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It happened today: on July 25, 1943, the fascist regime imploded. The Grand Council distrusts Mussolini

On 25 July 1943 the Grand Council distrusted Mussolini. The Duce is arrested and transferred to the Gran Sasso, then freed by the Nazis. Fascism implodes, Italy is in disarray and is invaded

It happened today: on July 25, 1943, the fascist regime imploded. The Grand Council distrusts Mussolini

Since a policy without hopes or arguments - especially on the left - teems with so many ghostbusters of fascism, it would be a serious accident to forget that today - July 25 - is the anniversary of a decisive event in the history of the country, which took place on the same day in 1943, when the fascist regime imploded. It had taken place during the night the meeting of the Grand Council of Fascism, which was, in practice, the only organ introduced into the Albertine Statute, capable of distrusting Mussolini.

Reading the minutes of that nocturnal debate is very interesting, not only for the harshness of the indictments, but for the state of prostration with which the Duce is described, who does not even seem to react to the accusations of his boyars. The discussion ended with the vote on the agenda presented by Dino Grandi, which was approved by a majority. That same morning Mussolini went to the king, who was no stranger to the conspiracy (as he hadn't been on October 28, 1922 after the March on Rome and its surroundings), who practically had him arrested by the carabinieri who loaded him into an ambulance and took him to a Roman clinic. A few days later the Duce – a mockery of fate – was transferred to the island of Ventotene, where many opponents of the regime were on ''forced holiday'', who in those days had been freed by the Badoglio government and were preparing to leave the island. Among them, the socialist leader Pietro Nenni who, in his Memoirs, tells of having observed Mussolini at the window from afar with a telescope. And he remembers that many years before they had been incarcerated together in their sunny Romagna. The fascism fell apart in one night.

The Pdf had never had so many subscribers also because the subscription had become compulsory; it had headquarters, hierarchs, officials, militants; but no one attempted the slightest reaction. While the people demonstrated in the squares, it was all a stampede or a lock up in their houses, while in a few days the Badoglio government dismantled the institutions of the regime starting from the Corporations which were commissioned, with the appointment of anti-fascist personalities, often coming from the trade unionism of liberal Italy. Thinking about it, the speed with which the same power groups moved that had favored the rise of the regime and prospered within it, starting with the Sovereign and Badoglio himself, is impressive. Allied landing in Sicily it took place in the first days of July; a few weeks later the Grand Council distrusted Mussolini and the king had him arrested and put into custody. The new government contacted the Allied Command to stipulate an armistice. The stipulation took place in Sicilia in the Syracusan hamlet of Cassibile, in the Santa Teresa Longarini district and remained secret for five days, in compliance with a clause of the pact which provided for it to enter into force from the moment of its public announcement. On the afternoon of 8 September 1943 at 17:30 (18:30 for Italy), Radio Algiers broadcast the proclamation in English by US general Dwight Eisenhower.

At 19:42 in Italy, Prime Minister Badoglio spread the news with a proclamation broadcast by the microphones of the EIAR.

The proclamation read on the radio:

«The Italian government, recognizing the impossibility of continuing the unequal struggle against the overwhelming enemy power, with the intention of sparing further and more serious disasters for the nation, has asked for an armistice from General Eisenhower, commander in chief of the Anglo-American allied forces. The request has been accepted. Consequently, all acts of hostility against the Anglo-American forces by the Italian forces in all places must cease. However, they will react to any attacks from any other source.

Badoglio had him transferred Mussolini on the Gran Sasso, from where it was liberated by a German commando on 12 September. The reaction of the Italian army, engaged on various fronts, was that of surprise and bewilderment, in the absence of precise orders and in the face of a German action which wasted no time in invading the entire peninsula. Fascism rose as a "republican", under the leadership of Mussolini, in the puppet state of the CSR, while the king and the Court fled from Rome to reach first Pescara, then Brindisi and Bari in order to safeguard the continuity of the State and to fight together with the new allies. A civil war began in the North which ended on April 25, 1945.

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