My Diary, 1915-1917

BENITO AMILCARE ANDREA MUSSOLINI (29 July 1883 - 28 April 1945) was an Italian politician, journalist, and leader of the National Fascist Party (Partito Nazionale Fascista; PNF), ruling the country as Prime Minister from 1922-1943. He ruled constitutionally until 1925, when he dropped all pretense of democracy and set up a legal dictatorship. Known as Il Duce (The Leader), Mussolini was the founder of Italian Fascism.

On 10 June 1940, with the Fall of France imminent, Mussolini officially entered World War II on the side of Germany, believing Italy could gain territorial concessions from France and he could then concentrate his forces on a major offensive in North Africa, where British and Commonwealth forces were outnumbered by Italian forces. In the summer of 1941 Mussolini sent Italian forces to participate in the invasion of the Soviet Union, and war with the U.S. followed in December.

On 24 July 1943, soon after the start of the Allied invasion of Italy, the Grand Council of Fascism voted against him, and the King had him arrested the following day. On 12 September 1943, Mussolini was rescued from prison in the Gran Sasso raid by German special forces. On 25 April 1945, with total defeat looming, Mussolini attempted to escape north, but was captured and summarily executed near Lake Como by Italian Communists..

RITA WELLMAN (1890-1965) was an early twentieth century American writer of drama, fiction and biography. Four of her plays were performed by the Provincetown Players, an influential collective of artists, writers, intellectuals and amateur theater enthusiasts, and her 1918 play, The Gentile Wife, was performed on Broadway. Her other books include The Wings of Desire (1919) and Eugénie, Star-Crossed Empress of the French (1941), about the nineteenth-century French empress Eugénie who married Napoleon III. Wellman lived in Greenwich Village in New York and died in 1965.