Achille Starace (August 18, 1889 — April 29, 1945) was a prominent leader of Fascist Italy prior to and during World War II.
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Starace was born in Gallipoli in southern Italy near Lecce. He was son of 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 Royal Army (Regio Esercito ) and by 1912 had become a Second Lieutenant (Sottotenente) of (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. In 1921, his efforts caught the attention of Benito Mussolini, who put Starace in charge of the Fascist organization in Venezia Tridentina. In October 1921, Starace became Vice-Secretary of the National Fascist Party (Partito Nazionale Fascista, or PNF). In 1922, Starace participated in the March on Rome (Marcia su Roma), leading a squadron (squadristi) of Blackshirts (Camicie Nere, or CCNN, or Squadristi) in support of Mussolini.
Later in 1922, Starace was appointed Party Inspector of Sicily and made a member of the Executive Committee of the PNF. In 1923, after resigning as Vice-Secretary of the party, he was made commander of the National Security Volunteer Militia (Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale or MVSN) in Trieste. The MVSN was an all-volunteers militia created to organize former Blackshirts.
In 1924, Starace 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 Party 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 the Italian Fascist Youth Organization (Opera Nazionale Balilla) along the lines of the Hitler Youth (Hitler-Jugend). He also failed to inspire a nationwide enthusiasm for Fascism on par with the popularity the Nazi Party enjoyed in Germany. Starace served as secretary for a total of eight years. This was longer than any other Secretary had served. But, by the mid-1930s, he had gained numerous enemies in the party hierarchy.
In 1935, Starace, a Colonel, took a leave of absence as PNF Party Secretary to participate in the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and fought on the northern front. In March 1936, after the Battle of Shire, he was given command of a mixed group of Blackshirts and Bersaglieri being assembled in Asmara, Eritrea. Later that month, Starace and his truck transportable "mechanized column" prepared to advance over rough tracks to seize Gondar, the capital of Begemder Province. Prior to setting out, "the Panther Man" (L'uomo pantera) gave the following speech to his men:
Soldiers, this is the most risky, most difficult and most important venture of the campaign. Don't waste a shot. We are carrying all the ammunition we are going to have on this trip. This column must be like an electric live wire. Death to the touch! Truck drivers must learn to keep to the right of the road under pain of severe penalties...
Britain is a rich country, Italy is a poor country, but the people of poor countries have hard muscles. The only way to explain the action of the English is that they thought they had only to mass a war fleet in the Mediterranean and Premier Mussolini would take off his hat and bow in submission.
Instead he reared up like a thorough bred horse and sent his soldiers into Africa. Viva Il Duce![1]
The road building skills of Starace's men played an equally important role to their combat prowess. The following morning, April 1, Starace and the column entered Gondar in triumph and two days later reached Lake Tana, securing the border region with British Sudan. The East African Fast Column (Colonna Celere de Africa Orientale) had covered approximately 120 km in three days.
After Ethiopia, Starace resumed his duties as Party Secretary. He continued to be controversial. For example, he decreed that all party flags must be made from an Italian-created textile fabric called "Lanital." Lanital was invented in 1935 and, according to Starace, it was "this product of Italian ingenuity." The basis of Lanital is casein. Casein is the thick substance in sour, skimmed milk from which cottage cheese is made. In 1936, Dino Grandi, the Italian Ambassador to Great Britain, appeared in London wearing a suit said to have been made from forty-eight pints of skimmed milk.[2]
During the Munich Crisis in 1938, Starace was a vocal proponent of the French agreeing to turn over Tunisia to Italy.
In October 1939, Starace was finally dismissed as Party Secretary in favor of the popular Ettore Muti. He was made Chief of Staff of the MVSN and he held this position until being dismissed for incompetence in May 1941. He was succeeded by Enzo Galbiati.
In 1943, following the demise of Mussolini's regime, Starace was arrested by Pietro Badoglio's Royalist government. He was arrested 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, Starace was again arrested. This time he was imprisoned in a concentration camp in Verona and was arrested by his former colleagues on charges that he had weakened the party during his tenure as Party Secretary.
Starace was eventually released and moved to Milan. On 29 April 1945, during his morning jog, he was recognized and captured by anti-Fascist Italian partisans. 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.