WHAT’S THE STORY?

It was 75 years ago today that the man who had once ruled Italy with an iron fist was captured as he tried to escape to neutral Switzerland.

Benito Mussolini had been Italy’s fascist leader, known as Il Duce, for more than 20 years. In that time he took his country, effectively a police state, into the Second World War as part of the Axis alliance with Germany and Japan.

It proved to be a disastrous move for Italy and Mussolini. By May of 1943, the Italian’s main army in North Africa had been roundly defeated, and on July 9 that year the Allies invaded Sicily. Italy’s government, the Grand Council of Fascism, voted to oust him and the king, Victor Emmanuel III, and name General Pietro Badoglio as prime minister in Mussolini’s place.

Mussolini was arrested but was freed by German troops. After meeting Adolf Hitler in Munich, he was installed as the dictator of a puppet state in Northern Italy, called Salo or the Italian Social Republic. There he executed several former associates, including his son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano, the former foreign minister of Italy.

With Italy formally now part of the Allies, and the mainly Communist resistance forces (partisans) in control of many cities, Mussolini knew by April, 1945, that if he was captured he would face war crimes and other capital charges. So, with the Third Reich beginning to suffer heavy losses and retreating from Italy, the 61-year-old decided that the only way out for him was to flee to Switzerland.

HOW WAS HE CAPTURED?

Mussolini had made Milan his base and it was there, on April 25, that he learned Nazi Germany was negotiating a surrender to the Allies. He immediately contacted his mistress, Clara Petacci, known as Claretta, and raced out of the city in the sports car he had bought her. He left his wife Rachele behind, as Petacci caught up with him.

They went north, travelling to Switzerland in a convoy of Germans and Italians heading for the neutral nation via Lake Como. From there Mussolini hoped to catch a plane to Spain, where the dictator General Franco owed him for Italy’s support in the Spanish Civil War.

It was not to be. As the convoy moved through the village of Dongo beside Lake Como on April 27, 1945, a group of local partisans attacked the vehicles and stopped the trucks. The Germans negotiated their own passage onward in return for surrendering all the Italian fascists.

One of the partisans thought the man in the car looked familiar – Mussolini’s face, after all, had been plastered on just about every wall in Italy when he was Il Duce. Despite wearing a German greatcoat and helmet, Mussolini was identified, seized, and taken into custody.

The partisans then began to round up the people with him, who included senior figures from the fascist party and Italian Social Republic. Some 50 were captured in all, including Petacci’s brother Marcello. Most of the 50 were summarily executed over the following days, and Marcello Petacci was shot trying to escape by swimming the lake.

As more fleeing fascists were found, Petacci reportedly gave herself up so she could be with Mussolini.

WHO WAS CLARA PETACCI?

Petacci was the daughter of the Pope’s doctor, and her sister was the actress Miriam di San Servolo. She had a teenage crush on Il Duce and became his lover at 21. He had various mistresses, but Petacci became his main paramour. They were together for 12 years, during which time Mussolini often paraded her in public.

Beautiful and voluptuous, Petacci was also manipulative and emotional, but was never able to persuade Mussolini to leave his wife Rachele. She may not even have tried, as she enjoyed the role of mistress and the income she gained. There is no doubting her loyalty – by surrendering and demanding to stay with Mussolini she signed her own death warrant.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM AFTER BEING CAPTURED?

Mussolini and Petacci were taken to a nearby farmhouse to spend their last night together. On April 28, they were taken to the village of Giulino di Mezzegra on the shores of Lake Como. Their capture had already been announced by the partisans and, fearing a German or Fascist attempt to free them, both were summarily executed, shot to death by sub-machine gun at the entrance to the Villa Belmonte.

WHO PULLED THE TRIGGER?

This has been disputed over the decades, but the man who was first to say he did it and always claimed it was him was local partisan commander Walter Audisio, who had used the pseudonym Colonel Valerio. He may or may not have held a tribunal to pronounce the death sentence.

Others who have been identified as the executioner have included senior Communist Party officials and even a British spy called “John”, but the main evidence points to Audisio.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THEIR BODIES?

In the early hours of April 29, the corpses of Mussolini, Petacci and 15 other fascists were dumped by the partisans in the Piazzale Loreto in Milan. It was a significant choice – Mussolini had ordered the public execution of 15 partisans in the same square.

A crowd began to gather and soon Mussolini, Petacci and three other bodies were desecrated and strung up on wires. One woman shot Mussolini five times, once for each son she had lost in the war.

The bodies were all mutilated before the US Army arrived and took them away to a mortuary where photographs were taken.

News of what had happened to Mussolini and his companions reached Adolf Hitler in the fuhrerbunker in Berlin. It made him resolve that his body would be destroyed by fire, after the suicide he had already decided upon.