On April 28, 1945, German troops capitulated in Italy. While trying to flee to Switzerland, fascist leader Benito Mussolini and his lover Clara Petacci were arrested and executed. The history of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) is intertwined with that of the Italian fascist movement. Its end began in the European summer of 1943, when the Allies landed in Sicily. On the 25th of July of that year, the highest body of fascism decided to overthrow and arrest the “Duce”, because of his military failures. King Victor Emanuel surrendered to the Allies and declared war on Nazi Germany, which he had previously supported.
Then the Germans occupied Italy, freed Mussolini and gave him protection to proclaim the Republic of Saló, a puppet government of Germany. Meanwhile, the Italian population was organizing resistance and cooperating with Allied troops, who were advancing north.
Attempt to negotiate surrender
At the end of March 1945, the partigiani (anti-fascist guerrillas) conquered Milan, closing the siege to Mussolini, who still tried, without success, to negotiate his surrender. On April 28, 1945, the Germans capitulated in Italy.
Embittered and resigned, Mussolini tried to flee to Switzerland with his lover Clara Petacci in a convoy of German soldiers. But it was too late for the “Duce”: Italian partisans intercepted the convoy, recognized the fascist leader and shot him along with Clara. The bodies were taken to Milan and exposed, hanging upside down, at a gas station in the square of Loreto.
Buried under a false name in a Milanese cemetery, the dictator would still take a long time to find his final resting place. A year later, his corpse was kidnapped by fascists and passed through several Italian cities, until he was found by the police. To avoid neo-fascist demonstrations, the remains were hidden for more than ten years in a monastery, being definitively buried on September 1, 1957.
Circumstances not explained
The last hours of Mussolini’s life were scrutinized by a Padua jury court in May 1957, but the case did not clarify the circumstances of the execution. To this day, it is not known, in fact, who fired the deadly shots. Researcher Renzo de Felice suspects that the British secret service has plotted the capture together with the partisans.
Michele Moretti, the last survivor of the anti-fascist group that executed the dictator, died in 1995, aged 86 in Como (northern Italy). Moretti, who at the time of the guerrillas used the codename “Pietro”, took to his grave the secret about who he really shot Mussolini and his mistress.
Some Italian historians claim that Moretti himself killed them both. For others, the author of the shots, made with the machine gun of “Pietro”, was another partisan, named Walter Audisio. It is certain, however, that the action was the work of the Italian resistance.
In power from 1922 to 1943
Italy was the first country to see the rise of an anti-Bolshevik, anti-socialist, nationalist, corporate, and violent movement. The embryo of what would become the National Fascist Party was founded in 1919, in Milan, by the ex-socialist Benito Mussolini.
Initially, the party was integrated by the fasci di combattimento, combat groups composed of ex-soldiers, marginals and the unemployed (called “black shirts”), whose objective was to repress workers’ demonstrations.
Supported by these groups, Mussolini threatened an uprising against the government, took power in 1922 and dominated Italy until 1943.
He intended to revive an empire like the Roman one and for that he invaded Ethiopia. He became dictator from 1925 onwards. The regime used the “red peril”, the fear of the bosses and the middle classes in the face of Soviet communism, to gain more support.
Although fascism, from the beginning, sought to ideologize the masses, the movement never had such indiscriminate support in Italian society as Nazism in Germany. Despite this, Italy tolerates parties like the Fiamma Socialist Movement, founded in 1995 by followers of Mussolini.
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