Benito Mussolini Mussolini was rescued from captivity in the Gran Sasso raid by German paratroopers and "Waffen-SS" commandos led by Major Otto-Harald Mors. Adolf Hitler, after meeting with the rescued former dictator, then put Mussolini in charge of a puppet regime in northern Italy, the Italian Social Republic (, RSI), informally known as the "Salò Republic". In late April 1945, in the wake of near total defeat, Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci attempted to flee to Switzerland, but both were captured by Italian communist partisans and summarily executed by firing squad on 28 April 1945 near Lake Como. His body was
Mistress of the World The film was not received well by critics in West Germany on its release. Mistress of the World Mistress of the World (, , ) is a 1960 German-French-Italian science fiction-spy film directed by William Dieterle and starring Martha Hyer and Carlos Thompson. It marked the comeback in his native country of the director William Dieterle after several decades spent in Hollywood. In West Germany it was released in a longer version split in two parts ("Die Herrin der Welt - Teil I" and "Die Herrin der Welt - Teil II"). "Mistress of the World" was developed when producer Artur