One man who was closely associated with Adolf Hitler during the Second World War and before was Benito Mussolini.
Il Duce, as he was known, was the infamous Italian fascist dictator who took his country into the Second World War closely allied with Nazi Germany.
However, ultimately, like the German war effort, the Italian one faltered, and Mussolini was subject to an execution which went down in the history books as one of the most brutal events of the Second World War, especially with what occurred to his body after it was displayed in Milan.
Benito Mussolini was a man whom Hitler himself idolized, but his death and execution was one which reinforced the desire in Hitler’s mind to take his own life in Berlin rather than to be made a public spectacle of.
Benito Mussolini had been acting as the leader of Italy since 1922 as the prime minister and then the dictator a few years later.
The fascist leader eventually took his country to war alongside the Nazis and his friend Hitler as part of the Axis forces.
Italy backed up the Wehrmacht and the Nazis in many different theatres.
Mussolini launched attacks on Greece and also offered his support to the Germans in North Africa, which resulted in a huge loss for the Italians.
Many Italian soldiers were even sent to Russia to help during Operation Barbarossa in the Soviet Union, and thousands failed to make it home.
The war for the Italians did not go well.
They became short on supplies, and heavy attacks against them heavily depleted their army.
The Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943, and Mussolini was then deposed and placed under arrest before the Italians signed an armistice with the Allies.
After this was signed, Mussolini was rescued by German soldiers in the Gran Sasso raid, and Hitler then placed him in control of the Italian Social Republic, a German puppet state in the north of Italy.
The Allies, however, continued to fight on and take control of many important Italian cities such as Rome, and they began to push north.
Mussolini then arrived in Milan with the last remnants of his loyalist army looking like they were about to be defeated, and he considered his options.
The Germans retreated out of the northern Italian cities, and the Italian partisan leadership, which were now running parts of the country, declared that any member of the former fascist government was to be sentenced to death upon their capture.
Unsuccessful negotiations happened between the partisan government and Mussolini’s representatives, and on the 25th of April 1945, he fled towards Lake Como.
Mussolini was now on the run for his life with the declaration meaning that he was almost certain to be killed once he was captured.
On the 26th of April, Mussolini was joined by his mistress, Claretta Petacci, and they tried to cross into Switzerland, which would have helped to save his life.
However, on the 27th of April, a detachment of local partisans attacked the convoy in which Mussolini and Petacci were part of near to the village called Dongo, and it was forced to stop.
Within this group were former fascist politicians, and the partisans recognized many figures in the convoy, but not initially Mussolini.
The Germans were forced to give over all of the Italians for safe passage, and Mussolini was then found in one of the vehicles.
One partisan who discovered him, Urbano Lazzaro, stated how his face was like wax and his stare glassy.
I read exhaustion, but not fear.
He seemed spiritually dead.
He was interested and spent the night near a barracks before being reunited with his mistress early in the morning of the 28th of April.
Intense fighting was going on around Mussolini’s prison, and he believed he would be rescued yet again by his supporters.
It was then announced that Mussolini had been captured on Radio Milano with a partisan leader stating, “We think an execution platoon is too much of an honour for this man; he would deserve to be killed like a mangy dog”.
Mussolini’s death sentence then came, and it’s unclear who gave the overall orders to kill the ex-fascist leader of Italy.
Within Milan, a communist leader, Luigi Longo, allegedly gave orders for a communist partisan named Walter Audisio to go and kill Mussolini and execute him along with another partisan, Aldo Lampredi.
They then went to carry out the mission.
There have been different accounts of how Mussolini and his mistress Petacci were executed, however, the account of Walter Audisio seems to be the most comprehensible.
The two left Milan for Dongo in the early hours of the 28th of April to carry out the orders, and when they arrived, they arranged for Mussolini to be placed into their custody.
Audisio went in the disguise of Colonel Valerio during the execution, and they were then taken to a farmhouse where Mussolini was being kept to pick them up.
Once Mussolini and Petacci were in Audisio’s custody, they drove to a village named Giulino di Mezzegra outside of a villa named Villa Belmonte on a narrow road.
Petacci and Mussolini were told to leave the car and stand against the wall of the villa.
At 4:10 pm, armed with his submachine gun, Audisio shot Mussolini and his mistress against the wall of the villa.
The accounts do differ as to how Mussolini was during the moments leading up to his execution.
Audisio paints him as a coward, but Lampredi does not, and also Audisio states how he read out his sentence of death, but Lampredi said he didn’t, with Mussolini’s last words being, “Aim at my heart”.
Some accounts also state how they were shot by a partisan firing squad, however, the execution of Mussolini seems to be more hastily arranged.
However, after the former fascist dictator being killed, it did not end there for his corpse.
Following his and his mistress’s shooting, the bodies of them along with other fascists executed were taken by van to Milan.
When they arrived in the city in the morning, they were dumped in the Piazzale Loreto, a major market square within Milan.
Previously, 15 partisans had been shot there, and their bodies had been left on public display, so for the partisans, this was payback.
By 9 am that following morning, a huge crowd had gathered, and the angry Italian citizens spat at, urinated on, shot at, kicked, and even threw vegetables at the body of Mussolini and his mistress.
It was a mob mentality, and Mussolini was heavily disfigured by the beatings, and the crowd was completely out of control.
The bodies were then placed on the metal girder frame that was above, and the corpses were hung upside down on meat hooks.
This was done to show the disgrace of the fascists, but it was another way to protect the bodies from the mob.
At 2 pm on the 29th of April, the Americans arrived in the city and took the bodies down.
They were driven to the morgue for autopsies to be carried out on the remains.
One autopsy on Mussolini showed the brutality of his execution, with him being sprayed with nine bullets from the submachine gun, with another stating he was shot seven times.
Four bullets had been aimed at his heart, and these were the fatal cause of death.
He was then buried in an unmarked grave, but his body was then dug up by fascists before it recovered again in August 1946.
After the Second World War, there was a significant effect that Mussolini’s execution had on the whole of the Second World War.
When Adolf Hitler learned of his execution and public display of his former friend on April 29, 1945, he then quickly acted to sort out his final affairs and his own death.
On the same day he found out, he then recorded his last will and testament with Traudl Junge, his secretary, and then the following day he took his own life.
Hitler stated how he did not want his body to fall into the hands of the enemy and to become a spectacle.
It’s clear that possibly the situation with Mussolini influenced Hitler’s decision to take his own life and then have his body burned in the garden of the Reich Chancellery.
But Mussolini’s execution was rather hastily arranged, but what happened to his body afterwards was incredibly brutal, and it came at a time when the Second World War was lost in Europe for the Axis forces.
