On July 19, 1943 Rome was bombed with significant damage. This was the last straw for Mussolini’s reign. A week later, the Grand Council took a vote of no confidence and the next day Il Duce was summoned to the palace. He was surprisingly shocked to learn that he was out of power. Emperor Victor Emmanuel II appointed Marshal Pietro Badoglio to replace him. Mussolini was arrested by the Carabanieri (Italian military police). They ended up putting him in the Hotel Campo which was a ski resort on a mountain plateau. 200 guards were assigned to guard one old, broken ex-dictator in an impregnable prison with no access other than a cable car. This did not dissuade Adolf Hitler. He insisted his partner be rescued and assigned the job to his personal commando expert, Otto Skorzeny. When Mussolini’s location was discovered, aerial photos showed a flat area near the resort. Skorzeny decided gliders could land on the patch of land. On Sept. 12, ten gliders landed despite the fact that the landing zone turned out to be a slope that was steep and rocky. There were some injuries, but it was a successful ingress. The commandoes crashed through the front gates, but no shots were fired. Skorzeny had brought along an Italian general who ordered the guards to stand down. They did. Skorzeny burst into Mussolini’s room. “Duce, the Fuhrer sent me!” “I knew my friend Adolf wouldn’t desert me.” Three days later, Il Duce and der Fuhrer were reunited. Hitler set up Mussolini as a puppet ruler in northern Italy.
https://www.history.co.uk/article/operation-eiche-the-rescue-of-benito-mussolini
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Sasso_raid
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