Dear readers,
This year, on April 28, we remember the 75th anniversary of Benito Mussolini’s death, so I will focus on a few more Mussolini-Italian connections.
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Benito Mussolini’s transgressions during World War II have generally been attributed by older Italian-Americans to male compagni, just as Nonna‘s good boy was led astray by the neighborhood bad boy. And since Mussolini’s focus was to bring rispetto to Italy and make the trains run on time, it was popularly believed, thanks to propaganda, that Italy was reluctantly dragged into the Second World War imbroglio at the urging of that male compagno, Hitler. Unfortunately, Mussolini was not entirely without blame for the pain and suffering that was inflicted upon the Italian people during five years of conflict.
When I was a little girl, sitting with my mother and her friends, I remember overhearing conversations that ended with variations of “morto o perduto in Guerra.” Now, it pains me to learn from various sources and in an essay by Alexander Stille that at times Mussolini’s war-making was accomplished for the pettiest motives of personal vanity. In 1941, although the Axis powers had their hands full fighting most of Europe, Mussolini, following his own military instinct, invaded Greece. Italian troops were pushed back into Albania, which forced Hitler to send troops to bail the Italians out. What was the cost of this demonstration of national greatness? 15,000 Greeks were killed, and 28,000 Italians died or went missing. When Hitler invaded Russia in June of 1941, Mussolini insisted on sending some 200,000 Italian troops, too, but they were completely unequipped for the Russian winter. Tens of thousands of Italians died in the campaign, and tens of thousands more were taken prisoner by the Germans and died in Nazi concentration camps when Italy tried to withdraw from the war in 1943. The final results of Mussolini’s recklessness, vanity, and poor judgment: 306,000 Italian soldiers killed, 145,000 Italian civilians dead, and countless badly wounded.
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Benito Mussolini entered the world on July 29, 1883, in the village of Dovia, near Predappio, province of Forlì, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. He made his world exit on April 28, 1945. Mussolini’s body, riddled with bullets, was strung up by the heels after being caught by Italian partisans trying to sneak out of Italy disguised as a retreating German soldier. Unfortunately, his young mistress, Claretta Petacci, in a misguided attempt to stand by her man, chose to be with him, and the pair were executed by the partisans, who had found them near Lake Como.
Benito Mussolini’s father, Alessandro, was a blacksmith and later an innkeeper. A generous and compassionate man, Alessandro was an early follower of the socialist cause and bitterly antagonistic to Church and Monarchy. Mussolini’s mother, Rosa Maltoni, came from better circumstances than her husband, and was an elementary school teacher. She was a sensitive religious woman, who was determined to raise her children above the precarious lower-middle-class existence she shared with her husband. Benito Mussolini was named after Benito Juarez, the Mexican revolutionary who led the revolt against Emperor Maximilian and his wife Carlotta.
At 18, Benito became a schoolteacher and also wrote, part-time, for a socialist newspaper. In 1915, after a common-law relationship, he married, in a civil ceremony, his wife Rachele, who had given birth in 1910, to their first child, Edda. At age 29, Mussolini became editor of Avanti, the Italian socialist party newspaper, and circulation tripled under his editorship. However, the World War changed him from an internationalist to a non-compromising advocate of intervention, which led to his expulsion from the socialist party. To spread his own views on patriotism, he founded Il Popolo d’Italia in 1914. Called into service, he went to the front as a private in the Bersaglieri Corps, rose to a corporal, and then was seriously wounded by the explosion of a trench mortar. After being hospitalized, he returned to Milan and organized a group of ex-servicemen into the first fascist unit, invoking nationalist fervor against the growing strength of socialism and communism. Excellently organized in military order, the fascists grew in political strength. They became a party of the opposition, and, in October 1922, inspired by the challenging oratory of their leader, a large group began the March on Rome. The cabinet, intimidated, resigned, and the king requested Mussolini to form a government. The fascist slate came into being, superimposed upon the constitutional monarchy, and vested with all political power. It was the beginning of a dictatorship that was to subjugate the country for 21 years.
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