Dino Grandi

Dino Grandi moved the motion that removed Mussolini in July 1943, having spent twenty years as one of his most senior servants. He was a squadrista from Bologna who had briefly challenged Mussolini for leadership of the movement in 1921, then submitted and rose: foreign minister from 1929, ambassador to London through the Abyssinian crisis and the Spanish war, and president of the Chamber of Fasci and Corporations. He was the regime's most presentable face abroad and privately opposed the German alliance throughout. By 1943 Sicily had been invaded, Rome had been bombed, and the war was plainly lost. At the Grand Council meeting of 24-25 July - the body's first in nearly four years - Grandi proposed that the king resume full constitutional powers, which meant command of the armed forces and the end of Mussolini's authority. It passed nineteen votes to seven after a session of nine hours. The king had Mussolini arrested that afternoon. Grandi left for Spain and then Portugal, was condemned to death in absentia by the Salo republic and tried in his absence at Verona, where five of those who had voted with him were shot, including Mussolini's son-in-law Ciano. He spent years in Brazil and returned to Italy in the 1960s. He had prepared the motion carefully and carried two hand grenades to the meeting, by his own account, expecting arrest. The vote had no constitutional force whatever - the Grand Council could only advise - and it worked because the king used it as cover for something he had wanted to do for months. Italy changed sides seven weeks later. Grandi lived to ninety-two and gave interviews to the end.

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