Mussolini, Benito

Mussolini, Benito (b. 29 July 1883, d. 28 Apr. 1945). Italian Fascist dictator 1922–45 Born in Predappio as the son of a socialist and anticlerical blacksmith, he was largely self-educated and became a primary school teacher (1901) and journalist. He lived with Rachele Guidi, from his home town, from 1909 (civil marriage 1915, religious marriage 1925), and together they had five children. A radical member of the Socialist Party since 1900, his political views were marked less by Marx than by Nietzsche, Pareto, and Sorel. He became provincial party secretary and a committed opponent of Guiolitti's conquest of Libya. In 1912 he became chief editor of the party newspaper Avanti!, whose circulation he increased from 20,000 to 100,000 copies by 1914. He broke with the socialists over World War I, into which he passionately supported Italy's entry, and founded his own newspaper, Il popolo d'Italia, in favour of a national socialism. He served in the war 1915–17. On 23 March 1919 he founded the Fascist movement, originally under the name Fasci di Combattimento, which he sought to develop into an anti-socialist and anti-capitalist mass movement.

After initial difficulties he came to power in a semi-constitutional coup known as the March on Rome (1922). Following the Matteotti Crisis he was pushed by the radical Fascist wing to outlaw all opposition and establish Fascism as the guiding principle in public and private life, e.g. through the establishment of the balilla or the dopolavoro. Despite the concentration of power in the hands of Il Duce, Mussolini's power continued to be circumscribed by the elites with whose help he had attained it. The fact that he had to take into account the opinions of the monarch, Victor Emanuel III, the Church, industrial elites, and parts of the administrative system meant that, unlike in Nazi Germany, a realization of concentration camps or other extreme forms of the prosecution of minorities were never possible in Italy.

From the mid-1920s his nationalism became more aggressive, with his emphasis on the ‘mare nostrum’ (our [Mediterranean] sea) which led, for example, to the pacification of Libya (1923–31) and its integration into the Italian state (1939) as well as the invasion of Albania (1939). In 1935–6, he also conducted the Abyssinian War, to international outrage. From 1936 he established ever-closer ties with Hitler's Germany. Hence, in 1940 he entered World War II even though the Italian army was too weak for the demands of a large-scale war which most Italians came to oppose. As a result, Mussolini was deposed by the Fascist Grand Council on 25 July 1943, and imprisoned the following day.

After the Italian armistice with the Allies, he was liberated by German paratroopers and brought to German-controlled northern Italy, where he was placed at the head of the Italian Social Republic (Republic of Salò). There, his room for manoeuvre was severely restricted by the Germans, on whose army and security apparatus (SS, SA) he depended, and by his Italian collaborators, most of whom came from the radical wing of the Fascist movement. When the Republic of Salò collapsed, he attempted to escape to Switzerland, but was discovered by Italian partisans and shot (with his mistress, Clara Petacci) without trial the next day. His body was taken to Milan and hung in the Piazzale Loreto, together those of Starace, Petacci, and Farinacci.