Who they were
He was born in 1883 at Predappio in Romagna, the son of a blacksmith who named him after the Mexican president Benito Juárez and of a schoolteacher whose profession he briefly followed. He left Italy for Switzerland to avoid conscription, came back to serve, and made his name as an agitator and editor in the north, reaching the editorship of the Socialist Party’s daily Avanti! at twenty-nine.
What they did
A former socialist journalist, he founded the Fascist movement after World War I and took power after the March on Rome in 1922, building a one-party dictatorship as “Il Duce.” He signed the Lateran Treaty in 1929, invaded Ethiopia in 1935, enacted racial laws in 1938, allied with Nazi Germany, and brought Italy into World War II in 1940. Deposed in 1943, he headed a German-backed puppet state and was captured and killed by partisans in April 1945.
Legacy
Historians remember his regime for dictatorship, propaganda, colonial wars, and the catastrophe of World War II for Italy, and “fascism” became a general term for the movement he named.