Mario Musolesi

Mario Musolesi (Vado di Monzuno, 1 August 1914 – Marzabotto, 29 September 1944) was an Italian soldier and Resistance leader during World War II.

Early life Musolesi was born into a large family (he had one brother, Guido, and six sisters) living in a village in the Bolognese Apennine. He initially worked as a mechanic.

Second Italo-Ethiopian War During the Second Italo-Ethiopian War he was drafted into the Royal Italian Army and fought in Ethiopia, being awarded for courage shown in combat, but was later reported by the Carabinieri as an anti-fascist, for which he was repatriated and referred to a military court. He was released thanks to the intervention of his commander, who certified his value as a fighter, but was nevertheless demoted from the rank of sergeant major he had earned on the field.

Second World War North Africa, POW He later fought as a tanker in North Africa, being captured by the British in 1942 but escaping and reaching the Italian lines after a three-day march in the desert; in the summer of 1943 he was wounded and repatriated, and at the time of the proclamation of the Armistice of Cassibile, on 8 September 1943, he was in service in an armoured unit stationed in Rome, with the rank of corporal first class.

Resistance activity In the days that followed the Armistice, Musolesi participated in the unsuccessful defense of Rome against the Germans, fighting at Porta San Paolo; after the fall of Rome, he returned to his hometown in Emilia-Romagna, where, as a decorated veteran, he was offered by local Fascists the post of secretary of the Monzuno section of the Republican Fascist Party, which he refused. Instead, along with his brother Guido and a group of friends, he set out to establish a Resistance group, looking for weapons in Bologna. In October 1943 he publicly assaulted a Blackshirt who had accused him of spreading anti-fascist propaganda leaflets, for which he was arrested, but freed thanks to the armed intervention of his friends. He then took to the mountains, where he founded the "Stella Rossa" ("Red Star") Partisan Brigade on Monte Sole; in reprisal, the Fascists burned his house and arrested several of his relatives.