Getty Images Portrait of Benito Mussolini circa 1940

A “Milestone” item in a June 1923 issue of TIME hails Mussolini: “Premier of All the Italians received the order of Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath from [British] King George V.” But the strutting fascist would lose his place among these strutting knights the moment he threw his lot in with the Nazi war effort in 1940.

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