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__NOINDEX__ Special:WhatLinksHere/Benito Mussolini User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 172 The death of Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist dictator, occurred on 28 April 1945 and was the result of a summary execution by anti-fascist partisans in northern Italy. In the final weeks of the war, Mussolini was captured fleeing towards the Swiss border by local partisans. He and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were shot the following day in the small village of Giulino di Mezzegra. The partisan who carried out the shootings used the [[nom de guerre] of "Colonello Valerio".

The "official" version of events is that the communist partisan Walter Audisio carried was "Colonello Valerio". However, since the end of the war, the identity of the partisan who killed Mussolini has been a subject of debate and dispute within Italy, with at least a dozen candidates having been proposed at different times. While the details of what happened remains shrouded in confusion and uncertainty, Audisio is the most likely person to have been Mussolini's executioner. Other facts surrounding the shooting, such as who gave the order to summarily execute Mussolini, also remain unclear.

Background
Mussolini had ruled Italy as a fascist leader since 1922 (with the title Il Duce from 1925) and had taken the country into World War II on the side of Nazi Germany in June 1940. Following the Allied Invasion of Sicily in July 1943, Mussolini was deposed and arrested; Italy then switched sides and joined the Allies. Later that year, he was rescued from prison in the Gran Sasso raid by German special forces. The Germans made him leader of the Italian Social Republic, a German puppet state in northern Italy. However, from the end of 1944, the Allies advanced into northern Italy. In late April 1945, with the German army in northern Italy about to surrender and total defeat looming, Mussolini attempted to escape north to Switzerland.

Capture and arrest
On 27 April 1945, he and his mistress Claretta Petacci, together with other fascist leaders, were travelling in a German convoy near the village of Dongo on the north western shore of Lake Como. A group of communist partisans led by Urbano Lazzaro attacked the convoy and forced it to hault. The partisans recognised one Italian fascist leader in the convoy, but not at this stage Mussolini, and made the Germans hand over all the Italians in exchange for allowing the Germans to proceed. Eventually Mussolini was discovered slumped in one of the convoy vehicles. Lazzaro later said that "his face was like wax and his stare glassy, but somehow blind. I read utter exhustion, but not fear...Mussolini seemed completely lacking in will, spiritually dead". Lazzaro arrested Mussolini and took him to Dongo, where he spent part of the night in the local barracks.

That evening, Sandro Pertini, the partisan leader in northern Italy, announced on Radio Milano; "The 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 hounour for this man. He would deserve to be killed like a mangy dog".

Fighting was still going on in the area around Dongo, so, in the middle of the night, Mussolini and Petacci were driven to a nearby farm of a peasant family named de Maria, which the partisans believed would be a safe place to hold them. They spent the rest of the night and most of the following day there.

Order to execute
Differing accounts exist of who made the decision that Mussolini should be summarily executed. The leader of the Communist Party, Palmiro Togliatti claimed he had given the order in the event of Mussolini's capture by a radio message on 26 April. He said that he had done so in his capacity of Deputy Prime Minister of the government in Rome and as Secretary-General of the Communist Party. A senior communist in Milan, Luigi Longo, said that the order came from the General Command of the partisan military units "in application of a CLNAI decision". The CLNAI (Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale Alta Italia) was the Milan-based collective political leadership of the coalition of the main partisan groups operating in northern Italy. Longo subsequently gave a different story and said that the order came from a member of the Action Party (which was part of the CLNAI) called Fermo Solari.

According to Leo Valiani, the Action Party representative on the CLNAI, the decision to execute Mussolini was taken on the night of 27/28 April by a group acting on behalf of the CLNAI comprising himself, Sandro Pertini, and the communists Emilio Sereni and Luigi Longo. The CLNAI subsequently announced, on the day after his death, that Mussolini had been executed on its orders.

Events of 28 April 1945
Audisio arrived in the Dongo area and met with Pier Luigi Bellini delle Stelle who, with Lazzaro, and been part of the partisan group that had captured Mussolini. According to Bellini delle Stelle, Audisio asked for a list of the fascist prisoners that had been captured the previous day and marked Mussolini's and Petacci's names for execution. Bellini delle Stelle said he challenged Audisio as to why Pertacci should be executed. Audisio replied that shehad been Mussolini's adviser, had inspired his policies and was "just as responsible as he is". According to Belini delle Stelle no other formalities took place. Audisio gave a different account. He claimed that no one presented any objections to the executions. He also said that he convened a "war tribunal" comprising Lampredi, Bellini delle Stelle, Michele Moretti and Lazzaro with himself as president. The tribunal condemned them to death. Lazzaro later denied that such a tribunal had been convened and said "I was convinced Musolini deserved death...but there should have been a trial according to law. It was very barbarous."

Audisio and others drove to the de Maria's farmhouse to collect Mussolini and Pertacci. They then drove a short distance to the village of Giulino de Mezzegra. There are varying versions of what happened next. The conventional "official" version is that vehicle pulled up at the entrance of the Villa Belmonte on via XXIV maggio and Mussolini and Pertacci were told to get out and stand by the villa's wall. Audisio then shot them at 1610 hours with a machine gun borrowed from one of the other partisans, his own gun having jammed. The dying Mussolini's last words when Audisio went to finish him off was "aim at my heart".

Post-war controversy
Until 1947, Audisio's involvement was kept a secret, and in the earliedt descriptions of the events (in articles of the Communist newspaper L'Unità) the person who caried out the shootings was only referred to by the Nom de Guerre of "Colonello Valerio". Audisio was first named in a series of articles in the newspaper Il Tiempo in March 1947 and the Communist Party subsequently confirmed Audisio's involvement. Audisio himself first spoke publicly about it in 1947 and he wrote a book with his account which was published posthumously in 1975.

There are a large number of alternate versions of the events of 28 April, which have included differences concerning who was present at the shootings and who carried them out. Lazzaro claimed that Longo and not Audisio was in charge of conducting the execution. However, he said that Mussolini was inadvertantly wounded when Petacci tried to grab the gun of one of the partisans. The partisan killed Petacci and Michele Moretti then shot dead Mussolini.

Others have claimed that Mussolini and Pertacci were shot earlier in day at different locations and that the execution at Giulino de Mezzegra was staged with corpses.