On September 3, 1943, the Kingdom of Italy signed an “armistice” with the Allies. Negotiations had been going on secretly for months with meetings in neutral Portugal by some Italian military leaders under orders of King Victor Emmanuel III.
Mussolini had been arrested on July 25th with the fall of Sicily and Marshal Pietro Badoglio appointed the new Prime Minister. The whole process was a not-so-clever ruse by the King to take Italy out of the war without Hitler being the wiser. The Germans were told that Mussolini’s ouster would not affect the Axis alliance. It didn’t dawn on any royal conspirators that Mussolini was the only Italian Hitler ever trusted.
So, through the month of August, Badoglio pretended nothing had changed. He didn’t secure the Alpine passes lest the Germans get suspicious. He didn’t alert Italy’s scattered armies that the war would take a momentous turn or even move some overseas troops back to defend the homeland. It was to be a ‘bait & switch’ that would catch the Germans flatfooted.
The Italians considered Italy’s withdrawal from the fighting as an honorable ‘armistice’. But the agreement that was signed at Cassibile, Sicily called for the total surrender and occupation of Italy. It required all Italian military and merchant ships to immediately sail to Allied bases around the Mediterranean. Moreover, the Italians had to keep German troops on the peninsula away from ports and air bases until Allied troops arrived.
Since Mussolini’s arrest, Hitler had sent scores of divisions across the unprotected Alps ostensibly to ‘reinforce’ the peninsula against an expected Allied invasion. Badoglio and the King had effectively made Italy a Nazi-occupied country.
Although the ‘armistice’ was signed on September 3rd, the Italians didn’t want it made public for weeks until they had prepared their military for the switch. But General Eisenhower gave them only 5 days to prepare. On September 8th, the world was told of Italy’s “unconditional surrender.” On September 9th, the Allies invaded the peninsula at Salerno. On September 12th, German commandoes rescued Mussolini from his mountaintop prison. Italy would soon have two governments—Fascist in the north, monarchy in the south—and both German and Allied troops ravaging the peninsula.
Making matters worse, the Italian Army was in total collapse thinking World War II was over for them. Badoglio had failed miserably in leadership and contingency planning. The troops were understandably confused, desertions were rampant. Some courageous unit commanders undertook suicidal action against superior German forces, others laid down their arms only to be massacred by vengeful Germans or deported to German prison camps as traitors.
Mussolini’s new puppet regime in the north managed to create a “republican” army with Italian soldiers released from German prisons. The southern Kingdom under Badoglio salvaged what was left of its army to assist the Allied war effort. Italians were now fighting both the Germans and the Allies; worse they began fighting each other in a civil war that went on past the 1945 murder of Mussolini and the surrender of German and Fascist troops.
This tragic episode of Italian history is ripe for Monday morning quarterbacks. Was it really possible to exit the war under these circumstances? Was Italy better off fighting alongside the Germans to the bitter end? Was the overthrow of Mussolini the perquisite for Italy’s exit?
Had Mussolini remained in power and Italian and German troops defended the peninsula, the war would have taken a different turn. Allied strategy, especially the American one, was to invade Normandy in 1943, not Italy. Churchill insisted on destroying Italy first to restore Britain’s hegemony in the Mediterranean, the gateway to British India. Mountainous Italy was the military nightmare that everyone had predicted, but the vast Allied armies had to go somewhere within reach after the successful North African campaign—a rehearsal for Normandy.
Italy in 1943 was a basket case even without an invasion. Allied air power was bombing it back to the Stone Age. There were few Allied qualms about leveling the glories of classical or Renaissance Italy—the abbey at Monte Cassino demonstrated that. But the ground war would unleash consequences even more horrific for civilians.
Was there a better way? -JLM
Thank you John for raising these difficult questions and reviewing very effectively and efficiently a summation of those horrible times. It also impacted not only the lives of many Italians but also Italian Americans who were desperately trying to support families and relatives in Italy. This is often a long ignored part of understanding modern Italy and the dynamics of the founding of the Italian Republic, but it is a necessary discussion, that really needs to be explored in many of its dynamics and of course “unintended consequences”.
The “bombing” of Monte Cassino was not a military mission. Residents of the town on the mountain pleaded to US repeatedly and assured that there were no longer Nazi troops there. I met the mayor of today’s Monte Cassino location in mid 90’s and asked about that subject, his reply was that
it was a “misunderstanding”. The war for Italy at that time was over. Historically a victor in a war, UNLOADS armaments that won’t be of value to bring back “home”. Hence, bombing, to total destruction (beyond military necessities), Monte Cassino became a “dumping ground” for artillery. Old timers in Monte Cassino tell me that the newly built version of the Church pales in comparison to the original.
I’ve been there a few times. And I saw several signs, such as cracks in stucco, walls etc
throughout the new church.
BTW there is also a large cemetery dedicated to Polish troops that lost their lives on Monte Cassino. Today’s Monte Cassino is ground level and quiet pleasant town. Top of mountain was never re-established.
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Though the suspected German presence was the cause of the bombing, facts later revealed that the Germans advised the Abbot to remove all historical treasures from the abbey before the Allies arrived. The Germans helped with the removal, and I do not believe they plundered those treasures as Germans had done thru-out Europe. German troops didn’t not occupy the abbey until after the Allies bombed it to rumble. All now acknowledge that the bombing was a mistake based on poor intelligence.
The Italian gov’t made rebuilding the abbey a post-war priority to lift the spirits of the nation. I visited it in 1984 and thought it magnificent restoration.