Execution of Mussolini
On 27 April 1945, as the partisan insurrection seized northern Italy, Mussolini was stopped at Dongo on Lake Como while attempting to escape into Switzerland in a German convoy. He was taken into custody by partisans of the 52nd Garibaldi Brigade. On 28 April he was shot by Luigi Longo's partisan unit at the Villa Belmonte in Giulino di Mezzegra, alongside his companion Clara Petacci and fifteen other Fascist leaders. The following morning the bodies were transported to Milan and hung upside down by their heels at the roof of a petrol station in Piazzale Loreto. The location was chosen deliberately. On 10 August 1944 the bodies of fifteen anti-fascist partisans, shot by Fascist forces in reprisal for a partisan attack, had been displayed at Piazzale Loreto. The inversion of that tableau — the executed becoming the executer on display at the same location — was a political statement as well as an act of retributive justice. The scene of the bodies hanging at Piazzale Loreto, photographed and distributed worldwide, became one of the defining images of the war's end in Europe, and of the fate of fascist leaders who had staked personal survival on military victory.
- Year: 1945 CE
- Category: Political
