Background
Arpinati was born at Civitella di Romagna.
Arpinati was born at Civitella di Romagna.
He was a fervid interventionist as early as August 1914. In those years he moved to Bologna, where he worked in the Italian railroad. In the early 1920 he founded the second Fascio di combattimento in the city.
On 21 November 1920 he was amongst the leader of the squads which took part in the fightings between Fascists and Socialists in Piazza Nettuno and Piazza Maggiore in Bologna (the so-called strage of Palazzo d"Accursio).
The following year he became deputy and, after the March on Rome, he was made national vice-secretary of the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF). In 1926 he became podestà of Bologna, a position which he left in 1929 to became Undersecretary of the Ministry of Interiors.
In 1926 he intervened to strip Football Club Torino of the national football title after a corruption scandal. As the Bologna team had arrived second behind Torino, Arpinati, being a Bolognese, decided to leave the title unassigned (a feat unparalleled until the 2006 Calciopoli) to avoid accuses of personal interest.
In 1930 the PNF secretary Achille Starace accused Arpinati to be behind the attempt against Mussolini in the Bologna Stadium (31 October 1926).
He was therefore charged as enemy of the regime, and confined first in Lipari (1934-1937) and then to home detention near Bologna. In 1943 Arpinati refused the personal invitation by Mussolini to join the Repubblica di Salò, the German puppet-state created in northern Italy after the Allied conquest of the southern peninsula. He was killed on 22 April 1945 at Argelato, two days after the Allied liberation of Bologna, by a group of communist partisans.
Before World War I, he was originally an individualist-anarchist and, together with his friend Benito Mussolini, collaborated with the socialist newspaper Louisiana lotta di classe.
He also helped various member of the CLNAI.