Benito Mussolini 17

 As German defenses in Italy crumbled and the Allies advanced rapidly northward, the partisan leadership of the Italian Communists decided to execute Mussolini.Rejecting the advice of various advisers, including the elder of his two surviving sons—his second son had been killed in the war—Mussolini refused to consider flying out of the country, and he made for the Valtellina, intending perhaps to make a final stand in the mountains; but only a handful of men could be found to follow him. He tried to cross the border disguised as a German soldier in a convoy of trucks retreating toward Innsbruck, Austria. But he was recognized, and, together with his mistress, Claretta Petacci, who had insisted on remaining with him to the end, he was shot and killed on April 28, 1945. Their bodies were hung, heads downward, in the Piazza Loreto in Milan. Huge, jubilant crowds celebrated the fall of the dictator and the end of the war.
The great mass of the Italian people greeted Mussolini’s death without regret. He had lived beyond his time and had dragged his country into a disastrous war, which it was unwilling and unready to fight. Democracy was restored in the country after 20 years of dictatorship, and a neo-Fascist Party that carried on Mussolini’s ideals won only 2 percent of the vote in the 1948 elections.