Setelah Jerman menyerah di Italia pada 1945, Benito Mussolini Site of execution: entrance to the Villa Belmonte. In the early morning, an end-run round the Italian southern flank by the 4th Indian Division achieved total surprise, catching the Italians in their beds. Wikimedia CommonsAdolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Munich, Germany, circa June 1940. On 27 April 1945, a group of local communist partisans attacked the convoy in which Mussolini and Petacci were travelling, near the village of Dongo on the north western shore of Lake Como and forced it to halt. He needed more than just fiery speeches and violent rhetoric. As panic spread in their ranks, OConnor now launched a frontal assault by 7th Armoured Division, the famed Desert Rats. Graziani's entire army was routed, sent into headlong retreat across the desert, pursued, caught, and destroyed at Beda Fomm in February 1941. To the hooks, like pigs!. Another few miles and Mussolini would have been free. Accounts vary as to how he died: Some say he was killed with coma-inducing injections, others say it was from electric shock treatments. The death of Benito Mussolini, the deposed Italian fascist dictator, occurred on 28 April 1945, in the final days of World War II in Europe, when he was summarily executed by an Italian partisan in the small village of Giulino di Mezzegra in northern Italy. They lived in two crowded rooms on the second floor of a small, decrepit palazzo; and, because Mussolinis father spent much of his time discussing politics in taverns and most of his money on his mistress, the meals that his three children ate were often meagre. That connection was not lost on the residents of Milan, who then took out 20 years of frustration and fury on the corpses. Upon Mussolinis death, the final words he uttered were No! He had one child with his first wife, Ida Dalser, but would eventually abandon them and seek to hide them from the public eye. The illusions of the new Roman Empire and Mussolinis ambition of creating a state that would encircle the Mediterranean, calling it Mare Nostrum, were shattered when poorly equipped and led Italian army started suffering defeat after defeat [24][25] In all, over fifty fascist leaders and their families were found in the convoy and arrested by the partisans. info@nationalww2museum.org Audisio said he read out a sentence of death, whereas Lampredi omitted this. Two days into their trek, they were identified by a group of partisans, which was probably inevitable. Upon concluding Marx was correct on revolution following the war he began to make moves to become a dictator and enact widespread change. Furthermore, he had had a reputation for being reliable and trustworthy; he was also known to have disliked Audisio personally. They made the Germans hand over all the Italians in exchange for allowing the Germans to proceed. The Frenchdisintegrating all over the mapstopped the Italians cold. Italy fared poorly from the outset, with ignominious defeats in North Africa, Greece, and the Soviet Union. By 1945, Germany was According to the latter, when he met Audisio in Dongo, Audisio asked for a list of the fascist prisoners that had been captured the previous day and marked Mussolini's and Petacci's names for execution. Among those who had him ousted and arrested was his own son-in-law Gian Galeazo Ciano. A woman stepping forward and pumping five bullets into his bodyfor my five dead sons, she said. At the age of 19, a short, pale young man with a powerful jaw and enormous, dark, piercing eyes, he left Italy for Switzerland with a nickel medallion of Karl Marx in his otherwise empty pockets. This included Leccisi himself, who was now a neo-fascist party deputy. Benito Mussolini, in full Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini, byname Il Duce (Italian: The Leader), (born July 29, 1883, Predappio, Italydied April 28, 1945, near Dongo), Italian prime minister (192243) and the first of 20th-century Europes fascist dictators. At the same time, however, he was gaining a reputation as a young man of strange magnetism and remarkable rhetorical talents. Fifteen partisans had been shot there in August 1944 in retaliation for partisan attacks and Allied bombing raids, and their bodies had then been left on public display. Indeed, the human corpses now looked like meat hanging in a slaughterhouse. At other times, howeverand we have to be honest about thisit can make us feel contented, perhaps even happy. [13][20] At 8p.m. he headed north toward Lake Como. At the time, Mussolini is said to have remarked "for the blood of Piazzale Loreto, we shall pay dearly". ]]>*/ Lampredi was undoubtedly an eyewitness and, because he prepared his narrative for the private records of the Communist Party and not for publication it was perceived that he had no motivation other than to tell the truth. At noon, given a lunch of polenta in their upstairs bedroom, Mussolini told Petacci that he had lost his appetite; suspense over their fate was getting to him. [75] Comparisons have been made with the John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories,[20] and it has been described as the Italian equivalent of that speculation. The night after Benito Mussolinis death, a cargo truck roared into Milans Square of the Fifteen Martyrs. [59], On the afternoon of 29 April, Adolf Hitler learned of Mussolini's execution, although it is unknown how much of the detail was communicated to him. [35][36] Audisio used the nom de guerre of "Colonnello Valerio" during his mission. One woman felt Il Duce wasnt dead enough. A fitting end to a wretched life, the New York Times declared, and there were few, either inside or outside of Italy, who disagreed. Zoli, who also came from Predappio and knew Mussolini's widow, Rachele, was reliant on the far right to support him in Parliament. As an adult, Benito Mussolini would have two wives and many mistresses. Then, in September, an Italian army of 130,000 men under Marshal Rodolfo Graziani invaded Egypt from the Italian colony of Libya. 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. [26], Fighting was still going on in the area around Dongo. The death of Benito Mussolini on April 28, 1945 was one of those latter occasions. His bald head, deeply set jaw, and piercing brown eyes gave him away. The south was in ruins as Allied troops advanced. [82], The theory has been criticised for lacking any serious evidence, particularly on the existence of the correspondence with Churchill. This article is part of an ongoing series commemorating the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II made possible byBank of America. With German SS soldiers looking on, Mussolinis men opened fire and killed them. In 1922 Mussolini and other fascist leaders organized a march on Rome with the intention of forcing the king to yield the government to Mussolini. However, the reason given by those involved in hanging Mussolini and the others in this way was to protect the bodies from the mob. [5], On 18 April 1945, Mussolini left Gargnano, a village near Sal where he had been residing, and moved, with his entire government, to Milan and based himself in the city's prefecture. For some time after his return little was heard of him. Like the other Great Powers, he also wanted to create a colonial empire in Africa, looking especially to the East African kingdom of Ethiopia. To be sure, Italy paid a steep price for Mussolini. Eventually Mussolini was discovered slumped in one of the convoy vehicles. WebMussolini was survived by his wife, Rachele Mussolini, two sons, Vittorio and Romano Mussolini, and his daughters Edda (the widow of Count Ciano) and Anna Maria. But arresting Il Duce was no longer a viable course of action. Sometimes the death of a man has the power to move us, to make us stop what were doing, and to contemplate our common humanity and the cruelty of fate. Faces of European History: Fact or Fiction? The corpses were pelted with vegetables, spat at, urinated on, shot at and kicked; Mussolini's face was disfigured by beatings. Mussolini had come incredibly close to reaching Switzerland; the resort town of Como literally shares a border with it. ", "Mussolini's brain 'stolen for sale on eBay', Fabrizio Ciano, 3rd Count of Cortellazzo and Buccari, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Death_of_Benito_Mussolini&oldid=1149485213, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing Italian-language text, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 12 April 2023, at 14:55. Mussolini returned triumphantly and kept suppressing his opposition. At least twelve different individuals have, at various times, been claimed to be the killer. The Duce, it was said, could recite cantos of Dante from memory. It was even forbidden to publish a picture of him smiling or to print the word DUCE in anything but uppercase letters. Mussolinis own Milan newspaper office was barricaded with huge rolls of newsprint paper and barbed wire and guarded by a curious mix of Fascists, police, and Army troops. He was still 80 miles away from the main British position at Mersa Matruh! On 28 April 1945, Benito Mussolini died. In it, Lampredi confirmed the key facts of Audisio's story but without the embellishments. So, how did Mussolini die? Benito Mussolinis reaction to Brunos death Family close to Benito Mussolini reported that the dictator was heartbroken at the loss of his second son. 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. Benito Mussolini was the fascist leader of Italy, appointed as prime minister after his march on Rome in 1922. No autopsy was carried out on Petacci. [57] Samples of Mussolini's brain were taken and sent to the United States for analysis. He obtained a teaching diploma and for a time worked as a schoolmaster but soon realized that he was totally unsuited for such work. After the defeat of the Italian Army in Russia, Mussolini was removed as head of state and imprisoned. Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy, Operation FLAX, April 1943: Severing the German, General William H. Simpsons Ninth US Army and the Crossing of the Rhine, Black Volunteer Infantry Platoons in World War II, Kasserine Pass: German Offensive, American Victory, Gallantry against Great Odds: LTC George Marshall and Operation RESERVIST, Prelude to Liberation: Genesis of American Amphibious Assault in the ETO. Fairly or unfairly, the Italian military has come to be synonymous with wartime ineptitude. He was also intelligent, and he passed his final examinations without difficulty. And if you failed to look enthusiastic enough or failed to conform in any number of ways, there was an all-seeing secret police force, called the OVRA, lurking in the background, arresting, beating, and killing opponents of the regime. OConnor had only 30,000 men, but he planned his attacks skillfully. [91], Other theories have been published, including allegations that not only Luigi Longo, subsequently leader of the Communist Party in post-war Italy, but also Sandro Pertini, a future President of Italy, carried out the shootings. The next morning, the partisans ordered the pair to stand against a brick wall near the entrance of Villa Belmonte, near Italys Lake Como and a firing squad shot the couple down in a barrage of gunfire. Mussolini then took matters into his own hands. Benito Mussolini was born to a poor family in Predappio, a town in northeastern Italy. In this case, its hard to argue with the New York Times: a fitting end to a wretched life.. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. He would strip to the waist to address farmers in the hot sun or pose wrestling with a lion cub. World War II began later that year in September. The campaign in North Africa began with a daring Anglo-American commando raid code-named Operation RESERVIST. [28] The CLNAI subsequently announced, on the day after his death, that Mussolini had been executed on its orders. Benito Mussolini was Europes first 20th-century fascist dictator. Born: July 29, 1883 in Predappio, Italy. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. [20][86] Journalist Peter Tompkins claimed to have established that "John" was Robert Maccarrone, a British SOE agent who had Sicilian ancestry. Finally, in December, a British force under General Richard OConnor attacked Graziani at Sidi Barrani. Duce! once upon a time, perhaps not so long ago. 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. Mussolinis booking file following his arrest by the police on 19 June 1903, Bern, Switzerland. Differing accounts exist of who made the decision that Mussolini should be summarily executed. It was very barbarous. No more posturing now: this was the real thing, when all that hard work and money he had lavished on the Italian military would bear fruit and show the world that he had created a new kind of Italian: a warrior as of old. In Audisio's account, Mussolini said nothing immediately prior to or during the execution. Rather than Fascism, its probably better to think of Italy in those days as being under the rule of mussolinismo: Mussolini-ism.. The exact story of Mussolinis death seems to be blurry. [17][18] That evening,[19] with the German army in northern Italy about to surrender and the CLNAI taking control of Milan, Mussolini decided to flee the city. His political beliefs took a hairpin turn to the right midway through World War I, when he stopped decrying the war effort and began advocating for it. 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