Cambridge historian Peter Martland, who discovered details of the deal struck with the future dictator, said: “Britain’s least reliable ally in the war at the time was Italy after revolutionary Russia’s pullout from the conflict. Mussolini was paid £100 a week from the autumn of 1917 for at least a year to keep up the pro-war campaigning — equivalent to about £6,000 a week today.”

From a very similar report titled “How Mussolini once worked for British intelligence”:

Mussolini recruited thugs to beat up poverty-stricken peace protesters, downtrodden by the war, to prevent them from agitating against it — a precursor to his fascist Blackshirts, Martland believes.

“He’s a nasty piece of work and he’s using violence on the streets. He’s a street fighter and he’s mobilizing veterans. One of the definers of fascism is that violence is a legitimate political tool, so this is the beginnings of seeing the Mussolini of the Blackshirts era,” said Martland.

While Martland said it was a “shrewd” move for MI5 to recruit Mussolini, he doubts very much whether “Il Duce” actually spent much of his British earnings on the war campaign.

“Part of the money went to subsidize his newspaper, but we know Mussolini and we know he is a womanizer. He thinks he is Mr Super Stud, so it’s not unreasonable to speculate that a lot of that money went on his mistresses,” he said.