Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was the first twentieth-century fascist dictator in Europe.

He was born on 29 July 1883 in Predappio, Emilia-Romagna. His early life was troubled, with expulsions from two schools for stabbing others with a penknife. After teaching for a while, he left for Switzerland aged 19, carrying little but a medallion of his hero, Karl Marx.

He read voraciously and spoke magnetically, although with no clear ideology. He got work as a journalist, and wrote propaganda for trade unions, whose strikes he believed should be violent. Following imprisonment, he returned to Italy in 1904.

After another failed attempt at school mastering, he carried on with political journalism, and was again imprisoned on several occasions.