PicoZ

Death came last week to Benito Mussolini, from the rifles of an Italian firing squad. As his body lay, reviled and spat upon, in a public square of Milan, it was as though the pent-up jury of a nation was beating upon the senseless clay of the man who had led it to vainglory, shame and disaster. From TIME Correspondent Reg Ingraham came this eyewitness report of one of history’s raw spectacles:

“For My Murdered Sons!” The first of the Fascist dictators was the first to meet death at the hands of the people he had so long oppressed. This Sunday morning (April 29), in a sun-drenched square not far from Milan’s center, where 22 years ago Editor Benito Mussolini launched the Black Shirt March on Rome, his battered, bullet-riddled corpse sprawled in public display. His head rested on the breast of his mistress, comely Clara Petacci, who had died with him. Around him stretched the bodies of 16 of his Black Shirt henchmen.

When I and other correspondents reached the scene, a howling mob was struggling for place beside the heap of cadavers. Partisan guards vainly fired rifle and pistol shots into the air to keep the crowd back. We drove our jeep to the edge of the scene, I clambered atop the hood.

While I watched, a civilian tramped across the bodies and dealt Mussolini’s shaven head a terrific kick. Someone pushed the twisted head into a more natural position again with a rifle butt.

Although the Duce’s upper teeth now protruded grotesquely, there was no mistaking his jaw. In death, Mussolini seemed a little man. He wore a Fascist Militia uniform — grey breeches with a narrow black stripe, a green-grey tunic and muddy black riding boots. A bullet had pierced his skull over the left eye and emerged at the back, leaving a hole from which the brains dripped. Mistress Petacci, 2 5 -year-old daughter of an ambitious Roman family, wore a white silk blouse. In her breast were two bullet holes ringed by dark circles of dried blood.

The mob surged and swayed around the grisly spot. One woman emptied a pistol into the Duce’s body. “Five shots!” she screamed. “Five shots for my five murdered sons!” Others cried: “He died too quickly! He should have suffered!” But the hate of many was wordless. They could only spit.

“I’ll Give You an Empire!” As near as can be pieced together at this time, in this fashion, from the last days of Benito Mussolini.*

On 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.

Before the hour expired, the Duce, who in his fustian prime had bellowed to his followers, “If I 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.

A 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!”

But the partisans gave him short shrift. He was bluntly informed that he had been condemned to death. After a brief “trial,” the 16 other Fascists in the Duce’s party were also adjudged guilty. The Duce’s last words as he faced the firing squad were: “No! No!”

The bodies of the 18 were loaded into a moving van and trucked south to Milan. There, at 3 a.m. Friday, they were dumped in the old Piazza Loreto, now renamed Piazza Quindici Martiri, in honor of 15 antiFascists recently executed there.

“It Is 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 a pig!”

Shortly before noon today the bodies were removed to a mortuary. Mussolini and Petacci were dragged like sacks of grain into a high-walled courtyard. Men, women & children followed, climbing the brick wall and peering over at the shapeless pulp that was the Duce’s face. The people’s temper, as though satiated, seemed calmer now. “At last, it is finished,” said one quietly. “He was punished by God.”

ncG1vNJzZmismaKyb6%2FOpmaaqpOdtrexjm9scnFoaYJwtdOao7JllJqutbSMoqVmpZmhrq97