Later on, Fascist Italy could also be considered as a " constitutional monarchy " of a kind, in the sense that there was a king as the titular head of state while actual power was held by Benito Mussolini under a constitution.

Clara Petacci ( born Claretta Petacci ; 28 February 1912 – 28 April 1945 ) was the mistress of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who was twenty-eight years her senior.

On 27 April 1945, when a convoy of escaping Italian Social Republic members, including Mussolini, was captured by Communist partisans, it is said that Petacci was offered the opportunity to go unmolested.

* Clara Petacci's brother, Marcello Petacci, was captured with Mussolini and Petacci.

The most notable member of this group was Julius Evola, who went on to become a preeminent occult scholar of the 20th century, as well as a right-wing philosopher and aide to Mussolini.

Mussolini was interested in Austria forming a buffer zone against Nazi Germany.

Mussolini had no hesitation in attributing the attack to the German dictator: the news reached him at Cesena, where he was examining the plans for a psychiatric hospital.

This was the greatest moment of friction between Fascism and National Socialism and Mussolini himself came down several times to reaffirm the differences in the field.

The decision to move to America and become American citizens was primarily a result of the Manifesto of Race promulgated by the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini in order to bring Italian Fascism ideologically closer to German Nazism.

" However Mussolini clarified that fascism's position on the political spectrum was not a serious issue to fascists and stated that:

" Mussolini claimed that Italian Fascism's economic system of corporatism could be identified as state capitalism which he claimed was state socialism " turned on its head ", which in either case involved " the bureaucratisation of the economic activities of the nation.

On 3 January 1925, Mussolini addressed the Fascist-dominated Italian parliament and declared that he was personally responsible for what happened, but he insisted that he had done nothing wrong.

From 1925 to 1929, Fascism steadily became entrenched in power: opposition deputies were denied access to parliament, censorship was introduced, and a December 1925 decree made Mussolini solely responsible to the King.

One early admirer of the Italian Fascists was Adolf Hitler, who, less than a month after the March, had begun to model himself and the Nazi Party upon Mussolini and the Fascists.

By 1943, after Italy faced multiple military failures, complete reliance and subordination of Italy to Germany, and Allied invasion of Italy, and corresponding international humiliation, Mussolini was removed as head of government and arrested by the order of King Victor Emmanuel III who proceeded to dismantle the Fascist state and declared Italy's switching of allegiance to the Allied side.

Mussolini was rescued from arrest by German forces and led the German client state, the Italian Social Republic from 1943 to 1945.

On 28 April 1945, Mussolini was captured and executed by Italian communist partisans.

In 1934, Mussolini declared that employment of women was a " major aspect of the thorny problem of unemployment " and that for women, working was " incompatible with childbearing ".

Mussolini went on to say that the solution to unemployment for men was the " exodus of women from the work force ".

On the other hand, other historians of the time, including Justin Pollard and Denis Mack Smith, thought Mussolini was probably aware of the assassination plot but that it was ordered and organized by someone else.

Cornwell is unsure whether the Vatican was aware of the exact atrocities committed by the Ustaše by this point, but he noted " it was known from the very beginning that Pavelic was a totalitarian dictator, a puppet of Hitler and Mussolini, that he had passed a series of viciously racist and anti-Semitic laws, and that he was bent on enforced conversions from Orthodox to Catholic Christianity ".

* 1945 – The Nazi occupation army surrenders and leaves Northern Italy after a general partisan insurrection by the Italian resistance movement ; the puppet fascist regime dissolves and Benito Mussolini tries to escape.

Once Mussolini had fallen in Italy, the Allies switched their attention to the mainland with Operation Avalanche.

He is interred in the Hietzing cemetery in Vienna beside his wife Alwine Dollfuss ( d. 1973 ) and two of his children, Hannerl and Eva, all of whom were in Italy as guests of Rachele Mussolini at the time of his death, an event which saw Mussolini himself shed some tears over his slain ally.

In 1917, Mussolini as leader of the Fasci of Revolutionary Action praised the October Revolution that brought Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik movement to power in Russia, as Mussolini himself desired a revolution in Italy to bring the Fascists to power.

Lenin regretted that Mussolini had abandoned Marxism and had become an anti-communist, as Lenin believed that Mussolini had once been the best public figure of Marxism in Italy, and blamed the Italian Socialist Party for having " lost " Mussolini.

Mussolini and the Fascists took advantage of the situation by allying with industrial businesses and attacking workers and peasants in the name of preserving order and internal peace in Italy.

Victor Emmanuel III decided to appoint Mussolini as Prime Minister of Italy, and Mussolini arrived in Rome on 30 October to accept the appointment.

Upon being appointed Prime Minister of Italy, Mussolini had to form a coalition government, because the Fascists did not have control over the Italian parliament.

In 1940, Mussolini led Italy into World War II on the side of the Axis.

Mussolini believed that following a brief entry of Italy into war with France, followed by the imminent French surrender, Italy could gain some territorial concessions from France and then concentrate its forces on a major offensive in Egypt where British and Commonwealth forces were outnumbered by Italian forces.

The repression of memory led to historical revisionism in Italy and in 2003 the Italian media published Silvio Berlusconi's statement that the Benito Mussolini only " used to send people on vacation ", denying the existence of Italian concentration camps, such as Rab concentration camp.

Fascist leaders who ruled countries were not always heads of state, but were heads of government, such as Benito Mussolini, who held power under the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III.

Thus Mussolini claimed that Italy under Fascist rule was not capitalist in the contemporary use of the term, which referred to supercapitalism.

By the late 1930s and the 1940s, Italian Fascism completely denounced capitalism as an obsolete and oppressive system, Mussolini in 1940 at the entry of Italy into World War II, said:

In 1933, Benito Mussolini declared Italian Fascism's opposition to the " decadent capitalism " that he claimed prevailed in the world at the time, but he did not denounce capitalism entirely.

Mussolini argued that Italian Fascism acknowledged the positive achievements of dynamic and heroic capitalism for its contribution to industrialism and its technical developments, but that it did not favour supercapitalism, which he claimed was incompatible with Italy's agricultural sector.

Some countries, however, historically did have equivalent honorifics for knights, such as Cavaliere in Italy ( e. g. Cavaliere Benito Mussolini ), and Ritter in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire ( e. g. Georg Ritter von Trapp ).

In its early years the party was stronger in Northern Italy, and especially in eastern Lombardy and Veneto, due to the strong Catholic roots of that areas, than in the South, where the Liberal establishment that had governed Italy for decades before the rise of Benito Mussolini had still a grip on voters, as also the Monarchists and the Front of the Ordinary Man did.

In spite of being extremely busy, Mussolini did me the great honour of conversing with me for three-quarters of an hour.

Only subsequently did Mussolini establish outright leadership of the movement.

Due to the role the Carabinieri had played in the downfall of Mussolini, and since one of the few units which fought the German occupation of Rome were the Granatieri di Sardegna regiments and the II Carabinieri cadet battalion, the Germans did not view the Carabinieri as loyal to the fascist cause and ordered the disbanding of all Carabinieri units in Axis-controlled territory on October 7, 1943.

Mussolini did not think the vote had any substantive value, and showed up at work the next morning like any other day.

Benito Mussolini said that " fascism is reaction " and that " fascism, which did not fear to call itself reactionary ... has not today any impediment against declaring itself illiberal and anti-liberal.

They are being ruthless and most determined .” After the July 1934 Night of The Long Knives, in which the Nazis ruthlessly exterminated their internal dissidents, Reith wrote: “ I really admire the way Hitler has cleaned up what looked like an incipient revolt .” After Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Nazis in 1939 he wrote: “ Hitler continues his magnificent efficiency .” Reith also expressed admiration for Mussolini .. Reith's daughter, Marista Leishman, revealed how her father in the 1930s did everything possible to keep Winston Churchill and other anti-appeasement Conservatives off the airwaves.

Badoglio was not in favour of the Italian-German Pact of Steel and was pessimistic about the chances of Italian success in any European war but he did not oppose the decision of Mussolini and the King to declare war on France and Great Britain.

However, because of his commitment to pacifism and intense opposition to fascism and to Benito Mussolini, he did not fire his gun at human targets.

A supporter of Benito Mussolini, Douhet was appointed commissioner of aviation when the Fascists assumed power but he soon gave up this bureaucrat's job to continue writing, which he did up to his death from a heart attack in 1930.

At the expense of the indigent peasantry — 85 percent of the workforce — not only did Vargas renege on his promises of land reforms, he denied agricultural workers in general the working class ' gains in labor regulations, a strategy reminiscent of contemporary leaders Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, and António de Oliveira Salazar.

Even Aurelio Lepre and Emilio Gentile thought that Mussolini did not want the death of Matteotti.

Mauro Canali suggests that Mussolini probably did order the murder, as Matteotti uncovered and wanted to make public incriminating documents proving that Mussolini and his associates sold to an American oil company ( Sinclair Oil ) exclusive rights to all Italian oil reserves.

Radio Moscow did express concern over the rise of German dictator Adolf Hitler during the 1930s, and its Italian mediumwave service specifically was jammed by an order of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini during the late 1930s.

However one who did, Alessandra Mussolini, a granddaughter of former Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini commented: " To implement the proposal of the Members of the European Parliament regarding Communist symbols is our moral duty ".

She came over to the United States to sell Mussolini to the American people, and she did that by using Hearst's column.

However, Facta did not believe Salandra and thought that Mussolini would govern quietly at his side.

Sorel was extremely hostile to Gabriele D ’ Annunzio, the poet who attempted to re-conquer Fiume for Italy, and did not show sympathy for the rise of fascism in Italy, despite Jean Variot's later claims that he placed all his hopes in Benito Mussolini.