Mussolini then moved his government to northern Italy, hoping to regain his influence. On June 4, , Rome was liberated by Allied forces, who marched on to take control of Italy. Mussolini and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were executed on April 28, , in Mezzegra near Dongo , Italy, and their bodies were hung on display in a Milan plaza.
Following the liberation of Rome by Allied forces, the pair had attempted to escape to Switzerland but were captured by the Italian underground on April 27, The Italian masses greeted Mussolini's death without regret. Mussolini had promised his people Roman glory, but his megalomania had overcome his common sense, bringing them only war and misery.
We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany. His fascist agenda led to World War II and the deaths of at least 11 million people, including some six million Jews. Italian Jewish chemist Primo Levi survived a year at Auschwitz against all odds. Franklin D.
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This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Find out more about page archiving. World War One Centenary. Settings Sign out. The Italian Fascists courted war veterans and encouraged violence against socialists. Mussolini stockpiled weapons and explosives in his newspaper offices.
By the end of the year, Mussolini stood in a general election as the Fascist candidate but lost in a Socialist sweep.
Two days later, Mussolini was arrested for allegedly collecting arms to overthrow the government. He was released without charges the next day. Elections brought a huge win for the Fascists, with Mussolini taking a seat as a deputy in Parliament. The party changed its name to Partito Nazionale Fascista.
In , Fascists were instructed to wear uniforms, including black shirts, when in squads that were modeled after Roman army groups. All party members were considered squad members. Soon after, several Italian cities were seized by Fascist squads, who also burned down Communist and Socialist offices. In October , Mussolini threatened to march on Rome to take control of the government through violent force if it was not handed over.
The government was slow to act, eventually dispatching troops, though Fascists had already seized control of some local governments. He dissolved the government and asked Mussolini to form a new one. Mussolini did not become a dictator overnight, but a speech he gave to the Italian parliament on January 3, asserting his right to supreme power is generally seen as the effective date that Mussolini declared himself dictator of Italy.
Soon after, the Italian parliament made suspicion of being anti-Fascist punishable by imprisonment without trial. The next year police rounded-up Socialists, and the government restricted their publishing activities. A Socialist deputy plotted to assassinate Mussolini, but the betrayal of a friend led to his arrest just before the attempt.
Several other assassination attempts followed. In , Fascists created a youth group called the Opera Nazionale Balilla, pressuring children to join. The Catholic Boy Scouts were dissolved and the formation of other youth groups became illegal. A strongman who had seized power in Italy in , then in the midst of its post-World War I troubles, he had restored order, ended partisan squabbling, and built Italy up into a respected military power.
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. 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. News photos regularly showed him in a position of command, riding on horseback, flying an airplane, or driving a high-performance race car.
He would strip to the waist to address farmers in the hot sun or pose wrestling with a lion cub. Stories circulated in Italy to reinforce the image. The Duce, it was said, could recite cantos of Dante from memory. He worked all night in his office and the office lights were cleverly left on so that Italians could imagine him hard at work at am. American razor blades, it was said, were inadequate to cut his tough beard. It was even forbidden to publish a picture of him smiling or to print the word DUCE in anything but uppercase letters.
Yes, there were achievements of a sort. In February 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 , when the Italian state had seized the Papal States. The stagnant economy received a great deal of attention, with a number of well-publicized public works projects to create jobs, including a huge effort to drain the Pontine Marshes outside of Rome.
The economy was based on a system he called corporatism: Italian economic life was organized into 22 corporations, representing all industries in a major area of production, like agriculture or metallurgy, from raw materials through production to distribution. Containing both labor and management, their task was to negotiate labor settlements. If they couldn't, they submitted to binding government arbitration.
Order was restored to Italian economic life, and old days of strikes and factory occupations were ended. But of course, almost all of this was mythological--unreal! The abolition of unions and the loss of the strike weapon were devastating blows to Italian labor, from which management clearly benefited.
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