Recruited by MI5: the name's Mussolini. Benito Mussolini

[go west young man]

Source: The Guardian UK

Mussolini's payments were authorised by Sir Samuel Hoare, an MP and MI5's man in Rome, who ran a staff of 100 British intelligence officers in Italy at the time.

Cambridge historian Peter Martland, who discovered details of the deal struck with the future dictator, said: "Britain's least reliable ally in the war at the time was Italy after revolutionary Russia's pullout from the conflict. Mussolini was paid £100 a week from the autumn of 1917 for at least a year to keep up the pro-war campaigning – equivalent to about £6,000 a week today."

Hoare, later to become Lord Templewood, mentioned the recruitment in memoirs in 1954, but Martland stumbled on details of the payments for the first time while scouring Hoare's papers.

As well as keeping the presses rolling at Il Popolo d'Italia, the newspaper he edited, Mussolini also told Hoare he would send 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 £4m Britain was spending on the war every day, it was petty cash," said Martland.


Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/13/benito-mussolini-recruited-mi5-italy

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Ah you gotta love the powers that be! Always willing to fund a Saddam or an Al Qaeda or a Pinochet or a Mussolini! The cycle continues. Sometimes it just takes 90 years to find out the truth.

[saigon68]

1. Don't forget the Mayor of Kabul Charlie McKarzai

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

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[izquierdista]

3. Makes you believe in reincarnation

What was



What he came back as

[jakeXT]

4. it's all incompetence, of course not