Armistice of Cassibile facts for kids
The Armistice of Cassibile was a special agreement signed on 3 September 1943. It was made between the Kingdom of Italy and the United States (US) and United Kingdom (UK) during World War II. This agreement was kept secret for five days and then announced to the public on 8 September 1943.
The armistice was signed by Major General Walter Bedell Smith for the Allies. For Italy, it was signed by Brigade General Giuseppe Castellano. They met at an Allied military camp in Cassibile, a town in Sicily. Sicily had recently been taken over by the Allies during the Allied invasion of Sicily.
Both the Italian King Victor Emmanuel III and Marshal Pietro Badoglio, who was the Prime Minister of Italy at the time, approved the armistice.
Germany did not like this agreement. They quickly responded by attacking Italian forces in Italy, southern France, and the Balkans. They also freed Benito Mussolini from prison on 12 September. Italian forces were quickly defeated. Most of Italy was then taken over by German troops. The Germans set up a new government there called the Italian Social Republic, which was controlled by Germany. The King, the Italian government, and most of the Italian Navy managed to escape to areas controlled by the Allies.
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Why the Armistice Happened
After the Axis powers (Germany and Italy) lost in North Africa on 13 May 1943, the Allies started attacking Italy. They bombed Rome on 16 May and invaded Sicily on 10 July. They were also getting ready to land on the Italian mainland.
In the spring of 1943, Italy's leader, Benito Mussolini, was worried about how badly the Italian military was doing in the war. He removed several people from his government. He thought these people were more loyal to King Victor Emmanuel III than to his own Fascist government.
The King wanted to make a change. He asked for help from Dino Grandi, a powerful member of the Fascist Party. The King also suspected that Grandi might change his mind about Fascism. Other important people, like Pietro Badoglio, also thought about taking over from Mussolini.
Secretly, other important Fascist leaders joined the plan. These included Giuseppe Bottai and Galeazzo Ciano, who was Mussolini's son-in-law. They created a plan for the next meeting of the Grand Council of Fascism. This plan suggested giving control of politics back to the King.
On 25 July 1943, the Grand Council voted on this plan, and most members agreed. After the meeting, Mussolini was called to see the King. The King removed him from his position as prime minister. As Mussolini left the meeting, he was arrested by police officers called carabinieri. He was then taken to the island of Ponza. Badoglio became the new Prime Minister.
Even with Badoglio in charge, Italy was still Germany's ally in the war. However, many people in Italy started looking for a way to make peace with the Allies. Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler sent German army divisions to Italy. He said they were there to help defend Italy, but really, he wanted to control the country.
Three Italian generals, including Brigade General Giuseppe Castellano, were sent to Lisbon to talk with Allied diplomats. The Allies needed to figure out who had the most authority among the Italian generals. Finally, Castellano was chosen to discuss the terms for Italy's surrender. The Allied representatives included the British Ambassador to Portugal, Sir Ronald Hugh Campbell, and two generals sent by Dwight Eisenhower: the American Walter Bedell Smith and the British Kenneth Strong.
On 27 August, General Castellano went back to Italy. Three days later, he told Badoglio that the Allies wanted to meet in Sicily. This meeting place had been suggested by the British Ambassador to the Vatican.
To make it easier for the Allies and the Italian government to talk, a British agent named Dick Mallaby was released from prison. He was secretly moved to the Quirinale in Rome. It was very important that the Germans did not find out about Italy's plan to surrender.
Terms of the Agreement
Badoglio still hoped to get good conditions for Italy's surrender. He told Castellano to insist that Allied troops must land on the Italian mainland before Italy surrendered. At that time, the Allies only controlled Sicily and a few small islands.
On 31 August, Brigade General Castellano flew to Termini Imerese in Sicily. From there, he went to Cassibile, near Syracuse. It quickly became clear that the two sides had very different ideas. Castellano asked for Italy to be protected from Germany's reaction after the armistice was signed. He received only vague promises, like the idea of sending a parachute division to Rome. Also, these actions would happen at the same time as the signing, not before, as the Italians wanted.
The next day, Castellano met with Badoglio and his team. Italy's Foreign Minister, Raffaele Guariglia, said that the Allied conditions should be accepted. Other generals, like Giacomo Carboni, argued that the army around Rome was not strong enough to protect the city. They said this was because they didn't have enough fuel and ammunition. They thought the armistice should be delayed. Badoglio did not say much at this meeting. In the afternoon, he met the King, who decided to accept the armistice conditions.
Signing the Armistice
A message confirming Italy's acceptance was sent to the Allies. However, the German armed forces, the Wehrmacht, intercepted this message. They had already suspected that Italy was trying to make a separate peace. The Germans contacted Badoglio, who kept saying that Italy was completely loyal to Germany. The Germans did not believe him. The Wehrmacht started planning Operation Achse to take control of Italy as soon as the Italian government changed sides.
On 2 September, Castellano went back to Cassibile. He had orders to confirm Italy's acceptance of the Allied conditions. He did not have a written authorization from Badoglio. Badoglio, as the head of the Italian government, wanted to distance himself from Italy's defeat.
The signing ceremony began at 2:00 PM on 3 September. Castellano signed for Badoglio, and Bedell Smith signed for General Eisenhower. A plan to bomb Rome with 500 airplanes was stopped at the last minute. This bombing threat had been Eisenhower's way to speed up the armistice process. Harold Macmillan, a British government official, told Winston Churchill that the armistice had been signed "without amendments of any kind."
What Happened Next
After the signing, Castellano was told about extra conditions. Another Italian general, Zanussi, who had also been in Cassibile, had received these. For some reason, Zanussi had not told Castellano about them. However, Bedell Smith explained to Castellano that these extra conditions would only apply if Italy did not join the Allies in fighting the war.
On the afternoon of the same day, Badoglio met with top commanders of the Regia Marina (Italy's Royal Navy) and the Regia Aeronautica (Italy's Royal Air Force). He also met with war ministers and the King's representatives. But he did not mention that the armistice had been signed. He only talked about ongoing negotiations.
The exact date for the armistice to start was linked to a planned Allied landing in central Italy. The Allies would decide the date. Castellano thought the date would be 12 September, and Badoglio started moving troops to Rome.
On 7 September, a small Allied group arrived in Rome. They told Badoglio that the armistice would begin the next day. They also told him about American troops from the 82nd Airborne Division arriving at airports near the city. Badoglio told them his army was not ready to support the landing. He also said that most airports were controlled by Germans. He asked to delay the armistice for a few days.
When General Eisenhower heard this, the plan for American troops to land in Rome was cancelled. However, the armistice date was confirmed because other troops were already on their way by sea to land in southern Italy.
When the armistice was announced on Allied radio on the afternoon of 8 September, German forces immediately attacked Italian forces. This was Operation Achse. Most of the Regio Esercito (Italian Royal Army) had not been told about the armistice. They had no clear orders on what to do when faced with German forces. Some Italian divisions that were supposed to defend Rome were still traveling from southern France.
The King, his royal family, and Badoglio fled Rome early on 9 September. They found safety in Brindisi, in southern Italy. Their first idea was to move the army headquarters with them, but few staff officers reached Brindisi. Meanwhile, Italian troops, without instructions, became disorganized and were quickly defeated. Some small units decided to stay loyal to Germany. From 8 to 12 September, German forces took over all Italian territory not yet controlled by the Allies. Only Sardinia and part of Apulia were not taken. The Germans met no organized resistance. In Rome, an Italian governor, with some Italian soldiers, officially ruled the city until 23 September. But in reality, the Germans controlled the city from 11 September.
On 3 September, British and Canadian troops crossed the Strait of Messina. They began landing in the southernmost part of Calabria during Operation Baytown. The day after the armistice was made public, on 9 September, the Allies landed at Salerno and at Taranto.
The Allies did not fully use the Italian armistice to their advantage. German troops quickly stopped them. In areas that were easy to defend, it took Allied forces 20 months to reach Italy's northern borders.
Some Italian troops outside Italy, in the occupied Balkans and Greek islands, fought for a few weeks after the armistice. But without strong support from the Allies, the Germans defeated them all by the end of September 1943. On the island of Cephalonia, the Italian Acqui Division was killed after fighting German forces. A similar event happened to 103 Italian officers on the island of Kos. They were shot in early October 1943 after the Germans captured the island. Only on the islands of Leros and Samos, with British help, did resistance last until November 1943. In Corsica, Italian troops forced the Germans to leave the island.
In other cases, some Italian units, mostly smaller ones, remained loyal to Germany. Many of these units became the start of the armed forces for the German-controlled Italian Social Republic.
After the September 1943 Armistice, Romania became the second Axis Power in Europe to sign an armistice.
Both the Regio Esercito (Italian Royal Army) and the Regia Aeronautica (Italian Royal Air Force) mostly fell apart when the armistice was announced on 8 September. The Allies really wanted the Regia Marina (Italian Royal Navy). It had 206 ships, including battleships like Roma, Vittorio Veneto, and Italia (which was called Littorio until July 1943). There was a risk that some of the Navy might keep fighting, sink their own ships, or, most worryingly for the Allies, fall into German hands.
Because of this, the armistice said that Italian warships on Italy's west coast, mostly at La Spezia and Genoa, should sail to North Africa. They had to pass Corsica and Sardinia. Ships at Taranto, in the heel of Italy, were to sail to Malta.
At 2:30 AM on 9 September, the three battleships Roma, Vittorio Veneto, and Italia left La Spezia. They were escorted by three light cruisers and eight destroyers. When German troops stormed into the town to stop the ships from leaving, they became very angry. They rounded up and shot several Italian captains who could not get their ships moving and had sunk them instead. That afternoon, German bombers attacked the ships sailing near Sardinia. They used guided bombs. Several ships were damaged, and Roma sank, with nearly 1,400 men lost. Most of the remaining ships safely reached North Africa. Three destroyers and a cruiser that had stopped to rescue survivors docked in Menorca.
The Navy's handover went more smoothly in other parts of Italy. When an Allied naval force headed for the large naval base of Taranto, they saw a group of Italian ships sailing out of Taranto Harbour. These ships were heading to Malta to surrender.
An agreement between the Allies and the Italians in late September allowed some of the Navy to stay active. However, the battleships were to be put into a state of care and maintenance, meaning they would be mostly disarmed. Italian merchant ships were to operate under the same rules as the Allies. In all cases, the Italian ships would keep their Italian crews and fly Italian flags.
See also
- Military history of Italy during World War II
- Allied invasion of Italy
- European Theatre of World War II
- Italian Co-belligerent Army
- Operation Margarethe
- Operation Panzerfaust
- 1944 Romanian coup d'état
- 1944 Bulgarian coup d'état
- Moscow Armistice
- Italian Army in Russia
- Badoglio Proclamation
- Treaty of Peace with Italy, 1947
