Bento Mussolini: Italy's Greatest Evil (2023) Movie Script
- Mussolini was a unifying
force for the Italian people
and they had faith in him
and they had a belief in him.
- He's been a writer, he's been an editor.
So he knows the power of ideas,
he knows the power of the written word.
He knows the power of expression,
and he knows how to harness it.
- He talked about the
solidarity of the trenches,
and of course he developed
a very nationalist ideology
and that appealed to many
who had been dispossessed
or socially dislocated by the war.
- Italy had, in fact a
pretty angry population.
There was a lot of dissatisfaction
with the Treaty of the Versailles in 1919,
and there was a lot of widespread unrest.
- So Mussolini made his primary appeal
to those members of the population
who were most socially uprooted
or dislocated by the war.
- Mussolini absolutely
captivates his audience.
I mean, he brilliant with
his use of body language
and facial expressions.
You know, his speeches are
really something to watch.
- The fascist regime used
violence from the start
and Mussolini was determined
to prevent any opposition.
- But he was also quite aggressive
and he often clash with
teachers and his fellow pupils
'cause he had this very
sort of proud nature.
He was quite grumpy and he
was always pretty violent.
Benito Mussolini was an Italian
politician and a journalist,
but he was a bit more than that.
He was actually the dictator of Italy
and he led the National
Fascist Party from 1922.
- In terms of Mussolini's family life,
his mother Rosa was an ardent Catholic
and she made sure that her children
were baptized and went
to church every Sunday.
She was the local school teacher,
so she brought in the
regular income to the family.
- Mussolini's Father Alessandro,
he worked as a blacksmith
and the young Benito
actually helped him at the Forge.
And as a result, the two men became,
you know, really quite close.
And what Alessandro taught young Benito
was all about the revolutionary
leaders that he so admired.
And one of them was Karl Marx.
- So in terms of the influence
of his father on his life,
Benito certainly feared his father
because he hit him to discipline him.
At the same time, Mussolini
looked up to his father
for his ideals and for his beliefs.
Mussolini as a child, was quite willful.
Bullying, showed signs of
violence from quite a young age.
He actually had some
difficulties learning to speak,
so there was some concern about that,
although he did get over that
and developed to become
quite a bright child,
but also quite difficult
and quite badly behaved.
- The young Mussolini
showed signs of violence
from a very young age.
When he was just 10,
he was actually expelled from school,
not for some, you know, student prank,
but for actually stabbing another student.
- Benito was sent away to boarding school
at Faenza that was run by Salesian Monks.
And he regarded that being
sent away as a punishment
and kind of made him feel rejected.
So he did recall a lack of
warmth and affection at home.
And perhaps this had some bearing
on his future personality as it developed.
- You know, he was quite a shy boy,
but he was also quite aggressive
and he often clashed with
teachers and his fellow pupils
'cause he had this very
sort of proud nature.
He was quite grumpy and he
was always pretty violent.
- Between 1912 and 1914,
Mussolini worked as
editor of the newspaper
of the Italian Socialist Party, Avanti.
Here he developed and honed
his skills in journalism.
At the same time, his intransigence
and his difficult nature
also became clear.
He was determined to use his
time there to prepare the way
for revolution as part
of the socialist party.
- When the Great War breaks out
what we today call World War I,
Mussolini sees this as a
potential start to revolution.
And what he begins to do is
support Italian intervention
whilst the Socialist
party is actually opposing
Italy's involvement in the war.
And because of this, in 1914,
Mussolini is actually expelled
from the Socialist party
and also an organization called Avanti.
And what he does is to start
his own newspaper publication.
And that is called the People of Italy.
- So once he established
his own newspaper,
he as an experienced journalist,
had a very good sense for
gauging public opinion
and understanding what
the people were thinking.
And this helped to launch
him in his political career.
He actually got support
for his new newspaper
from Italian industrialists
who would have something to
benefit from Italy going to war.
And he also got support from the British
and French governments
because they wanted Italy
to join on their side,
which Italy did in 1915.
Mussolini was conscripted
in September, 1915.
He remained a soldier until June, 1917
when he was discharged from
the army due to injury.
He later used his wartime
experience to his benefit,
talking of his time in the trenches,
and very much being one
with the other soldiers.
He talked about the
solidarity of the trenches,
and of course he developed
a very nationalist ideology.
And that appealed to many
who had been dispossessed
or socially dislocated by the war.
Italy had a frankly,
a pretty angry population.
There was a lot of dissatisfaction
with the Treaty of Versailles in 1919,
and there was a lot of widespread unrest.
- As Italy had not been
given all the territories
that had been promised to her,
she felt a wound to her national pride,
and Mussolini was able
to capitalize on that.
So Mussolini made his primary appeal
to those members of the population
who were most socially uprooted
or dislocated by the war.
There were some two and a
half million ex-servicemen
to be reintegrated into
the peacetime economy.
And of course, the
economy was suffering too.
Italy was quite unstable
politically in this period
with five different governments
between 1919 and 1922.
So what Mussolini was saying was that
his new party, the Fascist party,
would sort of sweep
clean all the decadence
and the corruption associated
with the existing governments,
and that he would really bring
something new to the nation.
And in 1921,
the Italian King Victor Emmanuel III,
he actually dissolves the parliament
'cause there's all this kind
of violence and chaos raging.
- Mussolini's new party was
designed to offer a third way
between liberalism and Bolshevism.
So it was something completely new.
And there were certain
key aspects of ideology
associated with the Italian Fascist Party.
First of all, Mussolini was determined
to create a new fascist man
who would lead this new nation.
And absolutely central to
fascist ideology was the state.
So it was to be a very strong state,
and one which really was
a totalitarian state,
a totalitarian state with
complete submission to the state.
So the state would control everything,
not just politics and the economy,
but cultural life, social life,
and even intervening into everyday life
and private life of the population.
The Blackshirts were the paramilitary wing
of the Fascist Party.
By the end of 1920,
there were these Fascist
Blackshirt Squads,
the
And after 1923,
you have this all volunteer militia
of the kingdom of Italy
under Fascist Rule.
And that's quite similar to
the SA, the Nazi Brownshirt.
- They went around in groups
of between 200 and 250.
The fascist squads were
attacking and burning down
socialist and communist headquarters,
also left-wing printing presses
and agricultural cooperatives
and those kinds of organizations.
So what the fascists were doing therefore,
was standing up for the industrialists
and for the landowners against
Bolshevism or communism.
So there was a big fear of communist
or red revolution in
Italy during this time.
And the fascists really seemed
to be the defenders against that.
So the fascist party
then got a lot of support
from industrialists and from landowners
because they were the ones who
were seeming to defend Italy
against this communist threat
or this perceived communist threat.
Mussolini was a unifying
force for the Italian people,
and they had faith in him,
and they had a belief in him.
So through his sense of vision,
he sort of transmitted that to the nation.
There came to be this kind
of symbiotic relationship
between the leader and the lead.
Mussolini
actually captivates
his audience, I mean, he's brilliant
with his use of body language
and facial expressions, you know,
his speeches are really
something to watch.
- Through his public appearances
and through his speeches,
Mussolini soon became very popular.
Using his body language
as well as his words,
he created a cult of a
leadership around him
where the people very much
saw him as this visionary man.
And he unified the Italian people
in a way that they hadn't been
in the recent history before.
He was a unifying figure for the nation,
and he was very keen to show
his prowess and his vigor.
He was shown open water swimming
or engaged in some of the public works.
So this was all designed to
create an aura around him,
of this great leader.
By October, 1922,
the fascists were becoming
increasingly strong
and they believed that the time was right
to stage their coup or
their seizure of power.
What
happens in late October, 1922,
is that you have the fascist
party leaders planning
an insurrection, you know,
they want a revolutionist,
let's make no bones about that.
And they want that to take
place on the 28th of October.
This becomes known as the March on Rome.
- This March on Rome was
mythologized by the fascist
as a great unstoppable force,
but in fact, the reality
was somewhat different.
They talked about a
hundred thousand fascists
marching on Rome, but the truth
was there were only 20,000.
And actually they waited outside Rome
for orders that never came.
The fascists were able to come to power
not as a result of actually
using force at that moment,
but through the threat of using force.
You've
got the Prime Minister,
a man called Luigi Facta.
He's wishing to declare
a state of siege quite understandably,
but this is actually overruled
by the king Victor Emmanuel.
The
King Victor Emmanuel III
invited Mussolini to form a government
and accepted his demands.
So this very celebrated March
on Rome in fascist mythology
wasn't quite what it was made out to be.
Of
course, what this means,
that political power
has now been transferred
to the fascist without any armed conflict.
- The fascist regime used
violence from the start,
and Mussolini was determined
to prevent any opposition.
- Even quite soon after
gaining power in 1925,
what the fascist government does,
is to even make suspicion
of being anti-fascist
a punishable crime.
And you can be imprisoned
for that suspicion alone
without any trial at all.
And then in 1927, Mussolini forms
what's called the
organization for vigilance
and repression of anti-fascism,
actually, that's a secret police.
- So he established the OVRA,
which was the secret police,
and that was used to track down
and deal with any political opposition.
- Mussolini survives three
assassination attempts in 1926.
Violet Gibson tries to kill
him on April the seventh.
On October 31st, you have
a man called Anteo Zamboni
tried to kill him.
And then on September the 11th in 1926,
you have a man called
Gino Lucetti having a go.
Now, all these attempts on his life
what they do is they
lead to an introduction
of a new law called the
the law for the defense of the state.
Now that is enacted on the
25th of November, 1926.
And this is a crucial part
of Mussolini taking control.
Because what that law does is to dissolve
all political parties, organizations,
associations, you name it,
anything opposed to fascism it goes.
So the new law allows those being accused
of being enemies of the state
to be sentenced to prison
or worse still to death.
- The Acerbo law was a key moment
in Mussolini's consolidation of power.
- Now, the Acerbo law stated that
the party gaining the
largest share of the votes
provided they got at least 25% of them
would actually gain two thirds
of the seats in parliament.
I mean, it's insane.
And the purpose of it is to
give Mussolini's fascists
a majority of deputies,
it's quite obvious.
And that law was only used
in the 1924 general election
because of course that
was the last proper full
competitive election, if you
like, held in Italy until 1946.
New elections
were held in April 1924,
after this law had come in at
the end of the previous year.
And using both this
law as well as violence
and intimidation, Mussolini
very much cemented his power.
Giacomo Matteotti
was an Italian socialist politician,
and on the 30th of May, 1924,
he openly speaks in
the Italian parliament,
and he's saying that the
fascists have committed fraud
in the recently held elections.
And he's denouncing the violence
they've used to gain votes.
He called
the results into question
because of the violence
and the intimidation
and really held that the election results
shouldn't be valid.
- Guess what happens, 11 days later,
he's kidnapped and he's
killed by the fascists.
The murder of Giacomo Matteotti
it does cause a real stick.
And you've got newspapers
launching really fierce attacks
on Mussolini and the
entire fascist movement.
And you've got all the
anti-fascist parties.
They're go, hang on a minute,
we are just gonna abandon
the chamber of deputies.
What we want to do is we
wanna force the crowd,
king Victor Emmanuel III
to act against Mussolini.
Socialist
deputies and others,
seceded from the Italian parliament
in what was known as
the Aventine secession
as a protest to what had happened.
Mussolini
is nothing, if not cunning,
and what he does is to
devise this counter maneuver.
And on the 3rd of January,
1925, he gives, you know,
what is now a really famous
kind of notorious speech,
both attacking the anti-fascist
and confirming that he and only he,
Mussolini was the leader of fascism.
And what he does is he
challenges the anti-fascists
to prosecute him.
He says, go on, have a go.
And he admits that the
murderers were fascists
of very high station as he calls them.
You know, he's proud of these guys.
I mean, this is what Hitler did.
You know, after night of the long knives.
On
the 3rd of January, 1925,
Mussolini made quite a famous speech
and one which was really meant to cement
his position as leader.
So it was both attacking anti-fascists,
but also saying that as far
as fascism was concerned,
he was the only and the
indisputable leader.
- Mussolini basically sort of,
kind of rhetorically claims fault.
And what he states is this.
He says, I assume that I
alone Mussolini the political,
moral and historical
responsibility for everything
that has happened.
And if these sentences more or less maimed
are enough to hang a man,
well then frankly out with a noose.
So what Mussolini is concluding
here is with a warning,
what Italy needs is stability
and fascism is gonna
ensure that stability,
and it's gonna do so in
any manner necessary.
And this speech is
considered the very beginning
of the dictatorship in Italy.
- So this made his position very plain,
and his days of sort of
dealing with what was left over
of the liberal state came to an end.
And now he was very much determined
to have his one party state
and his totalitarian state.
- Mussolini was a really
gifted propagandist.
He was a journalist at heart
and he was really aware of
the relationship between
power and optics, the
way that power is viewed.
You know, he understands completely
the necessity of having
the press on his side
in his efforts to maintain power.
You know, he's been a
writer, he's been an editor.
So he knows the power of ideas,
he knows the power of the written word,
he knows the power of expression
and he knows how to harness it.
- The fascist government introduced
a number of different
policies and measures,
some of which gained
quite a lot of popularity
with the Italian people.
So the party introduced youth
groups, also women's groups,
and also an organization called the OND,
which was the after work organization.
So this had clubs where there
were billards tables and bars
and sort of social activities.
It also sponsored holidays,
trips to the seaside subsidized
cultural events and so on.
And this was one of the
most popular aspects
of fascist Italy because
it's introduced mass tourism
and mass leisure in a way
that hadn't been there before.
The other policy that created
quite a lot of popularity
for Mussolini's regime
was his Lateran treaty,
his accord with the Pope in 1929.
And what that does
is officially recognizes the Vatican
as a sovereign state,
and it also makes Catholicism
Italy's official religion.
Now that's a really popular decision.
It's a really smart move.
'cause of course Italy has
a predominantly Catholic population.
So this
brought about a reconciliation
between the Pope and the Italian state
for the first time
since the state had come
into being in 1870.
So this policy with
the church in obviously
a very predominantly Catholic country,
made this regime quite popular.
The regime's public
work schemes and efforts
to reclaim land from the sea
and to put into place irrigation
policies and such like
also was making sure
that people were at work,
and that also increase the
popularity of the fascist regime.
Mussolini actually starts
a large number of public works
which actually dramatically
reduce unemployment.
And what they're also designed to do
is to improve infrastructure.
And of course, famously to
make the trains run on time.
What's commonly observed is
that the Great Depression
takes place and that leads
to a rise in fascism.
But you know, you gotta
remember that fascism
was made popular by
Mussolini in Italy from 1922.
And that we really gained
more traction after 1929,
because people looked at it
and went, hang on a minute,
this is one of the only
forms of government
that is surviving this economic collapse.
People looking at fascism thinking maybe
that's the way forward, not democracy.
In the
early years in terms of
the international
reputation of the regime,
Mussolini was hailed as quite successful
for these public work schemes
and other policies that were sort of
keeping the economy going
and also the population reasonably happy.
Of course that was to change
later, but at this point,
I think people were saying that
whatever else you could say
about Mussolini, he made
the trains run on time.
- There were many public figures
all over the world saying
that Mussolini was this kind of genius.
He was a kinda superman, if you like.
And his achievements,
some saw has been nothing
less than miraculous.
What he had appeared to have done was to
taken this demoralized country
and to kind of transform it
and kind of reinvigorate it.
And he'd carried out
all these social reforms
and these public works
and the landowners and the industrious
they were still on side,
and he had even made a deal with the Pope.
So on the surface, everything
looked kind of peachy,
looked all right, but if
you scratched below it,
nothing was quite as rosy as it seemed.
You know, way back in 1911
when he was a young socialist,
what Mussolini did was to take part
in his really violent protest
against Italy's invasion Libya.
But then spool forward to 1925,
Mussolini is now advocating
his spazio vitale,
he is now a fully fledged expansionist.
Spazio vitale was the
territorial expansionist concept
of Italian fascism.
What Mussolini dreams of
more than anything else
is to build a new Roman empire.
- Spazio vitale was a fascist concept,
Mussolini's concept for living space.
So this was very similar
to Hitler's concept of
Lebensraum, living space.
And Mussolini wanted to
create a new Roman empire
and to expand Italian power.
So this was always about expansion.
Rather than being confined
or hemmed in by the Mediterranean,
Mussolini talked about making
the Mediterranean our sea,
the Italian sea.
So a space from which
the Italians could expand
and gain empire.
At the end of the 19th century,
Italy had made some
territorial acquisitions.
So particularly in Somali
land and in Eritrea.
The Italians had failed
to take Ethiopia in 1896.
And so this remained a bit of
a thorn in the side of Italy,
the fact that they didn't succeed
in taking that land at that time.
So Mussolini could use that
to project again this concept
of living space and this
idea of territorial expansion
by the Italians and so to
try again to take Ethiopia,
and that's what he did.
So he invaded Ethiopia in 1935.
- In October, 1935, Italian
troops invade Ethiopia.
And this is seen as an example
of this expansionist policy
that is kind of characterizing
what the Axis powers are gonna do.
- Italy invaded Ethiopia in October, 1935,
and Mussolini's justification for this
was the need for Italy
to have living space.
The Italian military forces
actually went against
international law as outlined
in the Geneva protocol of 1925.
Italian military forces
used something like 300
to 500 tons of mustard gas
to attack both kind of military targets
and even more horrifically
civilian targets.
Italy was a signatory to
the 1925 Geneva protocol
that banned gas, Mussolini
just didn't care.
And you know there are some estimates
that say around one third
of Ethiopian casualties
of Mussolini's invasion were
caused by gas chemical weapons.
- Ladies and gentlemen,
the second speaker on the list
is his majesty Emperor Haile Selassie,
the first dedicated Ethiopia.
- In response to all the
appeals from the Ethiopians,
the League of Nations actually condemns
the Italian invasion in 1935,
and it votes to impose
economic sanctions on Italy.
But these sanctions are really,
really, really ineffective
because there's just a
general lack of support.
Italy's
invasion of Ethiopia
was a blow to the principle
of collective security
represented by the League of Nations
and to international stability.
- And what it also exposes is
this dreadful ineffectiveness
of the League of Nations
before the outbreak
of the Second World War.
You know that organization
simply cannot stand up to the dictators.
Mussolini has looked at
the League of Nations
and kind of laughed them off.
I mean, just dismissed them,
you know, there were no repercussions.
And what this also does, crucially,
it shows Mussolini's fellow
dictator Adolf Hitler
that the League of Nations
has got basically no power.
In fact, what happens
is all these tariffs,
all these sanctions that
are imposed on Italy
by other nations because of the invasion,
actually it increases
Mussolini's popularity.
You know, in May, 1936,
you've got more than 30
million people celebrating
the victory on the streets of Italy.
You know, this is a huge sign
of Mussolini's increased power,
increased popularity and the war also saw
the creation of a new military rank.
And that was called Field
Marshall of the Italian Empire.
And of course, you know,
he awarded that to himself
and also to the king.
And so therefore he sort of,
kind of making himself as prime minister,
the same rank theoretically
as the king himself.
At home
the invasion of Ethiopia
and the successful war there
made Mussolini's regime even more popular
and made Mussolini
himself even more popular.
So in 1936, millions of
Italians took to the streets
to celebrate this victory.
This was a foreign policy success
that just contributed to the whole aura
that surrounded il Duce, the leader.
- It's fair to say that
Mussolini's invasion
doesn't really gain
him a lot of popularity
amongst other nations.
And in fact, you know,
it comes as no surprise to
learn that the only nation
that doesn't oppose Italy's
invasion is Nazi Germany.
Mussolini could be conceived
as something of a political chameleon
because he changed quite a lot over time.
So he started out his
political life as a socialist,
but he was also influenced by
syndicalism and by anarchism.
And then he founded his
Italian fascist party.
And then later on, even within that,
his policies changed as
the Italian fascist state
became closer to Hitler's Nazi regime.
And then we can see that his policies
became much more influenced by Hitler.
Now in the late 1920s,
Mussolini is providing
some financial support
to the Nazi party as
it continues its rise.
And what he had also done
is to allow Brownshirts,
the SA and even SSS men to train
with his own paramilitary brigade.
Those are the Blackshirts of course.
Mussolini views the rise of the Nazi party
as something that's
affirming his own ideology.
This is saying, yeah,
fascism's on the march.
It's not just Italy, it's Germany next.
And who knows where else.
In private, however, you know,
Mussolini's really quite
scornful of Hitler and his Nazis.
You know, the Italian leader describes
"Mein Kampf" as boring.
Actually he was right.
And he thought that
Hitler's ideas and theories
were kind of coarse and simplistic.
And indeed Mussolini is dead right here.
In his early years when he
was leading the Nazi party,
you know, Hitler was a
big admirer of Mussolini.
You know, the Nazi leader
was particularly fascinated
by Mussolini's March on Rome.
And this is a very kind of
influential moment for him.
He looked
upon the March on Rome
as something to be admired
and in fact staged his
own coup or tried to
in November, 1923 following
the example of Mussolini.
But let's not forget
Mussolini's prone to his own
personal kind of egomania,
and he's got a low opinion of Hitler's
kind of rise to power,
which he thinks is far
less glorious than his own.
Even though they're
both fascist dictators,
the first meeting that takes
place between Mussolini
and Hitler, which is
in Venice, in June '34,
was frankly a bit of a disaster.
So Mussolini
turned up with his knowledge
of German without therefore
bringing a translator
and assuming he'd be fine.
Mussolini
speaks a little bit of German
and he said too arrogant
to use a translator.
And he had a lot of
difficulty in understanding
Hitler's kind of somewhat rough
and coarse Austrian accent.
And then what Mussolini is subjected to
are these huge notorious
Hitler long, boring monologues,
and Mussolini was so bored.
He
was also listening to
all these ideologies
that Hitler was espousing
and not particularly impressed.
- There's a big difference
between Mussolini and Hitler
and that lies in their racial views.
You know, Mussolini, let's
face it like Hitler did think
that white Europeans were
the kind of architects
of culture and civilization.
But what Mussolini
doesn't share with Hitler
is this kind of hateful and
eliminationist antisemitism.
What Mussolini was an Italian nationalist,
first and foremost and what he's doing
is he's harking back to the glories
and triumphs of ancient Rome.
You know, so he's really pretty
scornful of Hitler's rants
about early supremacy it is not really
Mussolini's bag, if you like.
And in one speech, the Italian leader
is actually actually
expressing kind of pity
for the racial views being
kind of expressed by the Nazis.
He's looking at them and
going, these people are,
you know, in his words,
the descendants of those
who are illiterate, Roman,
Caesar and Virgil and Augustus,
he kind of thinks the Germans
are inferior in some way.
And so both men kind
of walk out of Venice,
this summit, you know, thinking,
yeah, I don't think much of that guy.
Mussolini then pays a
state visit to Germany
in September, 1937, and where
he's met with a really long,
vast parade of troops, and
there's military equipment,
paraded artillery, you name it.
And these shows of strength
that were really obvious,
you know, they were there to
kind of impress Mussolini.
And you know what? It worked.
They came
to see the commonalities
of their ideologies and
indeed of their policies
and what could be gained by
becoming closer together.
And in 1936, they formed
the Rome Berlin Axis.
So coming closer together,
and that was cemented
into the Pact of Steel,
which was a formal alliance in 1939.
By the late 1930s,
we can see something of a
shift in the relationship
between Mussolini and Hitler,
and we see Mussolini being
much more heavily influenced
by Hitler in a number of ways.
So this could be seen by the introduction
of a series of reforms to
the way behavior took place.
So for example, that the Italian forces
were obliged suddenly to
goosestep that civil servants
were obliged to wear military
uniform for the first time.
So those kinds of things
showing the closeness
of the Italian regime to Hitlers
and just a kind of change in manners,
a change in the way of
behavior in the Italian state
heavily influenced by Hitler.
And this came to the fore in 1938,
with the racial laws adopted
by Mussolini's Italy.
- They restrict the civil
rights of Italian Jews.
They ban books written by Jews
and they exclude Jews from public offices
and even higher education,
this is antisemitism.
And there're more and more laws
stripping Jews their assets,
restricting their travel
and finally it even puts
them into internal exile.
It kind of treats 'em
as political prisoners.
But what Mussolini is known to,
it's systematically murdering Italy's Jews
in the way that Hitler does
with his Jews if you will.
So in 16
years before of fascist power,
there had not been any racial laws.
And suddenly at this point,
because he was showing his closeness
and proximity to Hitler,
and because he was heavily
influenced by Hitler,
Mussolini introduced a
series of racial laws
that were not too dissimilar
to the Nuremberg Laws in Nazi Germany.
Good evening everybody.
Tonight it seems clearly apparent
that the first great phase
of the war in the West
has been won by Germany.
The army of French and British
has made a valiant battle
in its effort to retreat to Gangoh,
where there is some slight chance
that some part of it can be evacuated.
It's all
Hitler's mechanized forces
are racing toward Paris as
French resistance collapses.
- This was a war that Hitler wanted.
He was an out and out aggressor.
And of course the first months of the war
were very successful for Germany
with the Blitz Creek
lightning strike on Poland,
and then very quick successes in the West.
Mussolini
is watching the progress
of Hitler with actually
quite a lot of jealousy.
He's a bit bitter to be honest,
you know, and as he sees
each a fresh German victory,
he gets more and more livid.
And he's starting to express the hope
that maybe the Germans will be slowed down
or they'll have a defeat
or some form of reverse
and that will make him
feel a little bit better.
You know we don't like it
when our friends are too successful
and this is what's going on here.
But Germany, of course,
just the advances Westwood, you know,
and not only takes all the low countries,
but even takes France.
And when France is on
the verge of collapse
Mussolini felt he can't delay any longer.
So then on June the 10th, 1940,
there's this fateful declaration of war.
It's apparent by 1943 that
that Italy's military position
is simply untenable.
You know, you've got the
axis forces in North Africa
being finally defeated
in the Tunisian campaign,
and that's in early '43.
And then you've also
got Italian involvement
on the eastern front
against the Soviet Union.
Setbacks are happening there as well.
And then to make matters
worse for Mussolini
the allies that invade Sicily.
So, you know, you've got the invasion
of Italy on its own doorstep if you like.
The Italian home front is in a bad way
'cause you've got the allies bombing.
And of course, you know, bombing
campaigns take their toll,
factories are being
brought to stand still.
You've got raw materials, a
stranglehold on them, coal oil,
you know, those are all
starting to run very short.
And on top of that, you've
also got a shortage of food.
And the food that is available is being
grossly overpriced.
And you've got this kind of black market
of incredibly expensive food.
And of course the result of this
is gonna be huge discontent.
So by March, 1943,
you've got strikes taking
place in the north,
which is the Italian industrial heartland.
Mussolini is in trouble make no doubt.
After the Italian surrender
in North Africa in '43,
the Germans begin to take precautions.
They look at Italy and
think it's gonna collapse.
You know, what Mussolini has
done is grossly exaggerated
the extent of his public support
for his regime and indeed
for the war itself.
As
the war years progressed,
Mussolini's popularity with
the Italian people declined.
And the reason for this was that Italy
was more and more
dependent on Nazi Germany.
You've got
this German presence in Italy
and that starts to turn public opinion
against Mussolini even more.
And you know, when the
allies invade Sicily,
the Sicilians look at the allies and go,
these people are liberators
they're not invading.
Between the
24th and 25th of July, 1943,
Mussolini was removed from government
through a vote of no confidence.
This is
the downfall of il Duce.
And by this time, you
know, discontent with him
is absolutely widespread and intense.
And when the news of his downfall
is announced on the radio,
there's no resistance to it.
People rejoice 'cause
they think that actually
what the end of Mussolini
also means is the end of war.
By
the last days of 1945,
Mussolini could see that the end was near.
- On the 28th of April, 1945,
Mussolini is shot dead by
partisans in the north of Italy.
It's a really ignominious end.
Mussolini was in no doubt
that the end was coming.
I mean, he was trying to flee
before the 28th of April 45.
You know, he was on the
run, he was desperate,
he was running for his life.
The day after Mussolini is killed
on the 29th of April, 1945,
his corpse and that of his mistress,
Clara Petacci, they're dragged
along and they're dumped
on the ground in front of
the old Piazzale Loreto.
And there
was some important symbolism
to the location because this
was where a few months earlier
the Nazis had carried
out some bloody reprisals
on Italian partisans.
And they're
kicked and they're spat upon
and then the bodies are
then hung upside down
from the roof of an SO petrol station.
And then the bodies are then stoned.
I mean, it's kind of endless abuse
of these corpses by civilians.
I think the reason for
this, it's symbolism
I mean, it's kind of done
as a very public display
of discouragement, it's
saying to other fascists,
Blackshirts you know,
you gotta end the fight
otherwise this is what's
gonna happen to you.
And of course it's also an act of revenge
'cause so many partisans were hacked
in that same place by
the Axis authorities.
One man who sees what
happens to Mussolini's corpse
and learns from it, is
of course Adolf Hitler.
And it's the abuse of Mussolini's corpse
that leads Hitler to make a decision
to actually kill himself a few days later.
force for the Italian people
and they had faith in him
and they had a belief in him.
- He's been a writer, he's been an editor.
So he knows the power of ideas,
he knows the power of the written word.
He knows the power of expression,
and he knows how to harness it.
- He talked about the
solidarity of the trenches,
and of course he developed
a very nationalist ideology
and that appealed to many
who had been dispossessed
or socially dislocated by the war.
- Italy had, in fact a
pretty angry population.
There was a lot of dissatisfaction
with the Treaty of the Versailles in 1919,
and there was a lot of widespread unrest.
- So Mussolini made his primary appeal
to those members of the population
who were most socially uprooted
or dislocated by the war.
- Mussolini absolutely
captivates his audience.
I mean, he brilliant with
his use of body language
and facial expressions.
You know, his speeches are
really something to watch.
- The fascist regime used
violence from the start
and Mussolini was determined
to prevent any opposition.
- But he was also quite aggressive
and he often clash with
teachers and his fellow pupils
'cause he had this very
sort of proud nature.
He was quite grumpy and he
was always pretty violent.
Benito Mussolini was an Italian
politician and a journalist,
but he was a bit more than that.
He was actually the dictator of Italy
and he led the National
Fascist Party from 1922.
- In terms of Mussolini's family life,
his mother Rosa was an ardent Catholic
and she made sure that her children
were baptized and went
to church every Sunday.
She was the local school teacher,
so she brought in the
regular income to the family.
- Mussolini's Father Alessandro,
he worked as a blacksmith
and the young Benito
actually helped him at the Forge.
And as a result, the two men became,
you know, really quite close.
And what Alessandro taught young Benito
was all about the revolutionary
leaders that he so admired.
And one of them was Karl Marx.
- So in terms of the influence
of his father on his life,
Benito certainly feared his father
because he hit him to discipline him.
At the same time, Mussolini
looked up to his father
for his ideals and for his beliefs.
Mussolini as a child, was quite willful.
Bullying, showed signs of
violence from quite a young age.
He actually had some
difficulties learning to speak,
so there was some concern about that,
although he did get over that
and developed to become
quite a bright child,
but also quite difficult
and quite badly behaved.
- The young Mussolini
showed signs of violence
from a very young age.
When he was just 10,
he was actually expelled from school,
not for some, you know, student prank,
but for actually stabbing another student.
- Benito was sent away to boarding school
at Faenza that was run by Salesian Monks.
And he regarded that being
sent away as a punishment
and kind of made him feel rejected.
So he did recall a lack of
warmth and affection at home.
And perhaps this had some bearing
on his future personality as it developed.
- You know, he was quite a shy boy,
but he was also quite aggressive
and he often clashed with
teachers and his fellow pupils
'cause he had this very
sort of proud nature.
He was quite grumpy and he
was always pretty violent.
- Between 1912 and 1914,
Mussolini worked as
editor of the newspaper
of the Italian Socialist Party, Avanti.
Here he developed and honed
his skills in journalism.
At the same time, his intransigence
and his difficult nature
also became clear.
He was determined to use his
time there to prepare the way
for revolution as part
of the socialist party.
- When the Great War breaks out
what we today call World War I,
Mussolini sees this as a
potential start to revolution.
And what he begins to do is
support Italian intervention
whilst the Socialist
party is actually opposing
Italy's involvement in the war.
And because of this, in 1914,
Mussolini is actually expelled
from the Socialist party
and also an organization called Avanti.
And what he does is to start
his own newspaper publication.
And that is called the People of Italy.
- So once he established
his own newspaper,
he as an experienced journalist,
had a very good sense for
gauging public opinion
and understanding what
the people were thinking.
And this helped to launch
him in his political career.
He actually got support
for his new newspaper
from Italian industrialists
who would have something to
benefit from Italy going to war.
And he also got support from the British
and French governments
because they wanted Italy
to join on their side,
which Italy did in 1915.
Mussolini was conscripted
in September, 1915.
He remained a soldier until June, 1917
when he was discharged from
the army due to injury.
He later used his wartime
experience to his benefit,
talking of his time in the trenches,
and very much being one
with the other soldiers.
He talked about the
solidarity of the trenches,
and of course he developed
a very nationalist ideology.
And that appealed to many
who had been dispossessed
or socially dislocated by the war.
Italy had a frankly,
a pretty angry population.
There was a lot of dissatisfaction
with the Treaty of Versailles in 1919,
and there was a lot of widespread unrest.
- As Italy had not been
given all the territories
that had been promised to her,
she felt a wound to her national pride,
and Mussolini was able
to capitalize on that.
So Mussolini made his primary appeal
to those members of the population
who were most socially uprooted
or dislocated by the war.
There were some two and a
half million ex-servicemen
to be reintegrated into
the peacetime economy.
And of course, the
economy was suffering too.
Italy was quite unstable
politically in this period
with five different governments
between 1919 and 1922.
So what Mussolini was saying was that
his new party, the Fascist party,
would sort of sweep
clean all the decadence
and the corruption associated
with the existing governments,
and that he would really bring
something new to the nation.
And in 1921,
the Italian King Victor Emmanuel III,
he actually dissolves the parliament
'cause there's all this kind
of violence and chaos raging.
- Mussolini's new party was
designed to offer a third way
between liberalism and Bolshevism.
So it was something completely new.
And there were certain
key aspects of ideology
associated with the Italian Fascist Party.
First of all, Mussolini was determined
to create a new fascist man
who would lead this new nation.
And absolutely central to
fascist ideology was the state.
So it was to be a very strong state,
and one which really was
a totalitarian state,
a totalitarian state with
complete submission to the state.
So the state would control everything,
not just politics and the economy,
but cultural life, social life,
and even intervening into everyday life
and private life of the population.
The Blackshirts were the paramilitary wing
of the Fascist Party.
By the end of 1920,
there were these Fascist
Blackshirt Squads,
the
And after 1923,
you have this all volunteer militia
of the kingdom of Italy
under Fascist Rule.
And that's quite similar to
the SA, the Nazi Brownshirt.
- They went around in groups
of between 200 and 250.
The fascist squads were
attacking and burning down
socialist and communist headquarters,
also left-wing printing presses
and agricultural cooperatives
and those kinds of organizations.
So what the fascists were doing therefore,
was standing up for the industrialists
and for the landowners against
Bolshevism or communism.
So there was a big fear of communist
or red revolution in
Italy during this time.
And the fascists really seemed
to be the defenders against that.
So the fascist party
then got a lot of support
from industrialists and from landowners
because they were the ones who
were seeming to defend Italy
against this communist threat
or this perceived communist threat.
Mussolini was a unifying
force for the Italian people,
and they had faith in him,
and they had a belief in him.
So through his sense of vision,
he sort of transmitted that to the nation.
There came to be this kind
of symbiotic relationship
between the leader and the lead.
Mussolini
actually captivates
his audience, I mean, he's brilliant
with his use of body language
and facial expressions, you know,
his speeches are really
something to watch.
- Through his public appearances
and through his speeches,
Mussolini soon became very popular.
Using his body language
as well as his words,
he created a cult of a
leadership around him
where the people very much
saw him as this visionary man.
And he unified the Italian people
in a way that they hadn't been
in the recent history before.
He was a unifying figure for the nation,
and he was very keen to show
his prowess and his vigor.
He was shown open water swimming
or engaged in some of the public works.
So this was all designed to
create an aura around him,
of this great leader.
By October, 1922,
the fascists were becoming
increasingly strong
and they believed that the time was right
to stage their coup or
their seizure of power.
What
happens in late October, 1922,
is that you have the fascist
party leaders planning
an insurrection, you know,
they want a revolutionist,
let's make no bones about that.
And they want that to take
place on the 28th of October.
This becomes known as the March on Rome.
- This March on Rome was
mythologized by the fascist
as a great unstoppable force,
but in fact, the reality
was somewhat different.
They talked about a
hundred thousand fascists
marching on Rome, but the truth
was there were only 20,000.
And actually they waited outside Rome
for orders that never came.
The fascists were able to come to power
not as a result of actually
using force at that moment,
but through the threat of using force.
You've
got the Prime Minister,
a man called Luigi Facta.
He's wishing to declare
a state of siege quite understandably,
but this is actually overruled
by the king Victor Emmanuel.
The
King Victor Emmanuel III
invited Mussolini to form a government
and accepted his demands.
So this very celebrated March
on Rome in fascist mythology
wasn't quite what it was made out to be.
Of
course, what this means,
that political power
has now been transferred
to the fascist without any armed conflict.
- The fascist regime used
violence from the start,
and Mussolini was determined
to prevent any opposition.
- Even quite soon after
gaining power in 1925,
what the fascist government does,
is to even make suspicion
of being anti-fascist
a punishable crime.
And you can be imprisoned
for that suspicion alone
without any trial at all.
And then in 1927, Mussolini forms
what's called the
organization for vigilance
and repression of anti-fascism,
actually, that's a secret police.
- So he established the OVRA,
which was the secret police,
and that was used to track down
and deal with any political opposition.
- Mussolini survives three
assassination attempts in 1926.
Violet Gibson tries to kill
him on April the seventh.
On October 31st, you have
a man called Anteo Zamboni
tried to kill him.
And then on September the 11th in 1926,
you have a man called
Gino Lucetti having a go.
Now, all these attempts on his life
what they do is they
lead to an introduction
of a new law called the
the law for the defense of the state.
Now that is enacted on the
25th of November, 1926.
And this is a crucial part
of Mussolini taking control.
Because what that law does is to dissolve
all political parties, organizations,
associations, you name it,
anything opposed to fascism it goes.
So the new law allows those being accused
of being enemies of the state
to be sentenced to prison
or worse still to death.
- The Acerbo law was a key moment
in Mussolini's consolidation of power.
- Now, the Acerbo law stated that
the party gaining the
largest share of the votes
provided they got at least 25% of them
would actually gain two thirds
of the seats in parliament.
I mean, it's insane.
And the purpose of it is to
give Mussolini's fascists
a majority of deputies,
it's quite obvious.
And that law was only used
in the 1924 general election
because of course that
was the last proper full
competitive election, if you
like, held in Italy until 1946.
New elections
were held in April 1924,
after this law had come in at
the end of the previous year.
And using both this
law as well as violence
and intimidation, Mussolini
very much cemented his power.
Giacomo Matteotti
was an Italian socialist politician,
and on the 30th of May, 1924,
he openly speaks in
the Italian parliament,
and he's saying that the
fascists have committed fraud
in the recently held elections.
And he's denouncing the violence
they've used to gain votes.
He called
the results into question
because of the violence
and the intimidation
and really held that the election results
shouldn't be valid.
- Guess what happens, 11 days later,
he's kidnapped and he's
killed by the fascists.
The murder of Giacomo Matteotti
it does cause a real stick.
And you've got newspapers
launching really fierce attacks
on Mussolini and the
entire fascist movement.
And you've got all the
anti-fascist parties.
They're go, hang on a minute,
we are just gonna abandon
the chamber of deputies.
What we want to do is we
wanna force the crowd,
king Victor Emmanuel III
to act against Mussolini.
Socialist
deputies and others,
seceded from the Italian parliament
in what was known as
the Aventine secession
as a protest to what had happened.
Mussolini
is nothing, if not cunning,
and what he does is to
devise this counter maneuver.
And on the 3rd of January,
1925, he gives, you know,
what is now a really famous
kind of notorious speech,
both attacking the anti-fascist
and confirming that he and only he,
Mussolini was the leader of fascism.
And what he does is he
challenges the anti-fascists
to prosecute him.
He says, go on, have a go.
And he admits that the
murderers were fascists
of very high station as he calls them.
You know, he's proud of these guys.
I mean, this is what Hitler did.
You know, after night of the long knives.
On
the 3rd of January, 1925,
Mussolini made quite a famous speech
and one which was really meant to cement
his position as leader.
So it was both attacking anti-fascists,
but also saying that as far
as fascism was concerned,
he was the only and the
indisputable leader.
- Mussolini basically sort of,
kind of rhetorically claims fault.
And what he states is this.
He says, I assume that I
alone Mussolini the political,
moral and historical
responsibility for everything
that has happened.
And if these sentences more or less maimed
are enough to hang a man,
well then frankly out with a noose.
So what Mussolini is concluding
here is with a warning,
what Italy needs is stability
and fascism is gonna
ensure that stability,
and it's gonna do so in
any manner necessary.
And this speech is
considered the very beginning
of the dictatorship in Italy.
- So this made his position very plain,
and his days of sort of
dealing with what was left over
of the liberal state came to an end.
And now he was very much determined
to have his one party state
and his totalitarian state.
- Mussolini was a really
gifted propagandist.
He was a journalist at heart
and he was really aware of
the relationship between
power and optics, the
way that power is viewed.
You know, he understands completely
the necessity of having
the press on his side
in his efforts to maintain power.
You know, he's been a
writer, he's been an editor.
So he knows the power of ideas,
he knows the power of the written word,
he knows the power of expression
and he knows how to harness it.
- The fascist government introduced
a number of different
policies and measures,
some of which gained
quite a lot of popularity
with the Italian people.
So the party introduced youth
groups, also women's groups,
and also an organization called the OND,
which was the after work organization.
So this had clubs where there
were billards tables and bars
and sort of social activities.
It also sponsored holidays,
trips to the seaside subsidized
cultural events and so on.
And this was one of the
most popular aspects
of fascist Italy because
it's introduced mass tourism
and mass leisure in a way
that hadn't been there before.
The other policy that created
quite a lot of popularity
for Mussolini's regime
was his Lateran treaty,
his accord with the Pope in 1929.
And what that does
is officially recognizes the Vatican
as a sovereign state,
and it also makes Catholicism
Italy's official religion.
Now that's a really popular decision.
It's a really smart move.
'cause of course Italy has
a predominantly Catholic population.
So this
brought about a reconciliation
between the Pope and the Italian state
for the first time
since the state had come
into being in 1870.
So this policy with
the church in obviously
a very predominantly Catholic country,
made this regime quite popular.
The regime's public
work schemes and efforts
to reclaim land from the sea
and to put into place irrigation
policies and such like
also was making sure
that people were at work,
and that also increase the
popularity of the fascist regime.
Mussolini actually starts
a large number of public works
which actually dramatically
reduce unemployment.
And what they're also designed to do
is to improve infrastructure.
And of course, famously to
make the trains run on time.
What's commonly observed is
that the Great Depression
takes place and that leads
to a rise in fascism.
But you know, you gotta
remember that fascism
was made popular by
Mussolini in Italy from 1922.
And that we really gained
more traction after 1929,
because people looked at it
and went, hang on a minute,
this is one of the only
forms of government
that is surviving this economic collapse.
People looking at fascism thinking maybe
that's the way forward, not democracy.
In the
early years in terms of
the international
reputation of the regime,
Mussolini was hailed as quite successful
for these public work schemes
and other policies that were sort of
keeping the economy going
and also the population reasonably happy.
Of course that was to change
later, but at this point,
I think people were saying that
whatever else you could say
about Mussolini, he made
the trains run on time.
- There were many public figures
all over the world saying
that Mussolini was this kind of genius.
He was a kinda superman, if you like.
And his achievements,
some saw has been nothing
less than miraculous.
What he had appeared to have done was to
taken this demoralized country
and to kind of transform it
and kind of reinvigorate it.
And he'd carried out
all these social reforms
and these public works
and the landowners and the industrious
they were still on side,
and he had even made a deal with the Pope.
So on the surface, everything
looked kind of peachy,
looked all right, but if
you scratched below it,
nothing was quite as rosy as it seemed.
You know, way back in 1911
when he was a young socialist,
what Mussolini did was to take part
in his really violent protest
against Italy's invasion Libya.
But then spool forward to 1925,
Mussolini is now advocating
his spazio vitale,
he is now a fully fledged expansionist.
Spazio vitale was the
territorial expansionist concept
of Italian fascism.
What Mussolini dreams of
more than anything else
is to build a new Roman empire.
- Spazio vitale was a fascist concept,
Mussolini's concept for living space.
So this was very similar
to Hitler's concept of
Lebensraum, living space.
And Mussolini wanted to
create a new Roman empire
and to expand Italian power.
So this was always about expansion.
Rather than being confined
or hemmed in by the Mediterranean,
Mussolini talked about making
the Mediterranean our sea,
the Italian sea.
So a space from which
the Italians could expand
and gain empire.
At the end of the 19th century,
Italy had made some
territorial acquisitions.
So particularly in Somali
land and in Eritrea.
The Italians had failed
to take Ethiopia in 1896.
And so this remained a bit of
a thorn in the side of Italy,
the fact that they didn't succeed
in taking that land at that time.
So Mussolini could use that
to project again this concept
of living space and this
idea of territorial expansion
by the Italians and so to
try again to take Ethiopia,
and that's what he did.
So he invaded Ethiopia in 1935.
- In October, 1935, Italian
troops invade Ethiopia.
And this is seen as an example
of this expansionist policy
that is kind of characterizing
what the Axis powers are gonna do.
- Italy invaded Ethiopia in October, 1935,
and Mussolini's justification for this
was the need for Italy
to have living space.
The Italian military forces
actually went against
international law as outlined
in the Geneva protocol of 1925.
Italian military forces
used something like 300
to 500 tons of mustard gas
to attack both kind of military targets
and even more horrifically
civilian targets.
Italy was a signatory to
the 1925 Geneva protocol
that banned gas, Mussolini
just didn't care.
And you know there are some estimates
that say around one third
of Ethiopian casualties
of Mussolini's invasion were
caused by gas chemical weapons.
- Ladies and gentlemen,
the second speaker on the list
is his majesty Emperor Haile Selassie,
the first dedicated Ethiopia.
- In response to all the
appeals from the Ethiopians,
the League of Nations actually condemns
the Italian invasion in 1935,
and it votes to impose
economic sanctions on Italy.
But these sanctions are really,
really, really ineffective
because there's just a
general lack of support.
Italy's
invasion of Ethiopia
was a blow to the principle
of collective security
represented by the League of Nations
and to international stability.
- And what it also exposes is
this dreadful ineffectiveness
of the League of Nations
before the outbreak
of the Second World War.
You know that organization
simply cannot stand up to the dictators.
Mussolini has looked at
the League of Nations
and kind of laughed them off.
I mean, just dismissed them,
you know, there were no repercussions.
And what this also does, crucially,
it shows Mussolini's fellow
dictator Adolf Hitler
that the League of Nations
has got basically no power.
In fact, what happens
is all these tariffs,
all these sanctions that
are imposed on Italy
by other nations because of the invasion,
actually it increases
Mussolini's popularity.
You know, in May, 1936,
you've got more than 30
million people celebrating
the victory on the streets of Italy.
You know, this is a huge sign
of Mussolini's increased power,
increased popularity and the war also saw
the creation of a new military rank.
And that was called Field
Marshall of the Italian Empire.
And of course, you know,
he awarded that to himself
and also to the king.
And so therefore he sort of,
kind of making himself as prime minister,
the same rank theoretically
as the king himself.
At home
the invasion of Ethiopia
and the successful war there
made Mussolini's regime even more popular
and made Mussolini
himself even more popular.
So in 1936, millions of
Italians took to the streets
to celebrate this victory.
This was a foreign policy success
that just contributed to the whole aura
that surrounded il Duce, the leader.
- It's fair to say that
Mussolini's invasion
doesn't really gain
him a lot of popularity
amongst other nations.
And in fact, you know,
it comes as no surprise to
learn that the only nation
that doesn't oppose Italy's
invasion is Nazi Germany.
Mussolini could be conceived
as something of a political chameleon
because he changed quite a lot over time.
So he started out his
political life as a socialist,
but he was also influenced by
syndicalism and by anarchism.
And then he founded his
Italian fascist party.
And then later on, even within that,
his policies changed as
the Italian fascist state
became closer to Hitler's Nazi regime.
And then we can see that his policies
became much more influenced by Hitler.
Now in the late 1920s,
Mussolini is providing
some financial support
to the Nazi party as
it continues its rise.
And what he had also done
is to allow Brownshirts,
the SA and even SSS men to train
with his own paramilitary brigade.
Those are the Blackshirts of course.
Mussolini views the rise of the Nazi party
as something that's
affirming his own ideology.
This is saying, yeah,
fascism's on the march.
It's not just Italy, it's Germany next.
And who knows where else.
In private, however, you know,
Mussolini's really quite
scornful of Hitler and his Nazis.
You know, the Italian leader describes
"Mein Kampf" as boring.
Actually he was right.
And he thought that
Hitler's ideas and theories
were kind of coarse and simplistic.
And indeed Mussolini is dead right here.
In his early years when he
was leading the Nazi party,
you know, Hitler was a
big admirer of Mussolini.
You know, the Nazi leader
was particularly fascinated
by Mussolini's March on Rome.
And this is a very kind of
influential moment for him.
He looked
upon the March on Rome
as something to be admired
and in fact staged his
own coup or tried to
in November, 1923 following
the example of Mussolini.
But let's not forget
Mussolini's prone to his own
personal kind of egomania,
and he's got a low opinion of Hitler's
kind of rise to power,
which he thinks is far
less glorious than his own.
Even though they're
both fascist dictators,
the first meeting that takes
place between Mussolini
and Hitler, which is
in Venice, in June '34,
was frankly a bit of a disaster.
So Mussolini
turned up with his knowledge
of German without therefore
bringing a translator
and assuming he'd be fine.
Mussolini
speaks a little bit of German
and he said too arrogant
to use a translator.
And he had a lot of
difficulty in understanding
Hitler's kind of somewhat rough
and coarse Austrian accent.
And then what Mussolini is subjected to
are these huge notorious
Hitler long, boring monologues,
and Mussolini was so bored.
He
was also listening to
all these ideologies
that Hitler was espousing
and not particularly impressed.
- There's a big difference
between Mussolini and Hitler
and that lies in their racial views.
You know, Mussolini, let's
face it like Hitler did think
that white Europeans were
the kind of architects
of culture and civilization.
But what Mussolini
doesn't share with Hitler
is this kind of hateful and
eliminationist antisemitism.
What Mussolini was an Italian nationalist,
first and foremost and what he's doing
is he's harking back to the glories
and triumphs of ancient Rome.
You know, so he's really pretty
scornful of Hitler's rants
about early supremacy it is not really
Mussolini's bag, if you like.
And in one speech, the Italian leader
is actually actually
expressing kind of pity
for the racial views being
kind of expressed by the Nazis.
He's looking at them and
going, these people are,
you know, in his words,
the descendants of those
who are illiterate, Roman,
Caesar and Virgil and Augustus,
he kind of thinks the Germans
are inferior in some way.
And so both men kind
of walk out of Venice,
this summit, you know, thinking,
yeah, I don't think much of that guy.
Mussolini then pays a
state visit to Germany
in September, 1937, and where
he's met with a really long,
vast parade of troops, and
there's military equipment,
paraded artillery, you name it.
And these shows of strength
that were really obvious,
you know, they were there to
kind of impress Mussolini.
And you know what? It worked.
They came
to see the commonalities
of their ideologies and
indeed of their policies
and what could be gained by
becoming closer together.
And in 1936, they formed
the Rome Berlin Axis.
So coming closer together,
and that was cemented
into the Pact of Steel,
which was a formal alliance in 1939.
By the late 1930s,
we can see something of a
shift in the relationship
between Mussolini and Hitler,
and we see Mussolini being
much more heavily influenced
by Hitler in a number of ways.
So this could be seen by the introduction
of a series of reforms to
the way behavior took place.
So for example, that the Italian forces
were obliged suddenly to
goosestep that civil servants
were obliged to wear military
uniform for the first time.
So those kinds of things
showing the closeness
of the Italian regime to Hitlers
and just a kind of change in manners,
a change in the way of
behavior in the Italian state
heavily influenced by Hitler.
And this came to the fore in 1938,
with the racial laws adopted
by Mussolini's Italy.
- They restrict the civil
rights of Italian Jews.
They ban books written by Jews
and they exclude Jews from public offices
and even higher education,
this is antisemitism.
And there're more and more laws
stripping Jews their assets,
restricting their travel
and finally it even puts
them into internal exile.
It kind of treats 'em
as political prisoners.
But what Mussolini is known to,
it's systematically murdering Italy's Jews
in the way that Hitler does
with his Jews if you will.
So in 16
years before of fascist power,
there had not been any racial laws.
And suddenly at this point,
because he was showing his closeness
and proximity to Hitler,
and because he was heavily
influenced by Hitler,
Mussolini introduced a
series of racial laws
that were not too dissimilar
to the Nuremberg Laws in Nazi Germany.
Good evening everybody.
Tonight it seems clearly apparent
that the first great phase
of the war in the West
has been won by Germany.
The army of French and British
has made a valiant battle
in its effort to retreat to Gangoh,
where there is some slight chance
that some part of it can be evacuated.
It's all
Hitler's mechanized forces
are racing toward Paris as
French resistance collapses.
- This was a war that Hitler wanted.
He was an out and out aggressor.
And of course the first months of the war
were very successful for Germany
with the Blitz Creek
lightning strike on Poland,
and then very quick successes in the West.
Mussolini
is watching the progress
of Hitler with actually
quite a lot of jealousy.
He's a bit bitter to be honest,
you know, and as he sees
each a fresh German victory,
he gets more and more livid.
And he's starting to express the hope
that maybe the Germans will be slowed down
or they'll have a defeat
or some form of reverse
and that will make him
feel a little bit better.
You know we don't like it
when our friends are too successful
and this is what's going on here.
But Germany, of course,
just the advances Westwood, you know,
and not only takes all the low countries,
but even takes France.
And when France is on
the verge of collapse
Mussolini felt he can't delay any longer.
So then on June the 10th, 1940,
there's this fateful declaration of war.
It's apparent by 1943 that
that Italy's military position
is simply untenable.
You know, you've got the
axis forces in North Africa
being finally defeated
in the Tunisian campaign,
and that's in early '43.
And then you've also
got Italian involvement
on the eastern front
against the Soviet Union.
Setbacks are happening there as well.
And then to make matters
worse for Mussolini
the allies that invade Sicily.
So, you know, you've got the invasion
of Italy on its own doorstep if you like.
The Italian home front is in a bad way
'cause you've got the allies bombing.
And of course, you know, bombing
campaigns take their toll,
factories are being
brought to stand still.
You've got raw materials, a
stranglehold on them, coal oil,
you know, those are all
starting to run very short.
And on top of that, you've
also got a shortage of food.
And the food that is available is being
grossly overpriced.
And you've got this kind of black market
of incredibly expensive food.
And of course the result of this
is gonna be huge discontent.
So by March, 1943,
you've got strikes taking
place in the north,
which is the Italian industrial heartland.
Mussolini is in trouble make no doubt.
After the Italian surrender
in North Africa in '43,
the Germans begin to take precautions.
They look at Italy and
think it's gonna collapse.
You know, what Mussolini has
done is grossly exaggerated
the extent of his public support
for his regime and indeed
for the war itself.
As
the war years progressed,
Mussolini's popularity with
the Italian people declined.
And the reason for this was that Italy
was more and more
dependent on Nazi Germany.
You've got
this German presence in Italy
and that starts to turn public opinion
against Mussolini even more.
And you know, when the
allies invade Sicily,
the Sicilians look at the allies and go,
these people are liberators
they're not invading.
Between the
24th and 25th of July, 1943,
Mussolini was removed from government
through a vote of no confidence.
This is
the downfall of il Duce.
And by this time, you
know, discontent with him
is absolutely widespread and intense.
And when the news of his downfall
is announced on the radio,
there's no resistance to it.
People rejoice 'cause
they think that actually
what the end of Mussolini
also means is the end of war.
By
the last days of 1945,
Mussolini could see that the end was near.
- On the 28th of April, 1945,
Mussolini is shot dead by
partisans in the north of Italy.
It's a really ignominious end.
Mussolini was in no doubt
that the end was coming.
I mean, he was trying to flee
before the 28th of April 45.
You know, he was on the
run, he was desperate,
he was running for his life.
The day after Mussolini is killed
on the 29th of April, 1945,
his corpse and that of his mistress,
Clara Petacci, they're dragged
along and they're dumped
on the ground in front of
the old Piazzale Loreto.
And there
was some important symbolism
to the location because this
was where a few months earlier
the Nazis had carried
out some bloody reprisals
on Italian partisans.
And they're
kicked and they're spat upon
and then the bodies are
then hung upside down
from the roof of an SO petrol station.
And then the bodies are then stoned.
I mean, it's kind of endless abuse
of these corpses by civilians.
I think the reason for
this, it's symbolism
I mean, it's kind of done
as a very public display
of discouragement, it's
saying to other fascists,
Blackshirts you know,
you gotta end the fight
otherwise this is what's
gonna happen to you.
And of course it's also an act of revenge
'cause so many partisans were hacked
in that same place by
the Axis authorities.
One man who sees what
happens to Mussolini's corpse
and learns from it, is
of course Adolf Hitler.
And it's the abuse of Mussolini's corpse
that leads Hitler to make a decision
to actually kill himself a few days later.