2023-04-28 08:49:26
28 April 1945: assassination of Alessandro Pavolini"We must die as fascists, not as cowards".Alessandro Pavolini was born on 27 September 1903 into an upper middle-class Florentine family.
A man of good education and great culture, founder of a magazine of artistic, social and political criticism (Il Bargello, published in Florence), creator of the Florence music festival (Maggio Musicale Fiorentino) Pavolini was not an uncultured, bloodthirsty brute.
As minister of popular culture (information and propaganda) in the fascist regime, Pavolini had the upper hand over the press, media and cinema.
His censorship guidelines (called veline) were the law and told newspaper editors and filmmakers what they could and could not publish or show.
A prominent figure in the Duce's entourage, Pavolini made headlines with his highly publicised affair with actress Doris Duranti, a popular Italian film star of the 1930s.
After 1943 and the advent of the Republic of Salò in northern Italy, under German protection, Alessandro Pavolini created the Black Brigades, a militia that fought anti-fascist partisans, whether communists, monarchists or republicans.
During the Verona trials, it was Pavolini who urged Mussolini not to pardon his own son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano, who had voted for the Grandi motion on 24 July 1943, and to send him to the firing squad.
It was also he who suggested to the government of the Republic of Salò, in retreat from the Allied advance, to make a last stand in the Alpine retreat of the Sondrio Valley. Pavolini saw it as 'the Thermopylae of Fascism' and planned to take Dante's bones, 'symbols of Italianness', with him.
The route chosen for the escape, from Milan and Como, was along the western shore of Lake Como, close to the Swiss border.
On 28 April 1945, the column of vehicles was stopped by a partisan roadblock at Dongo, north-west of Lake Como, and Mussolini was arrested.
Alessandro Pavolini, lost for lost, went on a mad dash, machine gun in hand, shouting "We must die as fascists, not cowards" and gave his pursuers a hard time, exchanging blows with them, before finally being captured, half drowned, on a rock just above the water.
He was shot - without trial - the same day, along with other fascist hierarchs, on the dock of Lake Como, and his corpse, hung by his feet, was exposed to the vengeance of the crowd next to that of Mussolini and Claretta Petacci in Piazzale Loreto, in Milan, in the following days.
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