Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (29 July 188328 April 1945) was a fascist dictator who was the prime minister of Italy from 1922 until his deposition in 1943. Known as Il Duce during his rule, he established a totalitarian dictatorship led by the National Fascist Party (PNF) in the Kingdom of Italy.
Born in Predappio, Mussolini originally worked as a journalist for the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) newspaper Avanti!. He was expelled from the party for advocating military intervention in World War I and called up for the Royal Italian Army in 1915, where he served until his discharge after being wounded in 1917. After the war, Mussolini turned to nationalism and denounced the PSI. He founded the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento in 1919, which opposed egalitarianism and class conflict and instead promoted a form of revolutionary nationalism transcending class lines. The Combattimento are often considered the world's first fascist movement.
The Combattimento were reorganised into the PNF in 1921. Fascist militants marched on Rome and Mussolini was appointed prime minister by King Victor Emmanuel III in 1922. He established the OVRA in 1927 to silence opposition, outlawed labour strikes, and consolidated power through the Acerbo Law among others, transforming Italy from a parliamentary democracy into a one-party state. He ordered the Pacification of Libya, characterised by some scholars as a genocide, and signed the Lateran Treaty to formally establish the Vatican City in 1929. Mussolini generally espoused autarkist and corporatist policies to grow the Italian economy, especially after the Great Depression.
Mussolini's foreign policy shifted from cautious pragmatism to aggressive expansion and close alignment with Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s. Initially, he sought to expand Italy's influence without risking a major conflict with France or Britain, aligning with them during tensions over Austria. However, his invasion of Ethiopia resulted in condemnations from the League of Nations, which isolated Italy diplomatically. This pushed Mussolini toward Adolf Hitler, leading to a rapprochement and the formation of the Rome–Berlin Axis in 1936. Mussolini began militarily supporting Francisco Franco's forces during the Spanish Civil War. Although he acted as a mediator at the Munich Conference in 1938, his ambitions for territorial expansion and growing distrust of the Western powers led him to strengthen ties with Germany, resulting in the creation of the Pact of Steel in 1939.
The wars of the 1930s cost Italy enormous resources, leaving it unprepared for the World War II; Mussolini initially declared Italy's non-belligerence. However, in June 1940, believing that German victory was imminent, he joined the war on Germany's side to share the spoils. Following defeats at the hands of the Allies and the landing in Sicily, the Grand Council of Fascism voted on the Grandi motion, which effectively ended Mussolini's leadership and restored powers to King Victor Emmanuel III who then immediately dismissed Mussolini as head of government and placed him in custody in July 1943. After the king agreed to an armistice with the Allies in September 1943, Mussolini was rescued by the Germans during the Gran Sasso raid. Hitler made Mussolini the figurehead of a puppet state in German-occupied north Italy, the Italian Social Republic, which served as a collaborationist regime of Germany. With Allied victory imminent, Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci attempted to flee to Switzerland, but were captured by communist partisans and summarily executed on 28 April 1945.
Early life
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was born on 29 July 1883 in Dovia di Predappio, a town in the province of Forlì in Romagna. Mussolini's father, Alessandro Mussolini, was a blacksmith and socialist, while his mother, Rosa (née Maltoni), was a devout Catholic schoolteacher. Given his father's political leanings, Mussolini was named Benito after liberal Mexican president Benito Juárez, while his middle names, were for Italian socialists Amilcare Cipriani and Andrea Costa. In return, his mother required that he be baptised at birth. Benito was followed by his siblings Arnaldo and Edvige. Mussolini's family was of relatively humble status, and fascist biographers emphasized that he had "come from the people". Nevertheless, the family did not belong to the lowest social stratum. Benito's father, despite having his own business, lived on the margins of the community because of his politics, while Rosa, who taught elementary school children at Palazzo Varano, earned a salary insufficient to compensate for her husband's lack of income.R. J. B. Bosworth, Mussolini (2002) pp. 35–41, 46.
Education Mussolini attended the first two years of elementary school in Dovia and then in Predappio (1889–1891). At his mother's request, he entered the Salesian college in Faenza (1892–October 1894), but was transferred after disciplinary problems, including a fight in which he injured a classmate with a knife, resulting in his demotion from the fourth to the second class. In Faenza, Benito experienced an unhappy period marked by corporal punishment from the Salesian friars and frustration over his family's modest social and economic condition.R. J. B. Bosworth, Mussolini (2002) pp. 46.
With his mother's assistance, Mussolini continued his studies at the secular Royal Carducci Male Teacher Training School in Forlimpopoli, directed by Valfredo Carducci, brother of Giosuè Carducci. He earned his lower technical qualification in 1898. Although his academic performance was good, he remained resistant to discipline. He was expelled from the boarding school twice: once after a fight in which he used a penknife, and another time for staying out all night. During his years in Forlimpopoli, and under the influence of his father, Mussolini became involved with militant socialism, speaking at evening rallies in nearby towns. In 1900 he joined the Italian Socialist Party, where he became acquainted with Olindo Vernocchi. On 8 July 1901, he received his diploma as an elementary school teacher from the same institute.
After graduation, Mussolini applied unsuccessfully for teaching posts in several municipalities, including Predappio, Legnano, Tolentino, Ancona, and Castelnuovo Scrivia. In Predappio he also sought a position as an assistant substitute to the municipal secretary, but was rejected by the moderate faction of the council. He eventually began teaching at the elementary school in Pieve Saliceto, a hamlet of Gualtieri and the first Italian municipality governed by a socialist administration. After the school year ended, he left Italy on 9 July 1902 and emigrated to Switzerland to avoid compulsory military service.
Emigration to Switzerland and military service
Without work, connections or money, he settled down on July 20 in Lausanne. Living in abject poverty, he was arrested for vagrancy by the police on 24 July under the arches of the Grand-Pont where he spent the night and was kept behind bars for three days.R. J. B. Bosworth, Mussolini (2002) pp. 57–61.
During this time, he studied the ideas of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, sociologist Vilfredo Pareto, and syndicalist Georges Sorel. Mussolini also later credited Charles Péguy and Hubert Lagardelle as influences.Delzel, Charles F. Mediterranean Fascism, p. 96 Sorel's emphasis on the need for overthrowing decadent liberal democracy and capitalism by the use of violence, direct action, the general strike, and the use of neo-Machiavellian appeals to emotion, impressed Mussolini.
Mussolini became active in the Italian socialist movement in Switzerland, working for the paper L'Avvenire del Lavoratore (The Future of the Worker), organising meetings, giving speeches to workers, and serving as secretary of the Italian workers' union in Lausanne. John Gunther alleged that Angelica Balabanov introduced Mussolini, then a bricklayer, to Vladimir Lenin. In 1903, he was arrested by Bernese police because of his advocacy of a violent general strike, spent two weeks in jail, and was handed over to Italian police in Chiasso. After he was released in Italy, he returned to Switzerland. He was arrested again in Geneva, in April 1904, for falsifying his passport expiration date, and expelled from the canton of Geneva. He was released in Bellinzona following protests from Genevan socialists. Mussolini then returned to Lausanne, where he entered the University of Lausanne's Department of Social Science on 7 May, attending the lectures of Vilfredo Pareto. In 1937, when he was prime minister of Italy, the University of Lausanne awarded Mussolini an honorary doctorate.
In December 1904, Mussolini returned to Italy to take advantage of an amnesty for desertion from the military. He had been convicted for this in absentia. Since a condition for being pardoned was serving in the army, he joined the corps of the Bersaglieri in Forlì on 30 December 1904.De Felice, 46-47 After serving for two years in the military (January 1905 until September 1906), he returned to teaching.
Political journalist, intellectual and socialist In February 1909,Georg Scheuer: Mussolinis langer Schatten. Marsch auf Rom im Nadelstreif. Köln 1996, S. 21. Mussolini again left Italy, this time to take the job as the secretary of the labour party in the Italian-speaking city of Trento, then part of Austria-Hungary. He also did office work for the local Socialist Party, and edited its newspaper L'Avvenire del Lavoratore (The Future of the Worker). Returning to Italy, he spent time in Milan, and in 1910 returned to his hometown of Forlì, where he edited the weekly Lotta di classe (The Class Struggle).
Mussolini thought of himself as an intellectual and was considered to be well-read. He read avidly; his favourites in European philosophy included Sorel, the Italian Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, French Socialist Gustave Hervé, Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta, and German philosophers Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, the founders of Marxism.Bosworth, Mussolini (2002) pp. 55–68 Mussolini had taught himself French and German and translated excerpts from Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Kant.
During this time, he published Il Trentino veduto da un Socialista (Trentino as viewed by a Socialist) in the radical periodical La Voce.Margherita G. Sarfatti, The Life of Benito Mussolini p. 156 He wrote essays about German literature, some stories, and a novel: L'amante del Cardinale: Claudia Particella, romanzo storico (The Cardinal's Mistress). This novel he co-wrote with Santi Corvaja, and it was published as a serial in the Trento newspaper Il Popolo from 20 January to 11 May 1910.taken from WorldCat's entry for this book's title. The novel was bitterly anticlerical, and years later was withdrawn from circulation after Mussolini made a truce with the Vatican.
He had become one of Italy's most prominent socialists. In September 1911, Mussolini participated in a riot, led by socialists, against the Italian war in Libya. He bitterly denounced Italy's "imperialist war", an action that earned him a five-month jail term.Charles F. Delzel, ed., Mediterranean Fascism 1919–1945 (1970) p. 3 After his release, he helped expel Ivanoe Bonomi and Leonida Bissolati from the Socialist Party, as they were two "revisionists" who had supported the war.