e war in 1943, German forces occupied most of Northern Italy until 1945. As a result, antifascist resistance groups formed and started guerilla operations against Nazi and Italian Social Republic's troops. As the war came to an end, the American 1st Armored Division advanced on Milan as part of the Po Valley Campaign. But before they arrived, members of the Italian resistance movement took control of the city and executed Mussolini along with several members of his collaborationist government. On 29 April 1945, the corpses of Mussolini, his mistress Clara Petacci and other Fascist leaders were infamously hanged in Piazzale Loreto, where a year before fifteen antifascists had been executed.
After the war, the city was the site of a refugee camp for Jews fleeing from Austria. During the economic miracle of the 1950s and 1960s, a large wave of internal migration, especially peasants from rural areas of Southern Italy, moved to the city. During this period, Milan saw a quick reconstruction of most of its destroyed houses and factories, with the building of several innovative and modernist skyscrapers, such as the Torre Velasca and the Pirelli Tower. The economic boom was however overshadowed in the late 1960s and early 1970s during the so called Years of Lead, when Milan witnessed an unprecedented wave of steet violence, labour strikes and political terrorism. The apex of this period of turmoil occurred on 12 December 1969, when a bomb exploded at the National Agrarian Bank in Piazza Fontana, killing seventeen people and injuring eighty-eight.
In the 1980s, as several fashion firms based in the city became internationally successful (such as Armani, Versace and Dolce & Gabbana), Milan started to be recognized as one of the world's fashion capitals. The traditionally affordable and practical, yet stylish and chic attire produced by the city's stylists made it a serious global competitor, threatening Paris' century-long status as the world capital of
