Fifteen partisans had been shot there in August 1944 in retaliation for partisan attacks and Allied bombing raids, and their bodies had then been left on public display. For some time after his return little was heard of him. While working for various labour organizations in Switzerland, Benito Mussolini made a name for himself as a charismatic personality and a consummate rhetorician. Fast Facts: Benito Mussolini. Lampredi said that Mussolini's last words were "aim at my heart". The death of the gassed Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini took place on April 28, 1945, in the last days of World War II in Europe, when he was executed by an Italian partisan in the small village of Giulino di Mezzegra in northern Italy. Mussolinis politics took a turn to the right midway through World War I, when he became a proponent for the war effort. He would strip to the waist to address farmers in the hot sun or pose wrestling with a lion cub. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Mussolini led Italy, alright: he led it straight into disaster. Additionally, it was better placed for an escape to the Swiss border. That still wasnt enough. They were those of Mussolini, the Petaccis, and the 15 suspected Fascists. One woman felt Il Duce wasnt dead enough. Fighting the Allies during the North African campaign of 1942-1943, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommels Afrika Korps (DAK) was resupplied by a concerted air and sea lift effort. Mussolinis mouth was agape. [50][51] The choice of location was deliberate. The death of Benito Mussolini, the deposed Italian fascist dictator, occurred on 28 April 1945, in the final days of World War II in Europe, when he was summarily executed by an Italian partisan in the small village of Giulino di Mezzegra in northern Italy. In his initial overtures into politics, Mussolinis beliefs took after his fathers: he spent time organizing with trade unions and writing for socialist publications in both Switzerland and Italy. The whereabouts of the body was kept a secret, even from Mussolini's family. The south was in ruins as Allied troops advanced. [46][note 4], During his dictatorship, representations of Mussolini's bodyfor example pictures of him engaged in physical labour either bare-chested or half-nakedformed a central part of fascist propaganda. Higher! Death of Benito Mussolini - Wikipedia. His neighbors, even Great Powers like France and Britain, took both Mussolinis new force and his constant warlike posturing very seriously, indeed. Soon after the marriage, Mussolini was imprisoned for the fifth time; but by then Comrade Mussolini had become recognized as one of the most gifted and dangerous of Italys younger socialists. The Pact committed Italy and Germany to provide military and economic support in event of war. Others have claimed that Mussolini (or Mussolini and Petacci together) committed suicide with cyanide capsules.[92]. It was even forbidden to publish a picture of him smiling or to print the word DUCE in anything but uppercase letters. He was placed in charge of a newly established Italian Social Republic in the north (sometimes, for the small town on Lake Garda that was its seat of government, called the Republic of Sal). The Italians convinced the West that their former pact with the Nazis was water under the bridge. Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy, Operation FLAX, April 1943: Severing the German, General William H. Simpsons Ninth US Army and the Crossing of the Rhine, Black Volunteer Infantry Platoons in World War II, Kasserine Pass: German Offensive, American Victory, Gallantry against Great Odds: LTC George Marshall and Operation RESERVIST, Prelude to Liberation: Genesis of American Amphibious Assault in the ETO. Like the other Great Powers, he also wanted to create a colonial empire in Africa, looking especially to the East African kingdom of Ethiopia. WebThe death of Benito Mussolini on April 28, 1945 was one of those latter occasions. According to the latter, when he met Audisio in Dongo, Audisio asked for a list of the fascist prisoners that had been captured the previous day and marked Mussolini's and Petacci's names for execution. And Il Duce was also beginning to realize that Italys military was woefully under-classed. Enter Rachele Mussolini or Donna Rachele, as she became known to the world. Palmiro Togliatti, the Secretary-General of the Communist Party, claimed that he had ordered Mussolini's execution prior to his capture. Even worse, Great Britain now sent forces to Greece to oppose him. There were no objections to any of the proposed executions. Mussolini returned triumphantly and kept suppressing his opposition. Mussolini may have been wearing German Luftwaffe kit, but there was no more recognizable face in all of Italy. [20][86] Journalist Peter Tompkins claimed to have established that "John" was Robert Maccarrone, a British SOE agent who had Sicilian ancestry. Your leisure time was overseen by a party organization called the Dopolavoro, and your children had no choice but to join the Young Fascists. [48][49], In the evening of 28 April, the bodies of Mussolini, Petacci, and the other executed fascists were loaded onto a van and transported south to Milan. The farmhouse in northern Italy where Benito Mussolini would be last seen alive. 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. At the time, Mussolini is said to have remarked "for the blood of Piazzale Loreto, we shall pay dearly". Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. In any event, on 27 April, he joined a Luftwaffe column travelling in convoy and retreating northwards to Germany.[22]. During World War I, he renounced socialism and adopted fascism. 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. Another few miles and Mussolini would have been free. On October 25, 1922, a day after his rally in Naples, Mussolini appointed four party leaders to lead members into the nations capital. Audisio replied that she had been Mussolini's adviser, had inspired his policies and was "just as responsible as he is". His tomb has become a place of pilgrimage for neo-fascists and the anniversary of his death is marked by neo-fascist rallies. After returning to Italy, he amassed a large following while working as an editor for the socialist magazine Avanti!. On April 28, 1945, Il Duce, Benito Mussolini, and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are shot by Italian partisans who had captured the couple as they attempted to flee to Switzerland. A US army cameraman went to the morgue and took photographs of the bodies for publication, including one with Mussolini and Petacci positioned in a macabre pose as though they were arm-in-arm. 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. Four months later it was recovered by the authorities who then kept it hidden for the next eleven years. Born: July 29, 1883 in Predappio, Italy. That still isnt the end of the story of Mussolinis death. Accounts vary as to how he died: Some say he was killed with coma-inducing injections, others say it was from electric shock treatments. Known For: Mussolini was a fascist dictator who ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943. 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. The Frenchdisintegrating all over the mapstopped the Italians cold. [82], The theory has been criticised for lacking any serious evidence, particularly on the existence of the correspondence with Churchill. At the same time, however, he was gaining a reputation as a young man of strange magnetism and remarkable rhetorical talents. Fascists dug up Il Duces body on Easter Sunday of 1946. His views were so extreme that the Socialist Party even kicked him out and he resigned from their newspaper. And that brings us back to where we started: that ill-fated gas station in the Piazzale Loreto. Word of Benito Mussolinis death spread quickly. I said I could not shoot Petacci, so John said he would shoot her himself, while making it quite clear that Mussolini however, had to be killed by an Italian. The south was in ruins as Allied troops advanced. He was still 80 miles away from the main British position at Mersa Matruh! [13][20] At 8p.m. he headed north toward Lake Como. [44] Urbano Lazzaro later denied that such a tribunal had been convened and said: I was convinced Mussolini deserved death but there should have been a trial according to law. Surrendered Italy would experience twenty more months of high intensity combata war that devastated countryside, cities, and civilian population alike. In fact, he first set out to be a teacher but soon decided that career wasnt for him. Keystone/Getty ImagesBenito Mussolini lies dead in Milans Piazza Loroto with his mistress, Clara Petacci. In the afternoon of the desecration of the corpses, both American troops arrived and a Catholic cardinal arrived. Poorly trained and outfitted, these men would likely have lost a battle with Italys army. WebThe death of Benito Mussolini on April 28, 1945 was characterized A fitting end to a wretched life, by The New York Times. Unlike traditional dictatorships, which demanded passive obedience, Mussolinis total state demanded constant involvement, even enthusiasm, for the regime. The abolition of unions and the loss of the strike weapon were devastating blows to Italian labor, from which management clearly benefited. [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. People got ropes, tied them to the feet of the corpses, and strung them upside-down from the iron girders of a gas station. Forces loyal to the Italian king arrested Mussolini and imprisoned him. Benito Mussolini was the fascist leader of Italy, appointed as prime minister after his march on Rome in 1922. 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. [75] However, within Italy, the subject has been a matter of extensive debate and dispute since the late 1940s to the present and a variety of theories of how Mussolini died has proliferated. But arresting Il Duce was no longer a viable course of action. Mussolini is on it, somewhere near the top, rivaled , perhaps, only by Hitler. Wikimedia CommonsA macabre autopsy photo of Benito Mussolini and his mistress in a Milan morgue. A fitting end to a wretched life, the New York Times declared, and there were few, either inside or outside of Italy, who disagreed. British war plans in the 1930s, in fact, flirted with abandoning the entire Mediterranean to Mussolini in the event of a conflict, so worried were the British that they could not resist his attacks. Two Franciscan friars were charged with assisting Leccisi to hide the body. Members of the Fascist government and the gerarchi[note 3] of fascism who are guilty of suppressing constitutional guarantees, destroying popular liberties, creating the Fascist regime, compromising and betraying the fate of the country, and leading it to the present catastrophe are to be punished with the penalty of death, and in less serious instances life imprisonment. He was later rescued by the Germans and placed as the man in charge of northern Italy. 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. Mussolini sold the invasion to the Italian people as a method to get jobs to It was never anything more than a German satellite state, and it did German bidding, rounding up and shooting anyone associated with the thriving anti-Axis partisan movement. Yes, there were achievements of a sort. The New York Times MUSSOLINI ON ISLE TORE OFF HIS SHIRT; But The Ousted Dictator As A Prisoner On Ponza Soon Wearied Of Tragic Role. His father was a blacksmith who wrote part-time as a socialist journalist, and his mother was a staunchly Catholic schoolteacher. [30] Longo asked another partisan, Aldo Lampredi[it], to go as well because, according to Lampredi, Longo thought Audisio was "impudent, too inflexible and rash". Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Munich, Germany, circa June 1940. By the autumn of 1943, he was reduced to being the leader of a German puppet state in northern Italy and was faced with the Allied advance from the south and an increasingly violent internal conflict with the partisans. She added, it was as if he had turned to stone. The death of Benito Mussolini on April 28, 1945 was characterized A fitting end to a wretched life, by The New York Times. Learn More. 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. Corrections? The tomb has become a neo-fascist place of pilgrimage. He was a bully at school and moody at home. 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. Now, Mussolini was in deep. [72], The anniversary of Mussolini's death on 28 April has become one of three dates neo-fascist supporters mark with major rallies. Whatever the case, his family was told that he died in the war. While these blackshirt squads cropped up all over northern Italy setting fire to government buildings, killing opponents by the hundreds Mussolini himself called for a general workers strike in 1922, as well as a march on Rome. But arresting Il Duce was no longer a viable course of action. In the early morning, an end-run round the Italian southern flank by the 4th Indian Division achieved total surprise, catching the Italians in their beds. How Did Benito Mussolini Die? He would have five childrenthree boys and two girlsby another wife, Rachele Guidi. The documentary went on to claim that the later shootings at the Villa Belmonte were subsequently staged as part of the "cover up". However, to reflect this lack of governmental or judicial authority, sources on the subject have used the term with quotation marks. In front of the tomb is a register for visitors paying their respects to sign. The bodies of Mussolini and Petacci were taken to Milan and left in a suburban square, the Piazzale Loreto, for a large angry crowd to insult and physically abuse. In 1966, the U.S. military turned over a slice of Mussolinis brain to his family. Throughout the 1920s, Mussolini remade Italy in his image. One battleship was sunk and two more disabled, neutralizing the Italian surface navy for the rest of the war. After this look at Benito Mussolinis death, read about Gabriele DAnnunzio, the Italian writer who inspired Mussolinis rise to fascism. Mussolini had come incredibly close to reaching Switzerland; the resort town of Como literally shares a border with it. The Duce, it was said, could recite cantos of Dante from memory. The intention was to prove the hypothesis that syphilis had caused insanity in him, but nothing resulted from the analysis;[58] no evidence of syphilis was found on his body either. After Lampredi's account was published, most, but not all, commentators were convinced of its veracity. [35][36] On arrival in Dongo, they met Pier Luigi Bellini delle Stelle, who was the local partisan commander, to arrange for Mussolini to be handed over to them. Also Known As: Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini. And by the mid-1930s, he began truly looking to assert his power beyond Italys borders. William DeLong is a freelance wordsmith. Il Duces days had been numbered. Support the continuing educational mission of The National WWII Museum by shopping our Museum Store book selection here. In June 1940, he took the country into World War II on the side of Nazi Germany led by Adolf Hitler. Whatever he might once have been, he was now a German puppet, beholden to Hitler for his very life. Fascist Italy was, or at least claimed to be, a totalitarian society, in which the state had complete control over the lives of its citizens. When he returned to Italy in 1904, even the Roman newspapers had started to mention his name. WebAnswer (1 of 6): Benito Mussolini was captured along with several of this top ranking officers while he was trying to flee to Switzerland, along with his lover and a certain amount of money and precious items. ] It was the birth cry of fascism. He declared war on France and Britain in June 1940. Bellini delle Stelle said he challenged Audisio as to why Petacci should be executed. Joseph Stalin died on March 5, 1953, after apparently suffering a stroke but some suspect that he was actually poisoned. One version is that he was executed by firing squad on the 28th of April, 1945, shot by soldiers firing several bullets. Some historians believe that what happened to Mussolini was a factor in Hitler's decision to take his own life and have his body burned. Mussolini and Petacci spent the rest of the night and most of the following day there.[27]. When the Allies touched down in Sicily in 1943, Mussolinis own government arrested him. [71] This remained the position until May 1957, when the newly appointed Prime Minister, Adone Zoli, agreed to Mussolini's re-interment at his place of birth in Predappio, in Romagna.