Benito Mussolini 15

 For some time, both fascists and non-fascists in Italy had been plotting Mussolini's demise. On July 24, at a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council the supreme constitutional authority of the state, which had not met since the war began an overwhelming majority passed a resolution that in effect dismissed Mussolini from office. Disregarding the vote as a matter of little concern and refusing to admit that his minions could harm him, Mussolini appeared at his office the next morning as though nothing had happened. That afternoon, however, he was arrested by royal command on the steps of the Villa Savoia after an audience with the king.
Imprisoned first on the island of Ponza, then on a remoter island off the coast of Sardinia, he was eventually transported to a hotel high on the Gran Sasso d’Italia in the mountains of Abruzzi, from which his rescue by the Germans was deemed impossible. Nevertheless, by crash-landing gliders on the slopes behind the hotel, a team of German commandos led by Waffen-SS officer Otto Skorzeny on September 12, 1943, effected his escape by air to Munich.