Although he was strenuously supported by his wife and by his young mistress, Claretta, the Duce grew estranged from his favorite daughter, Edda when her husband, Count Galeazzo Ciano, conspired to secure his father-in-law's downfall and arrest. Freed by German commandos and appointed by Hitler to be the head of a new fascist regime in German occupied northern Italy, Mussolini had Ciano imprisoned and executed for treason, before being shot himself by Italian resistance fighters in the spring of 1945.