The First Fall of Mussolini, July 1943

Abstract In the early hours of 25 July 1943, after a sitting which lasted for over nine hours, a vote was taken at the Wnal meeting of the Fascist Grand Council. Nineteen of the twenty-six high-ranking Fascists attending the Grand Council voted for a motion which led eventually to the removal of Mussolini as the head of the Italian government. When Mussolini met the king for a slightly earlier than normal audience on the afternoon of 25 July, Victor Emmanuel III told him that there was to be a new government under Marshal Pietro Badoglio. Not only was Mussolini dismissed as head of government; the king had him arrested by a waiting group of carabinieri (military policemen) within the palace grounds, and taken away to a carabinieri barracks in Rome in a windowless military ambulance.