Armistice of Cassibile

• 1. Introduction

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  The Armistice of Cassibile was signed on the 3rd of September 1943, in a tent at an Allied military camp in Sicily, ending Italy's participation in World War II on the side of the Axis. The signing took just minutes. But the road to that tent had taken months of conspiracy, betrayal, and desperate back-channel negotiation. The document that two generals signed that afternoon would reshape the entire Italian peninsula. It would also unleash a German response so swift and brutal that many Italians would later wonder whether surrender had been a rescue or a trap. How did a secret armistice become public knowledge? Why did the Italian Navy sail toward North Africa in the dead of night? And what happened to the Italian soldiers scattered across the Balkans and Greek islands when the news finally broke?

• 2. The Conspiracy Against Mussolini

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  Dino Grandi, the 1st Count of Mordano, had once been considered the sole credible alternative to Mussolini as leader of the National Fascist Party. By the spring of 1943, King Victor Emmanuel III was counting on that history. He asked Grandi to help devise a way to remove Mussolini from power. Grandi was joined by Giuseppe Bottai, a senior figure in the Fascist Directorate and Minister of Culture, and by Galeazzo Ciano, the 2nd Count of Cortellazzo and Buccari. Ciano was both Mussolini's son-in-law and the second most powerful man in the Fascist Party. Together, the conspirators drafted an Order of the Day for the next meeting of the Grand Council of Fascism. The document called for restoring direct political control to the King. When the Council met on the 25th of July 1943, a majority voted for the order. Mussolini was summoned to meet the King, dismissed as prime minister, and then arrested by the carabinieri outside the meeting. He was taken to the island of Ponza. Pietro Badoglio stepped in as President of the Council of Ministers. On the 27th of July, his new government banned all Fascist organizations throughout Italy and dissolved the National Fascist Party.

• 3. Negotiations in Lisbon

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  Three Italian generals arrived separately in Lisbon, each claiming authority to negotiate peace with the Allies. Before serious talks could begin, the Allies had to determine which general actually spoke for Rome. The three men quarreled among themselves over seniority. Brigade General Giuseppe Castellano ultimately won the argument and was admitted to the British Embassy, where he met Sir Ronald Hugh Campbell, the British Ambassador to Portugal. Also present were two officers sent by Dwight Eisenhower: Major-General Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower's chief of staff in the US Army, and Brigadier Kenneth Strong, Eisenhower's British intelligence chief. To maintain secure communications between the Italian government and the Allies, a captured British Special Operations Executive agent named Dick Mallaby was released from Verona Prison. He was moved quietly to the Quirinale Palace in Rome, where his SOE training made him the most secure communications link available. By the 27th of August, Castellano had returned to Italy. Three days later, he briefed Badoglio on the Allied request for a meeting in Sicily, a location suggested by the British Ambassador to the Vatican.

• 4. The Signing at Cassibile

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  Castellano reached Termini Imerese, in Sicily, on the 31st of August, arriving by plane and then transferring by road to the small town of Cassibile, near Syracuse. The negotiations were difficult. Castellano pressed for Allied troops to land on the Italian mainland before the armistice was announced, arguing that without such a landing, German forces would overwhelm Italian defenders. He received only vague promises in return, including a possible parachute drop over Rome. Italy's Foreign Minister, Raffaele Guariglia, declared the Allied terms acceptable. General Giacomo Carboni disagreed, warning that the Army Corps around Rome lacked sufficient fuel and ammunition to hold the city. Badoglio himself said nothing at the meeting before the King, who quietly decided to accept the conditions. A confirmation telegram went to the Allies but was intercepted by the Wehrmacht, which had already suspected Italy of seeking a separate peace. Badoglio told the Germans Italy remained loyal. The Germans doubted him and began planning Operation Achse, a contingency to seize control of Italy the moment allegiance shifted. The signing ceremony began at 14:00 on the 3rd of September. Castellano signed for Badoglio; Bedell Smith signed for Eisenhower. A bombing mission over Rome, involving 500 airplanes, was called off at the last moment as Eisenhower's final inducement to finalize the agreement. Harold Macmillan, the British government's representative at the Allied Staff, informed Winston Churchill that the armistice had been signed without amendments of any kind. Castellano, only after signing, was handed the longer list of terms known as the Instrument of Surrender of Italy, which a general named Zanussi had been carrying since Lisbon but had inexplicably not shared.

• 5. A Secret That Didn't Hold

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  On the 7th of September, a small Allied delegation arrived in Rome to tell Badoglio that the armistice would enter into force the following day. The American 82nd Airborne Division was set to land at airports around the city. Badoglio told the delegation his army was not prepared and that most of the airports near Rome were already under German control. He asked for a deferral of a few days. Eisenhower cancelled the Rome landing but refused to delay the announcement; other troops were already at sea, heading for southern Italy. On the 8th of September, Badoglio announced the armistice to the Italian public. Eisenhower followed on Allied radio. The German response was immediate. Operation Achse began. Most units of the Regio Esercito had not been told the armistice was coming; no one had issued clear orders for what to do when the Germans moved. Some Italian divisions that should have defended Rome were still in transit from southern France. Before dawn on the 9th, the King, the royal family, and Badoglio fled Rome for Brindisi, in southern Italy. The intention had been to relocate army headquarters with them, but few staff officers made it. Italian troops, without instructions, collapsed. German forces occupied essentially all remaining Italian territory not already held by the Allies, except Sardinia and part of Apulia, in the four days between the 8th and the 12th of September. In Rome, a nominal Italian governor, backed by a single infantry division, held formal authority until the 23rd of September, but German forces had effectively controlled the city from the 11th.

• 6. The Navy Sails for Malta

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  The Allies had a particular interest in the Regia Marina, Italy's Royal Navy, which counted 206 ships in total, including battleships. The armistice terms required warships on Italy's west coast, concentrated at La Spezia and Genoa, to sail for North Africa by way of Corsica and Sardinia. Ships at Taranto, on the heel of Italy, were to head for Malta. At 02:30 on the 9th of September, three battleships, Roma, Vittorio Veneto, and Italia, left La Spezia with three light cruisers and eight destroyers. German troops had rushed into the port to stop them. When the ships cleared the harbor, German soldiers rounded up and shot several Italian captains whose vessels had not gotten underway in time and had been scuttled instead. That afternoon, German bombers attacked the Italian fleet off Sardinia using guided bombs. Several ships were damaged. Roma sank with the loss of nearly 1,400 men. Most of the surviving ships reached North Africa safely. Three destroyers and a cruiser that stopped to rescue survivors from the Roma made port instead at Menorca, in Spain. At Taranto, the handover was calmer. An Allied naval force approaching the base watched an Italian flotilla sailing out of Taranto Harbour voluntarily toward Malta. A later agreement in September allowed some Italian naval vessels to remain in service, though the battleships were reduced to care and maintenance. Italian ships retained their crews and flew Italian flags throughout.

• 7. Soldiers Left Behind

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  Italian troops stationed outside Italy in the occupied Balkans and Greek islands faced a different and grimmer situation. Cut off from a clear chain of command, they held out for weeks after the 8th of September. Without determined Allied support, all had been overwhelmed by the Germans by the end of September 1943. On the island of Cephalonia, the Italian Acqui Division was massacred after resisting the Germans. On the island of Kos, 103 Italian officers of the 50th Infantry Division Regina were shot in early October 1943, after the Germans captured the island. On Leros and Samos, British reinforcements extended Italian resistance until November 1943. Corsica was a rare exception: Italian troops there forced the Germans to evacuate the island entirely. In Asia, the armistice cost Italy its presence in China. Japan, feeling betrayed by Italy's exit from the war, forcibly seized Italian settlements in China in September 1943, including the Peking legation and concessions at Shanhai Pass and Tianjin. Japanese forces confiscated Italian naval vessels and began interning Italian nationals across Asia, diplomats included. Some Italian soldiers who declared loyalty to the puppet Italian Social Republic continued to fight alongside Japanese and German personnel. The longer armistice, signed at Malta on the 29th of September aboard the British battleship HMS Nelson, formalized unconditional surrender; Badoglio and Eisenhower both signed that document, which also called for Mussolini and his Fascist officials to be handed over to the Allied nations.