Summer 1943 was a decisive moment in the history of modern Italy, marking the beginning of the country’s long, arduous path from fascism to democracy. During these months, the deep military, political, economic, social, and moral crisis of the fascist regime and monarchy reached its high point. This period of growing rift between the Italian and German dictatorships—involving, above all, an erosion of the military-political alliance maintained during the years of shared war—was marked by crucial events and dramatic changes. 

By this time, the illusion of a brief, easily winnable war had long-since dispelled; failure on the various war-fronts had led to exhaustion with the military effort by a large portion of the Italian populace, including the army itself. The defeat of Italian troops in Russia in January 1943, the Axis capitulation in Tunisia the following May, and the Allied landing in Sicily on 10 July (Operation Husky), together deepened the fascist regime’s political crisis. It reached a culmination with Benito Mussolini’s arrest on 25 July and his replacement by Marshal Pietro Badoglio.

In the forty five days between Mussolini’s removal and, on 8 September, the announcement of the Allied-Italian armistice, the Italian government faced the task of managing the collapse of fascism within the country and continuing the war on Germany’s side. Rather than promoting national unity, the connected severe domestic repression intensified the country’s division.

In this situation, Marshal Badoglio's policies showed clear signs of indecision. While he demanded support from Germany and promised loyalty to the Axis powers, he simultaneously sent mixed signals to Britain and America about his government's true intentions. Despite pressure from Italy's democratic and anti-fascist parties to break away from Germany, Badoglio remained silent on the issue, keeping these parties uninformed of his plans.

In summer 1943, Allied bombardment of the Italian peninsula intensified. The war fought by Italy and Germany in Europe and Africa had now reached Italian soil, resulting in thousands of civilian casualties. Both the country’s artistic heritage and urban architecture suffered heavy damage. In addition to the large industrial cities and harbours, which had already been targeted by air raids, many historically significant urban centres also suffered damage. Monuments, churches, and civilian populations were gravely affected.

Most Italians saw the fascist regime as morally discredited, corrupt, and incapable of defending the country's interests. The military defeats, destruction of cities, and impoverishment of society increased this conviction. Only small groups of party functionaries and ‘war profiteers’ thrived in this situation. The alliance with Germany had come to be seen as the main impediment to peace, with Allied propaganda fuelling a resentment of the Germans that increased in the course of 1943.

The widespread chaos, violence, and destruction in Italian society during this period fundamentally changed relations between Germany and Italy. Following Mussolini's arrest on 25 July, German military presence in Italy increased dramatically - from a few thousand Wehrmacht and SS troops to approximately 195,000 within weeks. After the Allied landing in Sicily, Italy became a major theatre of war, where German forces would continue fighting until their final surrender on 2 May 1945.

The Wehrmacht's Propaganda Companies (Propagandakompanien) photographically documented these decisive events in Italy during the summer and autumn of 1943, leaving behind a crucial visual record.

From the early days of their rise to power, the Nazis recognised the crucial role of propaganda in securing public support. After they came to power, they deployed new technical media, mainly radio, film, and photography, with a great deal of skill.
In Germany, photography had a long tradition. A highly modern form of photojournalism emerged in Germany in the 1920s, and the young Weimar Republic became one of Europe's leading centres for artistic photography. Once the Nazis were in power, most figures in the country’s artistic avant garde, including photographers, were forced to emigrate. 
Over the course of Nazi rule, the quality of photography deteriorated. There was a partial revival of late nineteenth-century traditional photography styles of photography; beyond this, propaganda-minister Joseph Goebbels exercised direct and very strict control over all areas of German artistic production—photography receiving special attention.

In 1938, on the verge of the Second World War, Goebbels’ ministry and the Armed Forces leadership agreed to establish military propaganda companies (PCs), largely composed of specialized personnel from different areas of journalism, art (in particular painters), and film (in particular cameramen and photographers).
In the war, the companies were active on all fronts. Many aspects of their work remain largely unknown. On the one hand the PCs offered the troops they accompanied newspapers, radio broadcasts, theatre, films, and variety-shows; on the other hand they collected and produced material used for propaganda purposes through the press, entirely under Nazi control. The main target audiences of this work were publications such as the well-known magazine Signal, published in several languages, and the ‘Deutsche Wochenschau’, broadcast in all the German-occupied countries.