27-04-2025
Eighty years after Mussolini's execution, nostalgia for fascism persists
On April 28, 1945, the dictator Benito Mussolini was executed by members of the Italian resistance, along with his mistress Clara Petacci. The next day, their bodies were dumped in a Milan square and subjected to mockery and abuse by the mob. Yet eighty years after the fall of the "Duce", the legacy of fascism is no longer deplored in Italy, and even gives rise to nostalgia.
The photographs appeared in media around the globe. The body of the former dictator Benito Mussolini, hung by the feet from a metal girder, facing a jeering crowd in Milan's Piazzale Loreto on April 29, 1945. His body and that of his mistress Clara Petacci had been horribly abused: spat upon, beaten and urinated on. By the time they were sent to the city's morgue, the remains were unrecognisable.
Unlike Adolf Hitler, the 'Duce' chose to flee as the end of the war approached rather than commit suicide.
Influential members of Mussolini's government turned against him by 1943 with the Allies capture of Sicily. He was arrested by the Fascist Grand Council and deposed in July, 1943, before being freed from prison by German special forces in September.
Mussolini was brought to German-occupied northern Italy to establish a puppet state, the Italian Social Republic, which lasted until April 1945.
Another option was to 'enter into immediate negotiations with the Allies in an attempt to save his own skin', De Luna notes. 'In the end, he chose to flee in a column with an armoured car, disguised as a German soldier in the back of a truck."
Read more on FRANCE 24 EnglishRead also:Italy's Berlusconi praises Mussolini on Holocaust Day'Gruesome' new documentary about Mussolini's corpse
