Mussolini_-_Dictator_or_Despot_

Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) "His Excellency Benito Mussolini, Head of Government, Duce of Fascism, and Founder of the Empire" official title from ‘36 Benito Mussolini was born on 29 July 1883 in Dovia di Predappio, a small town in Northern Italy. From a young age, Mussolini showed tendencies to violence. When sent away to school, he was expelled twice for a series of violent incidents. On at least two occasions he resorted to stabbing adversaries with a penknife. He even fought the fathers at his school when they tried to beat him. In 1902 Mussolini moved to Switzerland, where he became actively involved in Socialist politics. He studied the ideas of Marxism and philosophers including Freidrich Nietzche and George Sorel. He was greatly influenced by Sorel’s book Reflections on Violence which presented the idea that the only way for change to occur was through the application of force and violence. This deeply impressed the young Mussolini. When he returned to Italy in 1904, Mussolini began to work as a journalist in the Socialist press. With the outbreak of WWI, he was eventually expelled for his pro-war views. When Italy joined the Allies to fight Germany, he served for two years and was promoted to the rank of Corporal before being discharged due to shrapnel wounds. He then returned to his career in journalism, having decided that "Socialism as a doctrine was already dead”. At this point he began do develop ideas of strong political leadership through of fierce nationalism, anti-Communism and class unity. His ideas would one day become known as Fascism. When WWI ended, Italy was in turmoil. Although Italy emerged on the winning side, the country suffered huge losses of life and expense and gained relatively little. The economy was shattered and there was widespread dissent amongst the people. Mussolini’s disenchantment with his country led him further into political activism. He called for a leader "ruthless and energetic enough to make a clean sweep" to revive the Italian nation, obviously referring to himself. On March 23, 1919, Mussolini formed the National Fascist Party, galvanising the support of many unemployed war veterans who felt betrayed and resentful of their country. Mussolini thought of Fascism as a revolutionary idea and of himself as a revolutionary. He imagined himself as a 20th century Caesar who would restore the ancient glories of the mighty Roman Empire. Mussolini formed the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Squad), originally consisting of 200 discontented socialists, syndicalists, republicans, anarchists, other unclassifiable revolutionaries and restless ex-soldiers. This militia was organised into armed “Squadristi” in cities and provinces, spreading Mussolini’s reign of terror. They paraded around the country in their black shirts, waving their skull embroidered flag, singing patriotic songs, shouting nationalist slogans and marching to the attack of their political opponents. They terrorised the countryside, crushing all resistance by persecuting socialists and unionists, breaking up strikes, burning down union and Socialist party officers and intimidating local governments. Squadristi members punished their enemies by either beating them with manganellos or forcing them to drink pints of castor oil. Men were chained naked to trees, women had their heads shaved and many people were killed. The “Blackshirts” gathered more and more recruits, provoking and intensifying the anarchic political situation in Italy. Fascism gained much support from the people in its earliest stages, especially the hard hit lower middle classes. This popularity can be partly attributed to Fascism’s ideals of nationalism and strength in unity, regardless of class. Many found the Fascist movement offered a sense of comradeship and purpose lacking in civilian life. The Italian people were willing to accept the authoritarianism which Mussolini preached as a cure to the nation’s ills. So, in 1921, the Fascist Party was invited to join the coalition government. The next year, in October, the Blackshirts marched on Rome and Mussolini presented himself as the only man capable of restoring order to Italy’s political chaos. With the support of the Italian people, Benito Mussolini was made Prime Minister. From there he employed violence and intimidation against all who opposed him, including several assassinations of high ranking politicians. Once in power, Mussolini gradually dismantled Italy’s democracy, making himself dictator in 1925 and taking on the title Il Duce (the leader). He gradually slid further into the megalomania of the petty dictator. He banned opposition parties, trade unions, the free press, freedom of speech and forced his political opponents into exile. Mussolini abolished local autonomy, replacing councils and mayors with officials appointed by the Italian Senate. Mussolini forced all public servants to swear allegiance to fascism and set up a military tribunal to persecute antifascist “subversives”. His forces had 4,000 anti-Fascists imprisoned and thousands more beaten up. Mussolini directed one quarter of government spending into the Italian military and greatly encouraged population growth in order for larger armed forces. He went as far as to tax single men, and had everyone employed by the government, from postmen to teachers, marry or else lose their jobs. He was very focused on the Italian youth, as the next generation of Fascist soldiers. Young boys joined youth organisations at the age of 6, where they were given weapons training, taught discipline and obedience and what it meant to be a Fascist. Girls were given the message that a woman’s place was in the home, preferably with lots of children. One of Mussolini’s favourite slogans was “war is to the male what childbearing is the female”. His traditional view of women even extended so far as to ban them from wearing pants and abolishing mixed schools. Adults were also subjected to continuous propaganda, with parades and marches frequent events in big towns. Mussolini had slogans on the streets designed to encourage a war like attitude, such as “nothing in history has ever been won without bloodshed”. Even prior to the Second World War, Mussolini spread his negative influence outside Italy. In 1932, he granted Croatian Fascist Ante Pavelić, political asylum in Italy. Mussolini was instrumental in the rising of Pavelic’s Croatian revolutionary movement, providing him with training camps, protection and financial support. With Mussolini’s backing, he went on to lead the “Independent State of Croatia” during WWII. Pavelic’s reign was one of the bloodiest in the Second World War, condemning all Serbs, Jews, Roma to death in concentration camps and resulting in almost 1 million deaths. In October 1935, commanded by Field Marshal Pietro Badoglio, Mussolini’s forces invaded the African nation of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) and claimed it as part of the new Italian Empire. Mussolini’s invasion deliberately exploited minor provocations which arose in relations between the two countries, with his intention to expand his power into eastern Africa. During the seven month campaign, the Italian forces defeated the Ethiopians, who were comparatively poorly equipped. The Italian forces were merciless, making substantial use of mustard gas, used both in battle and in terrorising civilians. The Italians even carried out gas attacks on Red Cross camps and ambulances. Italian soldiers instituted forced labour camps, installed public gallows, killed hostages and mutilated the corpses of their enemies. Italian military officer Rodolfo Graziani was known to execute captured Abyssinian guerrillas by throwing them out of aeroplanes mid-flight. In Rome, on the 9th of May 1936, Mussolini announced the Italian victory in Abyssinia to a jubilant crowd of 400,000. After the war, Mussolini ordered that all rebels opposing Italian rule be killed. In 1937, following a failed assassination attempt on the Italian colonial governor, he had 30,000 Ethiopians executed. On July 18, 1936, The Spanish Civil War began when Spanish Nationalists led by Francisco Franco staged a coup against the country's left-leaning Republican Government. Mussolini provided support in the form of 50,000 troops to Franco and his Nationalist forces, which went on to win the war. This intervention helped condemn Spain into 40 years of fascism. In 1938, following Adolf Hitler’s lead, Mussolini’s fascist government passed laws discriminating against Jews in all parts of public and private life. Mussolini allegedly told his mistress, Claretta Petacci “those bloody Jews, they should be destroyed”. When WWII broke out in 1939, thousands of Italian Jews were deported to German death camps, with a total of almost 6,000 killed. In May of 1939, Italy and Germany cemented their alliance with the Pact of Steel as Germany prepared for war. When WWII broke out in September, Mussolini was reluctant to join the conflict. However, as Germany enjoyed great military success, he became obsessed with the fear that Hitler was about to win the war single handed and decided Italy must join in before Germany got all the glory. Italy was not equipped to fight in a war, with inferior technology and not enough weapons to arm its soldiers. Also, there were obvious advantages of Italian neutrality, including the prospect of foreign markets captured from Germany, particularly in the Balkans, and the soaring exports and stock market quotations that would result. The Italian people in whole did not want the war, the suffering WWI had brought still fresh in many minds. This reluctance to join the conflict was coupled with the people’s resentment of the Italian alliance with Germany. The alliance had never been popular, especially after the German defeat of the Catholic nation of Poland. Despite all of this, Mussolini was ultimately far more interested in Germany’s military triumphs and his own quest for power, so he joined the Germans, declaring war on the Allies on the 10th of June 1940. Mussolini soon realise that the League of Nations did not have the backbone to stop his and Hitler’s military advances, so he continued to press forwards. Prior to war breaking out, in April 1939, Italian forces had invaded Albania. However, Italy’s involvement in the war proved to be a bad move, exposed its military weakness and was followed by a series of Italian defeats in the Balkans and by May 1943, the end of Italy’s African Empire. It was at this point, due to poor leadership in the military and lack of fuel to power their forces, that Italy began to lose the war. Mussolini’s disastrous decision to involve Italy in WW2 cost the country one third of its national wealth, left 410,000 Italians dead, and a total of over 60 million dead worldwide. By July 1943, Allied troops had landed in Sicily. In the wake of the Italian defeats, Mussolini’s popularity had begun to nosedive and he was overthrown and captured by members of his own Fascist Grand Council. After Italy signed an armistice with the Allies in September, Germany began the occupation of Italy and Mussolini was rescued by German commandos. He was installed as the leader of a small government in Italy’s German occupied North, but was little more than Hitler’s puppet. He then fled to Switzerland in wake of the Allied advance northwards. On April 28, 1945, Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were captured by Italian partisans by Lake Como and taken into custody by communist partisan commander Walter Audisio. He shot them both. After being kicked, and spat upon, the bodies were hung upside down on meat hooks for all to see. The bodies were then stoned by civilians from below.