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April 28
Mussolini was arrested and executed while trying to escape to
Switzerland
1945: Italian partisans execute Mussolini
England have
Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy until his downfall in 1943, has been
killed by partisans along with his mistress, Clara Petacci, and some close
associates.
Their bodies were taken to Milan from the Lecco district near Lake Como
where they were arrested and executed yesterday.
According to the Times correspondent in Milan, the corpses of Mussolini,
Petacci and 12 Fascists are on display in Piazzale Loreto "with ghastly
promiscuity in the open square under the same fence against which one year ago
15 partisans had been shot by their own countrymen".
One woman fired five shots into Mussolini"s body, according to Milan Radio,
and shouted: "Five shots for my five assassinated sons!"
Other passers-by spat on the bodies.
Most British people are shocked at Mussolini"s end not knowing the full
history of Piazzale Loreto.
People"s War memories "
The executions are the first conspicuous demonstration of mob violence
carried out by the partisans who until now have been kept under control by their
leaders.
The partisan commander-in-chief General Raffaele Cadorna said such
incidents were regrettable but desirable in this case as a way for the public to
vent their anger against the former dictator and his cohorts.
Among the bodies were former general secretary of the Fascist Party,
Roberto Farinacci and Carlo Scorza, former secretary of the party.
Mussolini was spotted yesterday heading towards Switzerland by an Italian
customs guard at Dongo, near Lake Como. He was driving a car in a column of
other German cars wearing a German greatcoat over his uniform.
Other members of his party were found in neighbouring villages.
It was in Milan that Mussolini founded Europe"s first fascist movement -
Fasci di Combattimento - in 1919.
He came to power in 1922 after the so-called March on Rome.
By 1928 Mussolini was absolute dictator and took the title of Duce, leader,
and embarked on an expansionist foreign policy taking Ethiopia in 1935 and
annexing Albania in 1939. That same year Mussolini signed a Tripartite Pact with
Adolf Hitler"s Germany and Imperial Japan.
After defeats in Greece, the Balkans, North Africa and Russia, Mussolini
lost popularity. Then on 9 July 1943 the Allies landed in Sicily and Italy was
faced with an invasion of its mainland.
Mussolini failed to secure assurances from Germany of adequate support
against such an invasion and the Fascist Grand Council turned against him and
had him arrested on 25 July.
Marshal Pietro Badoglio was appointed prime minister, dissolved fascist
organisations and negotiated an armistice with the Allies.
Six weeks later the Germans launched a dramatic rescue of Mussolini. He was
made head of the puppet republic of Salo - also known as the Italian Social
Republic - once the Germans had occupied northern Italy in September 1943.
On 11 October 1943 the Badoglio government declared war on Germany.
The Chernobyl power plant after the accident
1986: Soviets admit nuclear accident
Artificially 1969:
The
The Soviet Union has acknowledged there has been an accident at the
Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine.
The report, from the official news agency, Tass, said there had been
casualties but gave no details of numbers. It said aid was being sent to the
injured.
The report said that one of the reactors had been damaged in the accident,
but gave no further details beyond saying that measures were being taken to
"eliminate the consequences of the accident". It also claimed the accident was
the first at a Soviet power station.
The report was the first confirmation of a major nuclear catastrophe since
monitoring stations in Sweden, Finland and Norway began reporting sudden high
discharges of radioactivity in the atmosphere two days ago.
Meltdown
The accident is believed to be the most serious in the history of nuclear
power, worse even than that at the Three-Mile Island power station in the United
States in 1979, when there was some release of radioactivity but nobody was
injured.
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant, just north of Kiev, consists of four
nuclear reactors, known as light-water cooled, graphite-moderated reactors - a
type hardly used outside the Soviet Union.
Nuclear experts say the levels of radioactivity recorded indicate that the
nuclear core of the damaged reactor may have melted down.
Full-scale alert
The number of casualties, both immediately and in the future, from
radiation sickness, is expected to be high, although the exact number may never
be known. It is not believed, however, that there is any risk to the health of
anyone outside the Soviet Union.
The discharge of radioactivity was so great that by the time the fallout
reached Sweden, 1,000 miles away, it was still powerful enough to register twice
the natural level of radioactivity in the atmosphere.
The sudden jump in radioactivity levels was enough to prompt a full-scale
alert in Sweden, which initially believed the accident had happened at its own
nuclear power station, on the Baltic coast. The evacuation of 600 workers had
been ordered before experts realised that the source of the radioactivity must
have been within the Soviet Union.
Vocabulary:
partisan: 游击队
armistice: 停战，休战
radioactivity: the radiation emitted by a radioactive substance(放射能) |
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发表于 2016-7-9 23:21:07