The government recovered it and interred it in a monastery near Milan. Mussolini’s body was buried in an unmarked grave, which was unearthed in 1946 by Fascist supporters, who took the body to a convent in Lombardy. One day later, Hitler committed suicide and the following week, Germany surrendered. The bodies of both Mussolini and Petacci were hung upside down at the Piazzale Loreto in Milan and displayed for crowds to kick and spit on. There are conflicting stories about how Mussolini died, but autopsy reports state the dictator was executed by firing squad on April 28, 1945, shot by soldiers firing several bullets-with four of them near the heart-causing immediate death. Transported to German-occupied northern Italy, he was installed as Hitler’s puppet leader, creating the Italian Social Republic and leading to the extermination of thousands of Italian Jews. Mussolini, fearful of being handed over, was instead rescued by Hitler’s forces. When Italy accepted the terms of secret peace talks with the Allies, Hitler ordered German forces into Italy, which resulted in two Italian nations, one occupied by Germans. On July 25, 1943, Mussolini was voted out of power by his own Grand Council, arrested after a visit with the king and sent to the island of La Maddalena. The Plot Against Mussoliniīy 1943, after years of fighting in World War II, Italy was viewed by its own citizens as losing the war. Italy declared war on France and Great Britain on June 10, 1940. (Japan would join in September of 1940 with the signing of the Tripartite Pact.)Īs the Germans plowed through France in June 1940, Mussolini announced Italy’s entrance into the war. On May 22, 1939, Italy and Germany signed the “ Pact of Steel” officially creating the Axis powers. Soon Holland and Belgium also fell to Hitler. Germany’s invasion of Denmark and Norway convinced Mussolini that Hitler would win the war. Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939 immediately caused Britain and France to declare war against Germany, but Mussolini, for the moment, remained neutral. Anyone who could not be prosecuted for a crime was detained for up to five years and placed in island internment camps. The same year, all Communist members of Parliament were arrested, and all Socialist members expelled. The Catholic Boy Scouts were dissolved and the formation of other youth groups became illegal.
In 1926, Fascists created a youth group called the Opera Nazionale Balilla, pressuring children to join. Several other assassination attempts followed. A Socialist deputy plotted to assassinate Mussolini, but the betrayal of a friend led to his arrest just before the attempt. The next year police rounded-up Socialists, and the government restricted their publishing activities. Soon after, the Italian parliament made suspicion of being anti-Fascist punishable by imprisonment without trial. Mussolini’s first act as prime minister was to demand special emergency powers allowing him to rig elections in the Fascists’ favor. Mussolini did not become a dictator overnight, but a speech he gave to the Italian parliament on Januasserting his right to supreme power is generally seen as the effective date that Mussolini declared himself dictator of Italy. Mussolini became Prime Minister, as well as Minister of the Interior and Minister for Foreign Affairs. He dissolved the government and asked Mussolini to form a new one. Refusing to pass martial law, King Victor Emmanuel III watched as thousands of armed Fascists entered Rome. By most accounts, Mussolini’s family lived in simple, small quarters. Mussolini’s Childhoodīorn on July 29, 1883, in Verano di Costa, Italy, Mussolini was the son of blacksmith and ardent socialist Alessandro Mussolini and a devout Catholic mother, Rosa Maltoni.
Mussolini was executed by firing squad shortly after the German surrender in Italy in 1945. Called “Il Duce” (the Leader) by his countrymen or simply “Mussolini,” he allied himself with Adolf Hitler during World War II, relying on the German dictator to prop up his leadership. Originally a revolutionary socialist, he forged the paramilitary fascist movement in 1919 and became prime minister in 1922. Benito Mussolini was an Italian political leader who became the fascist dictator of Italy from 1925 to 1945.
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