how did benito mussolini diehow did benito mussolini die

He began adult life as a staunch socialist opposed to the war in the footsteps of his father. Benito Mussolini lies dead in Milans Piazza Loroto with his mistress, Clara Petacci. Aside from Mussolini and Petacci, sixteen of the most prominent of them would be summarily shot in Dongo the following day and a further ten would be killed over two successive nights. MUSSOLINI WAS EXPELLED FROM SCHOOL. The treaty that Hitler hated even more than the Treaty of Versailles and one of the most important treaties you have probably never heard of. [30], Although several conflicting versions and theories of how Mussolini and Petacci died were put forward after the war, the account of Walter Audisio, or at least its essential components, remains the most credible and is sometimes referred to in Italy as the "official" version. Even worse, Great Britain now sent forces to Greece to oppose him. Furthermore, he had had a reputation for being reliable and trustworthy; he was also known to have disliked Audisio personally. The Matteotti crisis shook Mussolini, but he managed to maintain his hold on power. As an adult, Benito Mussolini would have two wives and many mistresses. Italy fared poorly from the outset, with ignominious defeats in North Africa, Greece, and the Soviet Union. The tribunal condemned Mussolini and Petacci to death. Audisio presented Mussolini as acting in a cowardly manner immediately prior to his death whereas Lampredi did not. They were those of Mussolini, the Petaccis, and the 15 suspected Fascists. But just like that, Mussolinis violent life had come to a violent end. OConnor had only 30,000 men, but he planned his attacks skillfully. ", "Mussolini's brain 'stolen for sale on eBay', Fabrizio Ciano, 3rd Count of Cortellazzo and Buccari, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Death_of_Benito_Mussolini&oldid=1149485213, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing Italian-language text, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 12 April 2023, at 14:55. In it, Lampredi confirmed the key facts of Audisio's story but without the embellishments. Lets take a look at the circumstances that led to his demise. In late 1935, his forces invaded Ethiopia and, after a brief war ending with Italys victory, declared the country an Italian colony. He thanks you for reading his content. Containing both labor and management, their task was to negotiate labor settlements. In February 1929 he signed a Concordat with the Vatican, the Lateran Treaty, which brought to an end the hostility between the Church and the Italian government that dated back to 1870, when the Italian state had seized the Papal States. At least this way, Mussolini believed, he could live out his days in exile. This reign of terror came to a head on Aug. 13, 1944. [Long live Italy!]. World War II broke out between Germany and the rest of Europe later that year, but Italyits resources already stretched thin by preexisting economic issues and Mussolinis Ethiopian conquest in 1935was hesitant to join. Italian fascism was a right-wing nationalist ideology that many, including Hitler, considered the big brother of Nazism. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Benito Mussolini was the creator of fascism. [89][90] The first to put this forward was Franco Bandini in 1978. That still isnt the end of the story of Mussolinis death. Keystone/Getty ImagesBenito Mussolini lies dead in Milans Piazza Loroto with his mistress, Clara Petacci. However, the reason given by those involved in hanging Mussolini and the others in this way was to protect the bodies from the mob. Surrendered Italy would experience twenty more months of high intensity combata war that devastated countryside, cities, and civilian population alike. After the Allies invaded North Africa in late 1942, war came to Italys doorstep. [69] Over a period of sixteen weeks it was moved from place to place the hiding places included a villa, a monastery and a convent while the authorities searched for it. On October 25, 1922, a day after his rally in Naples, Mussolini appointed four party leaders to lead members into the nations capital. When the Allies touched down in Sicily in 1943, Mussolinis own government arrested him. [67] Ian Kershaw notes that while it is uncertain whether Hitler was told the details of Mussolini's death: if he did learn of the full gory tale, it could have done no more than confirm his anxiety to take his own life before it was too late, and to prevent his body from being seized by his enemies. [72], The anniversary of Mussolini's death on 28 April has become one of three dates neo-fascist supporters mark with major rallies. Four bullets near the heart were given as the cause of death. At other times, howeverand we have to be honest about thisit can make us feel contented, perhaps even happy. A macabre autopsy photo of Benito Mussolini and his mistress in a Milan morgue. The man who had once strutted across the world stage now dangling by his heels, next to his mistress. But of course, almost all of this was mythologicalunreal! Mussolini had developed a cult-like following and instant recognizability over the past 25 years due to his face being plastered all over propaganda nationwide and now it had come back to haunt him. Much has been made in the historical record of the capture of the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine River at Remagen, Germany in early March of 1945. On Oct. 29, 1922, King Victor Emmanuel III appointed Mussolini prime minister. [57] Samples of Mussolini's brain were taken and sent to the United States for analysis. The Frenchdisintegrating all over the mapstopped the Italians cold. See. Wikimedia CommonsThe farmhouse in northern Italy where Benito Mussolini would be last seen alive. A fitting end to a wretched life, the New York Times declared, and there were few, either inside or outside of Italy, who disagreed. The next morning, the partisans ordered the pair to stand against a brick wall near the entrance of Villa Belmonte, near Italys Lake Como and a firing squad shot the couple down in a barrage of gunfire. From today onward we are all Italians and nothing but Italians, he once said. People began hurling rotten vegetables at the dictators corpse. [65] Alan Bullock said that news of Mussolini's fate had presumably increased Hitler's determination to avoid capture[66] and William L. Shirer thought that knowledge of the events surrounding Mussolini's death may have strengthened Hitler's resolve not to risk his downfall being turned into a public humiliation. For some time after his return little was heard of him. Fast Facts: Benito Mussolini. Then, the final indignity: the posthumous desecration. Corrections? [23] Lazzaro later said that: His face was like wax and his stare glassy, but somehow blind. The story might well have ended here, but in September 1943 the Germans staged a daring commando raid on Mussolinis prisonactually the Hotel Campo Imperatore on the Gran Sasso massif. By May of 1936, the capital city of Addis Ababa fell to the Italian army, which forced emperor Haile Selassie I into a forced exile (via Britannica).). The corpses were pelted with vegetables, spat at, urinated on, shot at and kicked; Mussolini's face was disfigured by beatings. The fascist dictatorship in Italy differed from the one in Nazi Germany or Stalins Russia. Lampredi said that Mussolini's last words were "aim at my heart". Inside The Mysterious Death Of The 'Godfather Of Soul', How Did Joseph Stalin Die? In 1922 Mussolini and other fascist leaders organized a march on Rome with the intention of forcing the king to yield the government to Mussolini. The Fhrer convinced Il Duce to set up a Fascist state in northern Italy where it all began with Milan as its headquarters. String them up! The former led to Mussolinis overthrow and imprisonment; the latter to the surrender of Italy, even though German troops soon occupied the entire country and carried on the fight against the Allies from Italian soil. [68], After his death and the display of his corpse in Milan, Mussolini was buried in an unmarked grave in the Musocco cemetery, to the north of the city. He had a party behind him, of course, the Fascists, and he could call on squads of tough guys in blackshirt uniform (Camicie Nere) to beat down his opponents. Then came actual invasion, of Sicily in July 1943 and the Italian mainland in September. He referred to the Mediterranean Sea, as the Romans had, as Mare Nostrumour sea. He reminded Italians of their imperial destiny and revived the old stiff-armed Roman salute. At the age of 19, a short, pale young man with a powerful jaw and enormous, dark, piercing eyes, he left Italy for Switzerland with a nickel medallion of Karl Marx in his otherwise empty pockets. After this look at Benito Mussolinis death, read about Gabriele DAnnunzio, the Italian writer who inspired Mussolinis rise to fascism. [38][39] After they were picked up, they drove 20 kilometres south to the village of Giulino di Mezzegra. In his final will, scrawled on a piece of paper, Hitler said, I do not wish to fall into the hands of an enemy who requires a new spectacle organized by the Jews for the amusement of their hysterical masses. On May 1, mere days after Mussolinis death, Hitler killed himself and his mistress. [44], In a book he wrote in the 1970s, Audisio argued that the decision to execute Mussolini taken at the meeting in Dongo of the partisan leaders on 28 April constituted a valid judgment of a tribunal under Article 15 of the CNLAI's ordinance on the Constitution of Courts of War. Differing accounts exist of who made the decision that Mussolini should be summarily executed. But when considering a man of Benito Mussolinis character type, who regularly consumed approximately 98% of the oxygen in the room in order to fuel his ego and oratory style, it was an absolute necessity. This invigorated the crowd even more. Two Franciscan friars were charged with assisting Leccisi to hide the body. And Il Duce was also beginning to realize that Italys military was woefully under-classed. Throughout the 1920s, Mussolini remade Italy in his image. When he returned to Italy in 1904, even the Roman newspapers had started to mention his name. In June 1940, with German armies running riot all over Europe, the Duce decided to strike. He was a bully at school and moody at home. Hitler, for one, heard the news on the radio and vowed to not have his corpse desecrated in the same fashion as Mussolinis. Togliatti said he had done so by a radio message on 26 April 1945 with the words: Only one thing is needed to decide that they [Mussolini and the other fascist leaders] must pay with their lives: the question of their identity. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Inside The Murky Death Of The Soviet Dictator, What Stephen Hawking Thinks Threatens Humankind The Most, 27 Raw Images Of When Punk Ruled New York, Join The All That's Interesting Weekly Dispatch. Benito Mussolini was Europes first 20th-century fascist dictator. In front of the tomb is a register for visitors paying their respects to sign. Benito Mussolini served as the Prime Minister of Italy from 1922 to 1943, and his death marked the end of a brutal era in Italian history. Indeed, worry about Mussolini was one of the principal stumbling blocks that kept the British and French from taking a harder line against Hitler in the 1930s. In late 1914, with World War I newly underway, he founded a newspaper called The People of Italy. In 1994 Bruno Lonati, a former partisan leader, published a book in which he claimed that he had shot Mussolini and he was accompanied on his mission by a British army officer called "John", who shot Petacci. His tomb has become a place of pilgrimage for neo-fascists and the anniversary of his death is marked by neo-fascist rallies. His new location would put him in closer proximity to the Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Schuster, whom he hoped to use as an intermediary to negotiate with the Allies and the partisans. Consider this quick summary. During a period of freedom in 1909, he fell in love with 16-year-old Rachele Guidi, the younger of the two daughters of his fathers widowed mistress; she went to live with him in a damp, cramped apartment in Forl and later married him. [20], In any event, Longo instructed a communist partisan of the General Command, Walter Audisio, to go immediately to Dongo to carry out the order. While earning a reputation as a political journalist and public speaker, he produced propaganda for a trade union, proposing a strike and advocating violence as a means of enforcing demands. Some historians go as far as claiming that this marked the start of World War II. Anxious that he would lose claim to conquered European lands as Hitler advanced, Mussolini entered the war in 1940. Poorly trained and outfitted, these men would likely have lost a battle with Italys army. Some journalists, politicians and historians, doubting the veracity of Audisio's account, have advanced a wide variety of theories and speculation as to how Mussolini died and who was responsible. Among those who had him ousted and arrested was his own son-in-law Gian Galeazo Ciano. His father was a blacksmith who wrote part-time as a socialist journalist, and his mother was a staunchly Catholic schoolteacher. In the post-war years, the "official"[note 1] version of Mussolini's death has been questioned in Italy (but, generally, not internationally) in a manner that has drawn comparison with the John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. We want this, even though we think an execution platoon is too much of an honour for this man. Many historians have written about the famous Buffalo Soldiers of the all-Black 92nd Infantry Division, who fought with distinction during World War II. [82], Some, including most persistently the fascist journalist Giorgio Pisan, have claimed that Mussolini and Petacci were shot earlier in the day near the De Maria farmhouse and that the execution at Giulino de Mezzegra was staged with corpses. It was the same square where, a year earlier, Mussolinis men had gunned down 15 anti-Fascists in a brutal execution. He also claimed that Mussolini was inadvertently wounded earlier in the day when Petacci tried to grab the gun of one of the partisans, who killed Petacci and Michele Moretti then shot dead Mussolini. On 28 April 1945, Benito Mussolini died. In his 20s, he ran a series of newspapers that amounted to propaganda sheets for his increasingly extreme political views. 504-528-1944. The campaign in North Africa began with a daring Anglo-American commando raid code-named Operation RESERVIST. Audisio himself did not speak publicly about it until he published his account in a series of five articles in L'Unit later that month (and repeated in a book that Audisio later wrote which was published in 1975, two years after his death). [13] It also issued a decree establishing popular courts, which included in its provisions what, in practice, would constitute a death sentence for Mussolini:[14]. So successful was this paper that in 1912 he was appointed editor of the official Socialist newspaper, Avanti! On 29 April 1945, the bodies of Mussolini, Petacci and the other executed Fascists were loaded into a van and moved south to Milan. Bellini delle Stelle said he challenged Audisio as to why Petacci should be executed. After advancing 50 miles, Graziani halted at Sidi Barrani in order, he said, to begin construction of a paved supply road back to Libya, something that would have taken months even under peacetime conditions. William DeLong is a freelance wordsmith. A detailed structure of fascist rule existed on paper, with a Grand Council to which the government was supposed to report and a Chamber of Deputies which made law, but in fact Italy was Mussolini's personal playground, and his own power nearly absolute. Hed declared war against the rest of the world with only Germany to back him up. 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