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
Dictator novel Although some dictator novels centre on one historical dictator (albeit in fictional guise), they do not analyze the economics, politics, and rule of the régime as might a history book. The dictator novel genre includes "I, the Supreme" (1974), by Augusto Roa Bastos, about Dr. Francia of Paraguay, and "The Feast of the Goat" (2000), by Mario Vargas Llosa, about Rafael Leónidas Trujillo of the Dominican Republic. Alternatively, the novelist might create a fictional dictator to achieve the same narrative end, as in "Reasons of State" (1974), by Alejo Carpentier, in which the dictator is a composite man assembled from