7 DIFF XXX-RARE WW2 FACIST-NAZI HITLER-MUSSOLINI STAMPS MINT UNUSED HISTORIC
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7 DIFF XXX-RARE WW2 FACIST-NAZI HITLER-MUSSOLINI STAMPS MINT UNUSED HISTORIC:
$174.95
DEAR , THISITEM HAS BEEN REVIEWEDAND APPROVED BY TRUST AND SAFETY.ALL IMAGES IN THIS LISTING ARE DOCUMENTARY (FROM NON-NAZI NEWS PUBLICATIONS). ALL TEXT IS HISTORICAL, NON-PROPAGANDA COPY FROM NON-NAZI SOURCES.
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This is one of the most remarkable and historic postage stamp lotsin the world. Issued in 1941, the year of Pearl Harbor, the stamps were meant to commemorate and honor the political and military bond between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
6 of the stamps are from wartime Fascist Italy. They are comprised of two full series in 6 different colors depicting the totalitarian leaders of the two Axis nations, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini,facing one another before soldiers from Italy and Germany.
The7th stamp is fromNazi Germany, and depicts Hitler andMussolini side-by-side,flanked by the Roman Fasces and the Nazi Eagle with Swastika, both symbols of Imperial Rule.
All 7 stamps are mint and postally unused!
Shipping is $.85. Insurance is $3.10
These legendary Nazi stampsat this condition levelare rare and special World War 2 collectibles thatare growing scarcer every day. Addthem to your collection today!
ALL PHOTOS ARE DOCUMENTARY NEWS PHOTOS.
Benito Mussolini war world 2
40th
President of the Council of Ministers of Italy
From 1925 Head of Government or DuceInoffice
31 October 1922–25 July 1943MonarchVictor Emmanuel IIIPrecededbyLuigi FactaSucceededbyPietro Badoglio (Provisional Military Government)Head of the Italian Social RepublicInoffice
September 23, 1943–April 26, 1945BornJuly 29, 1883(1883-07-29)
Predappio, ItalyDiedApril 28, 1945 (aged61)
Giulino di Mezzegra, Fascist PartySpouseRachele Baptised Roman Catholic in 1927.
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (July 29, 1883 – April 28, 1945) was the prime minister of Italy from 1922 until 1943. He established himself as the dictator of a fascist regime that valued nationalism, corporatism, militarism, and anti-communism combined with strict censorship and state propaganda. Mussolini became a close ally of German dictator Adolf Hitler, whom he influenced.
On 10 June 1940, Mussolini entered World War II on the side of Nazi Germany. Three years later, after a near unbroken series of Italian disasters, he was ousted by members of his own government. By then, the Allies had invaded and occupied parts of southern Italy.
In late April 1945, Mussolini attempted to escape to Switzerland, only to be captured and assassinated near Lake Como by Communist Italian partisans. His body was taken to Milan where it was hung upside down at a petrol station for public viewing and confirmation of his demise.
Early years
Mussolini was born in Dovia di Predappio in the province of Forlì in Emilia-Romagna, one of Alessandro Mussolini and Rosa Maltoni\'s three children. Despite having two incomes in the household, the Mussolinis were poor, as were many families in Italy at this time. He was named Benito after Mexican reformist President Benito Juárez; the names Andrea and Amilcare were from Italian socialists Andrea Costa and Amilcare Cipriani. His mother was a teacher. His father was a blacksmith and a socialist activist.
In 1891, Mussolini was banned from his local church for throwing stones at the congregation after Mass. Mussolini had never been baptized, and only would be in 1927. He was sent to boarding school later that year and at age 11 was expelled for stabbing a fellow student in the hand and throwing an inkpot at a teacher. He did, however, receive good grades, and qualified as an elementary schoolmaster in 1901.
EmigrationIn 1902, Mussolini immigrated to Switzerland to find work and to expand his political horizons. During a period when he was unable to find a permanent job there, he was arrested for vagrancy and jailed for one night. Later, after becoming involved in the socialist movement, he was deported to Italy and volunteered for military service. He later returned to Switzerland and a second attempt to deport him was halted when Swiss socialist parliamentarians held an emergency debate to discuss his treatment.
Trento, where Mussolini found his first jobMussolini found a job in February 1909 in the city of Trento, which was ethnically Italian but then under the control of Austria-Hungary. He did office work for the local socialist party and edited its newspaper L\'Avvenire del Lavoratore (\"The Future of the Worker\"). It did not take him long to make contact with irredentist politician and journalist Cesare Battisti, and to agree to write for and edit his newspaper Il Popolo (\"The People\") in addition to the work he did for the party. He wrote a novel for Battisti\'s publication (Claudia Particella, l\'amante del cardinale) which was published serially in 1910. He later dismissed it as written merely to smear the religious authorities. The novel was subsequently translated into English as The Cardinal\'s Mistress. In 1915, he had a son with Ida Dalser, a woman born in Sopramonte, a village near Trento.
By the time Mussolini\'s novel was printed in Il Popolo, Mussolini was already back in Italy. His growing defiance of Royal authority and anti-clericalism got him in trouble with the authorities until he was finally deported at the end of September. He was prompted to return to Italy once again when his mother became ill. He became a journalist for the socialist newspaper, Avanti! (Forward!).
Service in World War IAfter initially writing on numerous occasions against the war in the socialist paper Avanti, Mussolini relented and he and his class were called up in August of 1915 for active duty. Although his military record was unremarkable, it was without blemish and it has been suggested that he may have been prevented from moving further along in the ranks due to his ongoing political agitation in various periodicals. Mussolini\'s military experience is told in his work Diario Di Guerra. Overall he totalled about 9 months of active, front-line trench warfare. During this time he contracted paratyphoid fever. His military exploits ended in 1917 when he was wounded accidentally by the explosion of a mortar bomb in his trench. He was discharged from the hospital in August 1917 and resumed his editor in chief position at his new paper the Popolo d\'Italia.
Creation of Fascism The Fasces, the symbol of Italian fascismOnce Mussolini returned from World War I he gave little credence to socialism (though for a time, his paper still called itself \"a Socialist paper\"). By February 1918, he was calling for the emergence of a leader \"ruthless and energetic enough to make a clean sweep.\" In May, he hinted in a speech in Bologna that he was going to take that position.
On March 23, 1919, Mussolini reformed the Milan fascio as the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Fighting League), consisting of 200 members.Its first manifesto promised broad reforms. It became an organized political movement a month later. The Fascisti, led by one of Mussolini\'s close confidants, Dino Grandi, formed armed squads of war veterans called Blackshirts (or squadristi) to terrorize socialists, anarchists, and communists. The government rarely interfered. The Fascisti grew so rapidly that within two years, it transformed itself into the National Fascist Party at a congress in Rome. Also in 1921, Mussolini was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the first time.
The \"March on Rome\" and early years in powerThe March on Rome was a pseudo-coup d\'état by which Mussolini\'s National Fascist Party came to power in Italy and ousted Prime Minister Luigi Facta. The \"march\" took place in 1922 between October 27 and October 29. On October 28, King Victor Emmanuel III refused his support to Facta and handed over power to Mussolini. Mussolini was supported by the military, the business class, and the liberal right-wing.
A young Mussolini.As Prime Minister, the first years of Mussolini\'s rule were characterized by a right-wing coalition government composed of Fascists, nationalists, liberals and even two Catholic ministers from the Popular Party. The Fascists made up a small minority in his original governments. Nonetheless, Mussolini\'s domestic goal was the eventual establishment of a totalitarian state with himself as supreme leader (Il Duce) a message that was articulated by the Fascist newspaper Il Popolo which was now edited by Mussolini\'s brother Arnaldo. To that end, Mussolini obtained dictatorial powers for one year. He favored the complete restoration of state authority, with the integration of the Fasci di Combattimento into the armed forces (the foundation in January 1923 of the Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale) and the progressive identification of the party with the state. In political and social economy, he passed legislation that favored the wealthy industrial and agrarian classes (privatisations, liberalisations of rent laws and dismantlement of the unions).[5]
In 1923, Mussolini sent Italian forces to invade Corfu during the \"Corfu Incident.\" In the end, the League of Nations proved powerless and the Greece was forced to comply with Italian demands.
Acerbo LawIn June 1923, the government passed the Acerbo Law, which transformed Italy into a single national constituency. It also granted a two-thirds majority of the seats in Parliament to the party or group of parties which had obtained at least 25 percent of the votes. This law was punctually applied in the elections of April 6, 1924. The \"national alliance\", consisting of Fascists, most of the old Liberals and others, won 64 percent of the vote largely by means of violence and voter intimidation. These tactics were especially prevalent in the south.
Squadristi ViolenceThe assassination of the socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti, who had requested the annulment of the elections because of the irregularities committed, provoked a momentary crisis of the Mussolini government. The murderer, a squadrista named Amerigo Dumini, reported to Mussolini soon after the murder. Mussolini ordered a cover-up, but witnesses saw the car used to transport Matteotti\'s body parked outside Matteotti\'s residence, which linked Dumini to the murder. The Matteotti crisis provoked cries for justice against the murder of an outspoken critic of Fascist violence. The government was shocked into paralysis for a few days, and Mussolini later confessed that a few resolute men could have alerted public opinion and started a coup that would have swept fascism away. Dumini was imprisoned for two years. On release he told others that Mussolini was responsible, for which he served further prison time. For the next 15 years, Dumini received an income from Mussolini, the Fascist Party, and other sources. This was clearly hush money, for he left a dossier full of incriminating evidence to a Texas lawyer in case of his own death.
The opposition parties responded weakly or were generally unresponsive. Many of the socialists, liberals and moderates boycotted Parliament in the Aventine Secession, hoping to force Victor Emmanuel to dismiss Mussolini. Despite the leadership of communists such as Antonio Gramsci, socialists such as Pietro Nenni and liberals such as Piero Gobetti and Giovanni Amendola, a mass antifascist movement never caught fire. The king, fearful of violence from the Fascist squadristi, kept Mussolini in office. Because of the boycott of Parliament, Mussolini could pass any legislation unopposed. The political violence of the squadristi had worked, for there was no popular demonstration against the murder of Matteotti.
Within his own party, Mussolini faced doubts and dissension during these critical weeks. The militant members of the party were angry that only a few dozen had been killed and a bloodbath ensued, causing thousands of casualties.
On January 3, 1925, Mussolini made a speech before the Chamber in which he took responsibility for squadristi violence (though he did not mention the assassination of Matteotti). Promising a crackdown on dissenters, he dropped all pretense of collaboration and set up a total dictatorship. Before his speech, fascist militia beat up the opposition and prevented opposition newspapers from publishing. Mussolini correctly predicted that as soon as public opinion saw him firmly in control the \"fence-sitters\", the silent majority and the \"place-hunters\" would all place themselves behind him. In 1925, all opposition was silenced. And so the Matteotti crisis was the turning point between a parliamentary state ruled by a fascist party to a fascist dictatorship. From late 1925 until the mid-1930s, fascism experienced little and isolated opposition, although that which it did was memorable.
While failing to outline a coherent program, Fascism evolved into a new political and economic system that combined totalitarianism, nationalism, anti-communism, anti-capitalism and anti-liberalism into a state designed to bind all classes together under a corporatist system (the \"Third Way\"). This was a new system in which the state seized control of the organisation of vital industries. Under the banners of nationalism and state power, Fascism seemed to synthesise the glorious Roman past with a futuristic utopia.
Building a dictatorshipAssassination AttemptsMussolini\'s influence in propaganda was such that he had surprisingly little opposition to suppress. Nonetheless, he was \"slightly wounded in the nose\" when he was shot on April 7, 1926 by Violet Gibson, an Irish woman and sister of Baron Ashbourne. In January 1927, 15 year old Anteo Zamboni attempted to shoot Mussolini in Bologna. Zamboni was lynched on the spot. Mussolini also survived a failed assassination attempt in Rome by anarchist Gino Lucetti,[and a planned attempt by American anarchist Michael Schirru, which ended with Schirru\'s capture and execution.
Police state A fascist propaganda posterAt various times after 1922, Mussolini personally took over the ministries of the interior, foreign affairs, colonies, corporations, defense, and public works. Sometimes he held as many as seven departments simultaneously, as well as the premiership. He was also head of the all-powerful Fascist Party and the armed local fascist militia, the MVSN or \"Blackshirts,\" who terrorised incipient resistances in the cities and provinces. He would later form the OVRA, an institutionalised secret police that carried official state support. In this way he succeeded in keeping power in his own hands and preventing the emergence of any rival.
Over the next two years, Mussolini progressively dismantled all constitutional and conventional restraints on his power, thereby building a police state. A law passed on Christmas Eve 1925 changed Mussolini\'s title from \"president of the Council of Ministers\" (prime minister) to \"head of the government.\" He was no longer responsible to Parliament and could only be removed by the king. Only Mussolini could determine the body\'s agenda. Local autonomy was abolished, and podestas appointed by the Italian Senate replaced elected mayors and councils.
All other parties were outlawed in 1928, though in practice Italy had been a one-party state since Mussolini\'s 1925 speech. During the speech, he had talked about mass murders of a number of different races. In the same year, an electoral law abolished parliamentary elections. Instead, the Grand Council of Fascism selected a single list of candidates to be approved by plebiscite. The Grand Council had been created five years earlier as a party body but was \"constitutionalised\" and became the highest constitutional authority in the state.
Economic policyMussolini launched several public construction programs and government initiatives throughout Italy to combat economic setbacks or unemployment levels. His earliest, and one of the best known, was Italy\'s equivalent of the Green Revolution, known as the \"Battle for Grain\", in which 5,000 new farms were established and five new agricultural towns on land reclaimed by draining the Pontine Marshes. This plan diverted valuable resources to grain production, away from other less economically viable crops. The huge tariffs associated with the project promoted widespread inefficiencies, and the government subsidies given to farmers pushed the country further into debt. Mussolini also initiated the \"Battle for Land\", a policy based on land reclamation outlined in 1928. The initiative had a mixed success; while projects such as the draining of the Pontine Marsh in 1935 for agriculture were good for propaganda purposes, provided work for the unemployed and allowed for great land owners to control subsidies, other areas in the Battle for Land were not very successful. This program was inconsistent with the Battle for Grain (small plots of land were inappropriately allocated for large-scale wheat production), and the Pontine Marsh was lost during World War II. Fewer than 10,000 peasants resettled on the redistributed land, and peasant poverty remained high. The Battle for Land initiative was abandoned in 1940.
He also combated an economic recession by introducing the \"Gold for the Fatherland\" initiative, by encouraging the public to voluntarily donate gold jewelery such as necklaces and wedding rings to government officials in exchange for steel wristbands bearing the words \"Gold for the Fatherland\". The collected gold was then melted down and turned into gold bars, which were then distributed to the national banks.
Mussolini pushed for government control of business: by 1935, Mussolini claimed that three quarters of Italian businesses were under state control. That same year, he issued several edicts to further control the economy, including forcing all banks, businesses, and private citizens to give up all their foreign-issued stocks and bonds to the Bank of Italy. In 1938, he also instituted wage and price controls. He also attempted to turn Italy into a self-sufficient autarky, instituting high barriers on trade with most countries except Germany.
Government by propagandaAs dictator of Italy, Mussolini\'s foremost priority was the subjugation of the minds of the Italian people and the use of propaganda to do so; whether at home or abroad, and here his training as a journalist was invaluable. Press, radio, education, films — all were carefully supervised to create the illusion that fascism was the doctrine of the twentieth century, replacing liberalism and democracy. The principles of this doctrine were laid down in the article on fascism, written by Giovanni Gentile and signed by Mussolini that appeared in 1932 in the Enciclopedia Italiana. In 1929, a concordat with the Vatican was signed, the Lateran treaties, by which the Italian state was at last recognised by the Roman Catholic Church, and the independence of Vatican City was recognised by the Italian state. In 1927, Mussolini was baptised by a Roman Catholic priest in order to take away certain Catholic opposition, who were still very critical of a regime which had taken away papal property and virtually blackmailed the Vatican. However, Mussolini was never known to be a practicing Catholic. Since 1927, and more even after 1929, Mussolini, with his anti-Communist doctrines, convinced many Catholics to actively support him. In the encyclical Non abbiamo bisogno, Pope Pius XI attacked the Fascist regime for its policy against the Catholic Action and certain tendencies to overrule Catholic education morals.
The law codes of the parliamentary system were rewritten under Mussolini. All teachers in schools and universities had to swear an oath to defend the fascist regime. Newspaper editors were all personally chosen by Mussolini and no one who did not possess a certificate of approval from the fascist party could practice journalism. These certificates were issued in secret; Mussolini thus skillfully created the illusion of a \"free press\". The trade unions were also deprived of any independence and were integrated into what was called the \"corporative\" system. The aim (never completely achieved), inspired by medieval guilds, was to place all Italians in various professional organizations or \"corporations\", all of which were under clandestine governmental control.
Large sums of money were spent on highly visible public works, and on international prestige projects such as the SS Rex Blue Riband ocean liner and aeronautical achievements such as the world\'s fastest seaplane the Macchi M.C.72 and the transatlantic flying boat cruise of Italo Balbo, who was greeted with much fanfare in the United States when he landed in Chicago.
Foreign policyIn foreign policy, Mussolini soon shifted from the pacifist anti-imperialism of his lead-up to power to an extreme form of aggressive nationalism. An early example was his bombardment of Corfu in 1923. Soon after he succeeded in setting up a puppet regime in Albania and in ruthlessly consolidating Italian power in Libya, which had been loosely a colony since 1912. It was his dream to make the Mediterranean mare nostrum (\"our sea\" in Latin), and he established a large naval base on the Greek island of Leros to enforce a strategic hold on the Eastern Mediterranean.
Conquest of Abyssinia/EthiopiaThe invasion of Ethiopia was carried out rapidly (the proclamation of Empire took place in May 1936) and involved several atrocities such as the use of chemical weapons, (mustard gas and phosgene), and the indiscriminate slaughter of much of the local population to prevent opposition. Mussolini relied heavily on his propaganda machine to defend these actions, though many Italians never accepted these ideals as legitimate. The armed forces used a vast arsenal of grenades and bombs loaded with mustard gas, which were dropped from airplanes. This substance was also sprayed directly from above on to enemy combatants and villages. Mussolini authorised the use of the weapons:\"Rome, 27 October \'35. A.S.E. Graziani. The use of gas as an ultima ratio to overwhelm enemy resistance and in case of counterattack is authorised. Mussolini.\"
\"Rome, 28 December \'35. A.S.E. Badoglio. Given the enemy system I have authorised V.E. the use even on a vast scale of any gas and flamethrowers. Mussolini.\"
Mussolini and his generals attempted to keep secret their use of chemical weapons, but it was revealed to the world through the denunciations of the International Red Cross and of many foreign observers. The Italian reaction to these revelations consisted in the allegedly \"erroneous\" bombardment (at least 19 times) of Red Cross tents posted in the areas of military encampment of the Ethiopian resistance.
Regarding the Ethiopian population, the orders given by Mussolini were very clear:
\"Rome, 5 June 1936. A.S.E. Graziani. All rebels taken prisoner must be killed. Mussolini.\"
\"Rome, 8 July 1936. A.S.E. Graziani. I have authorised once again V.E. to begin and systematically conduct a politics of terror and extermination of the rebels and the complicit population. Without the legge taglionis one cannot cure the infection in time. Await confirmation. Mussolini.\"
The predominant part of the work of repression was carried out by Italians who, besides the bombs laced with mustard gas, instituted forced labor camps, installed public gallows, killed hostages, and mutilated the corpses of their enemies. Graziani ordered the elimination of captured guerrillas by throwing them out of airplanes in mid-flight. Many Italian troops had themselves photographed next to cadavers hanging from gallows, or standing beside chests full of cut-off heads.
One episode in the Italian occupation of Ethiopia was the slaughter of Addis Ababa in February 1937, which followed an attempt to assassinate Graziani. In the course of an official ceremony, a bomb exploded next to the general. The response was immediate and cruel. The thirty or so Ethiopians present at the ceremony were impaled, and immediately after, the black shirts of the fascist militias poured out into the streets of Addis Ababa where they tortured and killed all of the men, women and children that they encountered in their path. They also set fire to homes in order to prevent the inhabitants from leaving, and organized the mass executions of groups of 50-100 people.
Spanish Civil War From left: Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and his son-in-law, Ciano at the Munich Conference, September 29, 1938 Hitler and Mussolini parade through the streets of Munich after the successful Anschluss of Austria, 1939His active intervention in 1936–1939 on the side of Franco in the Spanish Civil War ended any possibility of reconciliation with France and Britain. As a result, his relationship with Adolf Hitler became closer, and he chose to accept the German annexation of Austria in 1938 and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1939. At the Munich Conference in September 1938, he posed as a moderate working for European peace, helping Nazi Germany seize control of the Sudetenland. His \"axis\" with Germany was confirmed when he made the \"Pact of Steel\" with Hitler in May 1939, as the previous \"Rome-Berlin Axis\" of 1936 had been unofficial. Members of TIGR, a Slovene anti-fascist group, plotted to kill Mussolini in Kobarid in 1938, but their attempt was unsuccessful.
Axis of blood and steelThe term \"Axis Powers\" was coined by Mussolini in November 1936 when he spoke of a Rome-Berlin axis in reference to the treaty of friendship signed between Italy and Germany on October 25, 1936. His \"Axis\" with Germany was confirmed when he made another treaty with Germany in May 1939. Mussolini described the relationship with Germany as a \"Pact of Steel\", something he had earlier referred to as a \"Pact of blood\".
Germany\'s influence on Italian policy increased, which alarmed many Italian citizens and proved unpopular. King Victor Emanuel III was also wary of this new axis, favouring the more traditional allies of Britain and France. In 1938, Italian soldiers began marching using the German goose step, which Mussolini called the passo romano (\"Roman step\"). The passing of the Charter of Race in 1938 demonstrated the enormous influence of Hitler over Mussolini, who had always been more interested in cultural superiority rather than racial superiority. These anti-Semitic laws meant that Jews were fired from government jobs and barred from marrying Italian \"Aryans.\"
Eve of World War IIAs World War II approached, Mussolini announced his intention of annexing Malta, Corsica, and Tunis. He spoke of creating a \"New Roman Empire\" that would stretch east to Palestine and south through Libya and Egypt to Kenya.
Mussolini\'s imperial ambitions focused on Albania. Italian forces had been humiliated there in 1920 by Albanian nationalist forces. The Italians were driven out of Vlorë which they had occupied for six years since 1914. If there was a single thread running through the fabric of Mussolini\'s imperial ambitions it was the need to restore Italy\'s honor.
Mussolini decided to invade Albania while the world was focused on German actions in Czechoslovakia and possible war against Poland.
Italian invasion of AlbaniaWhile the world was preoccupied with Hitler\'s aggressions, Italian forces crossed the Adriatic Sea headed for the small nation of Albania. On April 7, 1939, Italy invaded Albania. Despite some initial resistance, especially at Durrës, the Italians quickly took control of the country. Albania\'s leader, King Zog, was forced to flee.
World War II in Europe began on September 1, 1939, when the Germans invaded Poland and, in response, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany. Mussolini decided to remain non-belligerent in the conflict until he was quite certain which side would win.
War declared Mussolini and Hitler.On June 10, 1940, Mussolini finally declared war on Britain and France. Italian forces on the French border were able to make limited gains with a battle in southern France facing the fortified Alpine Line before France surrendered to Germany. The Italians lost 1,247 dead or missing in this brief campaign, French fatalities were over 200 men.
As soon as war was declared, Mussolini sent his forces in Italian East Africa to attack British forces in the Sudan, Kenya, and British Somaliland during what became known as the East African Campaign. On August 3, 1940, Italian forces invaded and occupied all of British Somaliland. In addition to this, other Italian forces in East Africa made limited advance into Sudan and Kenya. By the end of 1940, however, supply issues caused the isolated Italians in East Africa to halt any further advances and, instead, they began to fortify their positions against Allied counterattacks.
Initially, the Italian forces in Libya limited their activities against the British forces in Egypt to skirmishes. On September 13, 1940, the Italian Tenth Army commanded by General Rodolfo Graziani crossed the border and launched the first major attack of what was to become the Western Desert Campaign. After advancing successfully for three days, the Italian forces in Egypt halted their advance at Sidi Barrani to wait for logistic supply to catch up. Graziani planned to continue the offensive afterwards but did not get a chance to do so.
On October 25, 1940, Mussolini sent the Corpo Aereo Italiano (Italian Air Corps or CAI) to Belgium. He sent this expeditionary air force contingent in order to take part in the Battle of Britain. The mixed Italian fighter/bomber force achieved limited success against Allied forces, and was retired by early 1941.
On October 28, 1940, Mussolini sent Italian forces gathered in Albania and commanded by General Sebastiano Visconti Prasca into Greece. This started the Greco-Italian War. But, after a brief period of success, the Italian offensive which had been poorly coordinated, mainly due to Mussolini\'s personal involvement in its planning, were repelled by a relentless Greek counterattack. This resulted in the loss of one-quarter of Italian-controlled Albania. The Italian forces in Albania were stalled, and Mussolini asked Germany for assistance. Hitler soon committed forces to the Balkans in opposition to the Allies who hurried to defend Greece.
In December 1940, the British in Egypt launched Operation Compass. What started as a limited action to force the Italians back into Libya soon had British forces advancing to Bardia, Tobruk, and beyond. In January 1941, the British in East Africa launched a three pronged invasion of Italian East Africa. The Italians fought back hard, but their defense started to crumble after the Battle of Keren in April.
By February 7, 1941, the British had completed Operation Compass in North Africa, which resulted in the near total destruction of the Italian Tenth Army and the capture of Cyrenaica. On February 12, the German Afrika Korps arrived to support the Italian forces.
On May 18, 1941, the commander of the Italian forces in East Africa, the Duke of Aosta, surrendered to the British at his stronghold of Amba Alagi, although organized Italian resistance in East Africa did not end until November of the same year when the stronghold of Gondar was surrendered.
In April 1941, Italian forces took part in the Invasion of Yugoslavia with independent axis of attack in support of other Axis armies, capturing some 30,000 prisoners during the brief campaign while suffering 3,324 losses themselves. The same month, the Battle of Greece ended in Axis victory with the support of German and Bulgarian armies.
In June 1941, with the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, Mussolini declared war on the Soviet Union and sent an army to fight there. In December 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he declared war on the United States.
Replaced by BadoglioBy the summer of 1943, following the Axis defeat in North Africa, setbacks on the Eastern Front, and the Anglo-American landing in Sicily, most of Mussolini\'s colleagues (including Grandi and Count Galeazzo Ciano, the foreign minister and Mussolini\'s son-in-law) turned against him. Italy\'s position had become untenable by this time, and court circles were already putting out feelers to the Allies.
On the night of July 24, Mussolini summoned the Grand Council of Fascism to its first meeting since the start of the war. At this meeting, Mussolini announced that the Germans were thinking of evacuating the south. This led Grandi to launch a blistering attack on his longtime comrade. Grandi moved a resolution asking the king to resume his full constitutional powers—in effect, a vote of no confidence in Mussolini. The motion carried by an unexpectedly large margin, 19-7.
Mussolini did not think the vote had any substantive value and appeared for work the next morning as normal. That afternoon, King Victor Emmanuel III summoned him to the palace and dismissed him from office in the king\'s unrelated separate plot to replace Mussolini. Upon leaving the palace, Mussolini was arrested. For the next two months he was moved to various places to hide him from the Germans. Ultimately Mussolini was sent to Gran Sasso, a mountain resort in central Italy (Abruzzo). He was kept there in complete isolation.
Mussolini was replaced by Marshal of Italy (Maresciallo d\'Italia) Pietro Badoglio, who immediately declared in a famous speech, \"La guerra continua a fianco dell\'alleato germanico\" (\"The war continues at the side of our Germanic ally\"). In fact, Badoglio was working to negotiate a surrender.
On September 3, 1943, Badoglio signed an armistice with the Allies. The armistice was made public by the Allies five days later, throwing Italy into chaos. Badoglio and the king, fearing German retaliation, fled from Rome. They left the entire Italian Army without orders. Many units simply disbanded; some reached the Allied-controlled zone and surrendered; a few decided to start a partisan war against the German Army; and a few rejected the switch of sides and remained allied with the Germans. In retaliation for the Italian armistice, the Germans launched Operation Axis (Operation Achse) which included the ruthless disarming of the Italian Army.
Repubblica Sociale ItalianaOn 12 September 1943, two months after he was stripped of power, Mussolini was rescued by the Germans in Operation Oak (Unternehmen Eiche). This was a raid planned by General Kurt Student and carried out by SS Lieutenant Colonel (Obersturmbannführer) Otto Skorzeny. The Germans relocated Mussolini to northern Italy where he set up a new fascist state, the Italian Social Republic (Repubblica Sociale Italiana, RSI).
Mussolini lived in Gargnano on Lake Garda in Lombardy during this period. But he was little more than a puppet under the protection of his German liberators—indeed, he was little more than the Gauleiter of Lombardy.
After yielding to pressures from Hitler and the remaining loyal fascists who formed the government of the Republic of Salo, Mussolini helped orchestrate a series of executions of some of the fascist leaders who had betrayed him at the last meeting of the Fascist Grand Council. One of those executed included his son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano.
As Head of State and Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Italian Social Republic, Mussolini used much of his time to write his memoirs. Along with his autobiographical writings of 1928, these writings would be combined and published by Da Capo Press as My Rise and Fall.
Death Cross marking the place in Mezzegra where Mussolini was shotMussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were stopped by communist partisans and identified by the political commissar of the partisans\' 52nd Garibaldi Brigade, Urbano Lazzaro, on April 27, 1945, near the village of Dongo (Lake Como), as they headed for Switzerland to board a plane to escape to German-controlled Austria. Mussolini had been traveling with retreating German forces and was apprehended while attempting to escape recognition by wearing a German military uniform. After several unsuccessful attempts to take them to Como they were brought to Mezzegra. They spent their last night in the house of the De Maria family.
The next day, Mussolini and his mistress were both shot, along with most of the members of their 15-man train, primarily ministers and officials of the Italian Social Republic. The shootings took place in the small village of Giulino di Mezzegra. According to the official version of events, the shootings were conducted by \"Colonel Valerio\" (Colonnello Valerio). Valerio\'s real name was Walter Audisio. Audisio was the communist partisan commander who was reportedly given the order to kill Mussolini by the National Liberation Committee. When Audisio entered the room where Mussolini and the other fascists were being held, he reportedly announced: \"I have come to rescue you!\" He then had them loaded into transports, driven a short distance, and, finally, lined them up before a firing squad.
Mussolini\'s bodyOn April 29, the bodies of Mussolini and his mistress were taken to the Piazzale Loreto (in Milan) and hung upside down on meat hooks. This was both to discourage any fascists to continue the fight and an act of revenge for the hanging of many partisans in the same place by Axis authorities. The corpse of the deposed leader became subject to ridicule and abuse.
After his death, and the display of his corpse in Milan, Mussolini was buried in an unmarked grave in Musocco, the municipal cemetery to the north of the city. On Easter Sunday 1946 his body was located and dug up by Domenico Leccisi and two other neo-Fascists. Making off with their hero, they left a bizarre message on the open grave: \"Finally, O Duce, you are with us. We will cover you with roses, but the smell of your virtue will overpower the smell of those roses.\"
On the loose for months — and a cause of great anxiety to the new Italian democracy — the Duce\'s body was finally \'recaptured\' in August, hidden in a small trunk at the Certosa di Pavia, just outside Milan. Two Fransciscan brothers were subsequently charged with concealing the corpse, though it was discovered on further investigation that he had been constantly on the move. Unsure what to do, the authorities held the remains in a kind of political limbo for 10 years, before agreeing to allow them to be re-interred at Predappio in Romagna, his birth place, after a campaign headed by Leccisi and the Movimento Sociale Italiano.
Leccisi, now a fascist deputy, went on to write his autobiography, With Mussolini Before and After Piazzale Loreto. Adone Zoli, the Prime Minister of the day, contacted Donna Rachelle, the former dictator\'s widow, to tell her he was returning the remains, as he needed the support of the far-right in parliament, including Leccisi himself. In Predappio the dictator was buried in a crypt (the only posthumous honour granted to Mussolini; his tomb is flanked by marble fasces and a large idealised marble bust of himself sits above the tomb.)
LegacyMussolini was survived by his second wife, Donna Rachele Mussolini, two sons, Vittorio and Romano Mussolini, and his daughter Edda, the widow of Count Ciano and Anna Maria. A third son, Bruno, was killed in an air accident while flying a P108 bomber on a test mission, on August 7, 1941. Sophia Loren\'s sister, Anna Maria Scicolone, was formerly married to Romano Mussolini, Mussolini\'s son. Mussolini\'s granddaughter Alessandra Mussolini is currently a member of the European Parliament for the extreme right-wing party Alternativa Sociale; other relatives of Edda (Castrianni) moved to England after World War II.
Mussolini\'s National Fascist Party was banned in the postwar Constitution of Italy, but a number of successor neo-fascist parties emerged to carry on its legacy. Mussolini\'s granddaughter, Alessandra Mussolini, runs one of the primary neo-fascist parties in modern Italy, Azione Sociale. Historically, the strongest neo-fascist party was MSI (Movimento Sociale Italiano), which was declared dissolved in 1995 and replaced by the National Alliance, which distanced itself from Fascism (its leader Gianfranco Fini once declared that Fascism was \"an absolute evil\"). These parties were united under Silvio Berlusconi\'s House of Freedoms coalition and the leader of the National Alliance, Gianfranco Fini, was one of Berlusconi\'s most trusted advisors. In 2006, the House of Freedoms coalition was narrowly defeated by Romano Prodi\'s coalition, L\'Unione.
In popular cultureActor George C. Scott appeared as Benito Mussolini in the made for television mini-series Mussolini: The Untold Story in 1985. Actor Antonio Banderas starred as Mussolini in Benito - The Rise and Fall of Mussolini in 1993. The film covers his life from his school teacher days to the beginning on WWI, prior to his rise as dictator. The last few days of Mussolini\'s life have been depicted in Carlo Lizzani\'s movie Mussolini: Ultimo atto (Mussolini: The last act, 1974). He was also depicted in Tea with Mussolini (1991) a semi-autobiographical film directed by Franco Zeffirelli.
Charlie Chaplin\'s 1940 film The Great Dictator satirizes Mussolini as \"Benzino Napaloni\", portrayed by Jack Oakie.
In the film Bugsy, Warren Beatty portrays Bugsy Siegel, who schemes to assassinate Mussolini through his connection with the wife of a Duke.
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