29th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Italian) The new Italian Social Republic was founded on 23 September 1943 under dictator Benito Mussolini. On 2 October 1943, Heinrich Himmler and Gottlob Berger devised the "Programm zur Aufstellung der italienischen Milizeinheiten durch die Waffen-SS" ("Program for the deployment of Italian militia forces by the Waffen-SS") which was approved by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. In October 1943, 15,000 volunteers started training at Truppenübungsplatz Münsingen, but 9,000 of them were unsuitable and released for training in police units, the Black Brigades or for labor. On 23 November 1943, 13 Miliz-Battalions pledged their loyalty before being moved to "SS-Ausbildungsstab Italien". The
Death of Benito Mussolini assertion. During his dictatorship, representations of Mussolini's body for example pictures of him engaged in physical labour either bare-chested or half-naked formed a central part of fascist propaganda. His body remained a potent symbol after his death, causing it to be either revered by supporters or treated with contempt and disrespect by opponents, and assuming a broader political significance. In the evening of 28 April, the bodies of Mussolini, Petacci, and the other executed fascists were loaded onto a van and trucked south to Milan. On arriving in the city in the early hours of 29 April, they were dumped