The final moments of Benito Mussolini

Mussolini was worried about being handed over for his crimes throughout the war, but he had a stroke of luck when the German forces took over northern Italy in 1943. Mussolini ran Hitler’s puppet government until the Allied forces whooped it in 1945. At which point, Mussolini tried to flee the country, pretending to be a German soldier driving in a convoy, according to Britannica. But he and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were both caught. Within a day, they’d been shot dead. No one is officially sure who killed them, but the Communists are the prime suspects.

Mussolini’s story didn’t end with his death though. His body and that of Claretta Petacci, along with several other executed corpses, were dumped on the cobblestones of Piazzale Loreto. An announcement was made in the paper and over a radio station about the bodies, and a crowd gathered. The people weren’t happy with Mussolini. So unhappy, in fact, that crowd control measures did virtually nothing to keep the crowd away from the bodies.

A man kicked the jaw of Mussolini’s corpse. A woman fired five shots into the corpse’s skull. The body was beaten, urinated on, spit on, had flaming objects thrown at it, and was whipped. Finally, the bodies of Mussolini, Petacci, and four others were strung up by the ankles at the crowd’s delight.