Benito (Amilcare Andrea) Mussolini Biography (1883–1945) (known as il Duce (‘the Leader’)) Dictator and prime minister of Italy (1922–43), born in Predappio, Romagna. From a poor family, he was expelled from two schools for knife-assaults on other students, and soon became one of Italy's most intelligent and menacing young Socialists. He broke with the Italian Socialist Party after advocating Italian intervention in World War 1. In 1919 he helped found the Fasci di Combattimento as a would-be revolutionary force, and in 1922 became prime minister, his success symbolized by the March on Oct 1922). By 1925 he had established himself as dictator. His rule saw the replacement of parliamentarism by a ‘Corporate State’ and an officially totalitarian system; the establishment of the Vatican state (1929); the annexation of Abyssinia (1935–6) and Albania (1939); and the formation of the Axis with Germany. His declaration of war on Britain and exposed Italy's military unpreparedness, and was followed by a series of defeats in N and E Africa and in the Balkans. Following the Allied invasion of Sicily (Jun 1943), and with his supporters deserting him, he was overthrown and arrested (Jul 1943). Rescued from imprisonment by German paratroopers, he was placed in charge of the puppet Italian Social Republic, but in 1945 he was captured by the Italian Resistance, shot and then hanged, his body being exposed to insult in Como and in Milan, the old headquarters of Fascism.
