Remember reading in school History something about World War and its perpetrators as Hitlor & Mussolini. History is the most interesting story book that one can ever think of ! – many a times we read accusations of being Fascist ! while many criticised Mussolini for his fascism, not many would know that his successor was linked to genocide - On 20 June 1930, Italian military officer Pietro Badoglio called for the annihilation of the entire population of Cyrenaica, and wrote to General Rodolfo Graziani: "As for overall strategy, it is necessary to create a significant and clear separation between the controlled population and the rebel formations. I do not hide the significance and seriousness of this measure, which might be the ruin of the subdued population...But now the course has been set, and we must carry it out to the end, even if the entire population of Cyrenaica must perish".
Spazio vitale ("living space") was the territorial expansionist concept of Italian Fascism. It was defined in universal terms as "that part of the globe over which extends either the vital requirements or expansionary impetus of a state with strong unitary organization which seeks to satisfy its needs by expanding beyond its national boundaries". Spazio vitale was analogous to Nazi Germany's concept of Lebensraum. The territorial extent of the Italian spazio vitale was to cover the Mediterranean as a whole (Mare Nostrum) and Northern Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean. It was to be divided into piccolo spazio ("small space"), which was to be inhabited only by Italians, and grande spazio ("large space") inhabited by other nations to be under the Italian sphere of influence.
He was originally a socialist politician and journalist at the Avanti! newspaper. In 1912, he became a member of the National Directorate of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), but was expelled for advocating military intervention in World War I. In 1914, he founded a newspaper, Il Popolo d'Italia, and served in the Royal Italian Army during the war until he was wounded and discharged in 1917. He founded a movement which opposed egalitarianism and class conflict, instead advocating "revolutionary nationalism" transcending class lines. In October 1922, following the March on Rome, he was appointed prime minister by King Victor Emmanuel III, becoming the then youngest to hold the office. After removing opposition through his secret police and outlawing labor strikes, he and his followers consolidated power through laws that transformed the nation into a one-party dictatorship. Within five years, he could establish dictatorial authority by legal and illegal means and aspired to create a totalitarian state. In 1929, he signed the Lateran Treaty with the Holy See, to establish the Vatican City.
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini[a] (1883 – 1945) was an Italian dictator who founded and led the National Fascist Party (PNF). He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922, until his deposition in 1943, as well as Duce of Italian fascism from the establishment of the Italian Fasces of Combat in 1919, until his execution in 1945. As a dictator and founder of fascism, Mussolini inspired the international spread of fascist movements during the interwar period.
The Grand Council of Fascism was the main body of Mussolini's Fascist regime in Italy, that held and applied great power to control the institutions of government. It was created as a body of the National Fascist Party in 1922, and became a state body in 1928. The council usually met at the Palazzo Venezia, Rome, which was also the seat of the head of the Italian government. The Council became extinct following a series of events in 1943, in which Benito Mussolini was voted out as the Prime Minister of Italy.
The fall of the Fascist regime in Italy, also known in Italy as 25 Luglio ( '25 July'), came as a result of parallel plots led respectively by Count Dino Grandi and King Victor Emmanuel III during the spring and summer of 1943, culminating with a successful vote of no confidence against the Prime Minister Benito Mussolini at the meeting of the Grand Council of Fascism in July 1943. As a result, a new government was established, putting an end to the 21 years of Fascist rule in the Kingdom of Italy, and Mussolini was placed under arrest.
At the beginning of 1943, Italy was facing defeat. The collapse of the African front on 4 November 1942 and the Allied landings in North Africa on 8–12 November exposed Italy to an invasion by the Allied forces. The defeat of the Italian expeditionary force (ARMIR) in Russia, the heavy bombings of the cities, and the lack of food and fuel demoralized the population, the majority of whom wanted to end the war and denounce the alliance with Germany. Italy needed German aid in order to maintain control of Tunisia, the last stronghold of the Axis powers in Africa. Italy's Duce, Benito Mussolini, was convinced that the war could be decided in the Mediterranean theater. On 29 April 1943, at the meeting in Klessheim, Hitler rejected Mussolini's proposition to seek a separate peace with Russia and move the bulk of the German Army south. The request for reinforcements to defend the bridgehead in Tunisia was refused by the Wehrmacht, which no longer trusted the Italian will to maintain resistance. Mussolini's health was another main factor of uncertainty. He was depressed and sick after being diagnosed with gastritis and duodenitis of a nervous origin. Because of his illness, the Duce was often forced to stay at home, depriving Italy of effective government.
By 1943, Italy's military position had become untenable. Axis forces in North Africa were finally defeated in the Tunisia Campaign in early 1943. Italy suffered major setbacks on the Eastern Front as well. The Allied invasion of Sicily brought the war to the nation's very doorstep. The Italian home front was also in bad shape as the Allied bombings were taking their toll. Factories all over Italy were brought to a virtual standstill because raw materials, such as coal and oil, were lacking. Additionally, there was a chronic shortage of food, and what food was available was being sold at nearly confiscatory prices. Mussolini's once-ubiquitous propaganda machine lost its grip on the people. As it happens in history repeatedly, prominent members of Mussolini's government Grandi and Ciano turned against him. He was summoned to the royal palace by Victor Emmanuel who sacked Mussolini and had the government building surrounded by 200 carabinieri. The police took Mussolini in a Red Cross ambulance car, without specifying his destination and assuring him that they were doing it for his own safety. In an effort to conceal his location from the Germans, Mussolini was moved around: first to Ponza, then to La Maddalena, before being imprisoned at Campo Imperatore, a mountain resort in Abruzzo where he was completely isolated.
On 25 April 1945, Allied troops were advancing into northern Italy, and the collapse of the Salò Republic was imminent. Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci set out for Switzerland, intending to board a plane and escape to Spain but were stopped near the village of Dongo (Lake Como) by communist partisans named Valerio and Bellini and identified by the Political Commissar of the partisans' 52nd Garibaldi Brigade, Urbano Lazzaro. The next day, Mussolini and Petacci were both summarily 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 and were conducted by a partisan leader who used the nom de guerre Colonnello Valerio. His real identity is unknown, but conventionally he is thought to have been Walter Audisio, who always claimed to have carried out the execution, though another partisan controversially alleged that Colonnello Valerio was Luigi Longo, subsequently a leading communist politician in post-war Italy.
Certainly not the end, the man who ruled for couple of decades ! Imprisonment may have been the cause of Mussolini's claustrophobia. He refused to enter the Blue Grotto (a sea cave on the coast of Capri), and preferred large rooms like his 18 by 12 by 12 m (60 by 40 by 40 feet) office at the Palazzo Venezia. In addition to his native Italian, Mussolini spoke English, French and German.
The man who replaced Mussolini was - Pietro Badoglio, 1st Duke of Addis Abeba, 1st Marquess of Sabotino (you may wish to read the first para to know who he was!) was an Italian general during both World Wars and the first viceroy of Italian East Africa. With the fall of the Fascist regime in Italy, he became Prime Minister of Italy. On 9 June 1944, following the German rescue of Mussolini, the capture of Rome by the allies, and increasingly strong opposition to his government, Badoglio was replaced by Ivanoe Bonomi of the Labour Democratic Party. Due to increased tensions with the Soviet Union, the British government saw Badoglio as a guarantor of an anti-communist post-war Italy. Consequently, Badoglio was never tried for Italian war crimes committed in Africa.Badoglio died in the comune of his birth, Grazzano Badoglio, on 1 November 1956.
Pictured at the start is the present Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni the first woman to hold this position. A member of the Chamber of Deputies since 2006, she has led the right-wing Brothers of Italy (FdI) political party since 2014 and has been the president of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party since 2020. Forbes ranked Meloni as the fourth most powerful woman in the world in 2023. In 2024 she was listed among the most influential people in the world by Time magazine.
History offers so many important lessons !
With regards – S Sampathkumar
26.7.2024
