{"id":117760,"date":"2020-06-14T00:11:04","date_gmt":"2020-06-14T04:11:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gunsamerica.com\/digest\/?p=117760"},"modified":"2020-06-14T00:11:04","modified_gmt":"2023-09-06T06:22:15","slug":"the-megalomaniac-who-inspired-world-war-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/the-megalomaniac-who-inspired-world-war-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Megalomaniac Who Inspired World War 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"The
Most normal folk would righteously vilify Adolf Hitler as the most repugnant human who ever lived. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Were you to query the typical person regarding who was humanity\u2019s single most despicable historical figure most would justifiably cite Adolf Hitler. That guy was a homicidal nutjob. He was personally responsible for tens of millions of innocent deaths. Hopefully, his is a record that will never be broken. However, what many do not appreciate is that Hitler\u2019s role model, inspiration, and BFF was actually Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
Benito Mussolini paved the way for Hitler\u2019s National Socialism. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The eldest of three siblings, Benito\nMussolini was born in 1883 in Predappio, Italy. His father was a blacksmith and\nan atheist. His mother was a devout Catholic schoolteacher. Mussolini despised\nChristianity and deified the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Hitler\nonce presented Mussolini with a complete 20-volume set of Nietzsche\u2019s works as a\npersonal gift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
Like most able-bodied men of his generation, Benito Mussolini served in the trenches during World War 1. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Prior to World War 1, Mussolini worked as a journalist. Late in the war he enlisted and served nine months in the trenches. He was badly wounded by a mortar round and carried no less than forty pieces of steel in his body for the rest of his days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
The Italians always did rock some seriously flamboyant headgear. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After his discharge, Mussolini returned to mass media. During WW1 Italy was aligned with the British. For a time Benito was paid handsomely by the British MI5 security service to help publish pro-war propaganda. As his political ambitions grew, Mussolini began to see himself as a 20th-century version of Julius Caesar. He felt his destiny was to lead Italy back to its Roman-era greatness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
Mussolini\u2019s grasp on power was absolute. Those are surely some constipated-looking guys sitting behind him. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As is the case with all despots, Mussolini subscribed to a uniquely rarefied opinion of himself. By the mid-1920\u2019s he had obliterated any vestiges of constitutional restraints on his personal power and established Italy as a dictatorial police state. In nearby Germany, an ambitious Adolf Hitler liked what he saw. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
Benito Mussolini created for himself a persona that was larger than life. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By the 1930\u2019s Mussolini enjoyed a remarkable cult of personality, sometimes helming as many as seven government departments simultaneously while still drawing a check as Italy\u2019s supreme leader. His armed local fascist militia, the MVSN or Blackshirts, violently suppressed dissent. Under Mussolini\u2019s leadership journalists were required to obtain a certificate of approval from the Fascist party. Unbeknownst to him, Il Duce (The Leader) was setting himself up for a mighty fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Running with the Wrong Crowd<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"The
Arno Brecker\u2019s 1939 neoclassical work \u201cDie Partei\u201d depicts the Aryan archetype that resonated with Il Duce\u2019s image of the master race. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mussolini applied a certain social\nDarwinism to his international relations. He believed that virile nations with\nhigh birth rates were destined to destroy more effete nations with lower rates\nof procreation. This led him into an alliance with Germany and a visceral disdain\nfor the French. He described the war as \u201cThe struggle of the\nfertile and young people against the sterile people moving to the sunset.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
These Italian armored cars are shown during the ill-fated invasion of the Balkans. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In short order, Italy allied itself with Germany and embarked on a variety of military misadventures. The Germans had to rescue the Italians in Greece and the Balkans, subsequently delaying Operation Barbarossa. The Italian formations committed to the bloody battles on the Eastern Front got chewed into sausage on the frozen Russian steppes. The Italians got soundly trounced in North Africa, and by 1943 Mussolini\u2019s subjects were both cold and hungry. An uninterrupted stream of bad news from the sundry battlefields upon which Italian blood was being so liberally spilled finally spurred them to action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
These are some of the German Fallschirmjagers who freed Il Duce from Gran Sasso. Note the FG42 paratrooper rifle with its ZF4 scope resting on its integral bipod. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In July of 1943, Mussolini was summoned to a meeting with the Italian king and arrested. Mussolini was subsequently imprisoned at the alpine resort of Gran Sasso. In one of the most daring special operations in military history, an elite force of German Fallschirmjagers and Waffen SS troops led by Major Otto-Harald Mars and accompanied by the famed German commando Otto Skorzeny rescued Mussolini and spirited him to safety in Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
Mussolini was a notorious womanizer who maintained a generous harem. Clara Petacci was his final paramour. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hitler mobilized German forces in Italy to shore up his southern front and appointed Mussolini the titular head of the Italian Socialist Republic, a German puppet state headquartered in Milan. As German battlefield reverses grew to epic proportions, Mussolini fled north to Switzerland with his mistress du jour Clara Petacci in a sports car he had given her as a gift. His final destination was actually Spain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Killing<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"The
The assassination of Benito Mussolini remains embroiled in controversy to this day. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The murder of Benito Mussolini has\nrightfully been described as the Italian JFK shooting. No less than a dozen\ndifferent individuals claimed to have pulled the trigger. As such we will stick\nto the technical details and avoid some of the debatable human bits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
Mussolini was a professional journalist and an inveterate egomaniac. His efforts to deify himself made his one of the most recognizable faces on the planet. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mussolini disguised himself in a\nLuftwaffe helmet and greatcoat and masqueraded as a drunken German soldier in a\nmilitary convoy. He was subsequently identified by his characteristic chiseled\njaw and shaved head and captured by pro-communist partisans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
When they finally fell, Mussolini and Petacci fell a great distance. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mussolini and Petacci spent their last evening alive together sharing a peasant bed in a farmhouse belonging to the De Maria family in Mezzegra. The following morning they were rousted so quickly Petacci was unable to retrieve her undergarments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
This man, an Italian partisan named Walter Audisio, likely pulled the trigger that killed Mussolini. The true details will likely never be known for certain. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

An Italian partisan leader going by the\nnom de guerre Colonnello Valerio had the two prepped for execution. The most\nreliable versions of the story have him attempting to do the deed with a Sten\nsubmachine gun that jammed. He then retrieved a French-made MAS-38 and killed\nMussolini with a burst of either seven or nine rounds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gun<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"The
The Sten gun was widely distributed to partisan units during WW2. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We have explored the Sten in previous\ninstallments. It was a prolifically mass-produced arm that saw wide service\nwith both partisans and Commonwealth forces around the world. The French\nMAS-38, however, was a remarkably well-made weapon that saw very limited\nproduction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
The French MAS-38 was an unusual but effective French SMG. Note the odd angular interface between the bolt raceway and the bore. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The MAS-38 sported a complicated machined\nsteel receiver. Its action was an unusual off-axis delayed blowback contrivance\nthat made the gun exceptionally controllable. The MAS-38 weighed just shy of\nten pounds empty, cycled at around 650 rpm, and fed from a 32-round steel box\nmagazine. The weapon\u2019s unusual 7.65 Longue round was loosely\nbased on the American .30-caliber Pederson cartridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
The MAS-38 represented a decidedly unconventional design. It was by all accounts a fairly effective weapon, however. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The recoil system on the MAS-38 projected at an angle into the buttstock and the gun could be disassembled without tools. Pressing the trigger forward served to lock the bolt in either the open or closed position. The gun had a two-position flip-up sighting system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
The MAS-38 was a rare weapon, but it gained infamy as the gun that killed Mussolini. This is the actual piece that Collonnelo Valerio used to do the deed. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The MAS-38 was an odd rare piece. Less\nthan 2,000 copies were manufactured prior to the German occupation of France.\nProduction figures under German control are unknown. Some of the weapons were\nsupplied to the Vichy French collaborationists, while the German Wehrmacht\naccepted the gun as a substitute standard weapon titled the 7.65mm MP722(f).\nThe MAS-38 was encountered later during the war in French Indochina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Rest of the Story<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"The
The bodies of Mussolini and his entourage ultimately became a public spectacle. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Nearly a year before Mussolini was shot his government had murdered fifteen Italian partisans and displayed their bodies in the Piazzale Loreto, a suburban square in Milan. After Il Duce\u2019s execution, his body along with that of Clara Petacci and his Fascist comrades were dumped in the same square. A violent crowd assembled and desecrated the corpses most vigorously. The entire macabre scene was captured by a US Signal Corps cameraman and can naturally be found on YouTube.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
American soldiers later arranged the corpses of Mussolini and Petacci in this macabre embrace. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Partisans attempted unsuccessfully to\ndisperse the crowd by firing into the air and unlimbering fire hoses. Most of\nthe assembled unconventional troops appear to be armed with Carcano carbines or\nBeretta 38A submachine guns. An enraged Italian mother shot Mussolini\u2019s corpse five times\nin the head with a pistol, loudly exclaiming that she had done so to avenge her\nfive sons lost to the war. Angry Italians pummeled their dead leader\u2019s body, and a woman\nunceremoniously hiked her skirts and urinated on his face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
Images of the desecration of Mussolini became some of the most enduring of the war. The shocking nature of this event shaped Hitler\u2019s subsequent demise. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The corpses were ignominiously hung\nfeet-first from an unfinished Esso gas station. Petacci\u2019s lack of\nundergarments became embarrassingly obvious, so a local priest secured her\nskirt to her legs. Later in the day American military authorities retrieved the\nbodies and took them to a local morgue for autopsy. A slice of Il Duce\u2019s brain was sent to\nAmerica to be tested for syphilis. The test was negative, and Mussolini\u2019s preserved gray\nmatter was returned to his family for some bizarre reason in 1966.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
Adolf Hitler carefully orchestrated his death, insisting that he be cremated so as not to become the freak show that his buddy Mussolini had. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Adolf Hitler was mortified at the news of the desecration of Mussolini\u2019s corpse, and this shaped his own sordid destiny. Determined to avoid a similar fate, Hitler shot himself in the head with his engraved Walther PPK two days after Mussolini\u2019s gory demise. He left instructions that his body along with that of Eva Braun be burned outside the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It Gets Even Weirder\u2026<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"The
The pursuit of Mussolini\u2019s corpse took on the timbre of a dark comedy. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mussolini was subsequently buried in an unmarked grave, but neofascists stole his body nearly a year later and spirited it off with the authorities in hot pursuit. Over the next sixteen weeks, they dragged the guy\u2019s moldy corpse over half of Italy, losing one of his legs in the process. Italian authorities finally recovered what was left of him and hid it for the next eleven years in a Capuchin Monastery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
There yet remain those who venerate the degenerate Mussolini even today. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 1957 Benito Mussolini\u2019s long-suffering carcass\nwas finally laid to rest in a family sarcophagus liberally adorned with fascist\nsymbology and a marble bust of the man. Every year more than 70,000 people file\nby to gawk, pay their respects, or feed some misguided nostalgia for the good\nold days of unbridled despotism. Apparently the misplaced leg is still out\nthere somewhere.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
Mussolini\u2019s demise is itself a quirky tale. It seems only fitting that he would meet his end at the muzzle of a strange French submachine gun. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"The
This is the farmhouse where Mussolini spent his last night on earth. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"The
In a way, Benito Mussolini shaped both the beginning and end of WW2 in Europe. His heavy-handed governance inspired that of Adolf Hitler, while the frenetic nature of his demise drove Hitler to his ultimate doom. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Buy and Sell on GunsAmerica!<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a way, Benito Mussolini shaped both the beginning and end of WW2 in Europe. His heavy-handed governance inspired that of Adolf Hitler, while the frenetic nature of his demise drove Hitler to his ultimate doom. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":117781,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_specdata_upc":"","_specdata_placement":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[257,772],"tags":[1422,132,102,752,636,1323],"featured":[],"hunt365":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-117760","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-historical-guns","8":"category-will-dabbs","9":"tag-assassination","10":"tag-buzz","11":"tag-feature-articles","12":"tag-historical-guns","13":"tag-history","14":"tag-world-war-ii"},"yoast_head":"\nThe Megalomaniac Who Inspired World War 2<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Megalomaniac Who Inspired World War 2 - Will Dabbs\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/the-megalomaniac-who-inspired-world-war-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Megalomaniac Who Inspired World War 2\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In a way, Benito Mussolini shaped both the beginning and end of WW2 in Europe. 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However, shooting guns and claiming it was work seemed like a pretty sweet hustle. As a result, Will serendipitously transformed an avocation into a vocation. Raised in the Mississippi Delta, Will flew UH1H, OH58A\\\/C, CH47D and AH1S helicopters operationally as an Army Aviator. He is SCUBA-qualified and has parachuted out of perfectly good airplanes at 3 o'clock in the morning. Will has summited Mount McKinley, Alaska, six times\u2026always at the controls of an Army helicopter, which is the only way sensible folk climb mountains. Will has delivered sixty babies and occasionally wrung human blood out of his socks. He is married to his high school sweetheart and has three awesome adult children. Turn-ons include vintage German machineguns, flying his sexy-cool RV6A airplane, Count Chocula cereal and the movie \u201cAliens.\u201d www.word-monkey.com Experience: -Professional Writer-thousands of publishing credits for dozens of titles -Mechanical Engineer\\\/Practicing Physician -Instrument-rated Commercial Pilot -Sunday School Teacher\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\\\/\\\/www.word-monkey.com\",\"https:\\\/\\\/www.facebook.com\\\/will.dabbs.9\",\"https:\\\/\\\/www.instagram.com\\\/drwildmanmd\\\/\"],\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/gunsamerica.com\\\/digest\\\/author\\\/willdabbs\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Megalomaniac Who Inspired World War 2","description":"The Megalomaniac Who Inspired World War 2 - Will Dabbs","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/the-megalomaniac-who-inspired-world-war-2\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Megalomaniac Who Inspired World War 2","og_description":"In a way, Benito Mussolini shaped both the beginning and end of WW2 in Europe. 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