Benito Mussolini (July 29, 1883 - April 28, 1945) was the dictator of Fascist Italy during World War II. Mussolini started a war with Ethiopia and invaded North Africa to expand the Italian Empire and allied himself with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan during the war.
Mussolini gained a reputation for bullying and fighting during his childhood. At age 11 he was expelled from a religious boarding school for stabbing a classmate in the hand, and another stabbing incident took place at his next school. He founded the Facist party in 1919, galvanishing the suport of unemployed war vetrans he organised them into squadrons known as the blackshirts who antagonised his enemies, he was invited to join the coilition government in 1921, in 1922 as the goverments grip on the populace slipped and chaos loomed, he and his blackshirts marched on Rome, presenting himself as the one man to save Italy. On the match his squads burned down the headquaters and homes of every member of both socialist and communist organisations.
After that he gradually overthrew the democratic system and turned Italy into a one party Facist dictatorship with himself as its leader. He was racist against Slavs and the Africans, however he also publically said "Race is a feeling, not a reality. Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist today." When he became the leader of Italy he said that a small group of Jews have been in Italy since the days of the Roman Empire and "should remain undisturbed." Never the less he introduced the "Manefesto of Race" which stripped the Jews of there Itlian citizenship (despite multiple members of his own facist party being Jewish) and prevented them from working in 1938, mostly due to heavy infulence from Hitler and used his private militia (or Blackshirts) to police his country and enforce this ruling in areas that openly resisted, despite this the overall the enforcement of the Manefesto was relatively lax.
He was also critized by other european countries during his brutal conquest of Ethiopia in which he used mustard gas, bombed red cross hospitals, exercuted prisoners without trial, left children to starve to death in concentration camps and commited the Granzini massacre, which resulted in the deaths and imprisonment of thousands of Ethiopians. The only country that supported him during his conquest was Nazi Germany.
All schools and universities had to swear an oath to the Facist party, an the media was underwent a great amount of censorship. Newspaper editors were personally chosen by Mussolini himself, it was made illegal to practice Journalism without a certificate of approval from the Facist party. Labour unions were deprived of there independance and placed in a intergrated system, with the aim of being under the governments control.
Mussolini also inherited his fathers views against organised religon and publically attacked Christianity, arguing (ironically) it didn't allow enough free thought, however he later turned on these views and tried to gain the Churches support, purely to try and increase his popularity, as we was well aware of the church's influence, he even had his two children baptised as sign of faith.
Mussolini also provided Millitary support for Franco, during the Spanish Civil war, and act that sevearly damaged his reputation with Enland and France. When invading he had no quarms with kidnapping women and children and using them as hostages, as he did in Yugoslavia, along with other draconian measures such as summery exercutions and setting villiages alight. Around 300,000 were killed in wars while under his rule.
Realising he was the weaker partner in his alliance with Hitler, Mussolini sought greater military conquest, with his goal of making the entire Medertraina Italy's, as it had been in the Roman times. However although he successfully invaded Albania, causing the King to flee, his other invasions proved to be faliures. He attempted to attack the British forces in Egypt, however this soon failed and he was forced to ask Hitler for reinforcements. To try and recover from this embarrassment, he invaded Greece, but only six weeks later this also failed, and once again he was forced to ask Hitler for reinforcements. These failures were deeply embarrassing for Mussolini's image.
In 1943, following the Allied invasion, his party turned on him, however Mussolini ignored the council when they voted him out of power, and continued to until he was summoned before King Victore Emmanual III and publically arrested. In September Italy was practically occupied by the Germans, who rescued Mussolini and kept him as a figure head.
Never the less Mussolini did do some good things. He fought the Mafia to the point where in the 30's the mafia in Italy was almost completely crushed with their members either executed, imprisoned, in hiding or having immigrated to America. When he invaded and conquered Ethiopia he put an end to slavery. In the mid 1930's slavery was still being practiced in Ethiopia against the rules set out by the League of Nations and International Law. When Hitler began the extermination of the Jews Mussolini turned Italian occupied Europe into a safe haven for Jews, although anti-Jewish laws were in place, he refused to deport them to concentration camps. It got to the point where leading Nazis complained about his leniency with the Jews. After Italy surrendered in late 1943 he expressed regret for his actions and the mistakes that he had made in his life.
He and his mistress Clara Petacci was captured and executed by firing squad on April 25, 1945 following a failed attempt to escape.