Stuff You Always Never Wanted to Know About Mussolini

For whatever reason, as I wandered across the globe on my computer scanning news items this week, I noticed a number of articles related to notorious Italian families. So this has been our Italian week. The Mussolini family was another clan with a very powerful tyrannical man at it's head. Indeed, there are some parallels to the Gotti family.

The Fiat that failed to save Mussolini:

The sleek Berlinetta could not help Il Duce and his mistress escape resistance fighters who tracked them down.The Fiat that drove Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress to their deaths in 1945 has been sold in Switzerland for $107,000 (£65,000) after nearly half a century standing in a garage.
The black luxury coupe was bought by a Swiss intermediary for an unidentified American collector, said a spokesman for British auctioneer Brooks.It was on offer as lot 283 in an auction of vintage cars at Geneva's Automobile Museum.

Italy's fascist leader was executed in April 1945. The sleek black Berlinetta two-door coupe played a role in a defining moment of 20th century history. Mussolini, a notorious womaniser reputed to have fathered a string of illegitimate children, gave the Berlinetta to his lover Claretta Petacci as a present. Petacci could not drive so Mussolini had the large luxury coupe chauffeur-driven for her.

From September 1943 until 1945 Mussolini lived in Gargnano, a small town in northern Italy on Lake Garda. But on April 28 1945, with the German supported state on the verge of collapse, Mussolini and Petacci tried to flee in the Fiat coupe. They were caught by opposing partisan forces as they headed for an airstrip at Chiavenna, where an airplane was waiting to take the pair to neutral Switzerland. Partisans shot Mussolini's 16-man escort. Mussolini and Petacci were also shot dead and their mutilated bodies hung in Milan's Piazzale Loreto square, along with those of other fascist officials.

The Fiat was pushed into a lake by the resistance, who considered it a symbol of fascism. But the sleek coupe was later recovered from its watery grave and smuggled to Switzerland on a railway car under piles of hay. There is no sign of it's wartime damage in the car's interior of sumptuous red leather or on the aluminium bodywork and fastback tail. It must have been retrieved from it's watery grave fairly quickly. Since 1950 the car has remained in the family of its current Swiss owner and vendor in French-speaking Switzerland. It has only travelled 620 miles in the last forty years.

Mussolini, who ruled Italy from the early 1920s until 1943, was a keen motorist and owned a series of Alfa Romeos. The only other Mussolini car to hit the market recently was a 1935 Alfa 6C 2300, which Brooks sold for $320,000 (£195,000) three years ago.

Mussolini's museum pieces:
Visitors are drawn to Mussolini's bedroom:

Rome's newest museum has opened its doors for the first time, and the most controversial exhibit is the ornate bed used by the Italian Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini. The museum is just one of the houses in Mussolini's private compound and now renovation work is starting on his vast private villa next door. Even after half a century of neglect Villa Torlonia remains a neo-classical masterpiece.

For 18 years, this leafy paradise sheltered one of the twentieth century's most brutal leaders.
The authorities in Rome say British and American troops wrecked the villa's interior when they captured the city in WWII. In one room, pin-ups painted on a wall by an American GI will be preserved in the renovation process as historic artefacts. But the biggest draw for visitors to the compound is Mussolini's ornate bed. It has also proved the most controversial.

Italy's foremost expert on fascism, Professor Emilio Gentili, deplores moves to humanize a ruthless leader whom he calls a monster.
"Mussolini was a dictator who destroyed freedom, who destroyed parliamentary government and was a great megalomaniac."

Known as Il Duce, Mussolini was a one-time journalist who created Europe's first fascist state. In the 1920s and 1930s he was praised for modernising Italy. But he murdered political opponents and inspired his ally, Hitler, to even greater crimes against humanity.

One of his sons, Romano Mussolini, retraces the carefree years he spent there as a child under the watchful eye of a dictator who stopped at nothing.
"I have happy memories of living in the house", he recalls.
"I loved my father. He always had lunch with me and my brothers and sisters in the dining room every day. I'm pleased the villa is going to be restored because the building is a work of art in itself."
But for other Italians, it's a history project that has awakened ghosts they would prefer to forget.



Mussolini's 'brain and blood for sale on internet':

The granddaughter of Italy's fascist dictator Benito Mussolini has said that blood and parts of his brain have been stolen to sell on the internet. Alessandra Mussolini, a former showgirl turned MP, said she immediately informed the police when she found out. The listing, on auction site Ebay, reportedly showed images of a wooden container and ampoules of blood. Ebay, which does not allow the sale of human matter on its site, said that the listing was removed within hours.
The initial price requested for the material was 15,000 euros ($22,000; £13,000).

"This is very serious, these are the kinds of things we have to guard against," said Ms Mussolini, who was attending a seminar on internet crime when the listing was discovered. The BBC's Mark Duff, in Milan, says that Alessandra Mussolini is a colourful character in her own right who has remained doggedly faithful to her grandfather's political legacy. Ms Mussolini said that the remains were stolen from Milan's Policlinico hospital.

After Benito Mussolini was killed in 1945 his body was put on public display in a Milan square. It was then taken to the hospital for an autopsy. However, doctors at the hospital denied any remains of the former Italian leader were kept at the premises, saying they were destroyed in the years that followed.
A spokesperson for Ebay said that the listing violated its own regulations and was promptly taken down.
"It was removed before 11am, a few hours after it was put online and before anyone had made any bids," said spokesperson Irina Pavlova.

The world sure has it's share of ghouls and weirdos. They pop out of the woodwork every damn time a brain goes up for sale.