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Benito Mussolini (July 29, 1883 – April 28, 1945) led Italy from 1922 to 1943. He created a fascist state through the use of state terror and propaganda. Using his charisma, total control of the media and intimidation of political rivals, he disassembled the existing democratic government system. His entry into World War II on the side of Nazi Germany made Italy a target for Allied attacks and ultimately led to his downfall and death.

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Mussolini was born in a medium-sized village named Predappio in the province of Forlì, in Emilia-Romagna. His father, Alessandro, was a blacksmith. His mother, Rosa Maltoni, was a teacher who believed education was extremely important. He was named after Mexican reformist President Benito Juárez. Like his father, Benito became a socialist. By age eight, he was banned from his mother's church, and a few years later he was expelled from school, due to stabbing a fellow student in the hand and throwing an ink pot at a teacher. He did, however, receive good grades, and he qualified as an elementary schoolmaster in 1901. In 1902 he emigrated to Switzerland to escape military service. During a period when he was unable to find a permanent job there, he was arrested for vagrancy and jailed for one night. Later, after becoming involved in the socialist movement, he was deported and returned to Italy to do his military service. He returned to Switzerland immediately, and a second attempt to deport him was halted when Swiss socialist parliamentarians held an emergency debate to discuss his treatment. After his return to Italy (prompted by his mother's illness and death) he joined the staff of a socialist newspaper, ("Forward!"), in the city of Trento, ethnically Italian but then under the control of the Austria-Hungary, in 1908. At this time he wrote a novel, subsequently translated into English as

The word "Fascio" had existed in Italian politics for some time. A section of revolutionary syndicalists broke with the Socialists over the issue of Italy's entry into the First World War. The ambitious Mussolini quickly sided with them in 1914, when the war broke out. These syndicalists formed a group called Fasci d'azione rivoluzionaria internazionalista in October 1914. Massimo Rocca and Tulio Masotti asked Mussolini to settle the contradiction of his support for interventionism and still being the editor of and an official party functionary in the Socialist Party. (1) Two weeks later, he joined the Milan . In November, 1914, supported by his then mistress Margherita Sarfatti, he founded a new newspaper, ) and the pro-war group Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria. Mussolini was attracted to fasces, the ancient Roman symbol of the life-and-death power of the state, bundles of the lictors' rods of chastisement which, when bound together, were stronger than when they were apart — presaging the renewed Roman Mussolini promised to bring about. Mussolini claimed that it would help strengthen a relatively new nation (which had been united only in the 1860s in the ), although some would say that he wished for a collapse of society that would bring him to power. Italy was a member of the Triple Alliance, thereby allied with Imperial Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It did not join the war in 1914 but did in 1915 — as Mussolini wished — on the side of Britain and France

Called up for military service, Mussolini was wounded in grenade practice in 1917 and returned to edit his paper. Fascism became an organized political movement following a meeting in Milan on March 23, 1919 (Mussolini founded the on February 23, however). After failing in the 1919 elections, Mussolini at last entered parliament in 1921. The Fascisti formed armed squads of war veterans called to terrorize anarchists, socialists and communists. The government seldom interfered. In return for the support of a group of industrialists and agrarians, Mussolini gave his approval (often active) to strikebreaking, and he abandoned revolutionary agitation. When the liberal governments of Giovanni Giolitti, Ivanoe Bonomi, and Luigi Facta failed to stop the spread of anarchy, and after Fascists had organised the demonstrative and threatening ("March on Rome") (October 28th 1922), Mussolini was invited by Vittorio Emanuele III to form a new government. At the age of 39, he became the youngest Premier in the history of Italy on October 31.

Although many people believe that Mussolini became prime minister because of the march on Rome, this is not true. The king, Victor Emmanuel III, knew that if he did not choose a government under either the Fascist or Socialist party, Italy would be in a civil war in the near future. So, he asked Mussolini to become Prime Minister. This obviated the need for the march on Rome, but all of the fascists were already coming from all around Italy. He knew he could not send them back, so he decided to go on with the march, even though it was no longer necessary; in effect, the threatened seizure of power became a victory parade.

Mussolini's Fascist state, established nearly a decade before Adolf Hitler's rise to power, would provide a model for Hitler's later economic and political policies. Both a movement and a historical phenomenon, Italian Fascism was, in many respects, an adverse reaction to both the perceived failure of laissez-faire economics and fear of international Bolshevism (a short-lived Soviet influence was established in Bavaria just about this time), although trends in intellectual history, such as the breakdown of positivism and the general fatalism of postwar Europe were also factors. Fascism was a product of a general feeling of anxiety and fear among the middle-class of postwar Italy, arising out of a convergence of interrelated economic, political, and cultural pressures. Italy had no long-term tradition of parliamentary compromise, and public discourse took on an inflammatory tone on all sides.

Under the banner of this authoritarian and nationalist ideology, Mussolini was able to exploit fears in an era in which postwar depression, the rise of a more militant left, and a feeling of national shame and humiliation stemming from its 'mutilated victory' at the hands of the World War I peace treaties seemed to converge. Italian influence in the Aegean and abroad seemed impotent and disregarded by the greater powers, and Italy lacked colonies. Such unfulfilled nationalistic aspirations tainted the reputation of liberalism and constitutionalism among many sectors of the Italian population. In addition, such democratic institutions had never grown to become firmly rooted in the young nation-state. And as the same postwar depression ened the allure of Marxism among an urban proletariat even more disenfranchised than their continental counterparts, fear regarding the growing strength of trade unionism, communism, and socialism proliferated among the elite and the middle class.

Fascism emerged as a "third way" — as Italy's last hope to avoid imminent collapse of Italian liberalism, which was perceived as weak, or communist revolution. While failing to outline a coherent program, it evolved into new political and economic system that combined corporatism, nationalism, and anti-communism in a state designed to bind all classes together under a capitalist system. It was a new capitalist system in which the state seized control of the organization of vital industries. The appeal of this movement, the promise of a more orderly capitalism during an era of interwar depression, however, was not isolated to Italy, or even the rest of Europe.

At first Mussolini was supported by the Liberals in parliament. With their help, he introduced strict censorship and altered the methods of election so that in 1925–1926 he was able to assume dictatorial powers and dissolve all other political parties. Skillfully using his secret but absolute control over the press, he gradually built up the legend of , the title he bestowed upon himself: a man who never slept, was always right, and could solve all the problems of politics and economics. He introduced the Press Laws in 1925 which stated that all journalists must be registered Fascists. However, not all newspapers were taken into public ownership and sold on average 10 times as many copies as the leading Fascist newspaper 'Il Popolo D'Italia'. Nevertheless, Italy was soon a police state. The assassination of the prominent Socialist Giacomo Matteotti in 1924, began a prolonged political crisis in Italy, which did not end until the beginning of 1925 when Mussolini asserted his personal authority over both country and party to establish a personal dictatorship. Mussolini's skill in propaganda was such that he had surprisingly little opposition to suppress. Nonetheless he was "slightly wounded in the nose" when he was shot on 8 April 1926 by Violet Gibson, an Irish woman and sister of Baron Ashbourne. He also survived a failed assassination attempt in Rome by anarchist Gino Lucetti, and a planned attempt by American anarchist Michael Schirru ended with his capture and execution.

At various times after 1922, Mussolini personally took over the ministries of the interior, of foreign affairs, of the colonies, of the corporations, of the army and the other armed services, and of public works. Sometimes he held as many as seven departments simultaneously, as well as the premiership. He was also head of the all-powerful Fascist party (formed in 1921) and the armed local Fascist militia, the MVSN, or "Blackshirts", that terrorized incipient resistances in the cities and provinces. He would later form an institutionalised militia that carried official state support, the OVRA. In this way he succeeded in keeping power in his own hands and preventing the emergence of any rival. But it was at the price of creating a regime that was overcentralized, inefficient, and corrupt.

Most of his time was spent on propaganda, whether at home or abroad, and here his training as a journalist was invaluable. Press, radio, education, films — all were carefully supervised to manufacture the illusion that fascism was of the 20th century, replacing liberalism and democracy. The principles of this doctrine were laid down in the article on fascism, written by Giovanni Gentile and signed by Mussolini that appeared in 1932 in the . In 1929, a concordat with the Vatican was signed, the Lateran treaties, by which the Italian state was at last recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, and the independence of Vatican City was recognized by the Italian state.

Under the dictatorship, the effectiveness of parliamentary system was virtually abolished though its forms were publicly preserved. The law codes were rewritten. All teachers in schools and universities had to swear an oath to defend the Fascist regime. Newspaper editors were all personally chosen by Mussolini himself, and no one could practice journalism who did not possess a certificate of approval from the Fascist party. These certicicates were issued in secret, so the public had no idea of this ever occurring, thus skillfully creating the illusion of a "free press". The trade unions were also deprived of any independence and were integrated into what was called the "cooperative" system. The aim (never completely achieved), inspired by medieval guilds, was to place all Italians in various professional organizations or "corporations", all of them under clandestine governmental control. Another change is that all schools, newspapers etc. etc. had to not write the 13th of June 1933 but instead had to write the 13th of June of the 11th year of Mussolini's power.

Mussolini played up to his financial backers at first by transferring a number of industries from public to private ownership. But by the 1930s he had begun moving back to the opposite extreme of rigid governmental control of industry. A great deal of money was spent on highly visible public works, and on international prestige projects such as the , Blue Riband ocean liner [1], but the economy suffered from his strenuous efforts to make Italy self-sufficient. A concentration on heavy industry proved problematic, because Italy lacked the basic resources.

In foreign policy, Mussolini soon shifted from the pacifist anti-imperialism of his lead-up to power, to an extreme form of aggressive nationalism. An early example of this was his bombardment of Corfu in 1923. Soon after this he succeeded in setting up a puppet regime in Albania and in ruthlessly consolidating Italian power in Libya, loosely a colony since 1912. It was his dream to make the Mediterranean ("our sea" in Latin), and established a large naval base on the Greek Island of Leros to enforce a strategic hold on the Eastern Mediterranean. In 1935, at the Stresa Conference, he helped create an anti-Hitler front in order to defend the independence of Austria. But his successful war against Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935–1936 was opposed by the League of Nations, this eventually led to Hitler seeking an alliance with fascist Italy. His active intervention in 1936-1939 on the side of Franco in the Spanish Civil War ended any possibility of reconciliation with France and Britain. As a result, he had to accept the German annexation of Austria in 1938 and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1939. At the Munich Conference in September 1938 he posed as a moderate working for European peace. But his "axis' with Germany was confirmed when he made the "Pact of Steel" with Hitler in May 1939. Clearly the subordinate partner, Mussolini followed the Nazis in adopting a racial policy that led to persecution of the Jews and the creation of apartheid in the Italian empire. Before this, Jews were not specifically persecuted by Mussolini's government, and were permitted to be high members of the Party. Members of TIGR, a Slovene anti-fascist group, plotted to kill Mussolini in Kobarid in 1938, but were unsuccessful.

The term "Axis Powers" was coined by Mussolini, in November 1936, when he spoke of a Rome-Berlin axis in reference to the treaty of friendship signed between Italy and Germany on October 25, 1936. Later, in May 1939, Mussolini would describe the relationship with Germany as a "Pact of Steel", something he had earlier referred to as a "Pact of Blood".

As World War II (WWII) approached, Mussolini announced his intention of annexing Malta, Corsica, and Tunis. He spoke of creating a "New Roman Empire" that would stretch east to Palestine and south through Libya and Egypt to Kenya. In April 1939, after a brief war, he annexed Albania, a campaign which strained his military. His armed forces are generally considered to have been unprepared for combat when Hitler's invasion of Poland led to World War II. Mussolini thus decided to remain 'non-belligerent' until he was quite certain which side would win.

On June 10, 1940, as the German Army under General Guderian reached the English Channel, Mussolini finally declared war on Britain and France. In October, Mussolini attacked Greece and, as a result, lost 13 of Albania, until Hitler was forced to assist him by attacking Greece as well. In June 1941, Mussolini declared war on the Soviet Union and in December also declared war on the United States.

Following Italian defeats on all fronts and the Anglo-American landing in Sicily in 1943, most of Mussolini's colleagues (including Count Galeazzo Ciano, the foreign minister and Mussolini's son-in-law) turned against him at a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council on July 25, 1943. King Vittorio Emanuele III called Mussolini to his palace and stripped the dictator of his power. Upon leaving the palace, Mussolini was swiftly arrested. He was then sent to Gran Sasso, a mountain resort in central Italy (Abruzzo), in complete isolation.

Mussolini was replaced by the Maresciallo d'Italia, General Pietro Badoglio, who immediately declared in a famous speech "" ("The war continues at the side of our Germanic allies"), but was instead working to negotiate a surrender; 45 days later (September the 8th) Badoglio would sign an armistice with Allied troops. Badoglio and the King, fearing the German retaliation, fled from Rome, leaving the entire Italian Army without orders. Many units simply disbanded, some reached the Allied-controlled zone and surrendered, a few decided to start a partisan war against the Nazis, and a few rejected the switch of sides and remained allied with the Germans.

Rescued a few days later in a spectacular raid planned by Nazi General Kurt Student and carried out by Otto Skorzeny, Mussolini set up the Italian Social Republic, a Republican Fascist state (RSI, ) in northern Italy. He lived in Gargnano during this period, but was little more than a puppet under the protection of his liberators. In this "Republic of Salò", Mussolini returned to his earlier ideas of socialism and collectivization. He also executed some of the Fascist leaders who had abandoned him, including his son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano. During this period he wrote his memoirs entitled

On April 27, 1945, in the afternoon, near the village of Dongo (Lake of Como), just before the Allied armies reached Milan, Mussolini and his mistress Claretta Petacci were caught by Italian communist partisans as they headed for Chiavenna to board a plane to escape to Switzerland.

The day after, April 28, they were both executed along with their sixteen-man train, mostly ministers and officials of the Italian Social Republic. The execution took place in the village of Giulino di Mezzegra, and was conducted by "Colonnello Valerio" (Walter Audisio), the partisan commander entrusted by the CLN (National Liberation Committee) with the execution of the death sentence issued against Mussolini. According to Audisio, the execution of Petacci was incidental and unplanned. Despite having no orders to kill her "she simply wouldn't let go of Il Duce".sup

The next day the bodies of Mussolini and his mistress were hung upside down in Piazzale Loreto (Milan), along with those of other fascists, to show the population that the dictator was dead. This was both to discourage any fascists to continue the fight and an act of revenge for the hanging of many partisans in the same place by Axis authorities.

Mussolini's was moved back to Predappio. It was actually stolen briefly in the late '50s by neo-fascists, then again returned to Predappio. Here he was buried in a crypt (the only posthumous honor granted to Mussolini; his tomb is flanked by marble fasces and a large idealized marble bust of himself sits above the tomb.)

Mussolini was survived by his wife, Donna Rachele Mussolini, by two sons, Vittorio and Romano Mussolini, and his daughters Edda, the widow of Count Ciano and Anna Maria. A third son, Bruno, had been killed in an air accident while testing a military plane. Mussolini's granddaughter Alessandra, daughter of Romano Mussolini, is currently a member of the European Parliament for the neo-fascist alliance Alternativa Sociale.

, Zeev Sternhell, with Mario Sznajder and Maia Asheri, trans. by David Maisel, Princeton University Press, NJ, 1994. pg 214.There is an essay on "The Doctrine of Fascism" credited to Benito Mussolini that appeared in the 1932 edition of the Enciclopedia Italiana, and excerpts can be read at Doctrine of Fascism. There are also links to the complete text. ("My Life"), Mussolini's autobiography written upon request of the American Ambassador in Rome (Child). Mussolini, at first not interested, decided to dictate the story of his life to Armando Mussolini, his brother. The story covers the period up to 1929, includes Mussolini's personal thoughts on Italian Politics and the reasons that motivated his new revolutionary idea. It covers the march on Rome and the beginning of the dictatorship and includes some of his most famous speeches in the Italian Parliament (Oct 1924, Jan 1925).2 Mussolini autobiographies in one book. English. Searchable. Click on the result titled "My Rise and Fall" (usually the top result). Then use the search form in the left column titled "search within this book."