the name's Mussolini. Benito Mussolini

[akirav]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/ ... -mi5-italy

Recruited by MI5: the name's Mussolini. Benito Mussolini
Documents reveal Italian dictator got start in politics in 1917 with help of £100 weekly wage from MI5

Benito Mussolini
This article is more than 14 years old
Recruited by MI5: the name's Mussolini. Benito Mussolini
This article is more than 14 years old
Documents reveal Italian dictator got start in politics in 1917 with help of £100 weekly wage from MI5
Tom Kington in Rome
Tue 13 Oct 2009 21.15 CEST
52

History remembers Benito Mussolini as a founder member of the original Axis of Evil, the Italian dictator who ruled his country with fear and forged a disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany. But a previously unknown area of Il Duce's CV has come to light: his brief career as a British agent.

Archived documents have revealed that Mussolini got his start in politics in 1917 with the help of a £100 weekly wage from MI5.

For the British intelligence agency, it must have seemed like a good investment. Mussolini, then a 34-year-old journalist, was not just willing to ensure Italy continued to fight alongside the allies in the first world war by publishing propaganda in his paper. He was also willing to send in the boys to "persuade'' peace protesters to stay at home.

Mussolini's payments were authorised by Sir Samuel Hoare, an MP and MI5's man in Rome, who ran a staff of 100 British intelligence officers in Italy at the time.

Cambridge historian Peter Martland, who discovered details of the deal struck with the future dictator, said: "Britain's least reliable ally in the war at the time was Italy after revolutionary Russia's pullout from the conflict. Mussolini was paid £100 a week from the autumn of 1917 for at least a year to keep up the pro-war campaigning – equivalent to about £6,000 a week today."

Hoare, later to become Lord Templewood, mentioned the recruitment in memoirs in 1954, but Martland stumbled on details of the payments for the first time while scouring Hoare's papers.

As well as keeping the presses rolling at Il Popolo d'Italia, the newspaper he edited, Mussolini also told Hoare he would send Italian army veterans to beat up peace protesters in Milan, a dry run for his fascist blackshirt units.

"The last thing Britain wanted were pro-peace strikes bringing the factories in Milan to a halt. It was a lot of money to pay a man who was a journalist at the time, but compared to the £4m Britain was spending on the war every day, it was petty cash," said Martland.

"I have no evidence to prove it, but I suspect that Mussolini, who was a noted womaniser, also spent a good deal of the money on his mistresses."

After the armistice, Mussolini began his rise to power, assisted by electoral fraud and blackshirt violence, establishing a fascist dictorship by the mid-1920s.

His colonial ambitions in Africa brought him into contact with his old paymaster again in 1935. Now the British foreign secretary, Hoare signed the Hoare-Laval pact, which gave Italy control over Abyssinia.

"There is no reason to believe the two men were friends, although Hoare did have an enduring love affair with Italy," said Martland, whose research is included in Christopher Andrew's history of MI5, Defence of the Realm, which was published last week.

The unpopularity of the Hoare-Laval pact in Britain forced Hoare to resign. Mussolini, meanwhile, built on his new colonial clout to ally with Hitler, entering the second world war in 1940, this time to fight against the allies.

Deposed following the allied invasion of Italy in 1943, Mussolini was killed with his mistress, Clara Petacci, by Italian partisans while fleeing Italy in an attempt to reach Switzerland two years later.

Martland said: "Mussolini ended his life hung upside down in Milan, but history has not been kind to Hoare either, condemned as an appeaser of fascism alongside Neville Chamberlain."

[Golden Age]

Τη θυμάμαι αυτή την ιστορία στη δεκαετία του 2000.

Για ποιο λόγο όμως οι βρεττανικές μυστικές υπηρεσίες χρηματοδοτούσαν έναν αριστερό που αγωνιζόταν ενάντια στη συμμετοχή της Ιταλίας στην Αντάντ και στον πόλεμο;

Επίσης, η ΜΙ5 είναι η υπηρεσία αντικατασκοπίας της Βρεττανίας, με τις ξένες χώρες ασχολείται η ΜΙ6, η περιβόητη Intelligence Service.

[Maspoli]

Τη θυμάμαι αυτή την ιστορία στη δεκαετία του 2000.

Για ποιο λόγο όμως οι βρεττανικές μυστικές υπηρεσίες χρηματοδοτούσαν έναν αριστερό που αγωνιζόταν ενάντια στη συμμετοχή της Ιταλίας στην Αντάντ και στον πόλεμο;

Είσαι ψεύτης ή άσχετος;

[Golden Age]

Τη θυμάμαι αυτή την ιστορία στη δεκαετία του 2000.

Για ποιο λόγο όμως οι βρεττανικές μυστικές υπηρεσίες χρηματοδοτούσαν έναν αριστερό που αγωνιζόταν ενάντια στη συμμετοχή της Ιταλίας στην Αντάντ και στον πόλεμο;

Είσαι ψεύτης ή άσχετος;

Τί απο αυτά δεν ισχύει; Ο Μουσσολίνι μέχρι να φυλακιστεί ήταν εναντίον του πολέμου και αριστερός.

[Maspoli]

Ο Μουσολίνι ηταν υπερ του πολεμου από το 1914 τουλάχιστον και γι' αυτό είχε εκδιωχθεί απο το σοσιαλιστικό κόμμα.
Το άρθρο λέει οτι μπηκε στο pay roll το 1917.

ΥΓ. H MI6 δημιουργήθηκε αργότερα. Ορθώς η αναφορά ειναι για MI5

[πατησιωτης]

Τη θυμάμαι αυτή την ιστορία στη δεκαετία του 2000.

Για ποιο λόγο όμως οι βρεττανικές μυστικές υπηρεσίες χρηματοδοτούσαν έναν αριστερό που αγωνιζόταν ενάντια στη συμμετοχή της Ιταλίας στην Αντάντ και στον πόλεμο;

Είσαι ψεύτης ή άσχετος;

Τί απο αυτά δεν ισχύει; Ο Μουσσολίνι μέχρι να φυλακιστεί ήταν εναντίον του πολέμου και αριστερός.

Ο Μουσσολίνι όντως ήταν αριστερός αλλά άλλαξε και τάχθηκε υπέρ του πολέμου κατά τη διάρκειά του και για αυτό τον πλήρωναν.

[Golden Age]

Ο Μουσολίνι ηταν υπερ του πολεμου από το 1914 τουλάχιστον και γι' αυτό είχε εκδιωχθεί απο το σοσιαλιστικό κόμμα.
Το άρθρο λέει οτι μπηκε στο pay roll το 1917.

ΥΓ. H MI6 δημιουργήθηκε αργότερα. Ορθώς η αναφορά ειναι για MI5

Με μπερδεψε το "got start in politics".

[sys3x]

στον νήμα.