On this day 29th April 1945.

On this day 29th April 1945.

The bodies of Mussolini and Petacci were taken to Milan, Italy and hung upside down for public display at the spot where partisans had been executed earlier.

On April 25, 1945, Benito Mussolini agreed to meet with anti-Fascist partisans in the palace of Milan. It was here that he learned Germany had begun negotiations for Mussolini’s surrender, which sent him into a fearful rage.

He took his mistress, Clara Petacci, and fled north where the pair joined a German convoy headed to the Swiss border. At least this way, Mussolini believed, he could live out his days in exile.

He was wrong. Il Duce tried to wear a Nazi helmet and coat as a disguise in the convoy, but he was instantly recognized. His bald head, deeply set jaw, and piercing brown eyes gave him away.

Mussolini had developed a cult-like following and instant recognizability over the past 25 years — due to his face being plastered all over propaganda nationwide — and now it had come back to haunt him.

Fearing another rescue attempt of Mussolini by the Nazis, partisans whisked Mussolini and Petacci away to a remote farmhouse.

The next morning, the partisans ordered the pair to stand against a brick wall near the entrance of Villa Belmonte, near Italy’s Lake Como and a firing squad shot the couple down in a barrage of gunfire. Upon Mussolini’s death, the final words he uttered were “No! No!

But just like that, Mussolini’s violent life had come to a violent end. However, just because Mussolini’s death was now over, doesn’t mean the story was.

Still not satisfied, partisans rounded up 15 suspected Fascists and executed them in the same fashion. Clara’s brother, Marcello Petacci, was also shot dead while swimming in Lake Como, trying to escape.

The night after Benito Mussolini’s death, a cargo truck roared into Milan’s Square of the Fifteen Martyrs.

A cadre of 10 men unceremoniously dumped 18 bodies out of the back.

They were those of Mussolini, the Petaccis, and the 15 suspected Fascists.

It was the same square where, a year earlier, Mussolini’s men had gunned down 15 anti-Fascists in a brutal execution.

That connection was not lost on the residents of Milan, who then took out 20 years of frustration and fury on the corpses.

People began hurling rotten vegetables at the dictator’s corpse. Then, they took to beating and kicking it. One woman felt Il Duce wasn’t dead enough.

She fired five shots into his head at close range; one bullet for each son she lost in Mussolini’s failed war.

This invigorated the crowd even more. One man grabbed Mussolini’s body by the armpits so the crowd could see it. That still wasn’t enough.

People got ropes, tied them to the feet of the corpses, and strung them upside-down from the iron girders of a gas station.