European theatre of World War II major German forces in the west were encircled and trapped in the Ruhr. On April 27, 1945, as Allied forces closed in on Milan, Mussolini was captured by Italian Partisans. He was trying to flee Italy to Switzerland and was traveling with a German anti-air battalion. On April 28, Mussolini and several of the other Fascists captured with him were taken to Dongo and executed by firing squad. The bodies were then taken to Milan and unceremoniously strung up in front of a filling station. Hitler, learning of Mussolini's death, realized that the end had finally come. He remained in
Bombings of Switzerland in World War II British planes bombed Switzerland about seventy times during World War II, killing 84 people. Although these bombings were attributed to error, some historians have suspected that the Allies wanted to send a warning to Switzerland for having cooperated with Germany. The daylight bombing of Schaffhausen on 1 April 1944 by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) was the most serious of all incidents. Approximately 50 B-24 Liberators of a larger force misidentified Schaffhausen as their target Ludwigshafen am Rhein near Mannheim (about 235 km north of Schaffhausen), and dropped sixty tons of bombs on the town. Although an air