Meanwhile the King fled to southern Italy with his military government, where he arranged an armistice with the Allies. On October 13 1943 his government declared war on Germany, and the two Italian regimes descended into the chaos of civil war: Allies and partisans versus Nazis and Fascists. In April 1944, the King transferred most of his royal powers to his son, Umberto. On 27 April 1945, partisans captured Mussolini and his mistress en route to Switzerland, as they tried to escape. Both were executed by shooting the next day.
Their bodies were taken to Milan, where they were hung upside down outside a petrol station and mutilated by an angry mob. Meanwhile, in Berlin, Hitler blamed his own downfall on his “fatal friendship” with Mussolini, before committing suicide on April 30. Though Mussolini’s dictatorship had been mild compared to Hitler’s, his regime’s naked aggression abroad meant that it reaped a rich harvest of retribution, and he deserved his ignominious fate.