WW2 Italian Campaign 1943-45; End Fascist Rule, Dictator Mussolini 'Il Duce' Executed, April 28 1945

[appalachiablue]

- The Bloody Battle for Italy, Allied Invasion of Sicily. Imperial War Museums (47 mins).
In 1943, the Allies began one of the most controversial episodes of the Second World War, the Italian Campaign.
While the British claimed that Italy was the 'soft underbelly' of Europe, it turned out to be a 'tough old gut.' From the sunny shores of Italy to the barren peaks of the Gustav Line, Allied soldiers faced dogged German and Italian resistance as they edged their way up the Italian Peninsula.
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- Wiki. Italian Campaign (World War II). The Italian campaign of World War II, also called the Liberation of Italy following the German occupation in Sept. 1943, consisted of Allied and Axis operations in and around Italy, from 1943 to 1945. The joint Allied Forces Headquarters (AFHQ) was operationally responsible for all Allied land forces in the Mediterranean theatre and it planned and led the invasion of Sicily in July 1943, followed in Sept. by the invasion of the Italian mainland and the campaign in Italy until the surrender of the Axis forces in Italy in May 1945...(+ Death of Mussolini, Video, below).
https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_campaign_(World_War_II)

⚔ Mussolini, Death of A Dictator. Pritzker Museum and Library. (2 mins).

- Wiki. Death of Benito Mussolini. The deposed Italian fascist dictator was summarily executed by an Italian partisan in the village of Giulino di Mezzegra in northern Italy on 28 April 1945, in the final days of World War II in Europe. The generally accepted version of events is that Mussolini was shot by Walter Audisio, a communist partisan. However, since the end of the war, the circumstances of Mussolini's death, and the identity of his executioner, have been subjects of continuing dispute and controversy in Italy.

In 1940, Mussolini took his country into World War II on the side of Nazi Germany but soon was met with military failure. By the autumn of 1943, he was reduced to being the leader of a German puppet state in northern Italy and was faced with the Allied advance from the south and an increasingly violent internal conflict with the partisans. In April 1945, with the Allies breaking through the last German defences in northern Italy and a general uprising of the partisans taking hold in the cities, Mussolini's situation became untenable.

On 25 April he fled Milan, where he had been based, and headed towards the Swiss border.

He and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were captured on 27 April by local partisans near the village of Dongo on Lake Como. Mussolini and Petacci were executed the following afternoon, two days before Adolf Hitler's suicide. The bodies of Mussolini and Petacci were taken to Milan and left in a suburban square, the Piazzale Loreto, for a large angry crowd to insult and physically abuse. They were then hung upside down from a metal girder above a service station on the square.

Initially, Mussolini was buried in an unmarked grave but, in 1946, his body was dug up and stolen by fascist supporters. Four months later it was recovered by the authorities who then kept it hidden for the next 11 years. Eventually, in 1957, his remains were allowed to be interred in the Mussolini family crypt in his home town of Predappio. His tomb has become a place of pilgrimage for neo-fascists and the anniversary of his death is marked by neo-fascist rallies...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Benito_Mussolini

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Mussolini's demiise was not so simple

He was captured previously, and rescued on direct orders of Hitler, in the Skorzeny raid.

[appalachiablue]

3. You can note more sources to back this up I think.

Gran Sasso Raid, Wiki.
..On 12 September 1943, Skorzeny and 16 SS troopers joined the Fallschirmjäger to rescue Mussolini in a high-risk glider mission. Ten DFS 230 gliders, each carrying nine soldiers and a pilot, towed by Henschel Hs 126 planes started between 13:05 and 13:10 from the Pratica di Mare Air Base, near Rome...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Sasso_raid#:~:text=On%2012%20September%201943%2C%20Skorzeny,Mare%20Air%20Base%2C%20near%20Rome.

[Deep State Witch]

2. One of My Great Uncles

My grandmother's brother John, was in that campaign. He was one of 10 members of his unit that survived Monte Cassino.

[appalachiablue]

4. Well done, thanks for posting.