Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini survived several assassination attempts while head of government of Italy in the 1920s and 1930s.
Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini survived several assassination attempts while head of government of Italy in the 1920s and 1930s.
The former Socialist deputy Tito Zaniboni was arrested for attempting to assassinate Mussolini on November 4, 1925. In a hotel with a view unto Palazzo Chigi, where Mussolini had planned to give a balcony speech, Zaniboni set up a rifle with telescopic sights. Shortly before his target appeared, however, Zaniboni was arrested. A friend and double agent had informed the police. Historians believe that the plot itself was engineered by the Mussolini administration as a pretext to consolidate power, which is what followed. [1] [2] Mussolini's laws enacted in late 1925 enabled the suppression of any oppositional political organization. [3]
The Italian army officer Luigi Capello was arrested in conjunction with the Zaniboni plot and received a 30-year prison sentence. [4] The author and labor organizer Carlo Tresca wrote a play and political satire in late 1925 based on the attempt, L'Attentato a Mussolini ovvero il segreto di Pulcinella (The Attempt on Mussolini or the Secret of Pulcinella). [1]
Zaniboni received a 30-year prison sentence, but was released in 1943 after the King dismissed Mussolini as prime minister, and later named to government positions. [5]
The next year, on April 7, 1926, Violet Gibson shot a pistol at Mussolini, which grazed his nose. He was bandaged and continued on to give his scheduled speech. [2] Gibson, the daughter of the Irish Lord Chancellor, was nearly lynched, later jailed, and spent the remainder of her life in an asylum. [6]
Later in 1926, on September 11, anarchist marble worker Gino Lucetti threw a bomb at Mussolini's limousine in Porta Pia, Rome, which injured four others. [2]
The next month, on October 31, 1926, a shot fired at Mussolini, who rode in an open car through Bologna, led to the lynching of a 15-year-old boy. Terrorism specialist J. Bowyer Bell wrote that the boy was likely innocent and the affair either a put-up job or plot between Fascists. The attempt resulted in laws creating Mussolini's secret police. [2]
The attempt has been adapted into two films: the 1977 film Gli ultimi tre giorni (The Last Three Days) [7] and the fictionalized 1973 film Love and Anarchy . [8] A street in Bologna is named after Zamboni. [9]
As Italian Fascism became a stable institution, the potential murder of Mussolini became harder to attempt and offered less potential impact to destabilize his regime. In May 1931, American anarchist Michele Schirru was arrested and executed in Italy for plotting to kill Mussolini. The next month, Angelo Sbardellotto was arrested and executed for a similar plot. [2]
Gian Galeazzo Ciano, 2nd Count of Cortellazzo and Buccari was an Italian diplomat and politician who served as Foreign Minister in the government of his father-in-law, Benito Mussolini, from 1936 until 1943. During this period, he was widely seen as Mussolini's most probable successor as head of government.
The OVRA, whose most probable name was Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism, was the secret police of the Kingdom of Italy, founded in 1927 under the regime of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and during the reign of King Victor Emmanuel III. The OVRA was the Italian precursor of the German Gestapo. Mussolini's secret police were assigned to stop any anti-fascist activity or sentiment. Approximately 50,000 OVRA agents infiltrated most aspects of domestic life in Italy. The OVRA, headed by Arturo Bocchini, never appeared in any official document, so the official name of the organization still remains unclear.
Carlo Tresca was an Italian-American newspaper editor, orator, and labor organizer and activist who was a leader of the Industrial Workers of the World during the 1910s. He is remembered as a leading public opponent of fascism, Stalinism, and Mafia infiltration of the trade unions for the purposes of labor racketeering and corruption.
Italo Balbo was an Italian fascist politician and Blackshirts' leader who served as Italy's Marshal of the Air Force, Governor-General of Italian Libya and Commander-in-Chief of Italian North Africa. Due to his young age, he was sometimes seen as a possible successor of dictator Benito Mussolini.
Michele Bianchi was an Italian revolutionary syndicalist leader who took a position in the Unione Italiana del Lavoro (UIL). He was among the founding members of the Fascist movement. He was widely seen as the dominant leader of the leftist, syndicalist wing of the National Fascist Party. He took an active role in the "interventionist left" where he "espoused an alliance between nationalism and syndicalism." He was one of the most influential politicians of the regime before his succumbing to tuberculosis in 1930. He was also one of the grand architects behind the "Great List" which secured the parliamentary majority in favor of the fascists.
Junio Valerio Scipione Ghezzo Marcantonio Maria Borghese, nicknamed The Black Prince, was an Italian Navy commander during the regime of Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party and a prominent hardline neo-fascist politician in post-war Italy. In 1970, he took part in the planning of a neo-fascist coup, dubbed the Golpe Borghese, that was called off after the press discovered it; he subsequently fled to Spain and spent the last years of his life there.
Dino Grandi, 1st Conte di Mordano was an Italian Fascist politician, minister of justice, minister of foreign affairs and president of parliament.
Gino Lucetti was an Italian anarchist and anti-fascist who attempted to assassinate the dictator Benito Mussolini in 1926.
Walter Audisio was an Italian partisan and communist politician, also known by his nom-de-guerreColonel Valerio. A member of the Italian resistance movement during World War II, Audisio was involved in the death of Benito Mussolini, and personally executed the dictator and his mistress Clara Petacci according to the generally accepted account of the event.
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian dictator who founded and led the National Fascist Party (PNF). He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 1943, as well as Duce of Italian fascism from the establishment of the Italian Fasces of Combat in 1919 until his summary execution in 1945 by Italian partisans. As dictator of Italy and principal founder of fascism, Mussolini inspired and supported the international spread of fascist movements during the inter-war period.
General elections were held in Italy on 24 March 1929 to elect the members of the Chamber of Deputies. By this time, the country was a single-party state with the National Fascist Party (PNF) as the only legally permitted party.
Giovanni Passannante was an Italian anarchist who attempted to assassinate king Umberto I of Italy, the first attempt against Savoy monarchy since its origins. Originally condemned to death, his sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. The conditions of his imprisonment drove him insane and have been denounced as inhumane.
The death of Benito Mussolini, the deposed Italian fascist dictator, occurred on 28 April 1945, in the final days of World War II in Europe, when he was summarily executed by an Italian partisan in the small village of Giulino di Mezzegra in northern Italy. The generally accepted version of events is that Mussolini was shot by Walter Audisio, a communist partisan. However, since the end of the war, the circumstances of Mussolini's death, and the identity of his executioner, have been subjects of continuing dispute and controversy in Italy.
The following lists events that occurred in 1925 in the Kingdom of Italy.
Ugo Mazzucchelli was an Italian anarchist, anti-fascist and wartime partisan leader. He is best remembered as the commander of the Lucetti Battalion which became known as a tough opponent for the German and Fascist forces, when Italy became a critical battleground between 1943 and 1945, following the arrest of Mussolini.
Guido Leto was an Italian police official, head of the OVRA, the secret police of the Fascist regime, from 1938 to 1945. Throughout his career as a policeman he served under the Kingdom of Italy, the Italian Social Republic, and the Italian Republic.
Paolo Lega (1868–1896), also known as Marat, was an Italian anarchist who attempted to assassinate the prime minister, Francesco Crispi.
Gino Bibbi was an Italian engineer, political activist, anarchist, militant antifascist who participated in the Spanish Revolution of 1936 as a republican fighter pilot. Earlier, he had placed his engineering skills at the service of the causes for which he fought. He supplied the SIPE grenade-bomb which his cousin Gino Lucetti threw at Mussolini's car in Rome on 11 September 1926. The bomb exploded only after bouncing off the roof of the car containing its intended target: Mussolini was undamaged. Bibbi was arrested, but later escaped and fled abroad.
The anarchist brigades of the Italian Resistance were active during the Second World War, especially in central and northern Italy.
The Lucetti Battalion was an anarchist partisan brigade that operated in the surroundings of Carrara.
A Bologna ad Anteo Zamboni sono dedicate la via Mura Anteo Zamboni e una lapide.
