Benito Mussolini

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was born on 29 July 1883 in Dovia di Predappio, a town in the province of Forlì in Romagna. Mussolini's father, Alessandro Mussolini, was a blacksmith and socialist, while his mother, Rosa (née Maltoni), was a devout Catholic schoolteacher. Reflecting his father's political leanings, Mussolini was named Benito after liberal Mexican president Benito Juárez, while his middle names, were for Italian socialists Amilcare Cipriani and Andrea Costa. In return, his mother required that he be baptised at birth. Benito was followed by his siblings Arnaldo and Edvige. Mussolini's family was of relatively humble status, and fascist biographers emphasized that he had "come from the people". Nevertheless, the family did not belong to the lowest social stratum. Benito's father, despite having his own business, lived on the margins of the community because of his politics, while Rosa, who taught elementary school children at Palazzo Varano, earned a salary insufficient to compensate for her husband's lack of income.

Mussolini attended the first two years of elementary school in Dovia and then in Predappio (1889–1891). At his mother's request, he entered the Salesian college in Faenza (1892–October 1894), but was transferred after disciplinary problems, including a fight in which he injured a classmate with a knife, resulting in his demotion from the fourth to the second class. In Faenza, Benito experienced an unhappy period marked by corporal punishment from the Salesian friars and frustration over his family's modest social and economic condition.

With his mother's assistance, Mussolini continued his studies at the secular Royal Carducci Male Teacher Training School in Forlimpopoli, directed by Valfredo Carducci, brother of Giosuè Carducci. He earned his lower technical qualification in 1898. Although his academic performance was good, he remained resistant to discipline. He was expelled from the boarding school twice: once after a fight in which he used a penknife, and another time for staying out all night. During his years in Forlimpopoli, and under the influence of his father, Mussolini became involved with militant socialism, speaking at evening rallies in nearby towns. In 1900 he joined the Italian Socialist Party, where he became acquainted with Olindo Vernocchi. …

Mussolini returned to politics following his return from service in the Allied forces of World War I. In early 1918 he called for the emergence of a man "ruthless and energetic enough to make a clean sweep" to revive the Italian nation. In December 1918, he published the article "Trincerocrazia" in his newspaper, Il Popolo d'Italia, in which he claimed for the veterans of the trenches the right to govern post-war Italy and envisioned the fighters of World War I as the aristocracy of tomorrow and the central nucleus of a new ruling class. On 23 March 1919, Mussolini founded the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Squad) during a meeting in the San Sepolcro Square in Milan, initially consisting of 200 members. With this, he managed to consolidate control over this small emerging fascist movement, known as Sansepolcrismo.

Most Fascisti were young men from Milan or northern Italy, from the urban lower middle class, along with socialists who had broken with their party, anarchists, revolutionary syndicalists, and disgruntled demobilized war veterans especially from the Arditi. Mussolini outlined the new movement's program in the Fascist Manifesto, including a decentralized republic, universal suffrage (including women's suffrage), abolition of the Senate and nobility, compulsory military service, capital tax, confiscation of Church property, the eight-hour day, and nationalization of war industries, alongside attacks on socialism. After the meeting, fascist groups formed in about a hundred towns, mostly in northern Italy, but many were short-lived due to limited support from both workers and the bourgeoisie. By the Florence Congress in October, there were only 56 fasces, with around 17,000 members.

Mussolini had to contend with Gabriele D'Annunzio, who had become a national hero after the Fiume expedition and who was competing with him among the former Arditi and demobilized soldiers. Il Popolo d'Italia organized a major national fundraising campaign that brought in 3 million lire in a few weeks, and Mussolini met with D'Annunzio in Fiume, but only to persuade him not to launch an insurrection whose outcome seemed uncertain, and to wait for the November elections. …

On 3 January, Mussolini and Federzoni instructed the prefects to henceforth suppress political assemblies and demonstrations and to take active action against all organizations "undermining the power of the state". From that day forward, opposition deputies were denied return to the Chamber, which until then had at least been theoretically possible. Press censorship was enforced even more strictly than before following a relevant decree of 10 January 1925; while the press organs of the political left were gradually driven underground, the major liberal newspapers dismissed their few remaining opposition editors during 1925, before a repressive press law came into effect in December 1925. By the end of the year, local autonomy was abolished, and podestàs appointed by the Italian Senate replaced elected mayors and councils.

In 1925, Mussolini began to accept the term "totalitarian", first used by anti-fascist intellectuals in 1923, as an attribute of the regime. In a speech on the third anniversary of the March on Rome, he defined fascism as a system in which "everything [that happens] is done for the state, nothing is outside the state, nothing and no one is against the state". He based this formula on a speech by the Minister of Justice, Alfredo Rocco. The key ideologues of Italian fascism, whose suggestions Mussolini generally followed, were almost exclusively former nationalists such as Rocco and Giovanni Gentile, who were able to maintain their influence in 1925/26 "above all other tendencies within fascism". The "revolutionary" wing of fascism, which was working toward a genuine party dictatorship, was finally ousted by Mussolini in 1926 (the removal of Roberto Farinacci on 30 March 1926) and was only able to maintain a few journalistic positions.

On 7 April 1926, Mussolini survived a first assassination attempt by Violet Gibson. On 31 October 1926, 15-year-old Anteo Zamboni attempted to shoot Mussolini in Bologna. Zamboni was lynched on the spot. Mussolini also survived a failed assassination attempt in Rome by anarchist Gino Lucetti, and a planned attempt by the Italian anarchist Michele Schirru, which ended with Schirru's capture and execution.

All other parties were outlawed following Zamboni's assassination attempt in 1926, though in practice Italy had been a one-party state since 1925. …

Mussolini was held back from full alignment with Berlin by Italy's economic and military unpreparedness and his desire to use the 1938 Easter Accords to split Britain from France. A military alliance with Germany, rather than the looser political alliance under the Anti-Comintern Pact, would end any chance of Britain implementing the Accords. The Accords were intended by Mussolini to allow Italy to take on France alone, with the hope that improved Anglo-Italian relations would keep Britain neutral in a Franco-Italian war (Mussolini had designs on Tunisia, with some support there). Britain hoped the Accords would win Italy away from Germany.

Count Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini's son-in-law and foreign minister, summed up the dictator's objectives in his diary in November 1938: Djibouti would be ruled jointly with France; Tunisia with a similar regime; and Corsica under Italian control. Mussolini showed no interest in Savoy, considering it neither "historically nor geographically Italian". On 30 November 1938, Mussolini provoked the French by orchestrating demonstrations where deputies demanded France turn over Tunisia, Savoy, and Corsica to Italy. This heightened tensions, with France and Italy on the verge of war through the winter of 1938–39.

In January 1939, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain visited Rome. Mussolini learned that Britain would not sever ties with France, so he grew more interested in the German offer of military alliance, first made in May 1938. In February 1939, Mussolini declared that a state's power is "proportional to its maritime position", asserting that Italy was a "prisoner in the Mediterranean", surrounded by British-controlled territories.

The new pro-German course was controversial. On 21 March 1939, during a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council, Italo Balbo accused Mussolini of "licking Hitler's boots" and criticized the pro-German policy as leading Italy to disaster. Despite opposition, Mussolini's control of foreign policy ensured dissenting voices had little impact. In April 1939, Mussolini ordered the invasion of Albania; Italy had already enjoyed an unofficial protectorate over the country, and the invasion was prompted by Mussolini's desire to demonstrate his strength to his German ally. …

Mussolini's first wife was Ida Dalser, whom he married in Trento in 1914. The couple had a son the following year and named him Benito Albino Mussolini. In December 1915, Mussolini married Rachele Guidi, who had been his mistress since 1910. Due to his upcoming political ascendency, the information about his first marriage was suppressed, and both his first wife and son were later persecuted. With Rachele, Mussolini had two daughters, Edda and Anna Maria; and three sons: Vittorio, Bruno and Romano. Mussolini had several mistresses, among them Margherita Sarfatti and his final companion, Clara Petacci. Mussolini also had many brief sexual encounters with female supporters, as reported by his biographer Nicholas Farrell.

Imprisonment may have been the cause of Mussolini's claustrophobia. He refused to enter the Blue Grotto and preferred large rooms like his 18 by 12 by 12 m (60 by 40 by 40 feet) office at the Palazzo Venezia.

Mussolini spoke the dialect of his native region and used it in familiar conversation with his brother Arnaldo. In addition to Italian, Mussolini spoke English, French, and sufficient German to dispense with an interpreter. This was notable at the Munich Conference, as no other national leader spoke anything other than his native language; Mussolini was described as effectively being the "chief interpreter".