Originally a socialist, Mussolini founded the Italian Fascist Party in 1919. Three years later he orchestrated the March on Rome by the Blackshirts and was created Prime Minister, proceeding to organize his government along dictatorial lines. He annexed Abyssinia in 1936 and entered World War II on Germany’s side in 1940. Mussolini was forced to resign after the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943; he was rescued from imprisonment by German paratroopers, but was captured and executed by Italian Communist partisans in 1945, a few weeks before the end of the war.