Benito Mussolini was the facist dictator of Italy, who joined together his country with
Nazi German in the Axis Alliance.
He was a close friend of Adolf Hitler, and the pair got on incredibly well.
He had been the prime minister of Italy from 1922 and then the dictator from 1925.
He took his country into the Second World War, but following the Allied invasion of
Sicily in July 1943, Mussolini was deposed and placed under arrest.
His nation then signed an armistice with the Allies, but after this he was rescued from
prison in the Gran Sasso Raid by German special forces.
But then Hitler placed him in power of a German puppet state in northern Italy.
But as the Allies took Rome and made their way to Florence, they began to advance towards
Northern Italy.
Mussolini then went on the run and he tried to cross the Swiss Border, but he then joined
a Luftwaffe convoy towards Germany.
It’s believed that he had hoped to flee and to make it to safety, but this would not
be the case.
However he was arrested along with his mistress Claret Petacci, and the pair would be brutally
executed by a group of partisans at the side of a road.
He was mown down by machine gun fire, but after his death, his remains and body were
subjected to a brutal and savage ordeal with the Italians in Milan taking their hatred
out on Mussolini.
But what is the story of this?
Join us today as we look at the Horrifying execution of Mussolini Body.
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A group of communist partisans attacked a convoy which Mussolini and PEtacci were travelling
on the 27th April 1945 close to the village of Congo near to Lake Como.
They forced the Germans to hand over all Italians in exchange for allowing them to continue
their journey, however slumped inside one of the vehicles was Mussolini.
He was described as, ‘His face was like wax and his stare glassy, but somehow blind.
I read utter exhaustion, but not fear ... Mussolini seemed completely lacking in will, spiritually
dead.’
He was placed under arrest, and stayed in a local barrack, and then he was reunited
with his mistress Petacci early in the morning.
Over 50 facists were found with their families and were arrested, but Mussolini was the most
high profile.
The partisans were worried that he would be rescued, and despite many of the other facists
being executed, the order to execute Mussolini was initially delayed.
An announcement on Radio Milano stated, ‘he head of this association of delinquents, Mussolini,
while yellow with rancour and fear and trying to cross the Swiss frontier, has been arrested.
He must be handed over to a tribunal of the people so it can judge him quickly.
We want this, even though we think an execution platoon is too much of an honour for this
man.
He would deserve to be killed like a mangy dog.’
Many would later claim they ordered the execution of Mussolini, but it would be Walter Audisio,
a communist partisan who was tasked with carrying out the order.
He was told to ‘go and shoot him,’ and along with another man, Aldo Lamprey the pair
would be the ones who executed the former dictator and his mistress.
They arrived in Congo, and they then drove to collect Mussolini and PEtacci from a farm
house.
They then drove 20kms to an Italian village, and their var pulled up at the entrance of
the Villa Belmont on a narrow road.
Petacci and Mussolini were told to get out and they were ordered to stand by the wall
of the villa.
At 4:10pm, armed with his sub machine gun, Audis shot them dead with a submachine gun,
after his weapon jammed.
It’s claimed Mussolini’s last words were ‘aim at my heart,’ but other accounts
claim he said nothing.
He lay dead with his mistress, his body riddled with bullets, and in his final moments it
was a long departure from his former image as the dictator.
He used his body, either bare chested or half naked as a symbol of power through his propaganda,
but in his death his body would be treated with contempt and huge disrespect, and his
body became a symbol of hatred of facism and of the evil of his regime.
Hitler would later heard of the horrific posthumous ordeal, that his body was subjected to, and
this would make the Dictator of Nazi Germany’s mind up.
Hitler would then decide that he would take his own life inside the bunker, and then order
his closest companions to destroy his body for him to avoid it falling into the hands
of his enemy.
He also ordered this for his wife Eva Braun too, as Clara Petacci Mussolini’s mistress
would also have her body subjected to a terrible ordeal.
In the evening of the 28th April 1945, Mussolini and Petacchi’s body along with 3 other executed
facists were placed on a truck and they were sent south to Milan.
The arrived in the early hours of the 29th April, and the bodies were dumped on the ground
of the Piazzale Loreto a square near to the railway station.
Here in August 1945, 15 partisans had been executed and shot dead, and the Partisans
saw the square as a symbolic place and they wanted to bring Mussolini there to suffer
the ultimate humiliation.
The bodies of these partisans were then left on public display, but then Mussolini and
Petacci’s body was also then displayed.
The bodies were left in a heap, but by 9am in the morning a huge crowd had gathered.
People began to throw vegetables at the bodies, and they then spat at them too.
Some men even urinated on the corpses of Petacci and Mussolini and many pulled out their pistols
and shot at them.
One woman felt that Mussolini wasn’t dead enough and she pulled out her pistol and fired
five shots at close range into his head, one bullet for each son she lost in the Second
World War.
Another man grabbed the body by chew armpits so that the crowd could see it and tried to
raise it up.
The bodies were given a beating, with many kicking them in the face to the point where
Mussolini’s face was heavily disfigured and it would have been difficult to recognise
him.
At this time, American Soldiers arrived and many of them had camera’s and managed to
capture the moments and the anger in the crowd.
One American claimed the crowd were out of control, and were depraved and sinister.
But after a while in which the bodies were assaulted, they then had rope attached to
their feet, and they were then hug from a metal framework of a half built service station.
This was a method of hanging used in northern Italy to show intense shame of the executed,
but Mussolini and Petacci’s bodies along with the other executed Facists were strung
upside down above the crowd.
This was done allegedly to try and protect the bodies from the mob, but more projectiles
reigned down on them.
The crowd wanted the bodies raised, ‘Higher,’ and for them to be strung up to the hooks
like pigs.
The corpses that were hanging there were like meat in a slaughterhouse, and Mussolini’s
mouth was wide open, whilst Clara Petacci’s eyes stared motionless and creepily into the
distance.
At 2pm, the American authorities ordered the bodies to be cut down and then transported
to Milan’s morgue.
Autopsies were carried out, and sickeningly the bodies of Mussolini and Petacci were photographed
arm in arm, covered in injuries from their ordeal.
Autopies were carried out on the day after, and it was said Mussolini was shot with 9
bullets, four were near the heart and are given as the cause of death.
Samples of his brain were taken and were sent to America for testing, but no autopsy was
carried out on Clara Petacci.
But the effects of Mussolini’s death and public hanging was powerful as Hitler as mentioned
would make the decision to take his own life.
It’s believed by some historians that Mussolini’s fate was the deciding factor in this, but
after his death and display of the corpse in Milan, he was buried in an unmarked grave
in a cemetery to the north of the city.
But on Easter Sunday 1946, his body was disinterred and dug up by a young facist and his two friends.
It was moved for 16 weeks from place to place, and was hidden even at a monastery and a convent.
But then the body with a leg missing was tracked down, and some Friars were even charged with
helping to hide the body.
The body was then hidden at a Capuchin monastery for 11 years, and the location of the body
was kept a secret.
But then he was finally re-interred in the Mussolini family crypt on the 1st September
1957, and when he was interred in his tomb, the supporters gave the facist salute.
His tomb is decorated with a marble head of his, and other symbols linked to facism and
it had become today a site of pilgrimage for facists.
Mussolini was seen as a powerful figure before the Second World War as his politics and ideas
dominated Italy and European ideas.
He influenced many people across the continent including Adolf Hitler who became his best
friend.
But during the conflict he would lead a weak Italian army to be dwarfed by the military
powers of the German army and later the Americans and the British.
He was soundly beaten during the war and was forced to step down but he met a bloody end
at the side of the war at the side of a road.
He was executed by Walter Audisio alongside one of his mistresses, and then afterwards
his body was subjected to a horrific ordeal for anyone to have witnessed.
The crowd that day were baying for his blood and wanted justice to be administered as he
led Italy into a war that they suffered heavily within, and his command of the army was poor.
The crowds in Milan treated his body with anger and contempt, and after they had done
with it, it was hardly recognisable.
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