He was the father of fascism and the original European totalitarian leader.
In this episode, we explore the life and legacy of the man who embraced the title "Il Duce".
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today it is part two of our three-part mini-series on European dictators.
[00:00:28] In part one, we looked at the life of The Grey Blur, Joseph Stalin.
[00:00:33] In today’s episode, we are going to go to the other side of the political spectrum, to the far-right, and look at the life of Benito Mussolini, the father of fascism.
[00:00:45] And in part three, well you can probably guess who it’s going to be, the leader of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler.
[00:00:52] Now, clearly it would be incredibly difficult to give a thorough, blow-by-blow account of Mussolini’s entire life, and it certainly won’t be possible in this episode.
[00:01:03] So today, I’ll give a broad overview of his life and place in Italian and European history, whilst also trying to give you a sense of the type of man Mussolini was, and how his early years shaped the dictator he became.
[00:01:19] So, let’s get into it and talk about Benito Mussolini, the father of fascism.
[00:01:27] In the early hours of the 29th of April, 1945, a crowd was gathering in the Piazzale Loreto in Milan.
[00:01:37] There was a sea of top hats, military helmets, men in long coats, and military vehicles.
[00:01:44] In the middle of the square, a furious mob gathered around something on the floor.
[00:01:50] They screamed, cheered, and jeered.
[00:01:54] Two dead bodies lay on the floor. The crowd pushed forward, trying to get closer, hoping to catch a glimpse of one body in particular.
[00:02:06] Jostling for position, the people who had managed to push past the soldiers were confronted by the face of Italy’s fascist leader, Benito Mussolini.
[00:02:18] People spat on him, trying to kick his body, hurling abuse at the corpse.
[00:02:25] Firemen arrived and dispersed the crowd with jets of water.
[00:02:29] People began to move back, and order was restored.
[00:02:34] But then the crowd pushed forward again, took Mussolini’s body, dragged him across the square, and hung him up from a petrol station.
[00:02:45] The mutilated body of the man who had ruled Italy with an iron first was there for all to see.
[00:02:53] Il Duce was dead.
[00:02:55] It was an end so brutal, so undignified, that historians believe it was one of the reasons Hitler decided to commit suicide, rather than risk falling into the hands of his enemies and enduring a similar fate.
[00:03:12] It was an unlikely fate for many reasons, and completely likely for many others.
[00:03:20] This man, Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was born on the 29th of July, 1883, in Predappio, in central Italy.
[00:03:31] His father, Alessandro, was a blacksmith and committed socialist, and his mother, Rosa, a devout Catholic.
[00:03:41] In fact, Mussolini’s father wasn’t just a fly-by-night socialist, but left-wing enough to name his son after Benito Juárez, Mexico’s liberal President and the first indigenous head of state anywhere in post-colonial Latin America.
[00:03:57] His middle names, Andrea and Amilcare, were given to him after Andrea Costa and Amilcare Cipriani, two famous Italian socialists.
[00:04:09] As you’ll know, he would go in an altogether different direction to his namesakes.
[00:04:16] In school, he was known as a shy and good student but one with a violent temper.
[00:04:23] At 10 years old he stabbed another student, and then, at 14, in 1897, he again stabbed a classmate with a pen knife and was suspended from school.
[00:04:36] After leaving school Mussolini worked briefly as a school teacher but didn’t enjoy the job, and in 1902 his prospects were so poor that he moved to Switzerland.
[00:04:48] He would spend the following two years travelling around Switzerland and, following his father’s lead, became involved in socialist politics, often clashing with police in the process.
[00:05:01] A couple of years later, in 1904, Mussolini returned to Italy and continued to do bits of teaching, remaining active in socialist politics, before moving to Austria-Hungary where he edited a socialist newspaper but was deported back to Italy for violating freedom of press laws.
[00:05:22] As we’ll see from his own behaviour later on, this is somewhat ironic.
[00:05:29] Historians believe that Mussolini saw himself as a bit of an intellectual. He read philosophy, learned French and German, and clearly thought himself to be something of a grand thinker.
[00:05:43] These grand thoughts would end up leading him to the complete opposite side of the political spectrum.
[00:05:50] But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
[00:05:52] At this time, Mussolini was still a committed socialist and a committed anti-imperialist.
[00:06:00] In 1911 he spent six months in prison for inciting, or encouraging violence at a rally against Italy’s war in Libya.
[00:06:10] But even then Mussolini had visions of grandeur, of big plans for himself, and used his time in prison to begin writing his autobiography, which reportedly included descriptions of his many romantic, sexual, conquests.
[00:06:28] Even back then Mussolini was keen to boast about his womanising, and much like a more recent Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, he was keen to use it as part of his macho image.
[00:06:42] Clearly, there was truth behind it, with one biographer estimating that he slept with around 5,000 women during his life.
[00:06:52] If you’re wondering how you make time for this while running a country, well according to one account, he slept with at least one woman every day at his office while he was running the country.
[00:07:04] Perhaps he would have ruled for a bit longer if he had swapped this daily office activity for something else, who knows.
[00:07:12] Anyway, when he was finally released from prison, Mussolini continued working on several socialist newspapers, but he supported Italy’s involvement in the First World War, a position that put him at odds, or in contrast to, mainstream Italian socialists.
[00:07:30] This view of war, and general enthusiasm for violence and militarism, would lead to his departure from the Socialist Party in 1914, and his swing to the right.
[00:07:45] With civil unrest spreading across the country, Mussolini’s view of the world began to change, moving away from his socialist emphasis on social class to believing that national identity was more significant.
[00:08:01] He was drafted into the Italian army in September of 1915 where he fought on the front lines and was promoted to the rank of corporal before being discharged, or released, after being wounded.
[00:08:16] Upon his return to civilian life, Mussolini the corporal became Mussolini the journalist again, and by 1917 he was agitating for Italy to remain in the war and support the allies.
[00:08:31] It would be the start of his route to power, but you might be surprised to hear that he owes much of it - arguably all of it - to the British intelligence services.
[00:08:43] Yes, that’s right - archived records have revealed that Mussolini was paid by Britain’s famous MI5, the British Intelligence Services, to write propaganda articles encouraging support for Italy’s continued participation in World War I.
[00:09:01] He was paid £100 per week by MI5 - which is around €10,000 a week in today’s money, which also went towards paying supporters to go and beat up and intimidate anti-war protestors in Milan.
[00:09:17] And Mussolini’s political views had done an about turn, they were completely different.
[00:09:24] By the following year, in 1918, he was publicly stating that a dictator could, and should, take control of Italy.
[00:09:35] He began to organise the different fascist groups around Italy into a national organisation known as the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, which you could translate as something like the Italian Fighting Groups.
[00:09:50] The group appealed particularly to war veterans and the unemployed, and encouraged violence, mainly against socialists, and Mussolini became the de facto leader of the Fascists.
[00:10:05] In late 1919, he ran as the Fascist candidate in the Italian general election but lost in a large Socialist victory.
[00:10:14] In the aftermath of the election, he was arrested for collecting weapons and planning to overthrow the government, but was released.
[00:10:23] Then, in 1921, with the country gripped by political instability and fascists fighting communists in the streets, The King, Victor Emmanuel III dissolved the Italian Parliament.
[00:10:37] The following election saw big wins for the Fascists, and Mussolini won a seat in Parliament.
[00:10:43] Fascism was entering the political mainstream.
[00:10:48] Encouraged by their electoral success, the party changed its name to the Partito Nazionale Fascista - the National Fascist Party.
[00:10:58] In 1922 Mussolini’s men, the same ones that had been paid with British money to violently disrupt anti-war rallies, changed to their famous black shirt uniforms and were put in squads that resembled Roman army groups.
[00:11:16] In fact, Mussolini’s vision of fascist Italy relied heavily on romanticised notions of the Roman Empire and what he saw to be Italy’s rightful place among world powers.
[00:11:30] In Parliament, he continued his calls for a strong leader, and became known as a charismatic and powerful public speaker, delighting huge crowds with dramatic gestures and facial expressions.
[00:11:46] Giving a speech in Naples in October of 1922, Mussolini promised the 40,000 fascists in the crowd that, “Either the government will be given to us, or we will seize it by marching on Rome.”
[00:12:01] As the country deteriorated into further civil and political unrest, several Italian cities were seized by Fascist squads.
[00:12:10] And then, on the night of the 27th of October, 1922, 30,000 Fascist blackshirts gathered to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Luigi Facta.
[00:12:23] King Victor Emmanuel, Vittorio Emmanuele, could only watch as thousands of armed Fascists entered Rome, though Mussolini wasn’t one of them himself - he didn’t actually go.
[00:12:35] The King quickly dissolved the government and asked Mussolini to form a new one.
[00:12:42] And just like that, Mussolini became not only Prime Minister, but the Minister of the Interior and Minister for Foreign Affairs.
[00:12:52] The journalist, the school teacher and former-socialist, had become the most powerful man in Italy.
[00:13:00] But he wasn’t a fully-fledged, a real, dictator just yet.
[00:13:05] Over the next couple of years, Mussolini built up more and more power, sidelining democratic institutions and rivals until he could destroy them altogether.
[00:13:17] During this period there were several unsuccessful assassination plots against him, and in response he had all Communist members of Parliament arrested.
[00:13:27] Even those who couldn’t be found guilty of any crimes were detained for up to five years.
[00:13:34] After dealing with the Italian left - his former comrades, it must be remembered - Mussolini turned his attention to his other former passion: the press.
[00:13:44] And let’s not forget, he was a former journalist, so he was acutely aware of the power of the written word, of the press.
[00:13:53] As Mussolini began to tighten his grip on the country, the freedoms of the press were muzzled, or silenced, and cinemas were made to show government propaganda.
[00:14:05] Fascists owned the majority of newspapers and controlled how things were reported in the media, issuing editorial guidelines and arresting editors who didn’t follow them.
[00:14:17] Being aware of the power of an image, he was also very conscious about how he was portrayed in the press. And, as you may know, he was not a tall man, he was 1.69 m, and he would insist on photographs of him being taken from above, or standing on a box, or on a horse - anything to make him seem more heroic and grand.
[00:14:44] Now, historians generally say that Mussolini confirmed his total control of Italy, and grip on the country’s institutions, a few years later, on the 3rd of January, 1925, when he made a speech to the Italian parliament declaring his right to supreme power of the country.
[00:15:03] In just a few years, Mussolini had assumed full control of Italy and become the world’s first fascist dictator.
[00:15:12] But what would he do next?
[00:15:14] In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Mussolini further developed his personality cult, giving seemingly endless public speeches.
[00:15:25] Carefully creating a hyper-masculine image, Mussolini tried to establish himself as an ‘Ubermensch’ - a philosophical concept of a person who is almost superhuman and has powers ordinary people don’t have.
[00:15:41] This concept was actually created by Friedrich Nietzsche, a philosopher historians believe Mussolini was fond of, and one used by other fascist dictators as a means of justifying their brutality.
[00:15:55] In fact, it is thought that Hitler himself gave Mussolini the complete works of Nietzsche for his 60th birthday.
[00:16:04] Now, on the subject of Hitler, it is worth considering the relationship between the two of them for a moment.
[00:16:09] It is well-known that Hitler was a great admirer of Mussolini in the early days, and that Italian fascism was seen as the ideological ‘big brother’ of Nazism.
[00:16:22] Hitler particularly admired Mussolini’s March on Rome - in fact his failed putsch in Munich in 1923 was Hitler’s attempt to do the same.
[00:16:33] In their early meetings, however, Mussolini wasn’t particularly impressed by Hitler.
[00:16:40] After their first meeting in Venice in 1934 - during which he refused a translator and struggled with Hitler’s thick Bavarian accent - Mussolini reportedly described the German dictator as a ‘mad little clown.’
[00:16:57] Over time, however, and as Hitler grew in power, their partnership developed and Mussolini embraced some of Hitler’s foreign policy ideas and his anti-semitism.
[00:17:10] Yet, despite what the propaganda at the time showed, the relationship between the two was a ‘marriage of convenience’, or in other words, a relationship for mutual gain, an agreement that helps both parties.
[00:17:24] The biggest implication of their relationship, of course, would come a few years later.
[00:17:30] But Mussolini wasn’t just the ideological father of fascism for Hitler; he was the father of fascism full-stop, and an example for every European fascist that would follow.
[00:17:42] And Mussolini knew it.
[00:17:46] With the fascist general Franco plunging Spain into Civil War, and fascism also on the rise in Germany, Mussolini began to look beyond his own borders and consider the bigger picture, and his place in it.
[00:18:01] In October of 1935, Mussolini ignored the League of Nations and ordered Italian troops to invade Ethiopia - then known as Abyssinia – forcing the country's Emperor, Haile Selassie, into hiding.
[00:18:15] Mussolini, the man who just years ago was an active anti-imperial campaigner, declared Abyssinia, along with the territories of Somaliland and Eritrea, part of a new Italian Empire.
[00:18:30] During the conflict Mussolini proved himself to be particularly ruthless, ordering the Italian forces to use chemical weapons, including mustard gas, as they slaughtered 50,000 people.
[00:18:43] It would prove to be his only real military success, and was against an enemy with significantly inferior, worse, weapons than the Italians.
[00:18:54] Now, back in Europe, as the Spanish Civil War intensified, Mussolini sent tens of thousands of men to support the fascists, which further alienated Italy from other European powers.
[00:19:08] Mussolini instead grew closer to another European dictator: his old friend, the ‘mad little clown’ Adolf Hitler, who was no longer the fascist little brother, but a valuable European partner.
[00:19:22] When Italy invaded Abyssinia, Germany had, after all, been the second country to recognise Italy’s claim to it.
[00:19:30] Both Hitler and Mussolini sided with Franco in the Spanish Civil War, and in 1937 Italy left the League of Nations in solidarity with Germany.
[00:19:41] In March of 1938, with Mussolini’s support, Hitler invaded Austria.
[00:19:47] And despite having had an on-off affair with a Jewish author and academic for many years, and Italian fascism not initially being anti-semitic, Mussolini's increasing closeness to Hitler and Nazism increased his own anti-semitic views.
[00:20:06] In 1938, Mussolini wrote an article supportive of the German concept of the Aryan race, and soon after, he called for the expulsion of Jews from Italy.
[00:20:18] In 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland, Britain and France declared war against Germany but Mussolini remained neutral, for now.
[00:20:29] When Germany took Denmark and Norway, however, Mussolini became convinced that Hitler would win the war, and after the Nazis steamrollered through Holland and Belgium, Italy and Germany signed the “Pact of Steel” officially creating the Axis powers, on May 22, 1939.
[00:20:48] Now, to skip forward a few years, by 1943 it was clear that Italy was losing the war, and that the Italian army wasn’t particularly well organised or effective.
[00:21:01] And as Italians realised this, Mussolini’s grip on power began to wane, or decrease.
[00:21:09] Even his propaganda machine began to fall apart, and Italians increasingly listened to and read foreign media to find out what was really going on in the war.
[00:21:20] On July 25th, of 1943, Mussolini was voted out of power by his own Grand Council, arrested, and thrown into prison.
[00:21:30] When the new Italian Prime Minister began secret peace talks with the Allies, Hitler sent German troops into Italy.
[00:21:38] Then, in September of 1943, allied forces landed in Italy with the aim of liberating the peninsula.
[00:21:47] Fearful of being found by the advancing allied troops, on the 12th of September of 1943 Mussolini was rescued by an elite unit of German SS paratroopers and taken to German-occupied northern Italy.
[00:22:02] There he was made Hitler’s puppet leader, creating the Italian Social Republic - known as the Salò Republic.
[00:22:10] Though he claimed to be in full control during the next year and a half, Mussolini was effectively put under house arrest and guarded by SS troops - in his own country.
[00:22:22] How the tables had turned - how the situation had reversed - since Hitler and Mussolini’s first meeting.
[00:22:30] And by June of 1945, allied forces were rolling through Italy, and Mussolini tried to escape to Spain with his lover, Claretta Petacci.
[00:22:42] And, this all takes us back to the beginning of the episode, Mussolini’s gruesome end.
[00:22:49] Though he was strung up in the Piazzale Loreto in Milan, he didn’t actually die there, he was already a dead man when he arrived.
[00:22:59] On the 27th of April, 1945, a couple of days before, a group of communist partisans had stopped a convoy near the village of Dongo on Lake Como.
[00:23:12] Mussolini was found hiding in the back of a truck, trying to disguise himself in a German army overcoat and helmet, but his distinctive shaved head and jawline gave him away.
[00:23:25] Autopsy reports suggest he was shot dead the following day, on April 28th, 1945.
[00:23:33] His body was then driven to Milan and displayed for all Italians - indeed the world - to see
[00:23:42] Now, we need to jump forward almost 80 years to the modern day - to 2022, as debatably more so than Stalin and Hitler, the spectre of Benito Mussolini looms more closely over his country than either of the other subjects of this mini-series.
[00:24:02] In October 2022, as you may know, a lady called Giorgia Meloni became Italy’s first female Prime Minister.
[00:24:12] Her party, the Brothers of Italy, is generally described as a far-right or post-fascist party, and Meloni has publicly expressed her admiration of Mussolini.
[00:24:26] As a teenager, Italy’s current Prime Minister said, and I quote, “Mussolini was a good politician, in that everything he did, he did for Italy.”
[00:24:37] Her party won 26% of the vote, so one in four Italian voters decided that she, a woman who had openly expressed her administration for Mussolini, she was the best choice for leader.
[00:24:52] Now, this is not to say that this means a quarter of Italy is fascist, of course, but rather to point out that the legacy of Benito Mussolini is still alive and well.
[00:25:04] Yet, as we have discussed today, Mussolini’s legacy went beyond the borders of Italy.
[00:25:10] He was, put simply, the original fascist dictator.
[00:25:15] It was his violence, his personality cult, his charismatic public speaking, his strongman one-party state and his march on Rome that really gave birth to fascism and inspired similar movements across Europe in the inter-war years.
[00:25:34] Though he’s not the most infamous of the fascists, Mussolini was a brutal dictator who ordered the death of his political opponents and imprisoned and tortured anyone who dared to oppose him.
[00:25:47] By some calculations, he was indirectly responsible for the deaths of 300,000 people.
[00:25:55] His greatest, most dangerous, legacy, however, is the fact that he started the fascist movement, inspired its rise, and created the political divisions that - in Italy and around the world - remain to this day.
[00:26:11] When put like this, perhaps he holds responsibility for the deaths of tens of millions more.
[00:26:20] Ok then, that’s it for today’s episode on Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator who started fascism and met a gruesome end at the hands of his own people.
[00:26:32] I hope it was an interesting one, and whether you knew a lot about Mussolini, or this was the first time you’d heard anything about him, well I hope you learned something new.
[00:26:42] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:26:46] We have lots and lots of members from Italy, so my question to you is this: what is the legacy of Benito Mussolini on modern Italy?
[00:26:56] Do you think that Italy ever really had to deal with its role in the Second World War?
[00:27:01] Are there any saving graces, any positive things to be taken, from the rule of Benito Mussolini?
[00:27:08] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:27:12] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:27:20] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:27:25] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today it is part two of our three-part mini-series on European dictators.
[00:00:28] In part one, we looked at the life of The Grey Blur, Joseph Stalin.
[00:00:33] In today’s episode, we are going to go to the other side of the political spectrum, to the far-right, and look at the life of Benito Mussolini, the father of fascism.
[00:00:45] And in part three, well you can probably guess who it’s going to be, the leader of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler.
[00:00:52] Now, clearly it would be incredibly difficult to give a thorough, blow-by-blow account of Mussolini’s entire life, and it certainly won’t be possible in this episode.
[00:01:03] So today, I’ll give a broad overview of his life and place in Italian and European history, whilst also trying to give you a sense of the type of man Mussolini was, and how his early years shaped the dictator he became.
[00:01:19] So, let’s get into it and talk about Benito Mussolini, the father of fascism.
[00:01:27] In the early hours of the 29th of April, 1945, a crowd was gathering in the Piazzale Loreto in Milan.
[00:01:37] There was a sea of top hats, military helmets, men in long coats, and military vehicles.
[00:01:44] In the middle of the square, a furious mob gathered around something on the floor.
[00:01:50] They screamed, cheered, and jeered.
[00:01:54] Two dead bodies lay on the floor. The crowd pushed forward, trying to get closer, hoping to catch a glimpse of one body in particular.
[00:02:06] Jostling for position, the people who had managed to push past the soldiers were confronted by the face of Italy’s fascist leader, Benito Mussolini.
[00:02:18] People spat on him, trying to kick his body, hurling abuse at the corpse.
[00:02:25] Firemen arrived and dispersed the crowd with jets of water.
[00:02:29] People began to move back, and order was restored.
[00:02:34] But then the crowd pushed forward again, took Mussolini’s body, dragged him across the square, and hung him up from a petrol station.
[00:02:45] The mutilated body of the man who had ruled Italy with an iron first was there for all to see.
[00:02:53] Il Duce was dead.
[00:02:55] It was an end so brutal, so undignified, that historians believe it was one of the reasons Hitler decided to commit suicide, rather than risk falling into the hands of his enemies and enduring a similar fate.
[00:03:12] It was an unlikely fate for many reasons, and completely likely for many others.
[00:03:20] This man, Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was born on the 29th of July, 1883, in Predappio, in central Italy.
[00:03:31] His father, Alessandro, was a blacksmith and committed socialist, and his mother, Rosa, a devout Catholic.
[00:03:41] In fact, Mussolini’s father wasn’t just a fly-by-night socialist, but left-wing enough to name his son after Benito Juárez, Mexico’s liberal President and the first indigenous head of state anywhere in post-colonial Latin America.
[00:03:57] His middle names, Andrea and Amilcare, were given to him after Andrea Costa and Amilcare Cipriani, two famous Italian socialists.
[00:04:09] As you’ll know, he would go in an altogether different direction to his namesakes.
[00:04:16] In school, he was known as a shy and good student but one with a violent temper.
[00:04:23] At 10 years old he stabbed another student, and then, at 14, in 1897, he again stabbed a classmate with a pen knife and was suspended from school.
[00:04:36] After leaving school Mussolini worked briefly as a school teacher but didn’t enjoy the job, and in 1902 his prospects were so poor that he moved to Switzerland.
[00:04:48] He would spend the following two years travelling around Switzerland and, following his father’s lead, became involved in socialist politics, often clashing with police in the process.
[00:05:01] A couple of years later, in 1904, Mussolini returned to Italy and continued to do bits of teaching, remaining active in socialist politics, before moving to Austria-Hungary where he edited a socialist newspaper but was deported back to Italy for violating freedom of press laws.
[00:05:22] As we’ll see from his own behaviour later on, this is somewhat ironic.
[00:05:29] Historians believe that Mussolini saw himself as a bit of an intellectual. He read philosophy, learned French and German, and clearly thought himself to be something of a grand thinker.
[00:05:43] These grand thoughts would end up leading him to the complete opposite side of the political spectrum.
[00:05:50] But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
[00:05:52] At this time, Mussolini was still a committed socialist and a committed anti-imperialist.
[00:06:00] In 1911 he spent six months in prison for inciting, or encouraging violence at a rally against Italy’s war in Libya.
[00:06:10] But even then Mussolini had visions of grandeur, of big plans for himself, and used his time in prison to begin writing his autobiography, which reportedly included descriptions of his many romantic, sexual, conquests.
[00:06:28] Even back then Mussolini was keen to boast about his womanising, and much like a more recent Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, he was keen to use it as part of his macho image.
[00:06:42] Clearly, there was truth behind it, with one biographer estimating that he slept with around 5,000 women during his life.
[00:06:52] If you’re wondering how you make time for this while running a country, well according to one account, he slept with at least one woman every day at his office while he was running the country.
[00:07:04] Perhaps he would have ruled for a bit longer if he had swapped this daily office activity for something else, who knows.
[00:07:12] Anyway, when he was finally released from prison, Mussolini continued working on several socialist newspapers, but he supported Italy’s involvement in the First World War, a position that put him at odds, or in contrast to, mainstream Italian socialists.
[00:07:30] This view of war, and general enthusiasm for violence and militarism, would lead to his departure from the Socialist Party in 1914, and his swing to the right.
[00:07:45] With civil unrest spreading across the country, Mussolini’s view of the world began to change, moving away from his socialist emphasis on social class to believing that national identity was more significant.
[00:08:01] He was drafted into the Italian army in September of 1915 where he fought on the front lines and was promoted to the rank of corporal before being discharged, or released, after being wounded.
[00:08:16] Upon his return to civilian life, Mussolini the corporal became Mussolini the journalist again, and by 1917 he was agitating for Italy to remain in the war and support the allies.
[00:08:31] It would be the start of his route to power, but you might be surprised to hear that he owes much of it - arguably all of it - to the British intelligence services.
[00:08:43] Yes, that’s right - archived records have revealed that Mussolini was paid by Britain’s famous MI5, the British Intelligence Services, to write propaganda articles encouraging support for Italy’s continued participation in World War I.
[00:09:01] He was paid £100 per week by MI5 - which is around €10,000 a week in today’s money, which also went towards paying supporters to go and beat up and intimidate anti-war protestors in Milan.
[00:09:17] And Mussolini’s political views had done an about turn, they were completely different.
[00:09:24] By the following year, in 1918, he was publicly stating that a dictator could, and should, take control of Italy.
[00:09:35] He began to organise the different fascist groups around Italy into a national organisation known as the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, which you could translate as something like the Italian Fighting Groups.
[00:09:50] The group appealed particularly to war veterans and the unemployed, and encouraged violence, mainly against socialists, and Mussolini became the de facto leader of the Fascists.
[00:10:05] In late 1919, he ran as the Fascist candidate in the Italian general election but lost in a large Socialist victory.
[00:10:14] In the aftermath of the election, he was arrested for collecting weapons and planning to overthrow the government, but was released.
[00:10:23] Then, in 1921, with the country gripped by political instability and fascists fighting communists in the streets, The King, Victor Emmanuel III dissolved the Italian Parliament.
[00:10:37] The following election saw big wins for the Fascists, and Mussolini won a seat in Parliament.
[00:10:43] Fascism was entering the political mainstream.
[00:10:48] Encouraged by their electoral success, the party changed its name to the Partito Nazionale Fascista - the National Fascist Party.
[00:10:58] In 1922 Mussolini’s men, the same ones that had been paid with British money to violently disrupt anti-war rallies, changed to their famous black shirt uniforms and were put in squads that resembled Roman army groups.
[00:11:16] In fact, Mussolini’s vision of fascist Italy relied heavily on romanticised notions of the Roman Empire and what he saw to be Italy’s rightful place among world powers.
[00:11:30] In Parliament, he continued his calls for a strong leader, and became known as a charismatic and powerful public speaker, delighting huge crowds with dramatic gestures and facial expressions.
[00:11:46] Giving a speech in Naples in October of 1922, Mussolini promised the 40,000 fascists in the crowd that, “Either the government will be given to us, or we will seize it by marching on Rome.”
[00:12:01] As the country deteriorated into further civil and political unrest, several Italian cities were seized by Fascist squads.
[00:12:10] And then, on the night of the 27th of October, 1922, 30,000 Fascist blackshirts gathered to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Luigi Facta.
[00:12:23] King Victor Emmanuel, Vittorio Emmanuele, could only watch as thousands of armed Fascists entered Rome, though Mussolini wasn’t one of them himself - he didn’t actually go.
[00:12:35] The King quickly dissolved the government and asked Mussolini to form a new one.
[00:12:42] And just like that, Mussolini became not only Prime Minister, but the Minister of the Interior and Minister for Foreign Affairs.
[00:12:52] The journalist, the school teacher and former-socialist, had become the most powerful man in Italy.
[00:13:00] But he wasn’t a fully-fledged, a real, dictator just yet.
[00:13:05] Over the next couple of years, Mussolini built up more and more power, sidelining democratic institutions and rivals until he could destroy them altogether.
[00:13:17] During this period there were several unsuccessful assassination plots against him, and in response he had all Communist members of Parliament arrested.
[00:13:27] Even those who couldn’t be found guilty of any crimes were detained for up to five years.
[00:13:34] After dealing with the Italian left - his former comrades, it must be remembered - Mussolini turned his attention to his other former passion: the press.
[00:13:44] And let’s not forget, he was a former journalist, so he was acutely aware of the power of the written word, of the press.
[00:13:53] As Mussolini began to tighten his grip on the country, the freedoms of the press were muzzled, or silenced, and cinemas were made to show government propaganda.
[00:14:05] Fascists owned the majority of newspapers and controlled how things were reported in the media, issuing editorial guidelines and arresting editors who didn’t follow them.
[00:14:17] Being aware of the power of an image, he was also very conscious about how he was portrayed in the press. And, as you may know, he was not a tall man, he was 1.69 m, and he would insist on photographs of him being taken from above, or standing on a box, or on a horse - anything to make him seem more heroic and grand.
[00:14:44] Now, historians generally say that Mussolini confirmed his total control of Italy, and grip on the country’s institutions, a few years later, on the 3rd of January, 1925, when he made a speech to the Italian parliament declaring his right to supreme power of the country.
[00:15:03] In just a few years, Mussolini had assumed full control of Italy and become the world’s first fascist dictator.
[00:15:12] But what would he do next?
[00:15:14] In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Mussolini further developed his personality cult, giving seemingly endless public speeches.
[00:15:25] Carefully creating a hyper-masculine image, Mussolini tried to establish himself as an ‘Ubermensch’ - a philosophical concept of a person who is almost superhuman and has powers ordinary people don’t have.
[00:15:41] This concept was actually created by Friedrich Nietzsche, a philosopher historians believe Mussolini was fond of, and one used by other fascist dictators as a means of justifying their brutality.
[00:15:55] In fact, it is thought that Hitler himself gave Mussolini the complete works of Nietzsche for his 60th birthday.
[00:16:04] Now, on the subject of Hitler, it is worth considering the relationship between the two of them for a moment.
[00:16:09] It is well-known that Hitler was a great admirer of Mussolini in the early days, and that Italian fascism was seen as the ideological ‘big brother’ of Nazism.
[00:16:22] Hitler particularly admired Mussolini’s March on Rome - in fact his failed putsch in Munich in 1923 was Hitler’s attempt to do the same.
[00:16:33] In their early meetings, however, Mussolini wasn’t particularly impressed by Hitler.
[00:16:40] After their first meeting in Venice in 1934 - during which he refused a translator and struggled with Hitler’s thick Bavarian accent - Mussolini reportedly described the German dictator as a ‘mad little clown.’
[00:16:57] Over time, however, and as Hitler grew in power, their partnership developed and Mussolini embraced some of Hitler’s foreign policy ideas and his anti-semitism.
[00:17:10] Yet, despite what the propaganda at the time showed, the relationship between the two was a ‘marriage of convenience’, or in other words, a relationship for mutual gain, an agreement that helps both parties.
[00:17:24] The biggest implication of their relationship, of course, would come a few years later.
[00:17:30] But Mussolini wasn’t just the ideological father of fascism for Hitler; he was the father of fascism full-stop, and an example for every European fascist that would follow.
[00:17:42] And Mussolini knew it.
[00:17:46] With the fascist general Franco plunging Spain into Civil War, and fascism also on the rise in Germany, Mussolini began to look beyond his own borders and consider the bigger picture, and his place in it.
[00:18:01] In October of 1935, Mussolini ignored the League of Nations and ordered Italian troops to invade Ethiopia - then known as Abyssinia – forcing the country's Emperor, Haile Selassie, into hiding.
[00:18:15] Mussolini, the man who just years ago was an active anti-imperial campaigner, declared Abyssinia, along with the territories of Somaliland and Eritrea, part of a new Italian Empire.
[00:18:30] During the conflict Mussolini proved himself to be particularly ruthless, ordering the Italian forces to use chemical weapons, including mustard gas, as they slaughtered 50,000 people.
[00:18:43] It would prove to be his only real military success, and was against an enemy with significantly inferior, worse, weapons than the Italians.
[00:18:54] Now, back in Europe, as the Spanish Civil War intensified, Mussolini sent tens of thousands of men to support the fascists, which further alienated Italy from other European powers.
[00:19:08] Mussolini instead grew closer to another European dictator: his old friend, the ‘mad little clown’ Adolf Hitler, who was no longer the fascist little brother, but a valuable European partner.
[00:19:22] When Italy invaded Abyssinia, Germany had, after all, been the second country to recognise Italy’s claim to it.
[00:19:30] Both Hitler and Mussolini sided with Franco in the Spanish Civil War, and in 1937 Italy left the League of Nations in solidarity with Germany.
[00:19:41] In March of 1938, with Mussolini’s support, Hitler invaded Austria.
[00:19:47] And despite having had an on-off affair with a Jewish author and academic for many years, and Italian fascism not initially being anti-semitic, Mussolini's increasing closeness to Hitler and Nazism increased his own anti-semitic views.
[00:20:06] In 1938, Mussolini wrote an article supportive of the German concept of the Aryan race, and soon after, he called for the expulsion of Jews from Italy.
[00:20:18] In 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland, Britain and France declared war against Germany but Mussolini remained neutral, for now.
[00:20:29] When Germany took Denmark and Norway, however, Mussolini became convinced that Hitler would win the war, and after the Nazis steamrollered through Holland and Belgium, Italy and Germany signed the “Pact of Steel” officially creating the Axis powers, on May 22, 1939.
[00:20:48] Now, to skip forward a few years, by 1943 it was clear that Italy was losing the war, and that the Italian army wasn’t particularly well organised or effective.
[00:21:01] And as Italians realised this, Mussolini’s grip on power began to wane, or decrease.
[00:21:09] Even his propaganda machine began to fall apart, and Italians increasingly listened to and read foreign media to find out what was really going on in the war.
[00:21:20] On July 25th, of 1943, Mussolini was voted out of power by his own Grand Council, arrested, and thrown into prison.
[00:21:30] When the new Italian Prime Minister began secret peace talks with the Allies, Hitler sent German troops into Italy.
[00:21:38] Then, in September of 1943, allied forces landed in Italy with the aim of liberating the peninsula.
[00:21:47] Fearful of being found by the advancing allied troops, on the 12th of September of 1943 Mussolini was rescued by an elite unit of German SS paratroopers and taken to German-occupied northern Italy.
[00:22:02] There he was made Hitler’s puppet leader, creating the Italian Social Republic - known as the Salò Republic.
[00:22:10] Though he claimed to be in full control during the next year and a half, Mussolini was effectively put under house arrest and guarded by SS troops - in his own country.
[00:22:22] How the tables had turned - how the situation had reversed - since Hitler and Mussolini’s first meeting.
[00:22:30] And by June of 1945, allied forces were rolling through Italy, and Mussolini tried to escape to Spain with his lover, Claretta Petacci.
[00:22:42] And, this all takes us back to the beginning of the episode, Mussolini’s gruesome end.
[00:22:49] Though he was strung up in the Piazzale Loreto in Milan, he didn’t actually die there, he was already a dead man when he arrived.
[00:22:59] On the 27th of April, 1945, a couple of days before, a group of communist partisans had stopped a convoy near the village of Dongo on Lake Como.
[00:23:12] Mussolini was found hiding in the back of a truck, trying to disguise himself in a German army overcoat and helmet, but his distinctive shaved head and jawline gave him away.
[00:23:25] Autopsy reports suggest he was shot dead the following day, on April 28th, 1945.
[00:23:33] His body was then driven to Milan and displayed for all Italians - indeed the world - to see
[00:23:42] Now, we need to jump forward almost 80 years to the modern day - to 2022, as debatably more so than Stalin and Hitler, the spectre of Benito Mussolini looms more closely over his country than either of the other subjects of this mini-series.
[00:24:02] In October 2022, as you may know, a lady called Giorgia Meloni became Italy’s first female Prime Minister.
[00:24:12] Her party, the Brothers of Italy, is generally described as a far-right or post-fascist party, and Meloni has publicly expressed her admiration of Mussolini.
[00:24:26] As a teenager, Italy’s current Prime Minister said, and I quote, “Mussolini was a good politician, in that everything he did, he did for Italy.”
[00:24:37] Her party won 26% of the vote, so one in four Italian voters decided that she, a woman who had openly expressed her administration for Mussolini, she was the best choice for leader.
[00:24:52] Now, this is not to say that this means a quarter of Italy is fascist, of course, but rather to point out that the legacy of Benito Mussolini is still alive and well.
[00:25:04] Yet, as we have discussed today, Mussolini’s legacy went beyond the borders of Italy.
[00:25:10] He was, put simply, the original fascist dictator.
[00:25:15] It was his violence, his personality cult, his charismatic public speaking, his strongman one-party state and his march on Rome that really gave birth to fascism and inspired similar movements across Europe in the inter-war years.
[00:25:34] Though he’s not the most infamous of the fascists, Mussolini was a brutal dictator who ordered the death of his political opponents and imprisoned and tortured anyone who dared to oppose him.
[00:25:47] By some calculations, he was indirectly responsible for the deaths of 300,000 people.
[00:25:55] His greatest, most dangerous, legacy, however, is the fact that he started the fascist movement, inspired its rise, and created the political divisions that - in Italy and around the world - remain to this day.
[00:26:11] When put like this, perhaps he holds responsibility for the deaths of tens of millions more.
[00:26:20] Ok then, that’s it for today’s episode on Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator who started fascism and met a gruesome end at the hands of his own people.
[00:26:32] I hope it was an interesting one, and whether you knew a lot about Mussolini, or this was the first time you’d heard anything about him, well I hope you learned something new.
[00:26:42] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:26:46] We have lots and lots of members from Italy, so my question to you is this: what is the legacy of Benito Mussolini on modern Italy?
[00:26:56] Do you think that Italy ever really had to deal with its role in the Second World War?
[00:27:01] Are there any saving graces, any positive things to be taken, from the rule of Benito Mussolini?
[00:27:08] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:27:12] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:27:20] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:27:25] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today it is part two of our three-part mini-series on European dictators.
[00:00:28] In part one, we looked at the life of The Grey Blur, Joseph Stalin.
[00:00:33] In today’s episode, we are going to go to the other side of the political spectrum, to the far-right, and look at the life of Benito Mussolini, the father of fascism.
[00:00:45] And in part three, well you can probably guess who it’s going to be, the leader of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler.
[00:00:52] Now, clearly it would be incredibly difficult to give a thorough, blow-by-blow account of Mussolini’s entire life, and it certainly won’t be possible in this episode.
[00:01:03] So today, I’ll give a broad overview of his life and place in Italian and European history, whilst also trying to give you a sense of the type of man Mussolini was, and how his early years shaped the dictator he became.
[00:01:19] So, let’s get into it and talk about Benito Mussolini, the father of fascism.
[00:01:27] In the early hours of the 29th of April, 1945, a crowd was gathering in the Piazzale Loreto in Milan.
[00:01:37] There was a sea of top hats, military helmets, men in long coats, and military vehicles.
[00:01:44] In the middle of the square, a furious mob gathered around something on the floor.
[00:01:50] They screamed, cheered, and jeered.
[00:01:54] Two dead bodies lay on the floor. The crowd pushed forward, trying to get closer, hoping to catch a glimpse of one body in particular.
[00:02:06] Jostling for position, the people who had managed to push past the soldiers were confronted by the face of Italy’s fascist leader, Benito Mussolini.
[00:02:18] People spat on him, trying to kick his body, hurling abuse at the corpse.
[00:02:25] Firemen arrived and dispersed the crowd with jets of water.
[00:02:29] People began to move back, and order was restored.
[00:02:34] But then the crowd pushed forward again, took Mussolini’s body, dragged him across the square, and hung him up from a petrol station.
[00:02:45] The mutilated body of the man who had ruled Italy with an iron first was there for all to see.
[00:02:53] Il Duce was dead.
[00:02:55] It was an end so brutal, so undignified, that historians believe it was one of the reasons Hitler decided to commit suicide, rather than risk falling into the hands of his enemies and enduring a similar fate.
[00:03:12] It was an unlikely fate for many reasons, and completely likely for many others.
[00:03:20] This man, Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was born on the 29th of July, 1883, in Predappio, in central Italy.
[00:03:31] His father, Alessandro, was a blacksmith and committed socialist, and his mother, Rosa, a devout Catholic.
[00:03:41] In fact, Mussolini’s father wasn’t just a fly-by-night socialist, but left-wing enough to name his son after Benito Juárez, Mexico’s liberal President and the first indigenous head of state anywhere in post-colonial Latin America.
[00:03:57] His middle names, Andrea and Amilcare, were given to him after Andrea Costa and Amilcare Cipriani, two famous Italian socialists.
[00:04:09] As you’ll know, he would go in an altogether different direction to his namesakes.
[00:04:16] In school, he was known as a shy and good student but one with a violent temper.
[00:04:23] At 10 years old he stabbed another student, and then, at 14, in 1897, he again stabbed a classmate with a pen knife and was suspended from school.
[00:04:36] After leaving school Mussolini worked briefly as a school teacher but didn’t enjoy the job, and in 1902 his prospects were so poor that he moved to Switzerland.
[00:04:48] He would spend the following two years travelling around Switzerland and, following his father’s lead, became involved in socialist politics, often clashing with police in the process.
[00:05:01] A couple of years later, in 1904, Mussolini returned to Italy and continued to do bits of teaching, remaining active in socialist politics, before moving to Austria-Hungary where he edited a socialist newspaper but was deported back to Italy for violating freedom of press laws.
[00:05:22] As we’ll see from his own behaviour later on, this is somewhat ironic.
[00:05:29] Historians believe that Mussolini saw himself as a bit of an intellectual. He read philosophy, learned French and German, and clearly thought himself to be something of a grand thinker.
[00:05:43] These grand thoughts would end up leading him to the complete opposite side of the political spectrum.
[00:05:50] But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
[00:05:52] At this time, Mussolini was still a committed socialist and a committed anti-imperialist.
[00:06:00] In 1911 he spent six months in prison for inciting, or encouraging violence at a rally against Italy’s war in Libya.
[00:06:10] But even then Mussolini had visions of grandeur, of big plans for himself, and used his time in prison to begin writing his autobiography, which reportedly included descriptions of his many romantic, sexual, conquests.
[00:06:28] Even back then Mussolini was keen to boast about his womanising, and much like a more recent Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, he was keen to use it as part of his macho image.
[00:06:42] Clearly, there was truth behind it, with one biographer estimating that he slept with around 5,000 women during his life.
[00:06:52] If you’re wondering how you make time for this while running a country, well according to one account, he slept with at least one woman every day at his office while he was running the country.
[00:07:04] Perhaps he would have ruled for a bit longer if he had swapped this daily office activity for something else, who knows.
[00:07:12] Anyway, when he was finally released from prison, Mussolini continued working on several socialist newspapers, but he supported Italy’s involvement in the First World War, a position that put him at odds, or in contrast to, mainstream Italian socialists.
[00:07:30] This view of war, and general enthusiasm for violence and militarism, would lead to his departure from the Socialist Party in 1914, and his swing to the right.
[00:07:45] With civil unrest spreading across the country, Mussolini’s view of the world began to change, moving away from his socialist emphasis on social class to believing that national identity was more significant.
[00:08:01] He was drafted into the Italian army in September of 1915 where he fought on the front lines and was promoted to the rank of corporal before being discharged, or released, after being wounded.
[00:08:16] Upon his return to civilian life, Mussolini the corporal became Mussolini the journalist again, and by 1917 he was agitating for Italy to remain in the war and support the allies.
[00:08:31] It would be the start of his route to power, but you might be surprised to hear that he owes much of it - arguably all of it - to the British intelligence services.
[00:08:43] Yes, that’s right - archived records have revealed that Mussolini was paid by Britain’s famous MI5, the British Intelligence Services, to write propaganda articles encouraging support for Italy’s continued participation in World War I.
[00:09:01] He was paid £100 per week by MI5 - which is around €10,000 a week in today’s money, which also went towards paying supporters to go and beat up and intimidate anti-war protestors in Milan.
[00:09:17] And Mussolini’s political views had done an about turn, they were completely different.
[00:09:24] By the following year, in 1918, he was publicly stating that a dictator could, and should, take control of Italy.
[00:09:35] He began to organise the different fascist groups around Italy into a national organisation known as the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, which you could translate as something like the Italian Fighting Groups.
[00:09:50] The group appealed particularly to war veterans and the unemployed, and encouraged violence, mainly against socialists, and Mussolini became the de facto leader of the Fascists.
[00:10:05] In late 1919, he ran as the Fascist candidate in the Italian general election but lost in a large Socialist victory.
[00:10:14] In the aftermath of the election, he was arrested for collecting weapons and planning to overthrow the government, but was released.
[00:10:23] Then, in 1921, with the country gripped by political instability and fascists fighting communists in the streets, The King, Victor Emmanuel III dissolved the Italian Parliament.
[00:10:37] The following election saw big wins for the Fascists, and Mussolini won a seat in Parliament.
[00:10:43] Fascism was entering the political mainstream.
[00:10:48] Encouraged by their electoral success, the party changed its name to the Partito Nazionale Fascista - the National Fascist Party.
[00:10:58] In 1922 Mussolini’s men, the same ones that had been paid with British money to violently disrupt anti-war rallies, changed to their famous black shirt uniforms and were put in squads that resembled Roman army groups.
[00:11:16] In fact, Mussolini’s vision of fascist Italy relied heavily on romanticised notions of the Roman Empire and what he saw to be Italy’s rightful place among world powers.
[00:11:30] In Parliament, he continued his calls for a strong leader, and became known as a charismatic and powerful public speaker, delighting huge crowds with dramatic gestures and facial expressions.
[00:11:46] Giving a speech in Naples in October of 1922, Mussolini promised the 40,000 fascists in the crowd that, “Either the government will be given to us, or we will seize it by marching on Rome.”
[00:12:01] As the country deteriorated into further civil and political unrest, several Italian cities were seized by Fascist squads.
[00:12:10] And then, on the night of the 27th of October, 1922, 30,000 Fascist blackshirts gathered to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Luigi Facta.
[00:12:23] King Victor Emmanuel, Vittorio Emmanuele, could only watch as thousands of armed Fascists entered Rome, though Mussolini wasn’t one of them himself - he didn’t actually go.
[00:12:35] The King quickly dissolved the government and asked Mussolini to form a new one.
[00:12:42] And just like that, Mussolini became not only Prime Minister, but the Minister of the Interior and Minister for Foreign Affairs.
[00:12:52] The journalist, the school teacher and former-socialist, had become the most powerful man in Italy.
[00:13:00] But he wasn’t a fully-fledged, a real, dictator just yet.
[00:13:05] Over the next couple of years, Mussolini built up more and more power, sidelining democratic institutions and rivals until he could destroy them altogether.
[00:13:17] During this period there were several unsuccessful assassination plots against him, and in response he had all Communist members of Parliament arrested.
[00:13:27] Even those who couldn’t be found guilty of any crimes were detained for up to five years.
[00:13:34] After dealing with the Italian left - his former comrades, it must be remembered - Mussolini turned his attention to his other former passion: the press.
[00:13:44] And let’s not forget, he was a former journalist, so he was acutely aware of the power of the written word, of the press.
[00:13:53] As Mussolini began to tighten his grip on the country, the freedoms of the press were muzzled, or silenced, and cinemas were made to show government propaganda.
[00:14:05] Fascists owned the majority of newspapers and controlled how things were reported in the media, issuing editorial guidelines and arresting editors who didn’t follow them.
[00:14:17] Being aware of the power of an image, he was also very conscious about how he was portrayed in the press. And, as you may know, he was not a tall man, he was 1.69 m, and he would insist on photographs of him being taken from above, or standing on a box, or on a horse - anything to make him seem more heroic and grand.
[00:14:44] Now, historians generally say that Mussolini confirmed his total control of Italy, and grip on the country’s institutions, a few years later, on the 3rd of January, 1925, when he made a speech to the Italian parliament declaring his right to supreme power of the country.
[00:15:03] In just a few years, Mussolini had assumed full control of Italy and become the world’s first fascist dictator.
[00:15:12] But what would he do next?
[00:15:14] In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Mussolini further developed his personality cult, giving seemingly endless public speeches.
[00:15:25] Carefully creating a hyper-masculine image, Mussolini tried to establish himself as an ‘Ubermensch’ - a philosophical concept of a person who is almost superhuman and has powers ordinary people don’t have.
[00:15:41] This concept was actually created by Friedrich Nietzsche, a philosopher historians believe Mussolini was fond of, and one used by other fascist dictators as a means of justifying their brutality.
[00:15:55] In fact, it is thought that Hitler himself gave Mussolini the complete works of Nietzsche for his 60th birthday.
[00:16:04] Now, on the subject of Hitler, it is worth considering the relationship between the two of them for a moment.
[00:16:09] It is well-known that Hitler was a great admirer of Mussolini in the early days, and that Italian fascism was seen as the ideological ‘big brother’ of Nazism.
[00:16:22] Hitler particularly admired Mussolini’s March on Rome - in fact his failed putsch in Munich in 1923 was Hitler’s attempt to do the same.
[00:16:33] In their early meetings, however, Mussolini wasn’t particularly impressed by Hitler.
[00:16:40] After their first meeting in Venice in 1934 - during which he refused a translator and struggled with Hitler’s thick Bavarian accent - Mussolini reportedly described the German dictator as a ‘mad little clown.’
[00:16:57] Over time, however, and as Hitler grew in power, their partnership developed and Mussolini embraced some of Hitler’s foreign policy ideas and his anti-semitism.
[00:17:10] Yet, despite what the propaganda at the time showed, the relationship between the two was a ‘marriage of convenience’, or in other words, a relationship for mutual gain, an agreement that helps both parties.
[00:17:24] The biggest implication of their relationship, of course, would come a few years later.
[00:17:30] But Mussolini wasn’t just the ideological father of fascism for Hitler; he was the father of fascism full-stop, and an example for every European fascist that would follow.
[00:17:42] And Mussolini knew it.
[00:17:46] With the fascist general Franco plunging Spain into Civil War, and fascism also on the rise in Germany, Mussolini began to look beyond his own borders and consider the bigger picture, and his place in it.
[00:18:01] In October of 1935, Mussolini ignored the League of Nations and ordered Italian troops to invade Ethiopia - then known as Abyssinia – forcing the country's Emperor, Haile Selassie, into hiding.
[00:18:15] Mussolini, the man who just years ago was an active anti-imperial campaigner, declared Abyssinia, along with the territories of Somaliland and Eritrea, part of a new Italian Empire.
[00:18:30] During the conflict Mussolini proved himself to be particularly ruthless, ordering the Italian forces to use chemical weapons, including mustard gas, as they slaughtered 50,000 people.
[00:18:43] It would prove to be his only real military success, and was against an enemy with significantly inferior, worse, weapons than the Italians.
[00:18:54] Now, back in Europe, as the Spanish Civil War intensified, Mussolini sent tens of thousands of men to support the fascists, which further alienated Italy from other European powers.
[00:19:08] Mussolini instead grew closer to another European dictator: his old friend, the ‘mad little clown’ Adolf Hitler, who was no longer the fascist little brother, but a valuable European partner.
[00:19:22] When Italy invaded Abyssinia, Germany had, after all, been the second country to recognise Italy’s claim to it.
[00:19:30] Both Hitler and Mussolini sided with Franco in the Spanish Civil War, and in 1937 Italy left the League of Nations in solidarity with Germany.
[00:19:41] In March of 1938, with Mussolini’s support, Hitler invaded Austria.
[00:19:47] And despite having had an on-off affair with a Jewish author and academic for many years, and Italian fascism not initially being anti-semitic, Mussolini's increasing closeness to Hitler and Nazism increased his own anti-semitic views.
[00:20:06] In 1938, Mussolini wrote an article supportive of the German concept of the Aryan race, and soon after, he called for the expulsion of Jews from Italy.
[00:20:18] In 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland, Britain and France declared war against Germany but Mussolini remained neutral, for now.
[00:20:29] When Germany took Denmark and Norway, however, Mussolini became convinced that Hitler would win the war, and after the Nazis steamrollered through Holland and Belgium, Italy and Germany signed the “Pact of Steel” officially creating the Axis powers, on May 22, 1939.
[00:20:48] Now, to skip forward a few years, by 1943 it was clear that Italy was losing the war, and that the Italian army wasn’t particularly well organised or effective.
[00:21:01] And as Italians realised this, Mussolini’s grip on power began to wane, or decrease.
[00:21:09] Even his propaganda machine began to fall apart, and Italians increasingly listened to and read foreign media to find out what was really going on in the war.
[00:21:20] On July 25th, of 1943, Mussolini was voted out of power by his own Grand Council, arrested, and thrown into prison.
[00:21:30] When the new Italian Prime Minister began secret peace talks with the Allies, Hitler sent German troops into Italy.
[00:21:38] Then, in September of 1943, allied forces landed in Italy with the aim of liberating the peninsula.
[00:21:47] Fearful of being found by the advancing allied troops, on the 12th of September of 1943 Mussolini was rescued by an elite unit of German SS paratroopers and taken to German-occupied northern Italy.
[00:22:02] There he was made Hitler’s puppet leader, creating the Italian Social Republic - known as the Salò Republic.
[00:22:10] Though he claimed to be in full control during the next year and a half, Mussolini was effectively put under house arrest and guarded by SS troops - in his own country.
[00:22:22] How the tables had turned - how the situation had reversed - since Hitler and Mussolini’s first meeting.
[00:22:30] And by June of 1945, allied forces were rolling through Italy, and Mussolini tried to escape to Spain with his lover, Claretta Petacci.
[00:22:42] And, this all takes us back to the beginning of the episode, Mussolini’s gruesome end.
[00:22:49] Though he was strung up in the Piazzale Loreto in Milan, he didn’t actually die there, he was already a dead man when he arrived.
[00:22:59] On the 27th of April, 1945, a couple of days before, a group of communist partisans had stopped a convoy near the village of Dongo on Lake Como.
[00:23:12] Mussolini was found hiding in the back of a truck, trying to disguise himself in a German army overcoat and helmet, but his distinctive shaved head and jawline gave him away.
[00:23:25] Autopsy reports suggest he was shot dead the following day, on April 28th, 1945.
[00:23:33] His body was then driven to Milan and displayed for all Italians - indeed the world - to see
[00:23:42] Now, we need to jump forward almost 80 years to the modern day - to 2022, as debatably more so than Stalin and Hitler, the spectre of Benito Mussolini looms more closely over his country than either of the other subjects of this mini-series.
[00:24:02] In October 2022, as you may know, a lady called Giorgia Meloni became Italy’s first female Prime Minister.
[00:24:12] Her party, the Brothers of Italy, is generally described as a far-right or post-fascist party, and Meloni has publicly expressed her admiration of Mussolini.
[00:24:26] As a teenager, Italy’s current Prime Minister said, and I quote, “Mussolini was a good politician, in that everything he did, he did for Italy.”
[00:24:37] Her party won 26% of the vote, so one in four Italian voters decided that she, a woman who had openly expressed her administration for Mussolini, she was the best choice for leader.
[00:24:52] Now, this is not to say that this means a quarter of Italy is fascist, of course, but rather to point out that the legacy of Benito Mussolini is still alive and well.
[00:25:04] Yet, as we have discussed today, Mussolini’s legacy went beyond the borders of Italy.
[00:25:10] He was, put simply, the original fascist dictator.
[00:25:15] It was his violence, his personality cult, his charismatic public speaking, his strongman one-party state and his march on Rome that really gave birth to fascism and inspired similar movements across Europe in the inter-war years.
[00:25:34] Though he’s not the most infamous of the fascists, Mussolini was a brutal dictator who ordered the death of his political opponents and imprisoned and tortured anyone who dared to oppose him.
[00:25:47] By some calculations, he was indirectly responsible for the deaths of 300,000 people.
[00:25:55] His greatest, most dangerous, legacy, however, is the fact that he started the fascist movement, inspired its rise, and created the political divisions that - in Italy and around the world - remain to this day.
[00:26:11] When put like this, perhaps he holds responsibility for the deaths of tens of millions more.
[00:26:20] Ok then, that’s it for today’s episode on Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator who started fascism and met a gruesome end at the hands of his own people.
[00:26:32] I hope it was an interesting one, and whether you knew a lot about Mussolini, or this was the first time you’d heard anything about him, well I hope you learned something new.
[00:26:42] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:26:46] We have lots and lots of members from Italy, so my question to you is this: what is the legacy of Benito Mussolini on modern Italy?
[00:26:56] Do you think that Italy ever really had to deal with its role in the Second World War?
[00:27:01] Are there any saving graces, any positive things to be taken, from the rule of Benito Mussolini?
[00:27:08] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:27:12] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:27:20] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:27:25] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
