People of the Revolution and the USSR

National Fascist Party (PNF) Fascists and Nazis 1883–1945 ✕ Executed

The dictator who turned fascism into state power

On 25 July 1943, the king dismissed Mussolini as prime minister and had him arrested.

A socialist journalist turned nationalist during the First World War, Mussolini founded fascism as a movement claiming to overcome class conflict through the nation. After the March on Rome made him prime minister in 1922, he used political violence and institutional change to transform liberal Italy into a one-party dictatorship. Colonial war, alliance with Nazi Germany, and entry into the Second World War brought military defeat and political collapse. Overthrown in 1943, he headed the German-backed Italian Social Republic in the north until partisans captured and executed him in 1945.

Italy state institutions Fascists and Nazis 1895–1988 ○ Natural causes

A Fascist power broker who helped bring down Mussolini

At 2 a.m. on 25 July 1943, the Grandi motion passed 19–8 and shattered Mussolini’s grip on power.

Dino Grandi was a leading Italian Fascist and diplomat who exercised power at the centre of the regime. As foreign minister and ambassador in London, he pursued a cautious diplomatic line toward war, but he also bore responsibility for administering the Fascist state and its policies. After the Allied invasion of Sicily, he drafted and organized the vote on the July 1943 motion calling on the king to resume constitutional command of the armed forces, helping bring about Benito Mussolini’s removal. He went into exile and was later sentenced to death in absentia by the Italian Social Republic’s Fascist tribunal.

Italy state institutions Fascists and Nazis 1903–1944 ✕ Executed

A Fascist diplomat who became a witness to the regime's internal collapse

On 25 July 1943, Ciano voted for Grandi's motion, the act that helped bring down his father-in-law Mussolini.

Galeazzo Ciano was Mussolini's son-in-law and a leading diplomat of Fascist Italy who helped drive the regime's expansion and dependence on Germany before turning against a war he saw ending in catastrophe. He supported the Ethiopian war, the invasion of Albania, and the attack on Greece, while keeping diaries and diplomatic papers during his years as foreign minister. In July 1943 he voted for Dino Grandi's motion at the Fascist Grand Council, helping remove Mussolini, but miscalculated that his privileged position would survive the regime's change. After fleeing to Germany and being handed to the Italian Social Republic, he was executed after the Verona trial; his diaries remain a major record of Fascist responsibility and internal collapse.