Fascist dictator of Italy from 1922 to 1943. Mussolini created a very, very unfair and anti-democratic version of Italy, he forced the people to believe in ?Fascism? as the way of the future through his total control of the media, he had complete control of the country of Italy after he disassembled the existing democratic government system. He used corrupt and unfortunate means to keep his dictatorship. Mussolini was born in Predappio, near Forli, in Romagna, on July 29, 1883. His father, Alessandro, was a blacksmith, and his mother, Rosa, was a teacher. Like his father, Benito became a socialist. He qualified as an elementary schoolmaster in 1901. In 1902 he emigrated to Switzerland. Unable to find a permanent job there and arrested for vagrancy, he was expelled and returned to Italy to do his military service. After further trouble with the police, he joined the staff of a newspaper in the Austrian town of Trento in 1908. At this time he wrote a novel, subsequently translated into English as The Cardinal's Mistress.
Most of his time was spent on propaganda, whether at home or abroad, and here his training as a journalist was invaluable. Press, radio, education, films--all were carefully supervised to manufacture the illusion that fascism was "the doctrine of the 20th century that was replacing liberalism and democracy. The principles of this doctrine were laid down in the article on fascism, reputedly written by himself, that appeared in 1932 in the Enciclopedia Italiana. In 1929 a concordat with the Vatican was signed, by which the Italian state was at last recognized by the Roman Catholic Church.
Under the dictatorship the parliamentary system was virtually abolished. The law codes were rewritten. All teachers in schools and universities had to swear an oath to defend the Fascist regime. Newspaper editors were all personally chosen by Mussolini himself, and no one could practice journalism who did not possess a certificate of approval from the Fascist party. The trade unions were also deprived of any independence and were integrated into what was called the "corporative system. The aim (never completely achieved) was to place all Italians in various professional organizations or "corporations, all of them under governmental control. Mussolini played up to his financial backers at first by transferring a number of industries from public to private ownership. But by the 1930's he had begun moving back to the opposite extreme of rigid governmental control of industry. A great deal of money was spent on public works. But the economy suffered from his exaggerated attempt to make Italy self-sufficient. There was too much concentration on heavy industry, for which Italy lacked the resources.
As World War II approached, Mussolini announced his intention of annexing Malta, Corsica, and Tunis?. In April 1939, after a brief war, he occupied Albania. Failing to realize that he had more to gain by trying to hold the balance of power in Europe, he preferred to rely on a policy of bluff and bluster to induce the Western democracies to give way to his increasing territorial demands. Although he had preached for 15 years about the virtues of war and the military readiness of Italy to fight, his armed forces were completely unprepared when Hitler's invasion of Poland led to World War II. He decided to remain "nonbelligerent until he was quite certain which side would win. Only after the fall of France did he declare war in June 1940, hoping that the war had only a few weeks more to run. His attack on Greece in October revealed to everyone that he had done nothing to prepare an effective military machine. He had no option but to follow Hitler in declaring war on the Soviet Union in June 1941 and on the United States in December 1941.
Following Italian defeats on all fronts and the Anglo-American landing in Sicily in 1943, most of Mussolini's colleagues turned against him at a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council on July 25, 1943. This enabled the king to dismiss and arrest him. Rescued by the Germans several months later, Mussolini set up a Republican Fascist state in northern Italy. But he was little more than a puppet under the protection of the German Army. In this "Republic of Salo", Mussolini returned to his earlier ideas of socialism and collectivization. He also executed some of the Fascist leaders who had abandoned him, including his son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano. Increasingly he tried to shift the blame for defeat onto the Italian people, who had not been great enough to appreciate his imperial dream. In April 1945, just before the Allied armies reached Milan?, Mussolini, along with his mistress Clara Petacci, was caught by Italian partisans as he tried to take refuge in Switzerland. He was summarily executed. The Duce was survived by his wife, Rachele, by two sons, Vittorio and Romano, and his daughter Edda, the widow of Count Ciano. A third son, Bruno, had been killed in an air accident.