Execution of Mussolini
Mussolini was shot by partisans near Lake Como on 28 April 1945 and hung upside down in Milan the next morning. He had been head of a German puppet state in northern Italy since September 1943, and by April 1945 the front had broken and the northern cities were rising. He left Milan on 25 April after a failed negotiation with the resistance mediated by the archbishop, and joined a retreating German anti-aircraft column heading for the Swiss border with his mistress Claretta Petacci. The column was stopped at Dongo by a small partisan detachment, which agreed to let the Germans pass and insisted on searching for Italians. He was found in the back of a lorry wearing a German greatcoat and helmet, and was recognised immediately. The killing the following afternoon was carried out at Giulino di Mezzegra by a communist officer using the name Colonnello Valerio, and the details have been disputed ever since, including by people claiming to have done it. The bodies were driven to Milan and dumped in the Piazzale Loreto, where fifteen partisans had been shot and left the previous August, and a crowd kicked and spat on them before they were strung up from a petrol station girder. Petacci's skirt was tied at the knees by a bystander for decency. The photographs went round the world within days, and Hitler is said to have seen them before killing himself on 30 April. The corpse was buried in an unmarked grave, stolen by neo-fascists in 1946, recovered, kept in a monastery for eleven years, and finally released to his widow in 1957. It is in the family crypt at Predappio, which receives visitors.
- Year: 1945 CE
- Category: Political
