Biografie

In April 1945, just before the Allied armies reached Milan, Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were caught by Italian Communist partisans. It is unclear whether his objective was to attempt to cross the Swiss border or to go to the Valtellina; if it were the latter, he left the city without the thousands of supporters gathered in Milan intended to be his escort to the last stand in the Alps. Both Mussolini and Petacci were summarily executed. Later their corpses were hung upside down in a petrol station at Loreto Square in Milan.

In the early years of his rule he was sympathetic to the Zionist movement and even hosted a cordial meeting with Chaim Weizmann. Having read "Mein Kampf", he knew that Adolf Hitler despised Italians along with other non-Germanic groups. In 1938, under intense pressure from Hitler, Mussolini enacted relatively minor discriminatory anti-Jewish laws, and even those went largely unenforced. Only in late 1943, after the Germans had invaded northern and central Italy and reduced Mussolini to a puppet, did deportations of Jews begin. The Germans did not inform or consult Mussolini when they began deporting Jews. Some historians have argued the introduction of the Manifesto of Race in 1938 was a deliberate attempt by Mussolini to revive his regime, since it had lost popularity after being in power for 15 years.

Joined Adolf Hitler in declaring war on the United States on 11 December 1941.

Many German commanders bitterly resented having to prop up Mussolini during World War II. A German study before the war had suggested it would be better for Italy to remain neutral.

He sought to delay a major war in Europe until at least the end of 1942, and for this reason the Pact of Steel determined that neither Germany nor Italy should go to war without the other's support until 1943.

Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the marriage of government and corporate power.

Keep your heart a desert.

People are like women, they go with the winning man.

I only need a few thousand dead so that I can sit at the peace conference as a man who has fought.

[on 6/10/40] The hour of destiny has arrived for our fatherland. We are going to war against the decrepit democracies . . . to break the chains that tie us to the Mediterranean.