Benito Mussolini was well paid by British Government as their Agent in WW I, Sources: Yahoo News/The Guardian/ AP, Oct 14, 09

FILE - This is a January 14, 1939 file photo showing Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. standing between Italian Foreign Minster Count Galeazzo Ciano and British Prime Minister Sir Neville Chamberlain, right, at the Termini railway station in Rome. A historian says Benito Mussolini was well paid as a British agent during World War I. The Guardian newspaper reported Wednesday Oct. 14, 2009 that Peter Martland of Cambridge University discovered that Mussolini was paid 100 pounds a week by Britain in 1917 equal to about 6,000 pounds (US$9,600) today.
(AP Photo, File, File)

BLOGGER NOTE: By the time Mussolini returned from Allied military service in World War I, he had repudiated Socialism as a failure. In 1917, Mussolini got his initiation in bourgeois politics with the help of a £100 weekly wage from the British Security Service. Fascism a la il Duce soon flowered like a stink weed.


LONDON – A historian says Benito Mussolini was well paid as a British agent during World War I.

The Guardian newspaper reported Wednesday that Peter Martland of Cambridge University discovered that Mussolini was paid 100 pounds a week by Britain in 1917 — equal to about 6,000 pounds ($9,600) today.

The late Samuel Hoare, in charge of British agents in Rome at that time, revealed in his memoirs 55 years go that Mussolini was a paid agent. Martland found more details in Hoare's papers, including that Mussolini also sent 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 4 million pounds Britain was spending on the war every day, it was petty cash," The Guardian quoted Martland as saying.

The salary detail also was in historian Christopher Andrew's newly published history of the British intelligence agency MI5, to which Martland contributed.

In 1917, the future Italian dictator was editor of the Il Popolo d'Italia newspaper, which campaigned to keep Italy on the allied side in the war.