Which country did mussolini lead

The March on Rome was staged on the night of October 27—28, Instead, the King invited Mussolini to Rome to form a new government. While Mussolini became the Prime Minister in , he was still dependent on a coalition government to remain in power. The Acerbo Law, passed in , was designed to give Mussolini and the Fascists complete control over the Italian parliament and government.

The Acerbo Law stated that whichever party obtained the greatest number of votes would receive two thirds of the seats in Parliament, even if they did not receive two thirds of the vote. With the help of the Acerbo Law, the elections decisively gave power to the Fascists. Mussolini and Hitler met for the first time in Despite their shared fascism, the two men did not particularly like one another personally.

Moreover, their nationalist ambitions for Italy and Germany would inevitably conflict at some point. For the moment, the two states needed each other as they both attempted to rework the organization of Europe in their favor.

The alliance between the two was solidified in with the Pact of Steel, which committed Italy and Germany to support one another militarily and economically in event of war. Despite initial Axis military successes, the Italian military position quickly spun out of control, especially in North Africa.

As the Italian situation worsened and Mussolini lost the confidence of his own party, King Victor Emmanuel removed Mussolini from power in Mussolini was arrested shortly thereafter by Italian police. By the spring of , it was clear that the German defeat was imminent, so Mussolini attempted to escape to neutral Switzerland with his mistress Clara Petacci.

They were caught before they reached Switzerland and promptly arrested by communist partisans. Between and , Mussolini progressively dismantled virtually all constitutional and conventional restraints on his power, thereby building a police state.

Thereafter he began styling himself as Il Duce the leader. He was no longer responsible to Parliament and could be removed only by the king. While the Italian constitution stated that ministers were responsible only to the sovereign, in practice it had become all but impossible to govern against the express will of Parliament. A lavish cult of personality centered on the figure of Mussolini was promoted by the regime.

At various times after , Mussolini personally took over the ministries of the interior, foreign affairs, colonies, corporations, defense, and public works. Sometimes he held as many as seven departments simultaneously as well as the premiership.

He would later form the OVRA, an institutionalized secret police that carried official state support. He thus succeeded in keeping power in his own hands and preventing the emergence of any rival. All teachers in schools and universities had to swear an oath to defend the fascist regime.

Newspaper editors were all personally chosen by Mussolini and no one without a certificate of approval from the fascist party could practice journalism. The aim never completely achieved , inspired by medieval guilds, was to place all Italians in various professional organizations or corporations under clandestine governmental control. In his early years in power, Mussolini operated as a pragmatic statesman, trying to achieve advantages but never at the risk of war with Britain and France.

An exception was the bombardment and occupation of Corfu in , following an incident in which Italian military personnel charged by the League of Nations to settle a boundary dispute between Greece and Albania were assassinated by Greek bandits. Soon after, Mussolini called for the expulsion of foreign Jews from Italy. Soon Holland and Belgium also fell to Hitler. Japan would join in September of with the signing of the Tripartite Pact.

Italy declared war on France and Great Britain on June 10, By , after years of fighting in World War II , Italy was viewed by its own citizens as losing the war. On July 25, , Mussolini was voted out of power by his own Grand Council, arrested after a visit with the king and sent to the island of La Maddalena. When Italy accepted the terms of secret peace talks with the Allies, Hitler ordered German forces into Italy, which resulted in two Italian nations, one occupied by Germans. Allied forces barreled through Italy in June Mussolini attempted to flee to Spain with his lover, Claretta Petacci, but was discovered and arrested by partisans searching troop transport trucks.

There are conflicting stories about how Mussolini died, but autopsy reports state the dictator was executed by firing squad on April 28, , shot by soldiers firing several bullets—with four of them near the heart—causing immediate death.

The bodies of both Mussolini and Petacci were hung upside down at the Piazzale Loreto in Milan and displayed for crowds to kick and spit on. One day later, Hitler committed suicide and the following week, Germany surrendered.

The government recovered it and interred it in a monastery near Milan. The American diplomat who handed it to her claimed that the Americans had taken the brain in order to study what makes a dictator. She had the relic placed in his tomb, which receives , visitors a year. Ray Moseley. Jasper Ridley. Rupert Colley. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.

Mussolini had a penchant for violence even as a youth. Born on July 29, , Mussolini gained a reputation for bullying and fighting during his childhood. At age 10 he was expelled from a religious boarding school for stabbing a classmate in the hand, and another stabbing The instability created in Europe by the First World War set the stage for another international conflict—World War II—which broke out two decades later and would prove even more devastating.

Rising to power in an economically and politically unstable Germany, Adolf Hitler capitalized on economic woes, popular discontent and political infighting to take absolute power in Germany beginning in According to Machiavelli, the ends always justify the means—no matter how cruel, calculating or immoral those means might be.