158 Facts About Benito Mussolini

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian dictator and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party.

Benito Mussolini was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 1943, as well as "Duce" of Italian fascism from the establishment of the Italian Fasces of Combat in 1919 until his summary execution in 1945 by Italian partisans.

In 1914, Benito Mussolini founded a new newspaper, Il Popolo d'Italia, and served in the Royal Italian Army during the war until he was wounded and discharged in 1917.

Benito Mussolini denounced the PSI, his views now centering on Italian nationalism instead of socialism, and later founded the fascist movement which came to oppose egalitarianism and class conflict, instead advocating "revolutionary nationalism" transcending class lines.

On 31 October 1922, following the March on Rome, Benito Mussolini was appointed prime minister by King Victor Emmanuel III, becoming the youngest individual to hold the office up to that time.

In 1929, Benito Mussolini signed the Lateran Treaty with the Holy See to establish Vatican City.

Between 1936 and 1939, Benito Mussolini ordered the Italian military intervention in Spain in favor of Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War.

Therefore, when Poland was invaded on 1 September 1939, Benito Mussolini declared Italy's non-belligerence.

Benito Mussolini was born on 29 July 1883 in Dovia di Predappio, a small town in the province of Forli in Romagna.

Benito Mussolini's father, Alessandro Mussolini, was a blacksmith and a socialist, while his mother, Rosa, was a devout Catholic schoolteacher.

In 1902, at the anniversary of Garibaldi's death, Benito Mussolini made a public speech in praise of the republican nationalist.

Benito Mussolini was sent to a boarding school in Faenza run by Salesian monks.

In 1902, Benito Mussolini emigrated to Switzerland, partly to avoid compulsory military service.

Benito Mussolini worked briefly as a stonemason in Geneva, Fribourg and Bern, but was unable to find a permanent job.

Benito Mussolini later credited the Christian socialist Charles Peguy and the syndicalist Hubert Lagardelle as some of his influences.

Benito Mussolini became active in the Italian socialist movement in Switzerland, working for the paper L'Avvenire del Lavoratore, organizing meetings, giving speeches to workers, and serving as secretary of the Italian workers' union in Lausanne.

In 1904, having been arrested again in Geneva and expelled for falsifying his papers, Benito Mussolini returned to Lausanne, where he attended the University of Lausanne's Department of Social Science, following the lessons of Vilfredo Pareto.

In December 1904, Benito Mussolini returned to Italy to take advantage of an amnesty for desertion of the military.

In February 1909, Benito Mussolini again left Italy, this time to take the job as the secretary of the labor party in the Italian-speaking city of Trento, which at the time was part of Austria-Hungary.

Benito Mussolini did office work for the local Socialist Party, and edited its newspaper L'Avvenire del Lavoratore.

Benito Mussolini thought of himself as an intellectual and was considered to be well-read.

Benito Mussolini read avidly; his favorites in European philosophy included Sorel, the Italian Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, French Socialist Gustave Herve, Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta, and German philosophers Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, the founders of Marxism.

Benito Mussolini had taught himself French and German and translated excerpts from Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Kant.

Benito Mussolini wrote several essays about German literature, some stories, and one novel: L'amante del Cardinale: Claudia Particella, romanzo storico.

The novel was bitterly anticlerical, and years later was withdrawn from circulation after Benito Mussolini made a truce with the Vatican.

Benito Mussolini had become one of Italy's most prominent socialists.

In September 1911, Benito Mussolini participated in a riot, led by socialists, against the Italian war in Libya.

Benito Mussolini bitterly denounced Italy's "imperialist war", an action that earned him a five-month jail term.

John Gunther in 1940 called him "one of the best journalists alive"; Benito Mussolini was a working reporter while preparing for the March on Rome, and wrote for the Hearst News Service until 1935.

Benito Mussolini was so familiar with Marxist literature that in his own writings he would not only quote from well-known Marxist works but from the relatively obscure works.

Benito Mussolini was influenced by Nietzsche's anti-Christian ideas and negation of God's existence.

Benito Mussolini felt that socialism had faltered, in view of the failures of Marxist determinism and social democratic reformism, and believed that Nietzsche's ideas would strengthen socialism.

Benito Mussolini was influenced by anti-Austrian Italian nationalist sentiments, believing that the war offered Italians in Austria-Hungary the chance to liberate themselves from rule of the Habsburgs.

Benito Mussolini eventually decided to declare support for the war by appealing to the need for socialists to overthrow the Hohenzollern and Habsburg monarchies in Germany and Austria-Hungary who he said had consistently repressed socialism.

Benito Mussolini further justified his position by denouncing the Central Powers for being reactionary powers; for pursuing imperialist designs against Belgium and Serbia as well as historically against Denmark, France, and against Italians, since hundreds of thousands of Italians were under Habsburg rule.

Benito Mussolini argued that the fall of Hohenzollern and Habsburg monarchies and the repression of "reactionary" Turkey would create conditions beneficial for the working class.

Benito Mussolini said that for Italy the war would complete the process of Risorgimento by uniting the Italians in Austria-Hungary into Italy and by allowing the common people of Italy to be participating members of the Italian nation in what would be Italy's first national war.

Benito Mussolini attacked the opponents of the war and claimed that those proletarians who supported pacifism were out of step with the proletarians who had joined the rising interventionist vanguard that was preparing Italy for a revolutionary war.

Benito Mussolini began to criticize the Italian Socialist Party and socialism itself for having failed to recognize the national problems that had led to the outbreak of the war.

Benito Mussolini was expelled from the party for his support of intervention.

Benito Mussolini formed the interventionist newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia and the Fascio Rivoluzionario d'Azione Internazionalista in October 1914.

On 5 December 1914, Benito Mussolini denounced orthodox socialism for failing to recognize that the war had made national identity and loyalty more significant than class distinction.

Benito Mussolini fully demonstrated his transformation in a speech that acknowledged the nation as an entity, a notion he had rejected prior to the war, saying:.

Benito Mussolini continued to promote the need of a revolutionary vanguard elite to lead society.

Benito Mussolini became an ally with the irredentist politician and journalist Cesare Battisti.

Benito Mussolini was turned down because of his radical Socialism and told to wait for his reserve call up.

Benito Mussolini's unit took part in the Third Battle of the Isonzo, October 1915.

Benito Mussolini was promoted to the rank of corporal "for merit in war".

Benito Mussolini was left with at least 40 shards of metal in his body and had to be evacuated from the front.

Benito Mussolini was discharged from the hospital in August 1917 and resumed his editor-in-chief position at his new paper, Il Popolo d'Italia.

Benito Mussolini wrote there positive articles about Czechoslovak Legions in Italy.

Benito Mussolini legally recognized this son on 11 January 1916.

In early 1918 Benito Mussolini called for the emergence of a man "ruthless and energetic enough to make a clean sweep" to revive the Italian nation.

Much later Benito Mussolini said he felt by 1919 "Socialism as a doctrine was already dead; it continued to exist only as a grudge".

On 23 March 1919 Benito Mussolini re-formed the Milan fascio as the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, consisting of 200 members.

Benito Mussolini drew from the works of Plato, Georges Sorel, Nietzsche, and the economic ideas of Vilfredo Pareto, to develop fascism.

Benito Mussolini admired Plato's The Republic, which he often read for inspiration.

Benito Mussolini equated a nation's potential for economic growth with territorial size, thus in his view the problem of poverty in Italy could only be solved by winning the necessary spazio vitale.

Benito Mussolini claimed that the world was divided into a hierarchy of races, and that history was nothing more than a Darwinian struggle for power and territory between various "racial masses".

Benito Mussolini believed that the United States was doomed as the American blacks had a higher birthrate than whites, making it inevitable that the blacks would take over the United States to drag it down to their level.

In Benito Mussolini's thinking, demography was destiny; nations with rising populations were nations destined to conquer; and nations with falling populations were decaying powers that deserved to die.

In 1921, Benito Mussolini won election to the Chamber of Deputies for the first time.

The King then handed over power to Benito Mussolini by asking him to form a new government.

Benito Mussolini favored the complete restoration of state authority, with the integration of the Italian Fasces of Combat into the armed forces and the progressive identification of the party with the state.

In 1923, Benito Mussolini sent Italian forces to invade Corfu during the Corfu incident.

Benito Mussolini ordered a cover-up, but witnesses saw the car that transported Matteotti's body parked outside Matteotti's residence, which linked Amerigo Dumini to the murder.

Benito Mussolini later confessed that a few resolute men could have altered public opinion and started a coup that would have swept fascism away.

On his release, Dumini allegedly told other people that Benito Mussolini was responsible, for which he served further prison time.

On 31 December 1924, MVSN consuls met with Benito Mussolini and gave him an ultimatum: crush the opposition or they would do so without him.

On 3 January 1925, Benito Mussolini made a truculent speech before the Chamber in which he took responsibility for squadristi violence.

Benito Mussolini did not abolish the squadristi until 1927, however.

German-American historian Konrad Jarausch has argued that Benito Mussolini was responsible for an integrated suite of political innovations that made fascism a powerful force in Europe.

Benito Mussolini made a significant effort to include the previously alienated Catholic element.

Benito Mussolini defined public roles for the main sectors of the business community rather than allowing it to operate backstage.

Benito Mussolini shut down all alternative political formations and parties.

Between 1925 and 1927, Benito Mussolini progressively dismantled virtually all constitutional and conventional restraints on his power and built a police state.

Benito Mussolini was no longer responsible to Parliament and could be removed only by the King.

On 7 April 1926, Benito Mussolini survived a first assassination attempt by Violet Gibson, an Irish woman and daughter of Lord Ashbourne, who was deported after her arrest.

Benito Mussolini survived a failed assassination attempt in Rome by anarchist Gino Lucetti, and a planned attempt by the Italian anarchist Michele Schirru, which ended with Schirru's capture and execution.

Benito Mussolini nominated Mori as a senator, and fascist propaganda claimed that the Mafia had been defeated.

Giuseppe Volpi, who had been appointed governor in 1921 was retained by Benito Mussolini, and withdrew all of the measures offering equality to the Libyans.

Benito Mussolini launched several public construction programs and government initiatives throughout Italy to combat economic setbacks or unemployment levels.

Benito Mussolini's earliest was the Battle for Wheat, by which 5,000 new farms were established and five new agricultural towns on land reclaimed by draining the Pontine Marshes.

Benito Mussolini initiated the "Battle for Land", a policy based on land reclamation outlined in 1928.

Benito Mussolini attempted to turn Italy into a self-sufficient autarky, instituting high barriers on trade with most countries except Germany.

Benito Mussolini was keen to take the credit for major public works in Italy, particularly the railway system.

The difference between the Italian railway service in 1919,1920 and 1921 and that which obtained during the first year of the Benito Mussolini regime was almost beyond belief.

Benito Mussolini pretended to incarnate the new fascist Ubermensch, promoting an aesthetic of exasperated Machismo that attributed to him quasi-divine capacities.

At various times after 1922, Benito Mussolini personally took over the ministries of the interior, foreign affairs, colonies, corporations, defense, and public works.

Benito Mussolini was head of the all-powerful Fascist Party and the armed local fascist militia, the MVSN or "Blackshirts", who terrorized incipient resistance in the cities and provinces.

Benito Mussolini portrayed himself as a valiant sportsman and a skilled musician.

Benito Mussolini always portrayed himself as an intellectual, and some historians agree.

Benito Mussolini had had his children baptized in 1923 and himself re-baptized by a Catholic priest in 1927.

At the time of the Corfu incident, Benito Mussolini was prepared to go to war with Britain, and only desperate pleading by the Italian Navy leadership, who argued that the Italian Navy was no match for the British Royal Navy, persuaded Benito Mussolini to accept a diplomatic solution.

Subsequently, Benito Mussolini took part in the Locarno Treaties of 1925, that guaranteed the western borders of Germany as drawn in 1919.

In 1929, Benito Mussolini ordered his Army General Staff to begin planning for aggression against France and Yugoslavia.

In July 1932, Benito Mussolini sent a message to German Defense Minister General Kurt von Schleicher, suggesting an anti-French Italo-German alliance, an offer Schleicher responded to favorably, albeit with the condition that Germany needed to rearm first.

Benito Mussolini's planned war of 1933 was only stopped when he learned that the French Deuxieme Bureau had broken the Italian military codes, and that the French, being forewarned of all the Italian plans, were well prepared for the Italian attack.

Confident of having been given free hand by French Premier Pierre Laval, and certain that the British and French would be forgiving because of his opposition to Hitler's revisionism within the Stresa front, Benito Mussolini received with disdain the League of Nations' economic sanctions imposed on Italy by initiative of London and Paris.

In Benito Mussolini's view, the move was a typically hypocritical action carried out by decaying imperial powers that intended to prevent the natural expansion of younger and poorer nations like Italy.

Benito Mussolini personally ordered Graziani to execute the entire male population over the age of 18 in one town and in one district ordered that "the prisoners, their accomplices and the uncertain will have to be executed" as part of the "gradual liquidation" of the population.

Benito Mussolini favored a policy of brutality partly because he believed the Ethiopians were not a nation because black people were too stupid to have a sense of nationality and therefore the guerrillas were just "bandits".

The other reason was because Benito Mussolini was planning on bringing millions of Italian colonists into Ethiopia and he needed to kill off much of the Ethiopian population to make room for the Italian colonists just as he had done in Libya.

In January 1936, Benito Mussolini told the German Ambassador Ulrich von Hassell that: "If Austria were in practice to become a German satellite, he would have no objection".

Benito Mussolini had applied strong pressure on the Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg to sign the treaty in order to improve his relations with Hitler.

In January 1937, Britain signed a "Gentleman's Agreement" with Benito Mussolini intended to limit Italian intervention in Spain, and was seen by the British Foreign Office as the first step towards creating an Anglo-Italian alliance.

The Foreign Office understood that it was the Spanish Civil War that was pulling Rome and Berlin closer together, and believed if Benito Mussolini could be persuaded to disengage from Spain, then he would return to the Allied camp.

The economic costs of the conquest proved to be a staggering blow to the Italian budget, and seriously delayed Italian efforts at military modernization as the money that Benito Mussolini had earmarked for military modernization was instead spent in conquering Ethiopia, something that helped to drive Benito Mussolini towards Germany.

The 1930s were a time of rapid advances in military technology, and Sullivan wrote that Benito Mussolini picked exactly the wrong time to fight his wars in Ethiopia and Spain.

From 1936 through 1939, Benito Mussolini provided huge amounts of military support to the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War.

In May 1938, during Hitler's visit to Italy, Benito Mussolini told the Fuhrer that Italy and France were deadly enemies fighting on "opposite sides of the barricade" concerning the Spanish Civil War, and the Stresa Front was "dead and buried".

At the Munich Conference in September 1938, Benito Mussolini continued to pose as a moderate working for European peace, while helping Nazi Germany annex the Sudetenland.

Benito Mussolini stated his belief that declining birth rates in France were "absolutely horrifying" and that the British Empire was doomed because one-quarter of the British population was over 50.

Benito Mussolini saw international relations as a Social Darwinian struggle between "virile" nations with high birth rates that were destined to destroy "effete" nations with low birth rates.

Benito Mussolini believed that France was a "weak and old" nation as the French weekly death rate exceeded the birthrate by 2,000, and he had no interest in an alliance with France.

The Easter Accords in turn were intended by Benito Mussolini to allow Italy to take on France alone by sufficiently improving Anglo-Italian relations that London would presumably remain neutral in the event of a Franco-Italian war.

In January 1939, the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, visited Rome, during which visit Benito Mussolini learned that though Britain very much wanted better relations with Italy, and was prepared to make concessions, it would not sever all ties with France for the sake of an improved Anglo-Italian relationship.

On 21 March 1939 during a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council, Italo Balbo accused Benito Mussolini of "licking Hitler's boots", blasted the Duce's pro-German foreign policy as leading Italy to disaster and noted that the "opening to Britain" still existed and it was not inevitable that Italy had to ally with Germany.

The Pact of Steel was an offensive and defensive military alliance, though Benito Mussolini had signed the treaty only after receiving a promise from the Germans that there would be no war for the next three years.

However, when the Germans incarcerated 183 professors from Jagiellonian University in Krakow on 6 November 1939, Benito Mussolini personally intervened to Hitler against this action, leading to the freeing of 101 Poles.

In September 1939, France swung to the opposite extreme, offering to discuss issues with Italy, but as the French were unwilling to discuss Corsica, Nice and Savoy, Benito Mussolini did not answer.

Benito Mussolini planned to concentrate Italian forces on a major offensive against the British Empire in Africa and the Middle East, known as the "parallel war", while expecting the collapse of the UK in the European theatre.

On 24 October 1940, Benito Mussolini sent the Italian Air Corps to Belgium, where it took part in the Blitz until January 1941.

Benito Mussolini first learned of Operation Barbarossa after the invasion of the Soviet Union had begun on 22 June 1941, and was not asked by Hitler to involve himself.

Benito Mussolini is overjoyed about the Japanese attack on America.

Benito Mussolini is so happy about it that I am happy with him, though I am not too sure about the final advantages of what has happened.

Benito Mussolini feared that with Allied victory in North Africa, Allied armies would come across the Mediterranean and attack Italy.

Several of his colleagues were close to revolt, and Benito Mussolini was forced to summon the Grand Council on 24 July 1943.

Benito Mussolini showed little visible reaction, even though this effectively authorized the king to sack him.

Benito Mussolini did ask Grandi to consider the possibility that this motion would spell the end of Fascism.

Benito Mussolini allegedly viewed the Grand Council as merely an advisory body and did not think the vote would have any substantive effect.

Benito Mussolini was unaware of these moves by the king and tried to tell him about the Grand Council meeting.

People rejoiced because they believed that the end of Benito Mussolini meant the end of the war.

Only two months after Benito Mussolini had been dismissed and arrested, he was rescued from his prison at the Hotel Campo Imperatore in the Gran Sasso raid on 12 September 1943 by a special Fallschirmjager unit and Waffen-SS commandos led by Major Otto-Harald Mors; Otto Skorzeny was present.

The rescue saved Benito Mussolini from being turned over to the Allies in accordance with the armistice.

Three days after his rescue in the Gran Sasso raid, Benito Mussolini was taken to Germany for a meeting with Hitler in Rastenburg at his East Prussian headquarters.

Benito Mussolini opposed any territorial reductions of the Italian state and told his associates:.

Benito Mussolini told one of his colleagues that being sent to a concentration camp was preferable to this status.

In December 1915, Benito Mussolini married Rachele Guidi, who had been his mistress since 1910.

Benito Mussolini had several mistresses, among them Margherita Sarfatti and his final companion, Clara Petacci.

Benito Mussolini was raised by a devoutly Catholic mother and an anti-clerical father.

Benito Mussolini considered religion a disease of the psyche, and accused Christianity of promoting resignation and cowardice.

Benito Mussolini was superstitious; after hearing of the curse of the Pharaohs, he ordered the immediate removal from the Palazzo Chigi of an Egyptian mummy he had accepted as a gift.

Benito Mussolini made vitriolic attacks against Christianity and the Catholic Church, which he accompanied with provocative remarks about the consecrated host, and about a love affair between Christ and Mary Magdalene.

Benito Mussolini denounced socialists who were tolerant of religion, or who had their children baptized, and called for socialists who accepted religious marriage to be expelled from the party.

Benito Mussolini once attended meetings held by a Methodist minister in a Protestant chapel where he debated the existence of God.

In 1924, Benito Mussolini saw that three of his children were given communion.

Benito Mussolini began drawing parallels between himself and Jesus Christ.

Benito Mussolini was given a funeral in 1957 when his remains were placed in the family crypt.

In 1934, Benito Mussolini supported the establishment of the Betar Naval Academy in Civitavecchia to train Zionist cadets under the direction of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, arguing that a Jewish state would be in Italy's interest.

Until 1938 Benito Mussolini had denied any antisemitism within the Fascist Party.

The relationship between Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler was a contentious one early on.

Benito Mussolini declared that the ideas of eugenics and the racially charged concept of an Aryan nation were not possible.

Benito Mussolini dismissed the idea of a master race as "arrant nonsense, stupid and idiotic".

When discussing the Nazi decree that the German people must carry a passport with either Aryan or Jewish racial affiliation marked on it, in 1934, Benito Mussolini wondered how they would designate membership in the "Germanic race":.

Benito Mussolini reached out to the Muslims in his empire and in the predominantly Arab countries of the Middle East.

Benito Mussolini has been a member of the European Parliament for the far-right Social Alternative movement, a deputy in the Italian lower chamber and served in the Senate as a member of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party.

Alessandra Mussolini is the daughter of Romano Mussolini, and of Anna Maria Scicolone, Sophia Loren's sister.