Word: mussolini
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Give You an Empire!" As near as can be pieced together at this time, in this fashion, from the last days of Benito Mussolini...
...Sunday, April 22 men went on strike. The city's German garrison correctly interpreted this as the prelude to a revolt, withdrew from the streets into their barracks. On Wednesday a general strike was called. Demonstrations against the Germans and Fascists swept through the city. That evening Mussolini, as chief of the Republican Fascist Government, and his War Minister, Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, met with partisan representatives. Terms of surrender "were discussed. Mussolini cried: "The Germans have betrayed me!" Bombastically he asked for one hour's time to inform the German High Command of his displeasure...
...retreat, kill me!" was in headlong flight. At 9 p.m. he reached Como near the Swiss border. At 2 a.m. Thursday he sent an envoy to ask Swiss authorities to grant asylum to his wife, Donna Rachele, and their children. The Swiss emphatically declined. About 6 a.m. Mussolini sneaked northward presumably in the hope of reaching Germany. According to one report he joined a German truck convoy trying unsuccessfully to disguise himself in a German officer's overcoat. He was spotted near Dongo and held for arrest...
...partisan commander known by the nom de guerre "Eduardo" dispatched ten men and an officer to "settle the matter." They found the dictator and his mistress in a cottage on a hill outside the village. When he saw his countrymen approaching, Mussolini thought they had come to liberate him. Joyfully he embraced his Petacci. When he learned that he was under arrest, his face turned yellow with fear and fury. He cried: "Let me save my life, and I'll give you an empire...
...Finished." The bodies lay on the ground for many hours. Then, to give the mob a better view, the partisans hanged Mussolini and Petacci by their feet from a scaffold on the Piazza. "Hah!" jeered an onlooker, "Mussolini has become...