From Uncle Mike:
Mike is covering two fateful days ine one post, April 28, when Mussolini was executed by Italian Partisans, and April 30, when Hitler killed himself. In both instances they took a "significant other" with them, in Mussolini's case, that being his current mistress, Clara Petacci, age 33.
Mussolini and Petacci had been caught trying to cross into Switzerland by partisans, who executed them the following day. They were shot, and then their bodies hung upside down.
Mussolini had been the first of the fascist dictators to hold power. There had always been opposition to the one time socialist turned fascist, but armed Italian opposition only came about after the Allies had landed on Italian territory. As with France, whose resistance swelled as it became obvious that the Allies would land, Italian opposition was heavily dominated by the far left, but there were other elements in it as well. Mussolini, as already noted, had once been a member of the far left as well, and it's probable, frankly, that amongst those who watched and cheered his death were those who had once cheered him.
Often missed, Nicola Bombacci, Alessandro Pavolini and Achille Starace were also executed at the same time. Nicola Bombacci was an Italian Marxist revolutionary and later a fascist politician. The others were prominent fascists.
Like Eva Braun, there's little to note about Petacci, other than that she was loyal, like Braun, to her dictator until death. In Mussolini's case, that was not true of his spouse, whom he left when he left.
The U.S. Fifth Army took Alessandria and Vicenza.
Hitler ordered Himmler to be arrested, learning of his effort to make a deal in the West.
German and Soviet troops fought on in Berlin, where the Red Army was within a mile of the Fuhrerbunker.
The eccentric Rupprecht Gerngroß lead a military uprising against the Nazis in Munich, which failed.
Teh U-56 was sunk in an RAF raid on Kiel.
Hitler's brother in law, notorious SS figure Hermann Fegelein, was executed. He was planning on taking off with what he could.
The 8th Army took Digos in the Philippines.
Labels: 1940s, 1945, Allies, Army, Artillery, Austria, German SS, Heinrich Himmler, Italian partisans, Italy, Mussolini, Personalities, Philippine Resistance, Philippines, Red Army, The Holocaust, World War Two
