Benito Mussolini was born on July 29, 1881, in Dovia di Predappio to parents Alessandro and Rosa Mussolini. His father, a devoted socialist, named him after Benito Juarez, the leftist Mexican revolutionary.

Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator and leader of the National Fascist Party, was born on July 29, 1883.

At the age of 17, Benito Mussolini became a member of the Socialist party.

Mussolini's early career

In July 1902, Mussolini emigrated to Switzerland to avoid compulsory military service. During this time, he studied the ideas of various philosophers and became active in the Italian socialist movement in Switzerland.

In 1903, Mussolini was arrested by the Bernese police for advocating a violent general strike and was deported to Italy.

In December 1904, Mussolini returned to Italy to take advantage of an amnesty for desertion from the military. He joined the corps of the Bersaglieri in Forlì on 30 December 1904.

Mussolini was involved in military work in 1905.

In February 1909, Mussolini left Italy to take the job as the secretary of the labour party in Trento, which was then part of Austria-Hungary. He also did office work for the local Socialist Party and edited its newspaper.

In 1910, Benito Mussolini began writing and distributing socialist essays and even a novel, which contributed to his growing prominence as a socialist.

In September 1911, Mussolini participated in a riot against the Italian war in Libya, denouncing Italy's 'imperialist war' and earning a five-month jail term.

Benito Mussolini took on the role of editor at Avanti, an Italian newspaper.

In 1913, Mussolini published Giovanni Hus, il veridico, an historical and political biography about the life and mission of the Czech ecclesiastic reformer Jan Hus and his militant followers, the Hussites. During this socialist period of his life, Mussolini sometimes used the pen name 'Vero Eretico' ('sincere heretic').

On November 15, 1914, Mussolini initiated the publication of the newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia, in which he supported the thesis of Italian intervention in the war against the militarism of the Central Empires.

On 5 December 1914, Mussolini denounced orthodox socialism for failing to recognise that the war had made national identity and loyalty more significant than class distinction. He fully demonstrated his transformation in a speech that acknowledged the nation as an entity, a notion he had rejected prior to the war.

In 1915, Benito Mussolini re-joined the Italian Army.

On 25 December 1915, Mussolini married Rachele Guidi in Treviglio, Italy.

On 25 December 1915, Benito Mussolini contracted a marriage with his compatriot Rachele Guidi, who had already borne him a daughter, Edda, at Forlì in 1910.

On 11 January 1916, Benito Mussolini legally recognised his son with Ida Dalser, a woman born in Sopramonte, a village near Trento.

Mussolini's military experience included about nine months of active, front-line trench warfare. During this time, he contracted paratyphoid fever. His military exploits ended in February 1917 when he was wounded accidentally by the explosion of a mortar bomb in his trench.

After the end of World War I in 1918, Italy walked out of the peace conference due to their treatment by the allies and anger at what was considered a deficient settlement.

On 23 March 1919, Benito Mussolini re-formed the Milan fascio as the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Squad), consisting of 200 members.

The Fascist Party, led by Benito Mussolini, was founded on May 29, 1919, marking the beginning of the rise of fascism in Italy.

In August 1920, the Blackshirt militia was used to break the general strike which started at the Alfa Romeo factory in Milan, as part of the suppression of the socialist movement.

In 1920, socialists emerged victorious in local elections across Italy, leading to a response from Fascist militias who attacked union organizers and municipal administrators, causing disruption in the functioning of local governments.

After the assassination of Giulio Giordani, the Blackshirts were active in the suppression of the socialist movement, especially in the Po Valley, which included a strong anarcho-syndicalist component.

During the Third Fascist Congress on 7–10 November 1921, Mussolini promoted a nationalist program and renamed his movement National Fascist Party (PNF), which enrolled 320,000 members by late 1921.

On 2 August 1922, in Ancona, Fascist squads moved in from the countryside and razed all buildings occupied by socialists, which was then repeated in Genoa and other cities.

On 3 and 4 August 1922, there was street fighting between socialists and fascists in Milan, during which the fascists destroyed the printing presses of the socialist newspaper Avanti! and burned its buildings.

On September 27, 1922, Benito Mussolini and the Blackshirts marched in Rome to persuade the King to make Mussolini Prime Minister.

On September 28, 1922, Benito Mussolini became the 40th Prime Minister of Italy.

On 24 October 1922, Benito Mussolini declared in front of 60,000 militants at a Fascist rally in Naples that their program is simple: they want to rule Italy.

On 26 October 1922, the former Prime Minister Antonio Salandra warned the then Prime Minister, Luigi Facta, that Mussolini was demanding his resignation and preparing to march on Rome. However, Facta did not believe Salandra and thought that Mussolini would only become a minister of his government.

The March on Rome was staged on the night of October 27–28, 1922, where approximately 30,000 armed Fascists marched into Rome, demanding the resignation of Italian Prime Minister Luigi Facta.

The March on Rome was an organized mass demonstration and a coup d'état in October 1922, resulting in Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party ascending to power in the Kingdom of Italy without armed conflict.

On October 28, 1922, Benito Mussolini established his Fascist dictatorship in Italy.

Benito Mussolini becomes the Prime Minister of Italy, leading the Fascist Party and establishing a totalitarian regime, which significantly impacted Italian politics, society, and foreign policy during the interwar period.

The March on Rome was a march by which Italian dictator Benito Mussolini came to power in 1922. It marked the beginning of Mussolini's Fascist regime in Italy.

On 30 October 1922, the King handed power to Mussolini, who was supported by the military, the business class, and the right wing.

On 4 November 1922, Mussolini implemented the March on Rome after learning about Prime Minister Luigi Facta's mission to organize a large demonstration to celebrate the national victory during the war.

The government passed the Acerbo Law, which transformed Italy into a single national constituency and granted a two-thirds majority of the seats in Parliament to the party or group of parties that received at least 25% of the votes. This law applied in the elections of 6 April 1924.

The national alliance, consisting of Fascists, most of the old Liberals and others, won 64% of the vote in the elections held under the Acerbo Law.

Giacomo Matteotti, MP and Unitarian Socialist Party secretary, is killed few days after his famous speech about electoral violations during the elections held on April 6th, 1924. The political assassinations perpetuated by the State begin.

MVSN consuls met with Mussolini and gave him an ultimatum to crush the opposition or they would do so without him, leading Mussolini to drop all pretense of democracy.

In 1925, Mussolini orchestrated a coup d'etat to establish a personal dictatorship in Italy, effectively ending the democratic system. The coup began with his address to the Chamber of Deputies and was solidified with the 'Decree on Powers of the Head of Government' on December 24, 1925, granting him extensive control and authority.

On September 29, 1925, Benito Mussolini assumed the role of a dictator in Italy, consolidating his power and influence over the country.

Mussolini passed a law that changed his formal title to 'Head of the Government', effectively transforming his government into a de facto legal dictatorship.

The Opera Nazionale Balilla was created through Mussolini's decree of 3 April 1926, and was led by Ricci for the following eleven years. It included children between the ages of 8 and 18, grouped as the Balilla and the Avanguardisti.

Mussolini survived a first assassination attempt by Violet Gibson, an Irish woman, and daughter of Lord Ashbourne, who was deported after her arrest.

15-year-old Anteo Zamboni attempted to shoot Mussolini in Bologna and was lynched on the spot.

Over a period of 2-3 years, Mussolini slowly changed laws, giving himself more and more power. By 1927 he had power to do whatever he pleased, making the nation into a police state.

Mussolini initiated the 'Battle for Land' policy in 1928, focusing on land reclamation. While some projects were successful for propaganda purposes, others were not, leading to inconsistent outcomes and high peasant poverty.

Mussolini signed a concordat and treaty with the Roman Catholic Church, granting Vatican City independent statehood and recognizing the Catholic religion as Italy's state religion. This led to the Church regaining authority over marriage, teaching of Catholicism in secondary schools, and other privileges.

On September 29, 1929, Benito Mussolini adopted the title Il Duce, which means the Leader in Italian, further solidifying his authoritarian rule in Italy.

During the 'Pacification of Libya', the Fascist regime waged a genocidal campaign against the Libyan population, confining over half the population of Cyrenaica to concentration camps and staging chemical warfare attacks against the Bedouin.

In 1933, Mussolini ordered that miscegenation be made a crime in Libya to prevent interbreeding between Italians and Libyans, citing the French in Tunisia as an example of what he wanted to avoid.

The political assassinations perpetuated by the State begin.

By 1934, the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (Institute for Industrial Reconstruction) had been created to rescue, restructure, and finance banks and private companies that went bankrupt during the Great Depression.

Mussolini invades Abyssinia (Ethiopia).

Austro-German treaty was signed, declaring Austria as a 'German state' aligned with Berlin and allowing pro-Nazis to enter the Austrian cabinet.

In 1936, Mussolini invaded Abyssinia, now known as Ethiopia, with the aim of expanding Italian territory and exerting control over the region. This invasion was part of his larger ambition to dominate the Mediterranean Sea.

On October 25, 1936, the Rome-Berlin Axis was formed, bringing Italy and Germany closer together in a political and military alliance.

By 1937, the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale had become a major shareholder in Italian industry, controlling a significant portion of the capital in various sectors.

In May 1938, Adolf Hitler met with Benito Mussolini to discuss the division of Europe, marking a significant event in the lead-up to World War II.

The Pact of Steel was signed, binding together Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in a full military alliance.

On September 1, 1938, Benito Mussolini's government revoked the citizenship of Jews in Italy, leading to discriminatory policies and persecution.

Il Grand Council of Fascism approves the 'Declaration of Race', a pivotal event in the institutionalization of racial discrimination within the fascist regime.

The Italian Council of Ministers approves the second group of anti-Jewish provisions, further solidifying the discriminatory measures against the Jewish community.

Count Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini's son-in-law and foreign minister, outlined the dictator's foreign policy objectives regarding France in his diary entry dated 8 November 1938.

Mussolini invited the French ambassador to attend the opening of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, during which the assembled deputies began to demonstrate loudly against France, demanding territorial concessions.

In February 1939, Italy's Fascist Party, under Mussolini's leadership, banned Jews from joining the party, furthering discriminatory measures against the Jewish population.

During a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council, Italo Balbo accused Mussolini of 'licking Hitler's boots' and criticized the Duce's pro-German foreign policy. Despite the dissent from many gerarchi like Balbo, Mussolini's control of the foreign-policy machinery meant this dissidence counted for little.

The Pact of Steel was a military alliance between Germany (Nazism) and Italy (Fascism), which led to Italy's involvement in World War II.

Mussolini personally intervened to Hitler against the incarceration of 183 professors from Jagiellonian University in Kraków, leading to the freeing of 101 Poles.

On June 10, 1940, Italy, under the leadership of Mussolini, joined Hitler in Germany's wars after initially withholding formal allegiance to either side in the battle between Germany and the Allies.

Italian advances in the Sudan and Kenya led to the conquest of British Somaliland, becoming part of Italian East Africa.

Mussolini first learned of Operation Barbarossa after the invasion of the Soviet Union had begun on 22 June 1941, and was not asked by Hitler to involve himself.

On 25 June 1941, Mussolini inspected the first units at Verona, which served as his launching pad to Russia.

Mussolini told the Council of Ministers on 5 July 1941 that his only worry was that Germany might defeat the Soviet Union before the Italians arrived.

Mussolini's son Bruno was killed in an air accident while flying a Piaggio P.108 bomber on a test mission on August 7, 1941.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Mussolini declared war on the United States on 11 December 1941.

In June 1942, General Mario Robotti issued an order in line with a directive received from Mussolini to imprison all Slovenes and replace them with Italians, in order to ensure that political and ethnic frontiers coincide.

Benito Mussolini and his longtime mistress, Clara Petacci, were executed by Italian partisans as they attempted to escape to Switzerland. Their bodies were publicly displayed in Milan.

During the Grand Council meeting, a resolution was passed by a margin of 19-8, asking the king to resume his full constitutional powers, effectively expressing a vote of no confidence in Mussolini. This motion authorized the king to dismiss Mussolini from office.

Benito Mussolini is dismissed from office and subsequently arrested. This marks a significant shift in the leadership of Italy during World War II, leading to major political changes.

Mussolini was rescued from his prison at the Hotel Campo Imperatore in the Gran Sasso raid by a special Fallschirmjäger unit and Waffen-SS commandos. This rescue saved Mussolini from being turned over to the Allies in accordance with the armistice.

In September 1943, a new Fascist government under the leadership of Mussolini assumed administration of central and northern Italy, dividing the country into two. The new state was named Repubblica Sociale Italiana (RSI).

Mussolini agreed to set up a new regime, the Italian Social Republic (RSI), informally known as the Salò Republic. The new regime was much reduced in territory and faced territorial losses to Germany.

Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were captured by communist partisans near the village of Dongo and were subsequently executed. Their bodies were later dumped in Piazzale Loreto in Milan and subjected to public abuse.

On April 28, 1945, Benito Mussolini died.

The council of partisan leaders, led by the Communists, secretly decided to execute Mussolini and 15 leading Fascists in retaliation. They were executed on April 29, 1945, and their bodies were hung at an Esso gas station in the Piazzale Loreto in Milan.

Benito Mussolini and a group of fascists, along with German soldiers, set out for Switzerland with the intention of escaping to Spain. This marked a desperate attempt to evade capture and seek refuge.