Achille Starace

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Achille Starace (August 18, 1889, Gallipoli—April 29, 1945, Milan) was a prominent leader of Fascist Italy prior to and during World War II.

[edit] Early life and career

Born to a wine and oil merchant, Achille Starace attended the Lecce Technical Institute as a young man, and earned a degree in accounting. In 1909, he joined the Italian Army and by 1912 had become a second lieutenant of the Bersaglieri. Seeing action during World War I, Starace was highly decorated for his service, winning a Silver Medal of Military Valor. After the war, he left the army and moved to Trento, where he first came into contact with the growing Fascist movement.

An ardent nationalist, Starace joined the Fascist movement in Trento in 1920 and quickly became its political secretary. He subsequently helped Fascist squads bring Bolzano-Bozen under Fascist control. In 1921, his efforts caught the attention of Benito Mussolini, who put Starace in charge of the Fascist organization in Venezia Tridentina. In October of 1921, Starace became Vice-Secretary of the National Fascist Party (PNF). In 1922, Starace participated in the March on Rome, leading a squadron of Blackshirts in support of Mussolini.

[edit] Prominence

Later that year, he was appointed Party Inspector of Sicily and made a member of the Executive Committee of the PNF. He was made commander of the MVSN (Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale, an all-volunteers militia created to organize former Blackshirts) in Trieste in 1923 after resigning as vice-secretary of the party. In 1924, he was elected to the Italian Chamber of Deputies and made National Party Inspector. In 1926, Achille Starace once again became Vice-Secretary of the PNF, and, in 1928, he was appointed Secretary of the Milan branch of the party.

In 1931, his career reached its peak when he was made Secretary of the PNF. He was appointed to the position primarily due to his unquestioning, fanatical loyalty to Mussolini. As secretary, Starace staged massive parades and marches, proposed Anti-Semitic racial segregation measures, and greatly expanded Mussolini's cult of personality.

Although Starace was successful in increasing party membership, he failed in the later years of his tenure as secretary to reorganize Balilla groups along the lines of the Hitler Youth and to inspire a nationwide enthusiasm for Fascism on par with the popularity the Nazi Party enjoyed in Germany. He served as secretary for a total of eight years, longer than any other secretary had served, but by the mid-1930s he had gained very numerous enemies in the party hierarchy.

In 1935, Starace, a major general of the MVSN, took a leave of absence as secretary to participate in the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (the Second Italo-Abyssinian War), where he and his troops successfully seized Gondar. In October of 1939, he was finally dismissed as party secretary in favor of the popular Ettore Muti and made Chief of Staff of the MVSN, a position he held until being dismissed for incompetence in 1941.

[edit] 1943-1945

Following the demise of Mussolini's national regime in 1943, Starace was arrested by Pietro Badoglio's government, despite the fact that his real power under Mussolini had ended two years earlier. After unsuccessfully attempting to regain Mussolini's favor in the German-backed Italian Social Republic of Salò, he was arrested and imprisoned in a concentration camp in Verona by his former colleagues, on charges that he had weakened the party during his tenure as secretary. He was eventually released and moved to Milan, where on April 1945 during his morning jog he was recognized and captured by anti-Fascist Italian partisans. On April 29, 1945, after a summary trial he was sentenced to death. Starace was taken to the Piazzale Loreto and shown the body of Mussolini, which he saluted just before he was shot. His body was subsequently strung up next to Mussolini's.