Mussolini, Benito

Although popular at home, Mussolini felt increasingly isolated by international opinion, especially by the disapproval of Italy’s former allies France and Britain. In reaction, starting in 1936 he moved towards an alliance with Nazi Germany, under the leadership of dictator Adolf Hitler, who greatly admired Mussolini. Emboldened, Mussolini intervened in the Spanish Civil War on the side of General Francisco Franco and his right-wing revolutionaries. Italian troops performed poorly in Spain, however, while Nazi Germany gave critical support that helped Franco win the civil war. This event showed Italy’s growing dependence on the superior power and unflinching purpose of Hitler’s Germany.

Race-consciousness in Italy had heightened with the conquest of Ethiopia in 1936, leading to the passage of laws preventing interracial marriages. Now allied with the Nazis, Mussolini in 1938 adopted anti-Jewish laws similar to those in Germany. Though the laws in Italy were less strictly observed than those in Germany, Italian Jews were fired from employment, deprived of property, and excluded from public schools. Worse, Fascist lists of “non-Aryan” people eventually became available to the Gestapo, the German secret police. After Italy fell under German occupation in September 1943, the Gestapo used these lists to round up thousands of Italian Jews for execution in concentration camps (see Holocaust).

Eventually, Mussolini’s war-making proved his undoing and his country’s as well. After the Fascists launched a costly campaign in April 1939 to conquer Albania, Italy was depleted of war materiel. Italians faced rationing of food and other supplies. In May Italy entered into an alliance with Germany, in what was called the Pact of Steel, but it was unprepared to fulfil the pact’s military obligations. When Hitler unexpectedly invaded Poland in September 1939, Italy stayed neutral. Only after France surrendered to German invaders in June 1940 (and Mussolini thought the German-Italian conquest of Europe would soon be over) did Il Duce draw Italy into World War II. Thereafter, Italy had to pay dearly for German supplies. The army, its morale low and its leadership weak, performed badly. With rising hardships at home and the Italian army suffering defeats in Greece, North Africa, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Mussolini’s popularity plummeted. However, living in an egocentric solitude with no checks on his despotic politics, he was utterly blind to public and Fascist Party opinion.

Allied forces landed in Sicily on July 10, 1943, provoking rebellion in the Fascist ranks. On July 25 the Fascist Party’s governing body voted to hand executive power over to King Victor Emmanuel III, and the king had Mussolini arrested. As the Italian government surrendered to the Allies in early September, the German army began occupying the Italian peninsula. Hitler ordered the rescue of his old ally, and on September 12, in a daring aerial raid, German commandos successfully plucked Mussolini from his mountain prison at Gran Sasso, high in the Apennines. In the northern territories occupied by German forces, the Germans installed Mussolini as the leader of a new government called the Italian Social Republic, headquartered at Salò. From there, he boasted of reinvigorating Fascism and returning it to its rightful position in power in Italy. In reality, however, the Italian Social Republic was a mere puppet of the Nazis. In April 1945 as the ranks of Italian partisans swelled and the Allied armies advanced north, Mussolini fled toward Switzerland hidden in a retreating German army convoy. Near Lake Como, partisans captured him. The next day, April 28, 1945, at Giulino di Mezzegra, Mussolini was executed with his mistress, Clara Petacci.

Mussolini’s legacy is still disputed. Lasting practically the entire period between the world wars, his dictatorship oversaw Italy’s transformation from a respected, but second-tier country to a modernized nation with great power pretensions. Apologists argue that Mussolini was an effective leader given Italy’s legacy of class division, the inept liberal government he replaced, and the hard times a relatively poor country faced during the period between the wars. Had Mussolini not come under Hitler’s sway and Italy stayed out of World War II, they argue, his regime might have lasted decades, like Franco’s dictatorship in Spain.

However, whatever innovations that may have occurred came at a high cost. Under Mussolini, democratic freedoms were lost, corruption became rampant, and the division between the classes deepened. Moreover, Mussolini’s overreaching and costly military misadventures started well before his connection with Hitler. Like all modern despots, Mussolini became increasingly blinded by his self-declared infallibility and the workings of his totalitarian party apparatus. Pushed further and further into an unwinnable war of conquest, Mussolini utterly subordinated his people’s well-being to the interests of the Nazis. The ultimate result was catastrophic in terms of loss of civilian lives, military casualties, resources, and cultural pride. If Mussolini and his Fascist dictatorship appear more benign than Hitler and his frightful Third Reich, it is only because of different circumstances in the two countries. Ultimately, whatever positive changes may have occurred during Mussolini’s regime could most likely have developed just as well under a more democratic form of government.