9 Things You Should Know About Benito Mussolini
Know these nine fascinating things about Hitler’s junior partner.
The claim of behavioral psychology that childhood behaviors and traits can determine the sort of personality a person would possess can aptly be applied in the case of Benito Mussolini.
Since his childhood, according to sources, he exhibited traits that made him a difficult child. Since his early years of school, he was a bully, a batterer, violent, disobedient, and had a quick temper that made him detested even in his family.
He was even twice expelled from schools for attacking other fellow students with a penknife. However, he somehow obtained a school diploma that made him eligible to work as a teacher for a short term.
He was born as Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini to a blacksmith to an ardent socialist Alessandro Mussolini who abhorred religion and to an elementary school teacher Rosa Maltoni who was a devout Catholic. Since it is apparent that both his socialist father and Catholic mother have influenced him in their own ways, he literally possessed qualities and traits that could hardly be reconciled.
1# He was violent since his childhood
Mussolini was born on July 29, 1883, in Northern Italy to a socialist father. His father hated religion and disregarded certain values which a man of ethics should possess.
His father influenced his personality and he became quite a difficult child in his early life. When he was admitted to a boarding school, the administration found it hard to correct his violent behavior.
He bullied his classmates and went on to stab one of them which resulted in his expulsion from the school. This resulted in him being a difficult boyfriend and wounded his girlfriend's arm with a knife.
He even bullied people at church and would pinch people to make them cry during mass. Mussolini even formed his own gang of roughs that operated to destroy farmers’ property.
His love for fighting made Benito an adept sword fighter. He eventually challenged a rival newspaper editor in May 1922 to a duel in which he received more than 100 wounds. He was such a tough guy indeed!
2# He was not a fascist from the start
Before adopting a fascist ideology in 1919 that led him to form his Fascist Party, he was an ardent socialist like his father.
His father, out of his Socialist fervor, borrowed his name from three socialist such as his first name ‘Benito’ was adopted from Mexican President Benito Juárez, and his middle names ‘Amilcare Andrea’ were given to him under the influence of two prominent Italian socialist Andrea Costa and Amilcare Cipriani.
Before becoming a fascist, he worked as a teacher and journalist. He propagated revolutionary ideas and abhorred patriotism and capitalism under the influence of Karl Marx's teaching.
Despite his strong relations with the Socialist Party which he cultivated during his stay in Switzerland from 1902 to 1904 working for a socialist periodical ‘The Worker’s Future,’ he was expelled from it when he openly supported Italian entry into World War One. After that, his ideology radically changed that turned him against Communism and towards an extreme patriotic ideology known as fascism.
3# His fascism was unopposed in Italy
The irony is, Mussolini and his party were not opposed by the state police, the king, or the Army when they ran wild in Italy killing people and damaging properties.
Fascists killed almost 2,000 political opponents and forced dissident citizens to drink castor oil from 1920 to 1922. This gave him the courage to threaten the government under the demonstration known as March on Rome on October 24, 1922.
The then prime minister and King Victor Emmanuel III couldn’t do anything to hold him back despite the Facta’s advice to the king the declare an emergency which never happened. However, the situation forced Prime Minister Facta to resign and dissolve his government. This opened the way for the Fascists to take over government offices on October 27.
4# He didn’t come to power through a coup
It is popularly believed that Mussolini overthrew the government and seized power through a coup.
However, the Italian government was in shambles at that time and his mere threat did the work. After the resignation of Prime Minister Facts, the King himself asked Mussolini to form a government on October 29. After Mussolini’s claim that he had the support of 300,000 Blackshirts (fascist stormtroopers), the Army joined his government and paved the way for dictatorship.
5# Becoming a dictator was not that easy
He didn’t become a dictator overnight. After forming his coalition government, he still had obstacles to overcome.
When he became prime minister, he took to the job of squeezing the power of the judiciary, suppressed the free press, arrested and assassinated political opponents, and ushered a reign of terror in Italy to strengthen his hold. Mussolini maintained the parliamentary system till January 1925 to clear potential obstacles from his way to becoming a dictator.
When he declared himself dictator, he forced over a hundred members of parliament to resign, strengthened the secret police, banned local elections, and imposed the death penalty for political crimes when he survived assassination attempts in 1925 and 1926.
6# The atheist Mussolini became religious after becoming dictator
When he was closely aligned with the Socialist Party, he declared himself an atheist and ridiculed the Roman Catholic Church.
He said that Bible stories are concocted to fool the stupid and disregarded Jesus Christ and defamed Mary. He even went on to write a novel propagating anti-religious sentiments.
However, when he came to power, Mussolini thought that becoming religious can prolong and strengthen his rule. So, he banned freemasonry, propagated increased birth rate by banning contraception, penalized abortion, granted clergy exemption from taxes, penalized homosexuality, recognized the Vatican as an independent country, and redefined women’s clothing fashions.
For his religious services, Pope Pius XI referred to him as the “man whom Providence has sent us.” However, soon his relation with the Church soured again as he wasn’t a religious man from within. He kept mistresses, engaged in adultery, and adopted racial laws which reflected the spirit of Nazi Germany.
7# His passion for power led him to visualize an Italian Empire
Becoming a dictator failed to satisfy his thirst for power. In 1923, he attempted to establish an Italian empire that led him to attack the Greek island Corfu and occupied it for a short time.
He even adopted the horrifying tactics of using poison gas and concentration camps to quell the rebellions in Libya and other regions. When he conquered Ethiopia in 1936, he exclaimed that he has finally established an empire and said “It is a fascist empire, an empire of peace, an empire of civilization and humanity.”
He even occupied Albania and provided military and arms assistance to General Francisco Franco to support his Nationalist movement during the Spanish Civil War.
8# Mussolini lacked military prowess despite his boosts
Mussolini hesitantly entered World War Two in 1940 when he observed that the Germans had occupied half the Europe.
His hesitation was right as he saw his defeat because his production of war weapons was far less than the United States that rendered his forces lacked necessary military equipment. That’s why his oscillations cost him a disgrace when he attacked France while the Germans were negotiating an armistice with the French Army.
His military campaigns in Greece, Ethiopia, and North Africa failed and suffered the shame of being rescued by the Germans in two cases. Mussolini was incapable of keeping Ethiopia which was liberated by British Empire forces in 1942.
9# Just like his rise, Mussolini’s decline and death were dramatic
He failed to control Libya and Ethiopia for long. The Allied forces overran those areas and invaded Italy itself in 1943.
This forced King Victor Emmanuel to replace Mussolini as a prime minister on July 25, 1943 and imprisoned him for his crimes. The German forces immediately rescued him from a remote mountain prison and installed him as the head of the German-occupied government in northern Italy.
However, the defeat of the Germans brought the war to an end. On April 28, Mussolini and his mistress Claretta Petacci attempted to flee over the Swiss border, the Italian partisans captured them.
A partisan firing squad shot them the following day. People abused their corpses when they were dragged on the road and later on their bodies were hanged upside down in the public squares.
References
https://www.history.com/news/9-things-you-may-not-know-about-mussolini
https://www.thoughtco.com/benito-mussolini-1779829
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Benito-Mussolini/Role-in-World-War-II
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/26/mussolini-loses-grip-on-italy-archive-1943
