About Indro Montanelli
Indro Alessandro Raffaello Schizogene Montanelli (22 April 1909 – 22 July 2001) was an Italian journalist, historian, and writer. Montanelli originally volunteered in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and admired Benito Mussolini's dictatorship, but his political stance shifted in 1943. He joined the liberal resistance group Giustizia e Libertà, and in 1944, he and his wife were discovered and arrested by Nazi authorities. He was sentenced to death by firing squad but fled to Switzerland the day before his scheduled execution with the assistance of a secret service double agent. After World War II, Montanelli continued his work at Corriere della Sera, where he started working in 1938, and distinguished himself as a liberal-conservative for many decades. As an intransigent, anticonformist, and anti-communist, he defended the idea of another political right, which was sober, cultured, pessimistic, and distrustful of mass society. In 1977, the Red Brigades terrorist group kneecapped him; however, he forgave them years later. He was also a novelist and historian, especially remembered for his Storia d'Italia (History of Italy) in volumes. After leaving the Corriere della Sera in 1973, due to a perceived turn to the left, Montanelli worked as the editor-in-chief of Silvio Berlusconi-owned newspaper il Giornale for many years. Being opposed to Berlusconi's political ambitions, he quit as editor of il Giornale, and founded il Giornale nuovo in 1974. Berlusconi officially entered politics in 1994, after which he returned to the Corriere della Sera in 1995, and worked there until his death. Both the Italian centre-left and centre-right tried to reclaim his figure; the former, which overlooked his conservatism and anti-communism, emphasized his anti-Berlusconist militancy, while the latter, after having portrayed him as a useful idiot of the post-communist left, underplayed his opposition to Berlusconi. During this time, Montanelli conducted his first interview with a celebrity, Henry Ford, who shocked him by admitting he did not have a driver's license. The stand Montanelli took against fascism led him to his first conflict with the Italian authorities. Being opposed to Berlusconi's political ambitions, he quit as editor of il Giornale, which he founded as il Giornale nuovo in 1974. On his return from Abyssinia, Montanelli became a foreign correspondent in Spain for the daily newspaper Il Messaggero, where he experienced the Spanish Civil War on the side of Francisco Franco's Nationalist troops.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.