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In 1940, Mussolini took his country into World War II on the side of Nazi Germany, but was soon met with military failure. By the autumn of 1943, he was reduced to being the leader of a German puppet state in northern Italy , and was faced with the Allied advance from the south, and an increasingly violent internal conflict with the partisans.
During World War II, the Gran Sasso raid (codenamed Unternehmen Eiche, German pronunciation: [ʊntɐˌneːmən ˈaɪ̯çə] ⓘ, literally "Operation Oak", by the German military [1]) on 12 September 1943 was a successful operation by German paratroopers and Waffen-SS commandos to rescue the deposed Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini from custody in the Gran Sasso d'Italia massif.
Mussolini was survived by his wife, Rachele Mussolini, two sons, Vittorio and Romano Mussolini, and his daughters Edda (the widow of Count Ciano) and Anna Maria. A third son, Bruno , was killed in an air accident while flying a Piaggio P.108 bomber on a test mission, on 7 August 1941.
The MAS-38 submachine gun used by Audisio to execute Mussolini. It belonged to political commissar Michele Moretti, who lent it to Audisio after the latter's weapon jammed. On 27 April 1945 the high command of the CVL entrusted him with the execution of Benito Mussolini, who had been arrested on that day by Communist partisans near Dongo.
The Italian Civil War (Italian: Guerra civile italiana, pronounced [ˈɡwɛrra tʃiˈviːle itaˈljaːna]) was a civil war in the Kingdom of Italy fought during the Italian campaign of World War II between Italian fascists and Italian partisans (mostly politically organized in the National Liberation Committee) and, to a lesser extent, the Italian Co-belligerent Army.
Victor Klemperer, a famous Dresden-based literature professor and diarist, who – although being Jewish – had survived the Hitler years, writing diary notices for almost every day, [4] commented on the trial and the execution in a diary notice from 15 January 1944 as follows (translating the German original): "For me it is certain that the trial was a farce, that the execution was the work ...
Ciano attempted to convince Mussolini to bring Italy out of the war as casualties mounted but was ignored. In 1943, Ciano supported the ousting of Mussolini as prime minister. Ciano was later executed by Fascists in the Italian Social Republic for betraying Mussolini. Rodolfo Graziani was commander of Italian North Africa and Governor-General ...
As Italian Fascism became a stable institution, the potential murder of Mussolini became harder to attempt and offered less potential impact to destabilize his regime. In May 1931, American anarchist Michele Schirru was arrested and executed in Italy for plotting to kill Mussolini.