Italy In Wwii

Benito Mussolini

Benito Mussolini was born on July 29, 1883, in Predappio, Italy. His father was Alessandro Mussolini, who was a blacksmith and an atheist, meaning he did not believe in God. His mother, Rosa Maltoni, was a teacher and a devout Roman-Catholic. His full name is Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini, and his father named him this in honor of three leaders of revolutions whom he admired. Alessandro believed the world was an unfair place, and rebellion against those in authority was the only solution, and he instilled these beliefs into his son. Mussolini was violent, stubborn, and sullen, and he was a bully who had few friends in school. He was sent to boarding school at the age of nine, but was expelled two years later, when he stabbed a student with a penknife, and then attacked his teacher. He was transferred to another school, where he stabbed another student. Although he was very violent, he was also extremely smart, and graduated with honors and a diploma that allowed him to teach elementary school. He left Italy in 1902 to go look for a job, and ended up in Switzerland, where he was eventually arrested for vagrancy, or homelessness. Once he was released from jail, he joined a group of Italian socialists, who helped him become a journalist. He moved back to Italy in 1904 and served in the army for two years. He married Rachele Guidi in 1910, and they had four kids. Mussolini actually forced Guidi (who used to be his student) to marry him. When WWI started, Mussolini began preaching that Italy should join the Allies, which caused him to be kicked out of the Socialist party, since they preached noninvolvement.

When he was kicked out of the Socialist party, he created his own political party, known as Fascism. The Fascists became so powerful that in 1922, they threatened to march on Rome and seize the government. The king of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, was so alarmed by this that he invited Mussolini to become the prime minister. In four years, Mussolini was running the country, although the king kept his position since the people of Italy loved him. Mussolini became known as il Duce, which means The Leader. He was not anti-Semitic, and even had Jewish friends, some of which had helped him establish Fascism. He was widely quoted as saying "Anti-Semitism does not exist in Italy."

Mussolini, who had by this time formed a strong friendship with Hitler, forced his country to ally themselves with Germany. By 1943, however, he was, in his own words, "the most detested, indeed hated, man in Italy." He fled after the Allies captured Italy, but was captured and shot by his own countrymen on April 28, 1945, in Milan, Italy.

Josef Mengele

Josef Mengele was born in 1911, in Gunzburg, Germany. He was a German doctor who was known as the Angel of Death. He joined the Nazi party in 1938, and then went to Auschwitz in May of 1943 to work as a "doctor." While he was there, he sent 400,000 prisoners to the gas chambers, thousands of which were Jews. He directed arriving prisoners to go "left or right" which usually meant life or death. He enjoyed doing this, and performed experiments on the people that he told to go one way. His experiments mostly consisted of trying to