German commandos under the command of Otto Skorzeny rescued Benito Mussolini from Italian imprisonment at the Campo Imeriale Hotel in the Abruzzi Mountains. A less than enthusiastic Mussolini was spirited away as a passenger on a Fieler Storch after the combined glider/paratrooper raid.
The raid allowed Mussolini to be installed in a puppet fascist state called the Italian Social Republic, which would not have a happy end for Il Duce. While in photos of this event, he's all smiles, he was a shadow of his former bombastic self by this time. His fascistic state embedded within a monarchy had been destroyed and was going to be defeated no matter what was done at this point. Italian troops were now fighting the Germans, although not terribly effectively. A partisan movement was developing. The sympathies of the Italian people had gone over to an Allied peace.
The raid itself, while regarded as quite a feat of arms, emphasized the sad state of the Axis war effort itself by this point. Mussolini could be regarded as nothing other than a puppet with an Axis alliance that was basically down to one power and associates. Some of those associates, such as Romania and Finland, had concluded the Axis cause was doomed and were looking for a way out of the war.
Patriarch Sergius was installed as the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, the first such formal installation since the Russian Revolution.
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