BENITO MUSSOLINI: He asked too much from Italy

Mussolini was ambitious. He wanted Italy to regains the old glory of the days of the Roman Empire.

QUOTES BY MUSSOLINI

All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.

Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy.

Every anarchist is a baffled dictator.

Fascism is a religion. The twentieth century will be known in history as the century of Fascism.

Fascism is a religious concept.

Fascism is not an article for export.

Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.

Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.
Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity, quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace.

Inactivity is death.

It is humiliating to remain with our hands folded while others write history. It matters little who wins. To make a people great it is necessary to send them to battle even if you have to kick them in the pants. That is what I shall do.

It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity.

It's good to trust others but, not to do so is much better.

Let us have a dagger between our teeth, a bomb in our hands, and an infinite scorn in our hearts.

Socialism is a fraud, a comedy, a phantom, a blackmail.

The best blood will at some time get into a fool or a mosquito.

The fate of nations is intimately bound up with their powers of reproduction. All nations and all empires first felt decadence gnawing at them when their birth rate fell off.

The function of a citizen and a soldier are inseparable.

The history of saints is mainly the history of insane people.

He was then hung upside down on a lamp-post on a Milan street.

APRIL 28, 1945 MUSSOLINI KILLED (Source: BBC)

Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy until his downfall in 1943, has been killed by partisans along with his mistress, Clara Petacci, and some close associates.

Their bodies were taken to Milan from the Lecco district near Lake Como where they were arrested and then killed yesterday.

According to the Times correspondent in Milan, the corpses of Mussolini, Petacci and 12 Fascists are on display in Piazzale Loreto "with ghastly promiscuity in the open square under the same fence against which one year ago 15 partisans had been shot by their own countrymen".

One woman fired five shots into Mussolini's body, according to Milan Radio, and shouted: "Five shots for my five assassinated sons!"

Other passers-by spat on the bodies.

Mussolini was spotted yesterday heading towards Switzerland by an Italian customs guard at Dongo, near Lake Como. He was driving a car in a column of other German cars wearing a German greatcoat over his uniform.

It was later reported the mutilated bodies of Mussolini and his mistress had been hung upside down outside the forecourt of a Milan garage.

Beside them was Alessandro Pavolini, who had headed the "black brigades" to hunt down partisans and former leader of the Fascist Party Achille Starace.
On the following day Mussolini was buried in the family tomb in the village of Predappio.
The Committee of National Liberation in northern Italy publicly accepted responsibility for the executions and called them a "necessary conclusion to a phase of history which has left Italy in a state of material and moral ruin".

Mussolini shot dead along with 14 other Fascists by Italian communist partisans.

BENITO MUSSOLINI, A brief life sketch

(born July 29, 1883, Predappio, Italy — died April 28, 1945, near Dongo) Italian dictator (1922 – 43). An unruly but intelligent youth, he became an ardent socialist and served as editor of the party newspaper, Avanti! (1912 – 14). When he reversed his opposition to World War I, he was ousted by the party. He founded the pro-war Il Popolo d'Italia, served with the Italian army (1915 – 17), then returned to his editorship.

Advocating government by dictatorship, he formed a political group in 1919 that marked the beginning of fascism. A dynamic and captivating orator at rallies, he organized the March on Rome (1922) to prevent a socialist-led general strike. After the government fell, he was appointed prime minister, the youngest in Italian history. He obtained a law to establish the fascists as the majority party and became known as Il Duce ("The Leader").

He restored order to the country and introduced social reforms and public works improvements that won widespread popular support. His dreams of empire led to the invasion of Abyssinia (later Ethiopia) in 1935.

The Italian soldiers were not like the Germans. Mussolini's attacks on Greece and Abyssinia floundered.

Supported in his fascist schemes by Adolf Hitler but wary of German power, Mussolini agreed to the Rome-Berlin Axis and declared war on the Allies in 1940. Italian military defeats in Greece and North Africa led to growing disillusionment with Mussolini. After the Allied invasion of Sicily (1943), the Fascist Grand Council dismissed him from office.

He was arrested and imprisoned but rescued by German commandos, then became head of the Hitler-installed puppet government at Salò in northern Italy.

As German defenses in Italy collapsed in 1945, Mussolini tried to escape to Austria but was captured and executed by Italian partisans.


The Germans on Hitler's orders rescued Mussolini in 1944. But it was a broken man they had saved.

The dead Mussolini lies along with his mistress.

Brother-in-arms: Hitler and Mussolini were good friends.

Both had delusions of grandeur