Benito Mussolini was born on July 29, 1883. He became a journalist at the Avanti! newspaper and professed ties to socialism. In 1912, he was expelled from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) for advocating military intervention in World War I, in opposition to the party’s stance on neutrality. In 1914, Mussolini founded a new journal, Il Popolo d’Italia, and served in the Royal Italian Army during the war until he was wounded and discharged in 1917. Mussolini denounced the PSI, his views now favoring Italian nationalism instead of socialism.
Mussolini formed the Fascist Party in March of 1919 with the support of many unemployed veterans of WWI. He organized them into armed squads known as Black Shirts, who terrorized their political opponents. In 1921, the Fascist Party was invited to join the coalition government.
In October 1922, the Black Shirts marched on Rome, and on this day in history, King Victor Emmanuel III appointed Mussolini Prime Minister of Italy. After removing all political opposition through his secret police and outlawing labor strikes, Mussolini and his followers consolidated power through a series of laws that transformed the nation by 1925 into a one-party dictatorship. Mussolini took the title “Il Duce” and encouraged a cult of personality.
March on Rome
(Benito Mussolini, center) , October 1922.
BPIS/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Mussolini aimed to expand his sphere of influence beyond the borders of Italy. In 1923, he began the “Pacification of Libya” and ordered the bombing of Corfu in retaliation for the murder of an Italian general. In 1936, Mussolini formed Italian East Africa (AOI) by merging Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia following the Abyssinian crisis and the Second Italo–Ethiopian War. In 1939, Italian forces occupied Albania.
Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler in Munich, Germany September 1937.
Fox Photos/Getty Images
On June 10, 1940, with the Fall of France imminent, Italy officially entered World War II on the side of the Axis and eventually occupied parts of south-east France, Corsica, and Tunisia. The Italians invaded Egypt, bombed Mandatory Palestine, and occupied British Somaliland with initial success. In October 1940, Mussolini sent Italian forces into Greece, starting the Greco-Italian War. The British Royal Air Force prevented the Italian invasion and allowed the Greeks to push the Italians back to Albania. Despite this, the Greek counter-offensive in Italian Albania ended in a stalemate that allowed the Germans to invade the country. Italy subsequently took part in the Axis occupation of Greece and Yugoslavia.
Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Munich, Germany, June 1941 (U.S. National Archives)
The German invasion of the Soviet Union led Mussolini to send an Italian army to Russia, and the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor impelled Italy to declare war on the United States. In 1943, Italy suffered major military disasters and on July 9 the Allies invaded Sicily.
As a consequence, early on July 25, 1943, the Grand Council of Fascism passed a motion of no confidence in Mussolini; later that day the King dismissed him as head of government and had him arrested.
On September 12, 1943 Mussolini was rescued from captivity by the Nazis. Hitler, after meeting with the rescued former dictator, put Mussolini in charge of a puppet regime in northern Italy, the Italian Social Republic. In late April 1945, in the wake of near total defeat, Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci attempted to flee to Switzerland, but both were captured by Italian communist partisans and summarily executed by firing squad on April 28, 1945 near Lake Como. The bodies of Mussolini and his mistress were then taken to Milan, where they were hung upside down at a service station to publicly confirm their demise.
Legal Legacy 
Leave a comment