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
Clara Malraux as "Portrait de Grisélidis" (1945) and "La Lutte inégale" (1958). Her autobiography, "Le Bruit de nos pas" ("The Sound of Our Footsteps"), was published in six volumes between 1963 and 1979. She had a lengthy relationship with the writer Jean Duvignaud, who was nearly thirty years her junior, but they never lived together. They collaborated on a magazine called "Contemporains". Clara Malraux Clara Malraux (22 October 1897 – 15 December 1982) was a French writer and translator, and a member of the French Resistance during the Second World War. She was the first wife of the writer André Malraux. She