Armed clashes in the streets of Rome, September 1943 © BArch, Bild_201-41-03-041 / Phot. unknown

8 September

Italy’s political and military crisis in summer 1943

The armistice between the Italian government and the American military, signed in Sicily on 3 September, was announced five days later. This was an important moment in the history of the Second World War; its prehistory lay in the grave military, political, economic, and social crisis that Italy experienced from 1942 onward, and in the failure of the “parallel war” fighting on Nazi Germany’s side.

After the illusion of a short and easy war evaporated, the lack of success of the Axis powers on the different fronts having become apparent, rejection of the war deepened for a large portion of Italy’s populace. The collapse of the Italian front in Russia in January 1943, the Axis forces’ surrender in Tunisia in May, and the Allied landing in Sicily on 10 July 1943 sharpened the political crisis of the Fascist regime. With the arrest of Benito Mussolini on 25 July and his replacement with aged Marshall Pietro Badoglio, the crisis had reached its high point.

In the forty-five days between Mussolini’s removal and the armistice’s announcement, the Italian regime faced the difficult task of coping with the collapse of fascism in its own land while continuing the war on Germany’s side. For Italians, this was broadly a moment of hope, as it seemed the war might end together with fascism. But the feeling was short-lived: the new government declared a state of emergency and banned all demonstrations. Severe internal repression deepened divisions within Italian society rather than promoting unity. In reality, Badoglio’s policies were shaped by considerable ambiguity. He asked for reinforcement from the Germans and assured them of loyalty, but at the same time, he sent confused signals to both the Allies and Italy’s anti-fascist and democratic parties, which were pressing for a prompt end to the war.

The German reaction

The collapse of Italy’s fascist regime created a great deal of concern. Marshall Badoglio tried to reassure the Nazi leadership, asserting that “the war will continue and Italy will keep its word.” Hitler was, nevertheless, convinced that Italy’s capitulation was imminent. He ordered a drafting of detailed occupation plans and a transfer to Italy of a substantial military force. From the German perspective, Sicily’s defense now depended entirely on the Wehrmacht, the Italian forces having largely dissolved. In all the areas occupied by both countries, Italian officers and officials had long since begun to distance themselves from the Germans.

For Nazi Germany, no longer disposing over reliable political interlocutors after Mussolini’s removal, the situation was thus unclear and menacing. Hitler himself harbored intense dislike for Italy’s ruling house and military. The news about political unrest was alarming; the open resumption of activities by anti-fascists and democratic forces was evaluated as a sign of a pervasive Bolshevization of Italy. For Hitler, the possibility of the fascist regime abjectly collapsing was intolerable. In his eyes, fascism and the person of Mussolini were a guarantee of Italy’s reliability. Maintaining relations with the discredited fascist regime in the summer of 1943 proved a serious liability for both countries.

The top Nazi leadership’s sense of threat was swiftly transmitted to the broader German public, a process reinforced by a widespread disdain, at that time, for all Italians—and, more broadly, for Mediterranean people. In this atmosphere, old stereotypes, cultural and racist prejudice, reflected in a widespread German belief in the unreliability, cowardice, and military incompetence of the Italians, found new nourishment and “justification.” Starting in this period, we find widespread use of expressions such as Itaker, a crass insult for Italians that stemmed from military jargon, in diaries and letters of both ordinary German soldiers and officers.

Announcement of the armistice and its consequences

In this uncertain and volatile climate, the Badoglio government entered into secret surrender negotiations with the Allies—even as fighting continued in southern Italy and Allied air raids intensified. Following a series of diplomatic manoeuvres, the armistice was signed on 3 September 1943 at Cassibile, near Syracuse in Sicily. However, the news was initially withheld in an effort to gain time and to coordinate joint military operations—plans which ultimately failed to materialise. What ensued instead, as the German historian Gerhard Schreiber aptly put it, was an “improvised exit from the war.” The Italian government misjudged the resolve of both the Allies and Germany to pursue their respective strategic interests. The announcement of the armistice on the evening of 8 September 1943 came as a surprise. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, then Commander of Allied forces in the Mediterranean, announced the armistice at 18:30 (17:30 local time) via Radio Algiers—although rumours had already been circulating for several hours. Approximately ten minutes later, the Italian communiqué, agreed upon in advance with Badoglio, was likewise broadcast on Radio Algiers. Following intensive consultations, and after informing the German ambassador Rudolf Rahn of the new situation, Badoglio issued the following proclamation to the Italian people at 19:45:

“Since the Italian government has recognised the impossibility of continuing the unequal struggle against an overwhelming opposing force, and with the aim of sparing the Nation further and more grievous calamities, it has requested an armistice from General Eisenhower, Commander-in-Chief of the Anglo-American Allied forces. The request has been granted. Consequently, all acts of hostility against Anglo-American forces must cease on the part of Italian forces in all places. However, they will respond to any attacks from any other source.”

This announcement contributed to uncertainty among Italian officers, who, lacking precise orders, faced the difficult decision of whether to continue fighting—and if so against whom—or rather demobilize their men and return to civilian life. The precipitous flight not only of the king and his family but also of ministers and generals led, in the end, to the leaderless Italian forces being overwhelmed by the Wehrmacht.

The beginning of the German occupation of Italy

With the armistice, the alliance between Germany and the Kingdom of Italy, established in 1939 under the name "Pact of Steel," came to an end. For Germany, this meant a grave loss of prestige in both domestic and foreign arenas, especially since the country could not do without its systematic exploitation of Italy’s industrial, agricultural, and labor capacities. The Badoglio government’s ambivalent conduct led to general confusion and insecurity within the Italian civilian population. This represented an advantage for the Germans in executing their plans after the Italian collapse. When the armistice was announced, the German forces stoutly and speedily carried out orders given in the framework of “Operation Achse.” The German troops in northern Italy stood under the command of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel’s Army Group B. On the night of 8-9 September, the II SS-Panzer Corps took control of the Po valley, and the LXXXVII Army Corps occupied the harbors of Genoa and Savona, the LI Mountain Army Corps taking the marine base at La Spezia. Over the following days, the SS-Panzer-Grenadier-Division “Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, which had already occupied Verona and Mantua, moved onward to Milan and Turin. The 24th Panzer Division, which had occupied Bologna, Modena, and the Romagna area, moved further northward, occupying Verona, Treviso, and Venice, as well as the Apennines, and then onward as far north as Florence and Livorno. All the Alpine passes were occupied in a matter of hours, together with the most important connecting routes.

The armistice’s announcement surprised most Italians. The troops, left to their own devices, confused by the determination and ruthlessness of the German operations, became fully disorganized, allowing themselves to be disarmed without resistance nearly everywhere. Quite often, Italian commanders, fearing a Communist takeover, willingly handed their weapons to the Germans, the offer of cooperation being then exploited by the German Army. There were scattered, mostly uncoordinated episodes of resistance by Italian troops, usually undertaken by young, determined officers. Italian soldiers who had not spontaneously decided to flee were captured and brought to prisoner camps in the Reich.

In and around Rome, clashes broke out between Italian and German military units, often with the participation of civilians. Further south, German troops under the command of General Field Marshal Albert Kesselring (Commander-in-Chief South; from November 1943, Commander-in-Chief Southwest) undertook the disarmament of Italian forces. At the same time, they were engaged in heavy fighting against the advancing Allied troops, particularly during the American landings in the Bay of Salerno at dawn on 9 September 1943. In southern Italy, due to the specific operational and logistical constraints faced by the German military, including difficult terrain, overstretched transport routes, and the simultaneous need to repel the Allied offensive, the disarmament of Italian units had to be carried out differently than in the north. As a result, the majority of Italian soldiers in the south were permitted to return home rather than being taken prisoner.

On 12 September 1943, Mussolini was freed by German soldiers from the prison at Campo Imperatore on the Gran Sasso massif © BArch, Bild_101I-567-1503A-07 / Phot. Toni Schneiders

Italian “betrayal” as a German soldiers’ theme

The armistice of 8 September 1943 marked a significant caesura. The circumstances surrounding its implementation provided the Nazi leadership with a powerful and effective propaganda motif: the claim of Italian “betrayal,” for which not only the military leadership but the entire Italian people were held responsible. The majority of Wehrmacht soldiers and representatives of the “Third Reich” interpreted the armistice as an act of treachery and condemned it accordingly. Their view of the former ally gave rise to a surge of negative stereotypes, many of them rooted in racist and anti-Catholic ideologies. Traits such as unreliability, laziness, and opportunism were seen as essential components of the so-called “Italian character.”

Memoirs, diaries, and letters from German soldiers and officers stationed in Italy contain numerous references to their own reactions—and those of the Italian population—to the armistice’s announcement. Often described in terms such as Schweinerei (“disgraceful swinishness”) or the “Badoglio betrayal,” these reactions were shaped by disbelief and astonishment, as well as by the deep-seated, propaganda-fuelled prejudices described above.

Fury at “betrayal”

In his diary, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels recorded: “The Führer is determined to carry out a tabula rasa in Italy.”

Oberleutnant Ernst Maisch, an officer on the staff of Army Group B, provided the exact wording of what General Alfred Jodl, Chief of the German Armed Forces Operations Staff, was reported to have said in a telephone conversation with Field Marshal Erwin Rommel from Hitler’s headquarters on the evening of 8 September: “Italy has signed an armistice. This betrayal is so monstrous [ungeheuerlich] that words fail to express our feelings.”

Important testimony is provided by General Hermann Balck, commander of the XIV Panzer Corps, which at the time was attempting to repel the landing of American forces in the Gulf of Salerno, south of Naples. Balck was one of the principal figures responsible for the “scorched earth” tactics employed by German troops during their retreat between Salerno and the Volturno River. His reaction to the announcement of the armistice was vehement:

“The bells are ringing. Italy has signed an armistice. Bastards. Militarily, it is insignificant. They weren’t fighting anymore anyway. Now we must be severe—and we will be […] The betrayal by the Italians is shameless. A nation without any honour. [...] And this after Germany made such sacrifices for Italy. [...] From a military standpoint, not much will change, since the Italians weren’t fighting. The plain, honest German simply cannot conceive of such South-European deceit [welsche Tücke].”

As early as May 1943, Balck had written the following:

“The domestic political situation in Italy is, of course, poor. I had some interesting conversations (with the SD). Mussolini is ill and broken. The army and the people are against the war. Here, the army has openly taken a stand against us. In Greater Germany, Italians who openly fought on the Russian side were beaten to death. Italy is, in any case, our weakest point. Should Mussolini fall or die—he’s now being called Kohlenklau [“Coal Thief,” a satirical figure from German wartime propaganda]—then we can expect a military dictatorship and efforts to pursue a separate peace. We simply will not allow that.”
Anti-Catholic and ethnic prejudice

On 8 September, Gefreiter Otto Abb was stationed in Sardinia as part of the 90th Panzer Grenadier Division. In his reports on the events of those days, Abb expresses himself in strikingly derogatory terms about the Italian people. Particularly notable is how he, following the tradition of anti-Catholic polemic then circulating among German Protestants, links the national character of the Italians to the country’s dominant religion:

“Thursday, 9 September 43: Something unbelievable has happened. Italy has betrayed us for the second time. The armistice was apparently signed as early as the 3rd, and we only became aware of it on the 8th.… That’s the swine-people. That’s Roman-papal duplicity and deceit in full. First, Mussolini had to go—because this wouldn’t have happened under the Duce. Then this gang pretends they want to stay on our side, and now this treachery. But we will still win the war. It will be hard, very hard, and cost many more lives. Many cities will still be reduced to rubble, and many more tears will be shed.”

Albert Joos, an infantryman who had also been stationed in Sardinia in the summer of 1943, travelled from Livorno to Florence on 8 September. He was struck by the jubilation of the population following the announcement of the armistice and by the immediate collapse of military discipline. Joos expressed irritation at Italian behaviour, which he found incomprehensible—and which, unlike Otto Abb, he attributed to the biological and psychological characteristics of the “southern” peoples:

“The southern, fiery temperament of the Italians reacted to all this in an especially agitated manner. They tried to persuade me as well to hand over my weapon, which I answered by loading my rifle—whereupon they left my compartment.… At the next station, Italian soldiers were running about half-dressed. Some threw their caps to the ground and stamped on the cockade. Women and children joined in the repugnant shouting. This behaviour thoroughly disgusted me. How childishly stupid people can be. At 20:10 I arrived in Florence, where I learned at the station guard post that Italy had signed the armistice.”

In the hours following the announcement of the armistice, more than a few German soldiers vented their anger on Italian troops who had just been taken prisoner. In memoirs written many years after the war, Gerhard Jacobs—then a 23-year-old paratrooper—offers a vivid account of his emotional state at the time. He recalls encountering a group of Italian prisoners who were forced by him and his comrades to carry the unit’s ammunition crates. More than four decades later, Jacobs unabashedly affirms his enduring identification with the Nazi cause.

“Their insistence, following their unexpected capture, that they had never intended to fight against us left us unmoved. The energy of our bearing made it unmistakably clear that we meant business. Had any one of them so much as made a resentful face, things would have gone badly for him.… I am not, even now, in a position to describe in more detail or to convey adequately the furious mood that overtook us in response to the news and to events in Italy more generally. The cowardly and treacherous conduct of the “Itakers” left such deep marks that to this day I feel nothing but aversion and contempt for the rabble south of the Alps. At that moment, the prisoners—who from the start had observed both our martial bearing and now our rising, rage-fuelled agitation with growing apprehension for their own safety—could count themselves lucky that we were still able to restrain our tempers. It would have taken only the smallest further provocation—an implied act of defiance, or even just dropping a crate of ammunition—and one of us would have snapped. No officer would have been able to prevent a bloodbath, not even Oberleutnant Appel, the South Tyrolean who spoke perfect Italian and tried to advocate some understanding for the Italians.”

Heinz Schöne, an officer in the reconnaissance unit of the 94th Infantry Division, took part in the occupation of Voghera and the disarmament of the Monferrato Cavalry Regiment’s depot:

“Naturally, everyone believed they would now be going straight home to their mamis [sic] and bambinis [sic]. Far from it! At the railway station, the transport trains bound for captivity in Germany were already waiting. The station itself was hermetically sealed, so that the many relatives of the Italian soldiers, most of whom were from the Voghera area, had no opportunity to say farewell to their husbands, sons, fathers, or brothers.”

By contrast, another officer in the same division acknowledged that, in their anger and indignation, unarmed Italian officers threw down the medals they had received from the Germans on the Eastern Front “at the feet” of Wehrmacht personnel—scenes which, he conceded, were “grave from a moral perspective.”
Understanding and empathy

Few German soldiers expressed understanding or empathy for the Italian population. One notable exception was Fritz Wolter, a member of a medical unit responsible for protecting German troops from malaria in southern Italy. Although he, too, regarded the events of 8 September as an act of betrayal and referred to the Italians as a “childlike” people, he—unlike most other witnesses—showed sympathy for the situation of those under occupation:

“I must also say that I can only feel pity for the Italian people. All essential and even non-essential facilities and buildings were completely destroyed by us; the livestock was entirely driven off. The people have, in fact, been delivered over to death by starvation. How does our leadership intend to justify this? And the conduct of German soldiers—Landser—was by no means always proper; looting was a daily occurrence. In the end, the Italian people are not responsible for Badoglio’s betrayal—certainly not the ordinary man.”
Coldness and emotional distance

Other accounts—typically those of officers—reveal a greater degree of detachment, shaped by the professional ethos of career soldiers.

Two days after the announcement of the armistice, Winfried Albrecht, a young artillery officer deployed in southern Italy who would later be killed at the front, expressed his astonishment at the rapid collapse of Italian forces in a letter to his wife:

“The disarmament of the Italian armed forces is historically without precedent. Entire armies have allowed themselves to be stripped down to their shirts by a handful of German divisions—on their soil… The Italian nation may well have forfeited its claim to the status of a European great power and cultural force once and for all. If this weren’t all so serious, one could laugh all day.”

Major Josef Moll, head of Section Ic (intelligence and counterintelligence) of Army Group B, later continued his military career in the Bundeswehr, eventually rising to the post of Inspector of the Army. From his elevated vantage point, he assessed the consequences of the armistice in thoroughly positive terms for Germany, since it was no longer necessary to take Italian interests into account. He summarised his perspective as follows:

“Badoglio's government appears to have lost control of the country. Italy’s war-weariness has reached its peak. Initial public expressions of joy over the surrender quickly fell silent in light of the seriousness and gravity of the situation. Italy has sobered. What is decisive for the continuation of the war is to complete the disarmament operation as quickly and thoroughly as possible, in order to redirect all our strength against the Allied enemy. Since the Italians were no longer fighting anyway, their collapse has created no major GAP, and even presents a certain advantage, in that we are now finally free from Italian constraints and can speak plainly. Moreover, a substantial workforce will now be available for the Reich.”

One of the most clear-sighted observers of the events surrounding the armistice was Hans-Georg von Studnitz, a Nazi propaganda journalist and press officer at the Reich Foreign Office, who maintained close contacts with the Italian embassy in Rome:

“In Italy, the expected end has come. Only the form of the surrender was surprising. I heard the news on Wednesday, 8 September at 23:15 on the Deutschlandsender. At one o'clock in the morning, Schmidt called and asked me to gather my thoughts for an official line. A directive had been issued from above that the king and Badoglio were to be described as traitors. [...] Badoglio’s proclamation, which will not be published here, contains logical arguments. Italy’s only true wealth is its architecture, which would have been destroyed had the war continued. If one calls the Italian course of action treason, one must bear in mind that the Italians have felt deceived by us for the past three years. They repeatedly complained that we misinformed them about the situation on the Eastern Front and that we refused to pursue a decisive military campaign in the Mediterranean. They conveniently overlook the fact that Italy entered the war of its own accord, because it was certain of our victory and wanted to share in the spoils. [...] The members of the Italian embassy here have been placed under house arrest. They will be given the choice of declaring their support for the Fascist government or returning home. Most will likely choose to depart. Only Torso, Giretti, and Cuturi, who are married to German women, have indicated that they wish to stay.”

Sources

The military archives of the German Federal Archives in Freiburg preserve an extensive and valuable collection of documents concerning the operations conducted by German forces during the summer of 1943 to secure control over Italy and the territories in France, Greece, and the Balkans previously held by Italian troops. Key material is found within the record groups of German army corps (RH 24 and RS 2) and divisions (RH 26, RH 27, RS 3, RL 32). For the reconstruction of events in Italy, particularly significant are the holdings for the LXXXVII Army Corps (RH 24-87), which operated in northwest Italy and Liguria; the II SS Panzer Corps (RS 2-2), which oversaw a wide region including the Po Valley, Venetia, Lombardy, Piedmont, the Marche, and Tuscany; and the XIV and LXXVI Panzer Corps (RH 24-14 and RH 24-76), active in southern Italy, especially Campania and Naples. For Rome, key documentation includes records of the 3rd Panzer Grenadier Division (RH 26-3) and of the German commander in Rome (RH 34/265 and RH 34/266). For Bologna, the relevant files pertain to the 24th Panzer Division (RH 27-24) and its subordinate units. For Naples, in addition to the XIV Panzer Corps (RH 24-14), records are held for the “Hermann Göring” Panzer Division (RL 32). For Milan and Turin, documents from the II SS Panzer Corps (RS 2-2) are complemented by a small number of records from the garrison command of the SS-Division Leibstandarte “Adolf Hitler” in the Piedmontese capital (RS 4-1269). Documentation on the clashes in Piombino is preserved under the 3rd Escort Flotilla (RM 75/10). For the political dimension of these events, the most significant source is the Political Archive of the German Foreign Office in Berlin.

Photos

The events of 8 September 1943—described by Gerhard Schreiber as “the last victory of the Wehrmacht in the Second World War”—were among the most extensively photographed on the German side of the conflict. The photographic archive of the German Federal Archives in Koblenz contains a substantial number of images taken by war correspondents accompanying German forces, with a selection available online. The principal wartime collection, Bild 101 I, includes material from all theatres of war: for Greece, albums nos. 176 and 177 show operations in Elassona (Thessaly) and Epirus, including the embarkation of prisoners onto convoys and disarmament actions on Corfu; for Albania, nos. 201–203 depict prisoner transports by sea; for central Italy, no. 304 captures events in Rome (the EUR district, Porta San Paolo, the disarmament of the Piave Division, and related negotiations), as well as scenes from Corsica, while no. 305 also covers Rome and central Italy; no. 469 documents demonstrations in Rome on 25 July 1943; for Yugoslavia, no. 521 shows the disarming and transport of Italian soldiers from Croatia; for southern Italy, particularly Apulia, nos. 566 and 568 depict Barletta, Spinazzola, and Latium, including images of disarmament, prisoner capture, and summary executions of civilians; no. 569 includes the rescue of Benito Mussolini at Gran Sasso, seized Italian tanks near Rome, and General Kurt Student; no. 570 covers disarmament and negotiations with Italian officers in Rome and Latium. For the Provence and Côte d’Azur, no. 685 records the surrender of Italian units in Toulon, Saint-Raphaël, Nice, Menton, Saint-Lucia, and along the Riviera. Numerous individual photographs accompany these extensive series. Also of note are the contributions of Waffen-SS war correspondents Ferdinand Rottensteiner, who documented operations of the SS-Division Leibstandarte “Adolf Hitler” in the Po Valley—including Parma, Pavia, Milan, and Lago Maggiore—and Klaus Pachnike, who covered the SS-Sturmbrigade “Reichsführer-SS” in the Apuan Alps and Corsica.

Film material

Much of the material filmed by German war correspondents was destroyed during Allied bombing raids on Germany. Nevertheless, a number of surviving excerpts—compiled into wartime newsreels such as the Deutsche Wochenschau—have been preserved. These visual records depict key episodes, including the arrival of German troops in Italy during the summer of 1943 and the disarmament of Italian forces at various locations, notably by SS units in the Po Valley and Milan, and by German parachute troops in Rome and Apulia.

8 September

Italy’s political and military crisis in summer 1943

The German reaction

Announcement of the armistice and its consequences

The beginning of the German occupation of Italy

Italian “betrayal” as a German soldiers’ theme

Fury at “betrayal”

Anti-Catholic and ethnic prejudice

Understanding and empathy

Coldness and emotional distance

Information on data protection

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