1945: Benito Mussolini, his mistress, and his aides
April 28th, 2008 Headsman
On this date in 1945, Communist partisans shot Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci near Lake Como, along with fifteen or so additional fascist aides and officials.
It was an inglorious end for the flamboyant onetime socialist turned violent rightist, the man who had founded (and named) fascism; whose had inspired Hitler when the latter was still a streetcorner rabble-rouser, and then wandered suicidally into Germany’s orbit.
The next day, the victims’ bodies were hung up in Milan — the heart of Mussolini’s own power and still a stronghold of neo-fascist parties today — at Piazza Loreto for public abuse. The deposed Duce still had it in his power to stir the imagination of his Teutonic partner: news of the Italian dictator’s fate made it to the Fuhrer’s bunker and was said to have steeled Hitler’s resolve to take his own life with the dread vision of what should befall him if he should be taken alive.
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Entry Filed under: 20th Century, Capital Punishment, Death Penalty, Execution, Famous, Gibbeted, Heads of State, History, Infamous, Intellectuals, Italy, Martyrs, Mass Executions, Mature Content, No Formal Charge, Politicians, Power, Shot, Soldiers, Summary Executions, The Worm Turns, Wartime Executions
Tags: Fascism
3 Comments Add your own
1. ExecutedToday.com »&hellip | July 21st, 2008 at 1:55 am
[...] Hitler greeting Mussolini — the two had been scheduled to meet that day; it would be their last encounter in this [...]
2. ExecutedToday.com »&hellip | December 23rd, 2008 at 1:27 am
[...] other Axis heads of state, Tojo was in for a bad end: he shot himself in the chest before American troops [...]
3. ExecutedToday.com »&hellip | November 23rd, 2009 at 4:41 am
[...] It was barely ten weeks since the Derg — an Amharic word word “committee”, in this case a leftist military junta — had formally overthrown Emperor Haile Selassie, so ancient that he was already middle-aged back when he’d been leading Ethiopia’s resistance against Mussolini. [...]
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