Desert Fox
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Mussolini was easily overthrown because he had a "Fascist Grand Council" and the Italian Monarch was still in power, thus providing for alternative authoritative figures for a coup of overthrowing him to succeed and to negotiate with the Western Allies. Mussolini was overthrown because there were other powerful figures to oppose him and fill in his gap.If you look at Italian history after the end of the Roman Empire you would notice that most of Italy was ruled by foreigners. Either early Germanic Kingdoms, later the French and Spanish. From North to South. Obviously the Habsburg's (Austria) as well. Italian nationalism was also a new thing since Italy as a united entity first was founded in 1860 and back then it had much clearer regional differences than even today where they are very visible still. Northern Italians often proclaim that "everything South of Rome" is Africa.
Italy did not have the industrial know-how or fierce loyalty to fascism and Mussolini that the Germans had towards Hitler. Defending Italy from foreign attacks is not an easy task either. My grandmother is French but of partial Italian and Spanish ancestry so I am familiar of Southern Europe and it's history. Speaking about Spain then I think that Franco was more clever than Mussolini and his rule proved to last all the way until 1975. Even becoming a staunch ally of the victorious Allies (NATO) later on despite being closer to Nazi Germany/Fascist Italy politically than to the Allied countries.
As I see it then you can only mobilize such a huge percentage of a population like seen in Nazi Germany if you rule with a harsh hand and that's also why the Soviets were so successful militarily. Either you fought until your last breath or you received a bullet through your head. That obviously helps a big deal. Having a defined ideology next to that usually works really well. This would be unthinkable today anywhere outside of North Korea and a few other states.
The same happened in Germany's other Ally Romania. The Romanian Monarch overthrow Marshal Antonescu's gov.t in a coup and settled for a peace agreement with the Soviet Union.
Coming to General Franco, he stayed out of the war because of the German Abwher's head Admiral Canaris (who was fluent in Spanish) convinced Franco's General's to stay out of the war. Canaris was later executed fro treason at the orders of Hitler.
Another reason why Hitler lost the war was due to the double dealings of his high ranking military officers of the aristocracy class who viewed his Socialist views as a threat to their social class.