Death of the Father
Chronology of Italy & Benito Mussolini
1876-1944 Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, founder of the Futurism movement.
1883 (29 July) Birth of Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (Dovia, Predappio).
1902 (February) Mussolini starts his career as a schoolteacher (Gualtieri Emilia). (9 July) Mussolini migrates to Switzerland where he works as a mason; frequently homeless, he is sent to prison several times; in contact with the local trade union, he starts writing in different newspapers and journals and gives many speeches.
1902-19 Mussolini is imprisoned eleven times in: Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Italy.
1904 (end) Mussolini goes back to Italy where he does his military service with the "X bersaglieri".
1905 (February) Mussolini's mother, Rosa Maltoni, dies. One year later, his father, Alessandro, will start a relationship with Anna Guidi, the mother of Rachele.
1906 Mussolini resumes his schoolteaching in Tolmezzo and Oneglia where he also writes for the local newspaper, La Lima.
1908 (July) Mussolini goes back to his home-town where he participates in a local fight, on the farm labourers' side; he is sent to prison for twelve days.
1909 (6 February) Mussolini goes to Trento where he writes in the local weekly, L'Avvenire del Lavoratore and in the Popolo; he also writes and publishes many literary short stories. (20 February) First Futurism Manifesto published in the Parisian Figaro. (26 September) Mussolini is first imprisoned then expelled from Trento by the Austrian authorities after violent polemics with the Catholics. (October 1909) Mussolini goes back to Italy (Forl“) where he writes a novel, Claudia Particella, L'amante del Cardinale, for the Popolo and where he directs the local socialist newspaper La lotta di Classe.
1910 (January) Mussolini and Rachele Guidi move in together. (1 September) Birth of Mussolini's and Rachele's first daughter, Edda.
1911 (24 September) Antimilitarist Mussolini is strongly against the Libian war; the strike against the war fails in Italy except in Forl“, where people revolt under the leadership of Pietro Nenni, Aurelio Lolli and Mussolini.
(14 October) Mussolini leads a manifestation against the Italo-Turkish war; he is arrested and spends five months in prison where he writes his autobiography, La Mia Vita.
1912 (7-10 July) Congress of the Italian Socialist party where Mussolini gives his first important political speech. (1 December) Mussolini becomes director of the Socialist newspaper Avanti! where he develops a stong pacifist and antimilitarist debate; the newspaper sales rise from 40.000 copies to 60.000, then to 100.000 copies.
1913 (May) Milanese workers start a strike backed only by Mussolini.
1914 (28 July) Austrian declaration of war. (4 August) Deputies of the German Social Democrats agree to finance the war; "The international is dead", writes Mussolini. (18 October) Mussolini writes that the Italian Socialist party should move from "absolute neutrality" to "active neutrality"; he thinks that Italy should go to war or start a revolution but only nationalism is able to stir up the masses. (15 November) Mussolini founds the newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia where he praises the Italian nation. (24 November) Mussolini is expelled from the Socialist party during an assembly in Milan.
1915 (17 May) Italian declaration of war celebrated as a victory by Mussolini who also starts to revendicate territories in his articles. (31 August) Mussolini goes to war as a soldier of the "XI bersaglieri" regiment; he writes a diary, Il Mio Diario di Guerra (1915-1917); war becomes for him the essential ingredient for the masses. (17 December) Civil marriage of Mussolini and Rachele Guidi takes place.
1916 (27 September) Birth of Mussolini's and Rachele's first son, Vittorio.
1917 (23 February) Mussolini is wounded at the war front.
1918 (April) Birth of Mussolini's and Rachele second son, Bruno.
1919 (23 March) Mussolini founds the Italian Combat Fascists (Fasci Italiani di Combattimento). (12 September) Expedition of Gabriele D'Annunzio to annex Fiume to Italy. (16 November) Italian elections are held: neither Mussolini nor any Fascist is elected.
1919-20 Severe confrontations between political and trade unionist forces in Italy.
1921 (15 May) General elections: 32 Fascist candidates in the National bloc are elected, including Mussolini. During the electoral campaign, street fights result in 105 dead, 431 wounded. (21 July) A squadron of 500 Fascists battles in Sarzana against the population and the police: 18 dead.
(7 November) The Fasci Italiani di Combattimento reforms as the National Fascist Party.
1922 (3 August) Fascists attack the Milanese town hall and the Avanti! head office. (28 October) A squadron of 40.000 Fascists marches on Rome led by Cesare Maria De Vecchi and Dino Grandi. (29 October) Mussolini is summoned to Rome by the king to form the new government; he arrives the next day. (December) Constitution of Il Gran Consiglio del Fascismo.
1924 (6 April) Italian parliamentary elections: triumph of the Fascist party (65% of the votes, 275 deputy seats). (30 May) Giacomo Matteotti, a socialist deputy, declares in a fierce speech that the elections of 6th of April are illegal. (10 June) Matteotti is assassinated in Rome. (27 June) The opposition leaves the Chamber (Aventino secession). (16 August) Dead body of Matteotti is found in Rome.
1925 (3 January) Mussolini claims responsibility for the Matteotti murder. The Fascist dictatorship begins. (November 1925) Attempt on Mussolini's life by Tito Zaniboni. (19 December) Religious marriage of Mussolini and Rachele Guidi.
1926 (7 April) Attempt on Mussolini's life by Violet Gibson. (11 September) Attempt on Mussolini's life by Gino Lucetti (November 1926) Special laws voted in Rome: reintroduction of the death penalty (for murder attempts against king, queen, hereditary prince and chief of state), constitution of the Special Tribunal, suppression of the opposition press, dissolution of the antifascist political parties and organizations.
1927 (April) Organization of Fascist secret police (Ovra) is instituted. Birth of Mussolini's and Rachele's third son, Romano.
1928 (May) Antonio Gramsci, head of the Italian Communist Party, is condemned to twenty years in prison. (September) New electoral law requires all Italian voters to register as Fascists. All other parties are forbidden.
1929 (11 February) Signing of the Lateranensi pacts between the Fascist government and the Vatican. (1929) Birth of Mussolini's and Rachele's second daughter, Anna Maria.
1930 (23 April) Marriage of Mussolini's daughter, Edda, to Count Galeazzo Ciano.
1931 (3 February) Attempt on Mussolini's life by Michele Schirru. (October 1931) University professors forced to take oath of loyalty to Fascism.
1933 Mussolini and Claretta Petacci meet. (30 November) 2,600 couples marry in mass-wedding in Rome; they are honored by Mussolini.
1935 (October) Italian army invades Ethiopia (18 November) international economical sanctions instituted against Italy. (18 December) Italians offer their gold wedding rings to the Fatherland (patria).
1936 Mussolini and Claretta Petacci start a love affair. (5 May) Italian troops enter Addis Abeba headed by Pietro Badoglio. (9 May) Proclamation of the Italian Empire by Mussolini. King Vittorio Emanuele III takes the title of Emperor of Ethiopia.
1937 (8-24 March) Italian legionaries participating in the Spanish Civil War loose badly on the Guadalajara front. (June) The Rosselli brothers are assassinated by Fascists in France. (24 October) Birth of the Rome-Berlin Axis. (November 1937) Antikomintern Pact between Italy, Germany and Japan is formed.
1938 (14 July) The Manifesto della Razza is published in Italy. (August 1938) The Italian journal La Difesa della Razza is launched. (22 August) Racial census taken in Italy.( 5 September) Italian racial effort is taken over by the Consiglio Superiore della Demografia e Razza, the Tribunale della Razza, the Commissione per le Discriminazioni and the Consiglio di Amministrazione dell' EGELI. (6 October) The Grand Fascist Council (Il Gran Consiglio del Fascismo) passes the new racial laws. (17 November) Racial laws are decreed in Italy against Jews.
1939 (April) Italian military occupation of Albania. (22 May) Steel-pact between Italy and Germany is signed.
1940 (10 June) Italy enters WWII as a German ally. (24 June) Armistice between Italy and France is signed. (28 October) Italian army attacks Greece.
1941 (May) Ethiopian Negus regains his throne representing the end of the Italian Empire. (7 August) Mussolini's son, Bruno, dies in a plane crash while on military duty.
1943 (10 July) Allied forces land in Sicily. (25 July) Destitution and imprisonment of Mussolini (Ponza, Maddalena); Italians all over the country rejoice.
( 26 July 1943) Formation of the Badoglio government which negotiates secretly with the Allies. (8 September) Armistice in Cassibile (Siracusa) between Italians and Allied forces. (12 September) Mussolini is liberated from his Gran Sasso prison by the German commando Otto Skorzeny, and flown by plane to Vienna, Munich and finally Rastenburg to meet with Hitler. (September) Clandestine constitution in Rome of the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (CLN) by anti-fascist parties. (23 September) Mussolini founds the Social Italian Republic in Sal˜ at Lake Garda.
(13 October) Italian government lead by Badoglio declares war on Germany.
1943-45 7,495 Italian Jews are deported from Italy: 6,885 are killed in the Lager, and only 610 return to their homes
1944 (8-11 January) Trial and execution in Verona of the five "traitors" of the Gran Consiglio (Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini's son-in-law, is among them).
( 22 January) Allied forces land in Anzio; battles in Montecassino.
( 23 March) Partisans' responsible for bomb attack in via Rasella (Rome): thirty-three German soldiers are killed, ten wounded. (24 March) 335 Italians are executed in the Fosse Ardeatine (Rome) by the German army led by SS Major Kappler. (May) German army withdraws on the Gothic line. (4 June) Allied forces enter in Rome; Badoglio resigns; the new government is presided by Ivanoe Bonomi; Vittorio Emanuele III, king of Italy, abdicates the throne to his son, Umberto II. (6 June) Anglo-American forces land in Normandy (France). (June) Constitution of the Corpi Volontari per la Libertˆ (CVL) unites all military forces of the Italian resistance. (8 August) 15 hostages shot in Piazzale Loreto (Milan) by Fascists and the German army.
1945 (18 April) Mussolini starts out from Lake Garda for Milan. (27 April) Mussolini, Petacci and henchmen are captured in Dongo. (28 April) Execution of Mussolini and Petacci in Mezzegra on Lake Como. (28 April) Execution of Mussolini's henchmen in Dongo. (29 April) Public display of corpses of Mussolini, Petacci and henchmen in Piazzale Loreto (Milan.)
( 30 April) First autopsy of Mussolini's body (Milan). (14 June) Antifascist coalition for the Italian government headed by Ferruccio Parri (Action Party), takes power, followed a few months later, by Alcide De Gasperi (Christian Democrats).
1946 (23 April) Italian neofascists steal Mussolini's corpse from its secret grave in Cimitero Maggiore (Milan). (2 June) Italians vote for the Republic: King Umberto II and his family are sent into exile. (12 August) Recovery of Mussolini's stolen corpse (Pavia). (14 August) Second autopsy of Mussolini's body is performed (Milan).
1948 First political elections to establish the Italian Parliament are held: the left-wing parties are defeated; 48% of the votes go to the Christian Democrats.
1957 (30 August) Private funeral for Benito Mussolini in Predappio, S. Cassiano.
1996-97 Erich Priebke is tried twice in Rome by a Military Court for his participation in the execution of 335 Italians at the Fosse Ardeatine.
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Prepared by Maria Pia Di Bella & John Schoeberlein, 1998