Mussolini Captured and Executed by Italian Partisans

Benito Mussolini was captured by Communist partisans while attempting to flee to Switzerland disguised in a German military overcoat. On April 28, 1945 — just two days before Hitler's suicide — he was summarily executed by partisan Luigi Longo at Giulino di Mezzegra on Lake Como. His body and that of his mistress Clara Petacci were transported to Milan's Piazzale Loreto — the same site where partisans had been publicly executed months earlier — and hung upside down from a metal girder. The manner of his death was seen as symbolic justice for fascism's victims. Mussolini's 21-year rule had brought Italy into an alliance that cost 457,000 Italian lives.