Which Axis leader was overthrown and arrested in July 1943?

Benito Mussolini was the Axis leader overthrown and arrested in July 1943. Italy’s Fascist Grand Council voted against him on July 25, 1943, after Allied forces invaded Sicily and military defeat made his leadership increasingly untenable.

King Victor Emmanuel III then dismissed Mussolini as prime minister and had him arrested. Marshal Pietro Badoglio formed a new government, which initially claimed to continue fighting alongside Germany while secretly negotiating an armistice with the Allies. Italy announced the armistice on September 8, 1943.

Mussolini was later rescued from captivity by German commandos and installed as the head of the Italian Social Republic, a German-backed puppet state in northern Italy. He remained there until April 1945, when Italian partisans captured and executed him. The July 1943 arrest therefore marked the collapse of Mussolini’s first dictatorship, though not the end of his political role.