Question #eb709
1 Answer
It is said that, on receiving news of the killing and public hanging of Benito Mussolini he replied: "I will not be paraded in a cage like an animal by the Russians in Moscow, I will commit suicide".
Explanation:
In May 1945 Adolf Hitler was in Berlin where he lived in a underground bunker and around it in the rubbles of the capital the last ditch defense was manned by few fanatical SS and special shock troops that tried to sustain the fight against, literally, millions of men of the Red Army that were surrounding the capital; he had no means of escaping from Berlin and could expect little help from outside (the German Army was disintegrating and was not able to mount any organized operation anymore) and, even worse, he could not expect any mercy from the enemies whose country and people he cruelly tried to annihilate during long and terrible years of war.
The Russians were out seeking revenge and extracting it wherever they could and obviously were not going to treat leniently the Nazi dictator.
[Soviet tanks advance through what is left of Berlin]
As I said before in receiving news of the terrible fate of Benito Mussolini (shot and then hanged upside down in a square in Milan to be derided and brutalized by the crowd) Hitler expressed to his entourage the will of killing himself and then his body to be cremated not to leave even the bones to the victors!
