Benito Mussolini Part 6: The Road to Perdition
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It's November the 11th, 1940. A moonlit night. We're in the Gulf of Toronto, the raised arch within the foot of Italy. Out over the bay, 12 aircraft of Britain's fleet air arm cut through the clouds.

They are fairy swordfish, rickety old biplanes. They look more out of the previous World War than the current one. But the Stringbag, as the swordfish is affectionately known, is a deceptive aircraft. Slow, it can confound early warning systems, pootling up out of nowhere. Nimble too, able to weave round air defences. More important is its payload.

Strapped under each of the plane's bellies is a 1,600-pound torpedo, which can be aimed with remarkable precision. And they are to be delivered tonight to the Taranto Naval Base, home of the Regia Marina, the Royal Italian Fleet. Spotted at the last minute, the ACAC guns open up. Tracer bullets spray up into the night. But the stringbags have banked down into their final run, skimming just feet across the waves. In a surreal twist,

one of the navigators picks up a local radio station. Opera. In the Battle of the Mediterranean, the Tarento raid is a devastating blow to Italian military ambition. It will wipe out two destroyers, a cruiser, and three of Mussolini's prized battleships. After a second wave comes in to set the port ablaze, the stringbags wheel away, heading back out to sea. Just five months into the war, and Il Duce's navy has been neutered.

And all for the loss of two aircraft. The next day, a Japanese military attaché visits the Taranto base. He observes the sunken ships and wrecked docks, gathering intel about this ingenious carrier-borne attack. Excitedly, he cables his findings to Tokyo. He's come up with a way, he thinks, to knock out the US Pacific Fleet. From the Noisa Network, this is part six of the Mussolini story. And this is Real Dictators.

A few months earlier, it's the summer of 1940, Mussolini is at the peak of his powers. With Adolf Hitler, he is part of the new or conquering fascistic double act. In East Africa, Il Duce's troops have stomped into British Somaliland. In North Africa, the Royal Italian Army is pushing east from Libya to attack British forces in Egypt. Though, as with the Great War, Italy is late to the party.

Mussolini's role in the invasion of France seems a cynical case of kicking a man when he's down. Professor Joshua Arthas: "Italy's success is entirely contingent on Germany's success. And he only brings the timeline forward once he is confident that Hitler will be victorious and that if he doesn't act, then Italy will be shut out of the new Europe that Hitler is going to create."

Mussolini's warlord,

He covets not only huge bits of Africa, huge bits of the French Empire, he wants Tunis, but also big chunks of France. He wants Nice, he wants Savoy, he wants Corsica. So we're really right back to the old wars in Europe in the 18th century, where the powers are fighting each other and chewing bits out of each other. He really is back to that.

The Fuhrer is happy to let Mussolini share in the glory all the same. Their combined Axis dominion now extends from the Pyrenees to the Russian border, from the Arctic Circle to Africa's Great Rift Valley. But Hitler will not stop there. September 27th, 1940. Berlin. An open-topped Mercedes cruises along Unter den Linden and under the Brandenburg Gate. In it sits Count Galeazzo Ciano, the Italian foreign minister.

Permatanned, handsome, and with his Air Force captain's hat tilted at a rakish angle. Along the streets schoolchildren cheer and wave paper flags, though less enthusiastically than you might expect. Their little arms are tired. The Italian delegation is two hours late. Ciano is in town for a signing ceremony. There is a new power player to be added to the totalitarian order. Its representatives come from the Far East.

The land of the rising sun, Imperial Japan. In Asia and the Pacific, the Emperor's armies have been as all-conquering as Germany's have been in Europe. Hitler admires Japan's rapacious attitude, its martial spirit, the punctuality of its delegates. What better addition to team Axis could there be? The German-Italian Pact of Steel is about to be refashioned as the Tripartite Pact.

At the delayed signing ceremony, the ink is blotted, flash bulbs pop. The three signees pose with the document: Ciano, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Ambassador Saburo Caruso. Hitler makes a dramatic entrance, swanning in as the architect of this new world order: Germany, Italy, and now Japan. But Ciano has a sinking feeling. He cooled on the Nazis some time ago. Hitler can soft-soak Mussolini all he likes,

But he's getting a sense, just as the Allies treated Italy as a junior partner in the First World War, so it's becoming marginalized in the second. Worse, it's about to be dragged into something way out of its depth. Professor John Foote

hindsight's a wonderful thing. Clearly with the alliance with Hitler, not just in overstretching in the kind of we're going to take over the world kind of situation, but also in the power disparity in that alliance. The pupil has become the master at that point. Italy is a lesser player in that role and signs itself up to what looked quite a good idea for quite a long time, but ends up being a terrible idea and the death warrant for Mussolini.

Under the terms of this new arrangement, a military alliance, no party can break off to pursue a separate peace with the enemy. They're all locked in together, in this to the bitter end. As ever, Mussolini just can't help himself. He is going to demonstrate his worth, his independent spirit. Just as he did with his invasion of Albania, taking action to prove he's still a player, he's got another trick up his sleeve.

Hitler is currently off on a tour. First, a trip to the Spanish border, an attempt to sweet-talk General Franco into joining the Axis, then a pit stop in Vichy with France's Marshal Pétain. It's while his train is hurtling back to Germany that Mussolini sends his telegram: "Could the Führer come to Italy now?" Hitler doesn't like the sound of this. What is Il Duce playing at? But then a further piece of intel comes in. Mussolini is about to invade Greece.

What's more, he seems to be treating it as some kind of surprise, a gift. He had wanted to break the news in person. It's the last thing Hitler needs. In secret, he is gearing up to his great passion project: the invasion of the Soviet Union. As his train detours, destined now for Florence, he summons his staff. Can they persuade Mussolini to call it off?

But at 10:00 AM on October 28th, as the express passes Bologna, he's informed that it's too late. Italian troops have crossed into Greece from Albania. Hitler should have known. Mussolini has timed the invasion not for strategic reasons. It's the anniversary of the march on Rome. In Florence, Il Duce greets the Fuhrer outside the cathedral, jumping around like an excited puppy. "We are on the march," he cries.

You have this belief that with the Nazi victory inevitable, Italy has to keep going. And so the invasion of Greece follows that logic. That an Italian victory was guaranteed because a German victory was guaranteed, I think led to a lot of these catastrophic decisions.

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From the Noisa Network, this is Sherlock Holmes Short Stories. Search for Sherlock Holmes Short Stories wherever you get your podcasts. Or listen at Noisa.com. The Greek invasion is a disaster. As Italian troops blunder over the snowy Pindus Mountains, they meet stiff resistance from the defenders, bolstered by RAF planes operating from Greek bases. Within three months, the Greeks will have shoved the Italian army back into Albania,

The campaign will cost Mussolini over 100,000 casualties. As Ciano records in his diary, "Never had a military operation been undertaken so much against the will of the commanders." Adolio resigns as Chief of Staff. It will lead, for Hitler, to what will become a pattern for the rest of the war.

Well, he knows he's going to have to bail him out because the Italian forces are not up to it. And the reason they're not up to it is not any lack of courage, but their equipment is dated. You see, they've been so immersed in colonial wars for 20 years. And also pacification, concentration camps, gassing, all the rest of it, which goes with the show.

That they haven't upgraded. They didn't have the new planes, new fighters, the new ships, the new weapons, tanks, artillery, and all the things, machine guns. Because they'd been busy fighting poor people. Nazi Germany will now be obliged to intervene in the Greek war. As a byproduct, Hitler must also invade Yugoslavia. His blitzkrieg sweeps through the Balkans in the spring of 1941 with clinical efficiency.

It points out just how deficient the Italian forces are. The Germans reach Athens in just three weeks. Mussolini will be rewarded with some goodies for a walk on part: annexations of Ljubljana, Dalmatia and Montenegro. Meanwhile, Croatia and mainland Greece, redesignated as the collaborationist Hellenic state, will become Axis puppets. But at what price?

Mussolini's Greek adventure, it can be argued, has just cost the Axis the war. Crucially for Hitler, he has had to push back his invasion of Russia. He will be unable now to complete the job before winter sets in. In some ways we should think that because perhaps without the Italian disasters, Hitler would have won the war. You know, they're tied together in this kind of death embrace.

the disasters in Greece and so on Yugoslavia etc are baths of reality cold showers on the Italian military capacity and perhaps that also tells us that the rhetoric about Italian military power is overstated at the time you know eight million bayonets how many of those people were actually up for losing their lives in Greece or Albania or Yugoslavia how many of those people really wanted to die for Mussolini

Maybe there's a million bayonets, but eight million? Maybe not. Professor Helen Rush. I have been wondering whether the invasion of Greece was almost his last-ditch attempt to continue this idea of a Roman Empire that encompasses the entire Mediterranean.

But of course, from the Axis perspective, this is just a repetition of Italy's belated, inadequate entry into the war on the other side in World War I. And there's a lot of ill-feeling and also racialized stereotyping and

detrimental attitudes towards Italians, which then plays out really terribly when Italy switches sides because they're just seen as totally treacherous and Germans commit atrocities against Italians, thinking that that's justified in some way because of their actions. If ever there were a case to highlight Mussolini's shortcomings, it's the Battle of Britain.

Il Duce had begged Hitler to be allowed to take part in the summer bombing campaign over southern England, prelude to an intended German invasion. On September 10th, 1940, the newly formed Corpo Aereo Italiano, about 170 planes, arrives in Belgium. But the so-called "Benito's Blitz" is another embarrassment. More planes are lost through air accidents on the flight up than in actual battle, which amounts to a few token daylight sorties.

Obsolete and outgunned, the BR-20 bomb is a chicken feed for the RAF Spitfires and Hurricanes. The most notable contribution is when a few outdated Fiat biplanes, in bright desert camouflage, partake in some formation flying over the Kent coast before tossing a few bombs into Ramsgate Harbour. The locals, believing it to be some sort of aerobatic display, even come out to watch.

As Winston Churchill quips, the Italian Air Force would have been better off defending Taranto, for it's on this very same day, November 11th, 1940, that Britain's own biplanes are wreaking havoc at Italy's naval base. The ensuing defeat at sea at Cape Matapan will result in the destruction of the last vestiges of Italian naval strength.

Mussolini had bragged of taking Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, of reclaiming the Mediterranean as Mare Nostrum, our sea. It's now more of a British lake. Thinking part of Mussolini's appeal was saying, well, we're going to take on these decadent plutocracies, France and Britain, who've had it good for too long, and we're going to push them out of the way, destroy the old order, and replace it with Avera ourselves. But it doesn't work like that.

The Italians are now restricted to air raids, albeit to greater impact, on the British way station of Malta. But after a two-year siege of the island, the convoys are still getting through to supply Allied forces in Egypt. The same cannot be said for Italy. Without sufficient naval support, its armies beyond the Med are now effectively cut off. The advance into Egypt had been going well. Within four days of its attack in September 1940,

The Italian 10th Army under General Rodolfo Graziani advanced 60 miles to the coastal town of Sidi Barrani. Unfortunately, Graziani is stuck twiddling his thumbs for three months waiting for supplies. In December, British Commonwealth forces, with Australians to the fore, initiate Operation Compass. It will sweep through the Italian army like a desert storm.

Within a few weeks this combined army, including Poles and Czechs too, will be well inside Libya, taking more Italian POWs than they know what to do with. So many that the prisoners are measured by the acre. In April 1941, the same month that Hitler is obliged to intervene in the Balkans, he will be forced to dispatch his top tank commander, Erwin Rommel, to sort out the mess in North Africa.

to red faces all round. His new desert fighting unit, the Africa Corps, will start rolling the Allies back. In East Africa that same month, another Commonwealth force, including a substantial Indian contingent, takes Addis Ababa, jewel in the crown of the fascist Raj. The Western Desert Campaign comes with both tragedy and farce.

Italo Balbo, a key Mussolini confederate, aviation pioneer, commander-in-chief in North Africa, is shot down by friendly fire over Tobruk. And then there's the fate that befalls another of Il Duce's old goons. Remember Amerigo Domeni? He was the hitman who in 1924 murdered Giacomo Mattiotti, Mussolini's political rival. On release from prison, and after trying to blackmail Mussolini over his part in the crime,

Domini went to ground. He'd ended up in Tripoli, arrested by the British as a spy. He's put before a firing squad and shot. Despite being riddled with seventeen bullets, he somehow survives his own execution and escapes that night. Finding his way back home, he will end up in Florence, working quietly in the haulage business. Re-arrested, then amnestied post-war.

He will be fatally electrocuted in 1967 while changing a light bulb. Mussolini continues his meetings with Hitler. They rendezvous often at the Brenner Pass on the Italian-Austrian border. These days, the Führer is getting to see more of Mussolini than the Italian people do. As the military calamities pile up, his public appearance is becoming increasingly scarce. Mussolini is also becoming increasingly ill, both in body and mind.

At the Palazzo Venezia, his behavior is alarming the staff. He doesn't shave. He dresses oddly. He takes to wearing a shirt with a ridiculously outsized collar, like a pound-shot Napoleon. In manic interludes, he takes to the skies, barnstorming over Italy in his private bomber, or screeching around the countryside in his Alfa Romeo, almost willing himself to have an accident. On other days, he will lapse into depression, hunched like an old man.

grumbling about his stomach ulcer or his lumbago, blaming the war's reverses on the worthless Italian people. And it's only going to get worse. On the morning of June 22nd, 1941, at 4.30am, Mussolini takes a bedside phone call. He is informed of an astounding new development. Germany, as they speak, is invading the Soviet Union. Hitler hadn't even bothered to tell him.

Nor, he understands, does the Fuhrer require Italian assistance. In fact, quite the opposite. But Il Duce exists in a state of denial. In many ways, his biggest blunder was to join the war against Russia. Hitler didn't ask him to do that. He volunteered the Italian armed forces for the Eastern Front and

The universal consensus in Italy was that this is not our war. What have we got to do with Russia? It's not us. And yet he put them in it. Yet again, he is increasingly shackling himself or self-shackled, propelled by what is now not only an admiration for Hitler, but a massive dependence on Hitler psychologically and materially.

Mussolini joins a war which he claims is a parallel war, is one being fought for Italy's interests alongside Germany's. But that very quickly becomes a subordinate war. Sending troops to the Eastern Front is not in Italy's direct national interest. It is subservient to the Nazi war effort. So I think it's losing control of the war. Professor Giulia Albanese.

After 20 years teaching Italian to be violent and soldier-like and war-like, etc., after these 20 years, Italy is less willing to engage with war than it was in 1915.

In order to keep consent, Mussolini also decided in 1940 to accept that university students could be left out of the war, not be enrolled in the war, if they were at university. This is the bourgeoisie, the son of the little bourgeoisie that managed to escape war

And that's something that they wouldn't have done in 1915. These young intellectuals in '15 were all, or a great part, for war and fighting for Italy. And after 20 years of fascist rule, they weren't willing to do so. The number of people going to university grew from 1,000 from 39 to 40. The war is about to come home to Mussolini too.

His two elder sons, Vittorio and Bruno, are flyers on active service, decorated bomber pilots. Vittorio, the eldest, quieter, more studious, has always had to compete for his father's affections with his younger brother. Bruno, brash, a boxer, a playboy, hasn't even had to try. He's a chip off the old block. On August 7th, 1941, Vittorio telephones his father with devastating news.

During a test flight of a new bomber, Bruno has been killed. It happened at an airfield in Pisa. The plane crashed soon after takeoff. He was 23. For Mussolini, the sky is now falling in. On December 7th, having modeled their operation on the one that devastated Taranto, the Japanese Navy launches its audacious attack on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. President Roosevelt responds by declaring war on Japan.

And now, under the terms of the Tripartite Pact, Japan's Axis partners must come to its aid. On December 11th, in a rush to pip Hitler to the announcement, Mussolini gathers himself sufficiently to take to his balcony. The powers of the Pact of Steel, Fascist Italy and Nationalist Socialist Germany, ever closely linked, participate from today on the side of heroic Japan against the United States of America.

In addition to its fight with the British Empire and the Soviet Union, Italy has declared war on America. And not only that, but on its one and a half million Italian-American citizens, part of a huge global expat community across the world. A vast Italian diaspora, which, you know, is bigger than the population of Italy. Much bigger. So this is a double whammy. Say you're an anti-fascist in London, you're persona non grata in Italy, but you're also...

put in a camp by Churchill. Sort of, you know, bizarre kind of contradictions of war. The Italian diaspora, by and large, was fairly enthusiastic about fascism until the outbreak of the Second World War. So the regime, it actually courted expatriate populations in the United States and Argentina and other places. It really wasn't until the declaration of war against the Allies that

that Italian-Americans now pivoted. Well, for one thing, many of them were interned as, you know, enemy aliens in the United States. So there was a real pivot in the Italian-American and other diaspora communities with the onset of the Second World War. Even Hitler has noticed a change in Mussolini. At a meeting at the Brenner Pass, he sits hunched, sipping on chamomile tea.

while the sweet-toothed Hitler wolfs a plate of jam tarts. Between their respective military commanders, a rift is growing. Italian soldiers have been voicing their disgust at the German atrocities being perpetrated against Russian civilians. At least in North Africa, the war is being fought more honorably, thinks the Duce. Hoping to place himself at the center of a German-led victory there, he heads to Libya to visit his troops. It will prove spectacularly mistimed.

When he arrives in July 1942, Rommel's advance has run into the buffers at a railway halt called El Alamein. Mussolini returns looking more sick than ever. Suffering this time, he grumbles from amoebic dysentery. As one of his ministers puts it, he's more likely dying of humiliation. The mighty Duce, bare-chested strongman, love machine, will be put on a strict diet of milk and rice.

He grows gaunt, the stubble of his hair turning patchy and white. His only solace now sought in his weary designations with Clara, little Claretta, in the flat upstairs. There she sits, waiting for her duce, listening to American crooners on the record player, gazing up at the ceiling which she's painted in the signs of the zodiac. But the stars are not aligning for her lover.

In weeks, will commence the Second Battle of El Alamein, which will see General Montgomery's Eighth Army win a decisive victory. Simultaneously that November, Operation Torch, a massive Anglo-US landing, will take place in Morocco and Algeria. Squeezed from both ends, the Axis desert forces will be pressed back into Tunisia. Allied columns now stream under Mussolini's old triumphal arch on the Benghazi road.

200,000 men will surrender. North Africa is lost. Hitler will respond to the crisis by marching into the unoccupied southern zone of France, and with it, ending Italy's territorial gains there too. From Tunisia, Allied commanders cast their gaze north across the Med, to Italy itself, to the island of Sicily. On the streets of Italy, life is getting tough.

Shipments of coal and iron from Germany are run down. There is no more Romanian oil. Food is now severely rationed, prompting riots and strikes in Genoa, Milan, and Turin. On the icy hell of the Russian front, meanwhile, Italian troops have again proved ill-equipped and underprepared. At the end of 1942, as Mussolini is prematurely congratulating Hitler for his great victory at Stalingrad, the Red Army is already targeting Italian divisions.

They, along with Hungarian and Romanian units, will be identified as weak spots in the Axis advance. The Italians will suffer another 100,000 dead or wounded, half its entire expeditionary force, punching through their lines. Thus begins the great Soviet encirclement and annihilation of the German Sixth Army. It's April 7th, 1943. We're in Klesheim Castle, a grand baroque building on the outskirts of Salzburg.

And we're here for yet another of the power summits between Mussolini and Hitler. Or so they like to think. For it's not just Mussolini who is now on the back foot. Stalingrad is the turning point of the war on the Eastern Front. Mussolini has more bad news for Hitler. He wants to pull his troops out of Russia altogether, he says. And not just Russia, pretty much everywhere. The pair talk over four long days, Hitler bolstering their bromance.

They're in this for the long haul, he reminds. But these two dictators are no longer the glamour couple. When they come down the marble steps to bid farewell, an Italian Foreign Office staffer remarks that they look like a pair of corpses. On his return to Rome, Mussolini gives a brief balcony speech, a half-hearted mumble about ultimate victory. It will be his last public appearance as national leader. July 10th, 1943. The south coast of Sicily,

At dawn, under air and naval cover, American amphibious assault craft steer towards the shallow sandy beaches. They're packed with US Marines, Patton's 7th Army. On the southeast tip of the island, it's a similar story. Montgomery's 8th Army, the fabled Desert Rats, burst forth from the surf. Allied forces have planted their boots on Italian soil. There is a grim reality for Italian military commanders.

The men defending the beaches are firing off a few token shots, then coming out with their hands up. There seems little appetite for a fight. Allied planes drop leaflets. Die for Mussolini and Hitler? Or live for Italy and for civilization? They've made their choice. There's that interesting thing about dictatorship. Is he aware of reality anymore?

Because Mussolini, one of the things was he had a feeling for what was going on the ground, at least for a time. But is that true by 1940? Has he cut himself off or do dictators surround themselves with people who tell them what they want to hear? Are the reports coming in just telling him everything's great, everyone loves you, everyone loves the war? Are all these cheering crowds actually cheering crowds? Once the invasion starts of Sicily, there isn't that much resistance to the Allied invasion.

pockets minorities. And that's when you get an anti-fascist resistance, which is a much bigger, bigger thing. Behind the scenes, local mafia groups, never ones to forget a vendetta, are even facilitating the Allied advance.

The Americans, of course, brought in the mobster Lucky Luciano to help them in Sicily. The Mafia had never been pushed out of Sicily. The deputy Mussolini had appointed to deal with them had been so effective and so brutal, but discovered that actually the fascist party was making all kinds of deals with the Mafia.

And so he was booted out. They'd never actually been exterminated. Because obviously the fascists were themselves a mafia. The merits of landing in Italy have been argued over at Allied high command. Slogging up the mountainous peninsula is a road to nowhere. It leads only as far as the Alps. But it is in part a show of solidarity with the Russians, who've been dying in the East by the million.

Strategically, it will provide air bases from which to bomb key Axis targets and further drain its resources. As much as anything else, it is hoped it will also destabilize Mussolini's regime. They're not wrong. Since the fall of Tripoli in January, there has been backroom chatter among the fascist grandees. Whether concluding a separate peace for Italy or fighting on, they need some sense of direction.

In the good old days, policy was thrashed out regularly at the Fascist Grand Council. Yet, since the war began, one hasn't been convened. Surely they plead to Mussolini. The current crisis demands its recall. Seeing it as a means to reassert his authority, to bring them to heel, to rally the nation, Mussolini agrees. A meeting is set for Saturday, July 24th. On news of the impending meeting,

Mussolini receives an urgent invitation from Hitler, but this time it's more like a summons. On July the 19th, the two dictators meet at Feltre in northern Italy for a fateful thirteenth time. There, Hitler upbraids Il Duce in a two-hour amphetamine-fueled rant. Fascism demands leadership, action, not sitting around like some sewing circle.

Back in Germany, 15-year-old boys are signing up to fight, to die for their fatherland. Not running up a white flag at the first whistle of a bullet. Il Duce needs to get tough, start executing the cowards. He must rouse the Italians, expel the Allies from Sicily before it's too late. But it already is. The island's capital, Palermo, is about to fall. The meeting is interrupted by news that Allied bombs, for the first time, are now landing on Rome.

Mussolini excuses himself. Hitler's parting tirade is so incomprehensible that the Italian dictator has to ask the interpreter later for a copy of his notes. But the thrust of it is this. Hitler demands that Italy's armed forces be placed under German military command. The Rome that Mussolini returns to is now one of despair.

Mussolini's personal popularity had actually outlived the regime's popularity considerably. So that by the Second World War, people have many complaints about fascism, but Mussolini tends to rise above it all. It's really once the war comes home that now people turn against Mussolini himself.

When Allied bombers start raining down on Italian cities, Italian civilians blame Mussolini personally for having sent bombers to Britain during the Blitz. That he had only done this as an act of egomania and now we are reaping the consequences of his self-aggrandizement. Dr. Lisa Pine

And as the Italian forces were unsuccessful and becoming more and more reliant on Nazi Germany to help them out of their difficulties, the population was not happy. I mean, the truth is, by the spring to summer of 1943, circumstances on the home front were also dire, with great shortages of food and other necessities. So Mussolini's popularity was more than on the wane by then. It was kind of really at its end by this point.

Rome is also a city of intrigue. Mussolini has tipped off that disgruntled fascist deputies have been convening at the home of Count Ciano. Il Duce is now on the outs with his son-in-law. Ciano had been getting far too casual with his anti-German remarks. He's since removed him as foreign minister and appointed him ambassador to the Vatican, pretty much a non-job. Mussolini thus far has always been skillful at managing perceived threats.

If anyone got close to being a rival, he would either arrest them or send them to the colonies. He's very good at dividing and ruling his entourage. They're called the hierarchs, and some of them are really important figures like Itzalobabo. He sends him off to Libya to do genocide there. But he divides and rules. But this is not the Mussolini of old. He's losing his touch. The chief threat, he will discover, comes not in the shape of a young hothead, but a wise old hand.

his longtime colleague, Dino Grandi. Since he came to power, Mussolini has always been able to call on the unquestioning loyalty of Grandi. A lawyer by training, bearded, distinguished, calm, Grandi is regarded as the most statesmanlike of the ruling clique. He's served as Foreign Minister, Justice Minister, and Ambassador to the UK. As President of the Chamber, he's the closest Il Duce has ever got to a second-in-command.

On the afternoon of July the 21st, Grandi makes a discreet house call to Luigi Ferrazzoni, a veteran fascist deputy, someone he can trust. He wants to show him something, he explains, and produces the draft of a motion he intends to put before the council. It declares, quote, that the immediate restoration is necessary of all state functions allotted to the king, the grand council, the government, parliament, and...

to invite the head of the government to request His Majesty the King to assume effective command of the armed forces and national decision-making. Grandi is asking Mussolini to tender his resignation. One of the peculiarities of fascism is that Mussolini had left the traditional parliamentary structure intact, in part to legitimize the regime. The King has remained head of state throughout fascist rule,

Mussolini as Prime Minister is technically in his post only by royal appointment.

He leaves the king there and I think it's a mistake of fascism in hindsight. They don't take him seriously. He's a figurehead. He loves it. The king, you know, he loves taking over new countries and prancing around on his horse, becoming king of Albania and all this. You know, he has no interest in opposing anything that Mussolini does. He even signs the anti-Semitic laws, you know, the most shameful moment in the Italian monarchy. So they kind of leave this formal power,

with the king who's still head of state and they don't think it will ever be used. And then it is. It's a bold move by Grandi, a dangerous one. But with an invasion of the Italian homeland underway, these are exceptional times. Ferrazzoni gives it his backing. Emboldened, Grandi approaches others: Giuseppe Bottai, the Minister for Education; Umberto Albini, the Under-Secretary of State for the Interior;

Giuseppe Bastianini, who replaced Tiano as Foreign Secretary, each agrees to add his weight behind the motion. The numbers grow. Two generals, de Bono, de Vecchi, the last two surviving members of Mussolini's Big Four, his Quadrum Viri, are cautiously supportive. Just as his seizure of power in 1922 was done legally, so Grandi's move is by the book. As an official motion, the text is even made available to Mussolini by his personal secretary.

But Il Duce remains blind to the threat. He barely reads the document, just dismisses it as contemptible. Grandi tries the personal touch, visiting Mussolini in his cavernous office. In the best interests of Italy, and to avoid an unnecessary scene at the Council, might Il Duce consider resigning? It's a strained encounter. Grandi is not invited to sit, merely pointed towards the door with the rebuke that they shall see each other in the chamber.

As Grandi leaves, he sees a German field marshal, Albert Kesselring, one of Hitler's most decorated commanders, sitting in the antechamber. This is not a good sign. Grandi goes home, packs a pistol, shoves some grenades in his briefcase and prays that he can weather the next 48 hours. People can talk the talk in private, but in the court of Mussolini, can he count on his rebels not to lose their nerve? Saturday, July the 24th.

The council chamber of the Palazzo Venezia. At 5pm the fascist deputies assemble. Like dutiful acolytes, they're dressed in their all-black outfits. Mussolini wears his olive-green military uniform, setting himself apart. To Mussolini, as the presiding officer, it's business as usual. He kicks off with an unscripted, rambling address to the 27 assembled before him.

about how the war, in case anyone has missed it, has entered an extremely critical stage. If they want to blame anyone for the military failings, it's the useless generals. The least he, Mussolini, can do is stay on and sort this mess out. "I thought it wrong," he says, "to abandon ship in the middle of a storm." Germany's military assistance, he adds, is now a vital part of their resistance to the end.

The Wehrmacht should be invited to help defend mainland Italy. Though he doesn't mention the Führer's price, that the Germans take over the running of the show. Like admonished schoolboys, the council members look sheepish. There are toadying pro-Duce speeches. Black shirt hardman Roberto Farinacci, rabidly pro-Nazi, raves maniacally about the brilliance of Hitler. Grandi's heart sinks. He's about to be hung out to dry.

But, slowly, General de Vecchi gets to his feet. He makes a statement that gently warms up to criticizing Il Duce's conduct of the war, the first time anyone has said anything negative publicly. And then it's Grandi's turn. Scanning the room, he clears his throat. All eyes are upon him. Trying not to betray his nerves, he duly reads out his awaited order of the day, complete with its concluding plea to return governance to royal authority.

Though once he hits his stride, he outlives, damning this idiotic war as he calls it and its disastrous effect on the Italian people. He turns to his Duce. "You have imposed a dictatorship on Italy, which is historically immoral." He clutches at his black shirt. "For years you've suffocated our personalities in these funereal clothes. Not so long ago Grandi would have been dragged out and shot."

But these words, from such a trusted colleague, hit home. Mussolini just sits there, hunched over, doodling on his notepad. He looks a broken man, his face is bloodless, streaming with sweat. Ciano is next, declaring that he will be supporting Grandi's motion. One by one, the daggers are plunged into Caesar. By midnight, the meeting has gone on for seven hours.

at 2:15 AM after a short recess. And, having heard enough, Mussolini bites the bullet. He tells them to get on with it, put it to the vote. After a swift ballot, the party secretary reads out the names on the roll. Those opposing Grandi include key fascists, Farinacci and Gaetano Polverelli, the minister of culture. But, of the 27 members voting, there is an overwhelming majority in favor of the motion.

Nineteen for, seven against, with one abstention. It is a de facto vote of no confidence in Mussolini's leadership. Mussolini hauls himself up, at which someone yells out, "Salute the Duce!" "I excuse you from that," he snaps as he stomps to the door.

This is why we are still discussing this moment in a way, because every single aspect has been reconstructed. Every single source that we could find has been read and considered. But it is true that what remains inexplicable is the fact that he accepted the result of this vote. But I think one of the reasons is the shock.

She is not able to deal with recognizing that the country is against him and recognizing that the party is against him and recognizing that the allies are at the door and that he is not able to transform a situation which is, I think he knows it, quite lost. When he gets back home at 4 a.m., Rachele is waiting for him. You've had them all arrested, she asks. Matter of fact...

No, he says, but he will. By 9am Mussolini is back in his office, working away at his desk. It's as if nothing has happened. No one dares mention the events of last night. It's only when Mussolini is handed an invitation to meet with the king at 5pm does it sink in. More so when it's requested that he come in civilian attire. The day is scorchingly hot, surreal. As his car winds up to the Villa Savoia, the king's private residence,

The streets are quiet. Yes, it's Sunday, but with Rome now under threat from the air, people are staying home. En route, Mussolini stops off at some bomb-damaged houses to pose with the residents. Despite it all, he's greeted warmly. He wonders whether he shouldn't just organize some black shirts to retake Rome. Grandi has already been in to see His Majesty.

to explain the outcome of the fascist Grand Council, and, he assumes, to be appointed as provisional head of a new cross-party government. But there is one last twist. The King informs him he is giving the job of Prime Minister to Marshal Pietro Badoglio. Grandi is speechless. He bows, walks out of the room, and leaves public life forever. When the car drives through the gates of the villa,

The king is waiting on the steps, ready to greet Mussolini personally. In the game of dressing up, he's making his point. He is costumed as a grand marshal of the army. Mussolini is in an ill-fitting blue suit. Inside the villa there's some preliminary chit-chat about the stifling weather, before the king and his duche get down to business. Last night's meeting and its damning vote. Mussolini scoffs,

The Fascist Grand Council has no basis in legality. It's an advisory body." But the King has trapped him in his own deceit. Was it not Il Duce who had made it the government's supreme executive body? "My dear Duce," he adds, "it isn't any good anymore. Matters are very serious. Italy is in ruins. The army is completely demoralized. The soldiers have no desire to go on fighting.

"You can certainly be under no illusion as regards Italy's feeling for you. At this moment, you are the most hated man in the country. I am your only remaining friend. That is why I tell you that you need have no fears for your own safety. I will see you are protected." Mussolini slumps into an armchair. "Then it's all over," he sighs. "If your majesty is right, I should present my resignation." "Yes," replies the king.

And I have to tell you that I unconditionally accept your resignation as head of the government. To put it more succinctly, he's deplosed by feudal means. The king asserts his kingly authority. It has always been a monarchy, and Mussolini has always been, in theory, subordinate to the king. But the king has never had the political parental now to overthrow him. No, he does. And he just dismisses him. So it's like that, you know.

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper. It's a whimper, the whimper of fascism. After the scream of Achilles... The king will later describe how Mussolini appeared jaundiced, stooped, old, mumbling about the injustices done to him. Outside, they shake hands. But as Mussolini eases himself down the steps, he sees that his car has been moved across the drive. Irritated, he makes his way towards it.

only to be intercepted by a military police captain, who salutes him and tells him that he has orders to protect his Duce. He may be in danger. Mussolini declines the offer, but the captain insists. He leads him by the arm. More armed police appear. There, waiting, is an ambulance. Without time to react, Mussolini is pushed on board, and five men climb in with him.

He pulls his hat down over his face as the door is slammed shut. In the next episode, the conclusion of this story. As Italy switches sides, Hitler hatches a plan to rescue his pal. Sprung from captivity, Il Duce is installed as head of a puppet regime in the Italian north. With the Axis collapsing on all fronts, Mussolini breaks for the border. His downfall will come at the hands of his own people.

That's next time, in the final part of the Mussolini story.