Representatives of the American, British, and Russian armies were present. On this same day, at Giulino di Mezzegra near Lake Como, Italian partisans shot to death former Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini along with his young mistress, Clara Petacci, and seventeen other Fascist followers. Mussolini—who had aligned himself with Hitler and the Axis powers and had hurled Italy into the war with all the resources he could muster—had been caught trying to flee into Switzerland.
