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 labour 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
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