April 28, 2017
Benito Mussolini executed

On this day in 1945, “Il Duce,” Benito Mussolini (1883 – 1945) and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are shot by Italian partisans who had captured the couple as they attempted to flee to Switzerland. The 61-year-old deposed former dictator of Italy was established by his German allies as the figurehead of a puppet government in northern Italy during the German occupation toward the close of the war. As the Allies fought their way up the Italian peninsula, defeat of the Axis powers all but certain, Mussolini considered his options. Not wanting to fall into the hands of either the British or the Americans, and knowing that the communist partisans, who had been fighting the remnants of roving Italian fascist soldiers and thugs in the north, would try him as a war criminal, he settled on escape to a neutral country.

He and his mistress made it to the Swiss border, only to discover that the guards had crossed over to the partisan side. Knowing they would not let him pass, he disguised himself in a Luftwaffe coat and helmet, hoping to slip into Austria with some German soldiers. His subterfuge proved incompetent, and he and Petacci were discovered by partisans and shot, their bodies then transported by truck to Milan, where they were hung upside down and displayed publicly for revilement by the masses. (History.com website)

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) rose to power in the wake of World War I as a leading proponent of Fascism (Robert Paxton, a professor emeritus of social science at Columbia University in New York who is widely considered the father of fascism studies, defined fascism as “a form of political practice distinctive to the 20th century that arouses popular enthusiasm by sophisticated propaganda techniques for an anti-liberal, anti-socialist, violently exclusionary, expansionist nationalist agenda.”). Originally a revolutionary Socialist, he forged the paramilitary Fascist movement in 1919 and became prime minister in 1922. Mussolini’s military might made Italy predominant in the Mediterranean region, though he exhausted his armed forces by the late 1930s. Mussolini allied himself with Hitler, relying on the German dictator to prop up his leadership during World War II. He died trying to escape.

Why should we lift up a fascist dictator like Mussolini or the failed military campaign of death and destruction like Hitler’s? We remember their hate and their attempts at death and extermination so that we do not allow such leaders to attempt similar atrocities in the future. Those who repeat the failures of the past are those who fail to remember them for the future. It will only be with G-d’s help and the efforts of people of faith lead by the Holy Spirit that we will succeed in remembering not to forget.

This week please collect bottles of house cleaner for Trinity’s Table.

Pastor Dave