The body of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini after being killed by Italian partisans in Milan's main city square was lynched by passers-by. An angry mass of people tortured Mussolini's dead body, spat on him, stoned him and completely mutilated him. It was a response to the brutality that Mussolini led through life and that he applied during his reign. Mussolini was born on July 29, 1883, in the northern Italian city of Predappio. He was intelligent and curious from an early age. In fact, he first started training to be a teacher, but realized that that career was not for him. He continued to read passionately the works of great European philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, Georges Sorel, Benedict de Spinoza, Peter Kropotkin, Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx.
Even as a young man, he worked as a journalist in the socialist media, spreading his extreme political views through them. He advocated violence as a model for achieving change, especially when it came to union action and worker protection. He was arrested several times and ended up in prison for inciting violence and for supporting violent strikes by workers in Switzerland. His views were so extreme that the Socialist Party expelled him from membership and expelled him from the newspapers. However, at the end of 1914, just at the beginning of the First World War, he founded his own newspaper. He called them "People of Italy." In them, he published articles advocating nationalism, militarism and violent extremism that would direct his life. He said, "As of today, we are all Italians and nothing but Italians." In 1921, with like-minded people, he founded the National Fascist Party. Over time, he had more and more supporters. Members of his paramilitary were all dressed in black, and he called himself "Il Duce". He very quickly became known for his fiery speeches which were prompted by his increasingly violent political views. As his black-shirted men spread through northern Italy, killing dissidents and setting fire to the buildings inhabited by the then government, Mussolini called on the workers to go on a general strike and march on Rome.
Shortly after 30,000 fascist soldiers marched into the Italian capital and sparked a revolution, the fascists took power. On October 29, 1922, King Victor Emmanuel III entrusted Mussolini with his mandate and he became prime minister. He was the youngest prime minister in Italian history. He then gained an even larger audience for his speeches and spreading his worldview. In those years, Mussolini completely changed the image of Italy. By the mid-’30s, he had begun to test his power beyond the borders of Italy. In late 1935, his military forces invaded Ethiopia. The Italians emerged victorious from the short war, and Ethiopia was declared an Italian colony. Some historians claim that this event marked the beginning of World War II.
When the war began, Mussolini took the world stage like never before. Five years after the invasion of Ethiopia, he watched Hitler invade France. He thought that Italy should have done it, but he knew that the German army was bigger, better equipped and had better officers. In the end, he decided to side with Hitler and declared war on all German enemies. He was obviously wrong. He declared war on the whole world, and had only Germany on his side. In time, he realized how weak the Italian army was. It took him much more than passionate speeches and violent rhetoric. He needed a strong army to defend his dictatorship, but it did not exist. In order to satisfy Hitler and show the power of Italy, he attacked Greece and Albania. The Italians, who lived in growing poverty, did not like these attacks at all. Due to growing pressure, the King and the Grand Council overthrew Mussolini in July 1943. The Allies recaptured North Africa from Italy, and also occupied Sicily in preparation for an attack on the rest of Italy. Duce's days were numbered. Forces loyal to the king arrested and imprisoned Mussolini. He was kept locked in a hotel in the Abruzzo Mountains. German military forces first decided not to go to his rescue, but soon changed their position. German commandos descended to the mountain behind the hotel, freed Mussolini and flew him to Munich where he met Hitler. The Führer convinced Duce that he must establish a fascist state in northern Italy where it all began, with Milan as its headquarters. In this way, Mussolini will have power, while Hitler will remain his ally. Mussolini triumphantly returned to Italy and continued the war against his opponents. Members of his fascist party tortured all who had different views, deported all those who did not have an Italian name, and held the north of the country with an iron fist. Along with the black-shirted men, German soldiers also maintained peace.
The terror culminated on August 13, 1944. On that day, the fascists lined up 15 partisans in Milan's Piazzale Loreto and shot them all. This place was later called the Square of the Fifteen Martyrs. Eight months later, the people of Milan were given the opportunity to take revenge on Mussolini in an equally inappropriate way. In the spring of 1945, the war in Europe ended and Italy was conquered. As Allied military forces advanced, southern Italy was increasingly in ruins. The country was on its knees, and many held Duce responsible for such a situation. But his arrest was no longer an option. Although Hitler was surrounded by Allied troops in Berlin, Italy no longer wanted to take risks. On April 25, 1945, Mussolini agreed to meet with the partisans. On that occasion, he learned that Germany had begun negotiations for his capitulation, which greatly upset him. With his longtime mistress Clara Petacci, he fled north. He joined a German convoy moving towards the Swiss border. He believed he would manage to escape, but he was wrong. Although he was disguised in a German military uniform, the partisans recognized him and he was only a few kilometers away from freedom. His bald head, pronounced jaw, and piercing brown eyes immediately betrayed him. Mussolini has been creating a cult of personality for years and everyone knew what he looked like. The whole country was glued to his face, and now it was all revenge. Fearing that the Nazis would save him again, Italian partisans placed Mussolini and his mistress in a secluded house. The next morning they were ordered to stand against the wall at the entrance to Villa Belmonte, near Italian Lake Como, and shot. It was April 28, 1945. Duce allegedly shouted as he died, "No! No!" Had he walked a few more miles Mussolini would have been free. This is how his violent life ended in a violent death. But the contempt for him was so strong that the partisans brought his dead body, along with 17 other bodies, including the bodies of his mistress and her brother, to Milan's central square. In the same square where Mussolini's men brutally shot 15 anti-fascists a year earlier.
This event was never forgotten by the people of Milan, so in 20 years, frustration and anger lived on the corpses of the former dictator and his closest associates. According to Mussolini, they first started throwing rotten vegetables. Then they started beating and hitting him. One woman thought Duce wasn't dead enough so she fired five shots at his head from close range; one bullet for each son she lost in Mussolini's failed war. It made the masses even angrier. One man received his dead body under his armpit and lifted it so the audience could see it. But even that was not enough for them. People brought ropes and hung all the corpses upside down for meat hooks. The crowd shouted, "Lift them higher, higher! We don't see them! Hang them on hooks like pigs!" Truly their carcasses looked like meat hanging in slaughterhouses. Mussolini's mouth was still open. Even in death, his mouth would not close. Clara's eyes were still open and staring into the distance. News of Mussolini's death spread quickly. When he heard the news on the radio, Hitler promised himself that no one would desecrate his body. In his will written on a piece of paper, Hitler wrote: "I do not want to fall into the hands of enemies who want a new spectacle to be organized by the Jews to entertain the hysterical masses." On May 1, just days after Mussolini's death, Hitler killed himself and his mistress. His close associates burned his body before the arrival of Russian forces. As for Mussolini’s death, that story was not over yet. In the afternoon, the desecrated corpses of Mussolini and his mistress were taken by American soldiers and a Catholic cardinal to a local morgue, and an official U.S. military photographer photographed the disgusting remains of their bodies. The couple was eventually buried in an unmarked grave in Milan's cemetery. But the location where they were buried did not remain a secret for long. On Easter 1946, the fascists exhumed Mussolini's body. They left a message saying that the fascist party would no longer tolerate "cannibalistic desecrations organized by the human party from the Communist Party."
Four months later the bodies were buried in a monastery near Milan. They remained there for a full eleven years, until Italian Prime Minister Adona Zola handed Mussolini's bones to his widow, who buried him in 1957 in the family tomb in the small town of Predappi. But the story did not end there. In 1966, the U.S. military handed over a piece of Mussolini's brain to his family. The army took a piece of Mussolini's brain to test him for syphilis. But the test was not reliable so the sample was returned to the family.
