Mussolini's Fall From Grace | SLICE WHO l FULL DOCUMENTARY

They called him Il Duce. Since his march on Rome in 1922, Mussolini had governed Italy with billy clubs, nationalist slogans, and large scale public works. He had become the model for dictators in the 1930s. Among his pupils, Adolf Hitler. With his help, he planned to turn Italy into one of the world's superpowers. But his downfall was approaching. If Mussolini hadn't joined up with Hitler, he'd still be in power. It was 1937, one year after the war in Ethiopia. The year that everything would change. On this day, Il Duce made an official visit to Germany. Nazi Germany, the new rising power in Europe. Adolf Hitler had come to power four years earlier, in 1933. More than a decade behind his Italian counterpart. Mussolini is the world's leading statesman, said the Führer. And nobody by far has the right to compare themselves to him. Hitler clearly held him in great esteem. For five days, from Munich and Berlin, across hundreds of kilometers, the Italian dictator was shown around the new Germany and honored by the Nazis. Never was such a welcome offered even to emperors, wrote Mussolini to one of his mistresses in Rome. I have conquered them. They are crazy about me. For a year, Hitler flattered him and tried to make him an ally. He sent him special envoys with his plans to divide Europe into two spheres of influence. Central and Northern Europe for Germany, up to the Baltic Sea. And Southern Europe for Italy, bordering the Mediterranean. A highly confidential plan, which was particularly timely for Il Duce. This was Mussolini's dream, a dream which until now he couldn't afford. At the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, a fired-up Mussolini committed himself to march alongside Hitler, while proclaiming his wish for peace. With this rapprochement, he hoped to give new impetus to his enemies. And he did so with his dictatorship. A golden opportunity to revive enthusiasm, which was on the wane after his 15 years in power. Intuition. He knew how to seize the moment in all situations. He knew how to choose. Italians counted on him. He showed them he was acting for the good of the nation. Italy would join with Germany to conquer the world. But there was a latent fear of being dominated. That Mussolini had been bewitched. In fact, Mussolini knew what to expect from Hitler. He had known the German chancellor since 1934, three years earlier, when he made an official visit to Venice. Their first discussions were tempestuous and his first impressions frightful. A madman, an Attila, a sex maniac, confided Il Duce to his entourage. In July of 1934, a few weeks after Venice, the two powers almost came to arms when Hitler orchestrated a failed coup attempt in Vienna and ordered the assassination of Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dolfus, an Italian protégé. Mussolini sent several divisions to the border and publicly vented his anger against Nazi racism. The tension was such that in 1935, a few months after the Austria crisis, Mussolini even attempted rapprochement with the Western democracies, France and Great Britain. But his dirty war in Ethiopia, which violated international law, scuppered that. Influenced by London and Paris, the League of Nations in Geneva condemned Italy and imposed economic sanctions on it. It was then, in 1936, that Hitler made his first gesture by refusing to apply the sanctions and recognizing Italy's right to build an empire. A friendly hand held out and quickly seized by Mussolini. One of his family members encouraged him in this direction, his son-in-law, the young Count Ciano, husband of his daughter Ada. In the mind of the diplomat from the new fascist elite, an alliance between the two dictatorships was a natural step. And Mussolini had everything to gain from a rapprochement with Hitler. In 1936, Iducce appointed Ciano his minister of foreign affairs, and the two men set out to fulfill an alliance with Germany. The civil war in Spain was their first common playing field. In 1936, General Franco, another admirer of Iducce, became the leader of nationalist forces against the Republicans. He called on the two dictators for help. Hitler sent 7,000 men to Spain, Mussolini 10 times more, including his son Bruno, still a bomber pilot. What I remember very well was the great adhesion in the towns and villages. Those eager to go as volunteers to Spain turned up to enroll in their hundreds, in their thousands. There was a riot. The Germans bombed Guernica, the Italians Barcelona. Thousands died in the air raids. A good way, believed Mussolini, to harden his soldiers, to free them from the fear of domination and turn them into masters. He wanted to create a new Italian man, a virile man like this with his jaw and chest proudly out, intent on ruling others. And yet war was less popular than fascist legend would have us believe. After victory in Malaga, the Italian army collapsed outside Madrid. Under poor leadership, many Italians deserted or intentionally wounded themselves. Thousands of them would die. According to him, the Italians were the grandchildren of the Romans. But not all of them were. In fact, practically nobody. If you give the Italians an empire, that's great. But if they have to go out and conquer it with wars, then no. The new Italian warrior didn't exist because we don't have that natural warrior spirit. In Rome, a disappointed Mussolini began to doubt in his Italians, these mandolin players, as he called them. In German eyes, his prestige was tarnished, but he refused to give up. To build a great people, he said, you must force them into battle with a kick up the backside. For the past few months, one woman had encouraged him. His new mistress, Clara Petacci, almost 30 years his junior. He met her on a road outside of Rome during a hair-raising spin in a convertible. Here she is on the right with her family. Mussolini called her little Servilia after the mistress of Julius Caesar. I love you madly, he wrote. I want to harm you, be brutal with you. You are the epitome of beauty and power, she replied. Her flattery always gave Mussolini the energy to bounce back. But there was a problem. In March of 1938, as his army was floundering in Spain, Mussolini received some dispiriting news. Hitler had entered Austria, an act he had opposed in 1934, due to his ties with the Austrian government. Il Duce was informed on the morning of the incursion, presented with a fait accompli. With Hitler going behind his back, he felt he no longer counted for the Germans. In Europe, the spotlight was now on the Führer and not on him. But without Hitler, how could he build the Mediterranean empire he dreamed of? Corsica, Malta, Tunisia, Gibraltar, the Suez Canal. A few weeks later, in May of 1938, the Führer headed to Rome. Il Duce, who had invited him, gave orders to shower him with tributes. They forced us to go to Reggio to watch his train pass by. There we were, sleepy-eyed, ordered to stand to attention, all in uniform. We were told that unity was strength, only teamwork counted, and that we belonged to a privileged group. By rolling out all the pomp of the dictatorship, Mussolini intended to remind Hitler that he was the first fascist and thus impose equality in their relations. In Rome, it was King Victor Emmanuel, who had appointed Mussolini as head of the government 16 years earlier, who greeted Hitler. A simple matter of protocol, but frustrating for Il Duce. He had to walk a meter behind the two heads of state before seeing them head off to the Quirinal Palace, where Hitler would stay. The following morning, Mussolini was back in his rightful place, and the race for prestige, begun in Berlin, started again in front of the crowds. Silvana Agiocagli, a Jewish girl from Rome, was on the parade route, too young to grasp the consequences. Mussolini and Hitler in uniform, saluting the crowd. And we schoolchildren were waving our little flags and shouting. To be honest, I didn't feel a thing. To me, he was some man come to visit Italy. So I can't say seeing Hitler filled me with fear. No, it was like watching a movie. This was a year and a half before the outbreak of World War II. Who in the crowd imagined what would soon come? I make him laugh, Mussolini told his mistress. When Hitler isn't on view, he's very pleasant and quite respectful. To impress the Führer, Il Duce took him to Naples, where he had organized a giant mock naval battle. One of the strong points of the Italian armed forces. But in truth, it was Mussolini, the so-called master, who was won over. For several months, he had been observing how Hitler operated, his way of laying down the law and making serious headway in constructing a totalitarian society in Germany. And he didn't balk at copying him to make his own totalitarian dream come true. In Trieste, without Hitler's pressure, Mussolini launched a new attack, this time against the enemy within. Despite our policies, they are an irreconcilable enemy of the party. We will adopt a policy of separation. We will adopt the necessary sanctions. Italy, a nation which had never really been anti-Semitic. Within days, judged to be incompatible with the new Italian man, Jews became the bane of society and were expelled from governmental posts. No more rights or social welfare. Second class citizens hounded from justice, education and the press. These filthy Jews must be wiped out, said Il Duce in private. Strict measures were taken. Jews were forbidden from running banks and real estate companies. And mixed marriages were banned. In the name of the defense of the Italian race presented as an Aryan race, 10,000 Jews were struck from the lists of the fascist party, including those who had participated in the March on Rome of 1922. As for Jewish children, they were excluded from school, like the young teenager Silvana, who had up until then cheered on Il Duce. It was awful staying home when all my classmates went to school. I could hear them on their way through the open window. It was unbelievable. We were even forbidden from going to the seaside. My dad loved going to the baths in Tivoli. He used to go by bus, but then he was forbidden from boarding it. There were bans for very simple things that we'd been used to doing forever. But worse than not doing them, it was the bans themselves that were ridiculous. It was stupid. It was stupid because lots of Jews had actively taken part in the fascist revolution. We were flabbergasted by the race laws. We just couldn't accept them. Laws taken badly by the Italian people, but ratified by the king, applied by the administration and supported by the majority of party militants. Mussolini knew what he was doing with anti-Semitism. By singling out Jews after communists, strikers and Ethiopians, he intended to re-motivate militants and once again create tension in the country. There is only one remedy, he said, the principle of permanent revolution. Like a cyclist, if the dictator were to stop peddling, he would fall. A few days after the launch of his anti-Jewish campaign, he was back in Germany on the request of the international community, which was desperate to avoid plunging Europe into a new war. He was still working both sides. Daladier of France and Chamberlain of Britain asked him to reason with his friend Hitler, who was threatening to invade Czechoslovakia. Extreme tension reigned. Europe was in a panic and on the point of exploding. It was Mussolini who would save the day. Back in the spotlight and flattered by his role as mediator between the great nations, he put forward a rule which was originally suggested to him by the Nazis. Everybody signed the Munich Agreement, a feat of diplomacy, the international press called it. Mussolini, saviour of world peace and lauded by his people. But the illusion did not last. Six months later, the German army entered the Czechoslovakian capital of Prague, breaking the recently signed agreement. And this time the mask fell. Surprised by the attack, Mussolini quit his role as mediator and set out to conquer Albania, a small country neighbouring Italy. And immediately his fanatic supporters were screaming for more. Mussolini was more belligerent than ever. In Berlin, his friend Hitler now had his eye on Poland, a lie to France and Britain. World War II was imminent. For several months, his son-in-law Ciano had been ringing the alarm bells. Italy, he claimed, was being dragged too far into this by Hitler. We must stand with Hitler, replied Il Duce, otherwise he'll turn against us. Improvising, and notwithstanding his own reservations, Ciano went to Berlin to sign a binding military alliance with Germany. The Pact of Steel, a point of no return. Any entry into war by either of the two countries would automatically involve the support of the other. To encourage Italians, Hitler promised them that war would not break out before 1942, three years later. Another lie. Because in September, Germany invaded Poland. World War II had begun. Italy was at the heart of history, just as Mussolini had wished. When Poland was invaded, my fascist grandmother came in shouting, Pino, that was my father, we're already in Warsaw. They supported the idea of the Axis invading Poland. From a military viewpoint, they were pleased that Italy and Germany were victors. But it was untrue. The Italians never made it to Poland. At the last minute, Mussolini shirked Hitler and failed to back Germany. Because his army, weakened by the Ethiopia campaign and the Spanish Civil War, was still in training and lacking in fuel, anti-tank weapons and armored vehicles. They had plenty of prototypes, but not enough operational equipment. In truth, all of Hitler's allies had lied to him about the state of their armed forces, for fear of upsetting him. A classic of totalitarianism. In a panic, and to justify his decision, Il Duce came up with a new concept. Non-belligerence. To be at war without fighting it, while waiting for the second phase. War did come eight months later, when Germany invaded France. This time, Mussolini wanted his share of the war booty. Southeastern France, Corsica and Tunisia. It was a bit of an egotistical side to Italians by wanting to go to war alongside a winner. Or a potential winner. Not with a loser, but with a winner. Once the Battle of France was already two-thirds won by Hitler, Il Duce declared war on Paris and London. When we heard, declaration of war, we went, yeah, we were all so happy. An old man came out of his house and said to us, you're so delusional. You have no idea what war means. Pain, disease, death, disaster. And we all shouted, what a defeatist. For Italians, the hour of truth had come. For the past two decades, their leader had promised them glory. They could not imagine the scale of the defeats that lay in store. Having launched an assault on the Alps, the Italians were unable to breach French defences. After three days of fighting, they had gained only a few kilometres, on the Riviera and in Savoy. Following the armistice signed with the Vichy regime, Mussolini was granted a small strip of land at the border. Nothing compared to what he had hoped for. But the worst was yet to come. When Hitler occupied Romania, Mussolini decided to launch an offensive against Greece. A solo and secret headlong rush. He only informed Hitler at the last moment on his visit to Florence. Führer, we are on the march. At dawn, victorious Italian troops crossed the Greece-Albania border. Mussolini was convinced of a sweeping victory. Now, with the same absolute determination, I tell you that we will conquer the Kingdom of Greece. We, the Germans and the Italians, are a fleet of 150 million men. This fleet will have the victory. Once again, he was dreaming. Within days, his advance was blocked by the stubborn resistance of the Greeks and turned into a disaster. Three months later, the Italian army had retreated to its own territory. Not only a disaster, but total humiliation. When Hitler dispatched backup troops, it took them only three weeks to defeat and occupy Greece. For Ilduce, this was only the beginning of his cavalry. For in Libya as well, Hitler had come to the rescue by sending in Rommel, one of his top generals. Targeting the Suez Canal, Ilduce believed he could occupy Egypt. But after advancing across the desert, his army was cut off by the British. And to make matters worse, Churchill, his former admirer, stole the jewel in Mussolini's empire's crown, Ethiopia, only five years after conquering it. Mussolini was broken, despite the brave face he put on. His strategy was a failure. He suffered from a stomach ulcer and lumbago. And he relieved his anxieties at the commands of his private bomber flying for hours across the Italian skies. Between bouts of depression and euphoria, he also found time to speed around the Italian countryside in his Alfa Romeo. He sometimes went days without eating. He laid the blame on the Italians. I am humiliated for not having turned them into a people of steel and bravery. He decided to stick with his friend Hitler until the end. We are not whores, he replied to those who were already urging him to break with the Nazis. He even insisted that the Fuhrer allow him to send men to the Soviet Union alongside German troops. Italians were now dying in their thousands on every front. Like Marta Badoni's brother, an officer in the Italian Navy who was torpedoed in the Mediterranean. The notion of fascism and all that was swept away with my brother's death. It was a complete disaster. That will be the end of politics for me. Late 1942 was the turning point. Having landed in North Africa, the Allies bombarded Italy. The myth of Ilduce was collapsing under a rain of bombs. In Rome, Mussolini had a number of bunkers constructed beneath the Villa Torlonia to protect his wife and children. I'm glad that Naples is going through such terrible nights, he said. It will make the race stronger. He showed no emotion on learning of the Nazi genocide of the Jews. He was obsessed by his failures and began blaming his aides, especially his son-in-law Ciano, who wanted to break with Germany. Mussolini relieved him of his post as foreign minister. His mistress, Clara Petacci, discovered him on the floor, leaning against an armchair. She tried to encourage him, you are the man for a titanic battle. On morphine, when the pain was too acute, he continued to put up a front. But for how long? In Rome, more and more rumors about an uprising began to circulate. He pretended to ignore them. On July 9th, 1943, came the event that would result in his fall. Sailing from Africa, the Allies landed in Sicily. The moment the enemy tries to land, screamed Mussolini, we must wipe out every last one of them. But that did not come to pass. Induce had been speaking with empty rhetoric for so long that his troops had stopped listening. In Rome, backed by the king and the business community, high-ranking fascist party officials, Mussolini's brothers in arms since the beginning, decided to spark a revolt. It started two weeks later, at the Palazzo Venezia, at a meeting of the Grand Council of Fascism. Have them all arrested, his wife said before the meeting. But Mussolini had stopped taking advice from anyone. After 21 years in power, he was voted out in a few hours by his fellow party members. We were totally lost. We thought, what do we do now? I thought it was about time there was a rebellion. Among the rebels was his son-in-law, Ciano. The former foreign minister wanted to break the military alliance with Germany, which he had signed himself in 1939. Ciano betrayed Mussolini in a despicable manner. He should have been shot in the back, like all traitors. And it wasn't long coming. For now, Mussolini was arrested in the name of the king, secretly imprisoned on an island off Sardinia. Then transferred to an Alpine resort hotel, a hundred kilometers from Rome. My star has been extinguished forever, he said. And that was the end of an era. But the situation immediately turned into a tragedy. For once again, Hitler decided to come to his allies' aid. He dispatched a commando of paratroopers to rescue him from captivity. Having successfully landed their glider on a high plane, they disarmed the guards and filmed the scene. Duce, you are free. Do what you will with me. I need to rest, replied Mussolini, who knew that history had escaped him. I scream with joy. We thought, what can't these Germans do? But I must say, we felt sorry for Mussolini. It was sad to see this once great man like that, in his little overcoat and little hat. Evacuated to Germany, he was met by Hitler, who greeted him with tearful eyes. A finished man in a daze was how he was described by his son Vittorio, who was present. The failed strategist made no requests, just that he be allowed to retire to his native region of Romagna. But for now, this wasn't in Hitler's plans. The Führer, who had treated him equally until then, now gave an order. There's not a day to lose. Tomorrow you will announce on the radio that the monarchy is deposed and a new Italian fascist state is born. And to make sure he understood, he implied that if he refused, the cities of Milan, Turin and Genoa would be wiped off the map. It was here, on the shores of Lake Garda, in Salo in northern Italy, that Mussolini founded a new regime. An Italian social republic, as he called it, without a king and representative of the anti-capitalism of his youth. He, his wife and several of his children would reside in this house for a year and a half, the time that he had left to live. His mistress, Clara Petacci, moved into another villa 10 kilometers away. She urged him to take revenge on the traitors. Today, only blood can wash away the shame. I'm a living corpse, replied Il Duce. Cut off from the world and disheartened. He was living in a bubble, more or less a recluse and not even allowed to bathe in the lake. He formed a government with fascist party bit players. But when he went about the town of Salo, and even when he went to visit his mistress, he was followed by SS men there to protect him. In theory, his regime still governed the north and center of Italy. But this was a decoy. In reality, the German army occupied half of Italy and Mussolini was its puppet. Between signing autographs and making diplomatic visits on behalf of a fictional sovereign state, he played his role with aplomb. He had lost everything, save for the support of about 20,000 admirers who joined him through their hatred of communism, their loyalty to military alliances and their fascination with Germany. Like many others, I was fascinated by the German army. That's why I joined up. Because the only ones who would save us from communism were the Germans. Mussolini sent his men to fight in the south, alongside the Germans and against the Americans who had landed close to Rome. There, they came up against another Italy, monarchic Italy, which had overthrown fascism in July of 43 and joined the Allied camp. Were you ready to follow Mussolini to the bitter end? Yes, I was. But I was disappointed because our true enemy was in Eastern Europe. It wasn't the Allies. The Allies just pissed us off with their constant bombing. We got caught in an air raid and a bomb blew my whole arm off. Iducce sent his troops to attack the communist, socialist and democrat resistance groups, which had been fighting non-stop and which, after 20 years of dictatorship, had taken up arms. Civil war broke out, much bloodier than the one that had been fought in the early days of fascism. Raids, roundups, torture, executions, thousands of partisans were killed by the Nazis and their fascist allies. And many Jews as well, who, despite persecution, had been left in freedom. They were rounded up in transit camps and transported to Auschwitz. Some of them managed to hide, like Silvana Aiocai, but nearly 8,000, a quarter of those deported, never returned. We heard that my mom's sister, her husband and my cousin were taken to Turin. After someone who worked for them denounced them. And none of them came back. So people should stop singling out Hitler. I put Hitler and Mussolini in the same boat. The two dictators saw each other one last time in July of 1944, after the Normandy landings and the fall of Rome. Hitler had just survived an assassination attempt by German army officers. For the first time, he seemed vulnerable, as Mussolini had been for some time now. Mussolini was secretly happy. Please believe me when I tell you that you're my only friend, Hitler told him from the station platform. Until the end, he obeyed the Fuhrer. Despite his own misgivings, Mussolini agreed to punish his son-in-law, Ciano. Here in the light-colored raincoat, for his betrayal in July of 1943. Arrested a few months earlier, Ciano was shot after a summary trial. That morning, Mussolini's daughter Ada had come to beg for a pardon, but her father was unswayed. When the fate of Rome was at stake, he told her, Roman fathers didn't balk at sacrificing their own sons. He knew it would soon be his turn, but his mistress Clara urged him to keep fighting. When everything seemed lost, Iduce launched his last ditch stand. He gathered his last few faithful in a Milan theater. A final fling. For two days, he visited his former stronghold and appeared on the balcony at the Piazza San Sepolcro, where he had founded fascism 26 years earlier. He was 61. A sleepwalker. I don't care about being assassinated, he wrote to Clara Petacci. In fact, I hope for it. It was here, in Milan, while Italy was finally freeing itself of fascism and the Germans, that Mussolini would be seen one last time in public. But dead. Three days before Hitler's suicide, Iduce fled toward the Tirol with a retreating SS convoy. Disguised as a German soldier, he was captured by communist partisans, along with Clara Petacci, who was accompanying him. They were both executed in a nearby village. Their bodies were brought to Milan, exhibited to the crowd, then strung up by their feet. He loved Italy, and Italians loved him. But after, they changed. I still don't understand why they changed. An unworthy death for a man. Horrible, dreadful, negative. I'm ashamed that the resistance did that. Instinctively, I asked myself, why did they kill him? They should have given him a trial. By mistreating his corpse, weren't the witnesses, in a way, meting out brutality on themselves? It's as though Mussolini never existed. We took a big gasp of air. We had only one desire, to start over and to forget. We didn't even want to talk about what had happened. Fascism. A kind of collective journey. In 1957, in an Italy that had become a democracy, Iducce's body was exhumed and reburied in his hometown of Bredapio. It marked the beginning of a cult, unofficial and adhered to by a minority, but one still lasting today. Like that. You see how much I still love him? What I did, I'd do it all over again, even today. For sure, I'd do it again. But if my son did it, I'd thump him. It was only natural. To me, Mussolini was like slipping on my shoes. In the end, he was no clown. But Mussolini was hugely to blame. It's disastrous that men like that can be placed at the head of a nation. Mussolini, the first fascist in a long line that would spread across the globe.