At the Casablanca Conference of January 1943, Churchill and Roosevelt planned the invasion of Sicily as a prelude to an invasion of Italy, whereby they hoped to remove Mussolini from power, to encourage the Italians to desert Hitler, and equally as important, to force Hitler in diverting troops there from the Soviet Union. The western Allies wanted to avoid a repetition of 1918, when Russia surrendered to Germany, allowing the Germans the luxury of continuing the war on one front. Likening Europe to a crocodile, Churchill referred to Italy as its ‘soft underbelly’.
Under the supreme command of Dwight D. Eisenhower, US forces were led by George Patton and British troops by Montgomery, whose conflicting opinions and raging egos threatened to upset Anglo-American relations. Allied troops landed on Sicily on 10 July 1943, where they enjoyed an ecstatic welcome from the islanders. By mid-August, the German forces escaped by crossing over the narrow Strait of Messina on to the Italian mainland.
As a result of the invasion of Sicily, on 24 July, at a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council, Mussolini delivered an impassioned two-hour speech, exhorting his fellow fascists to put up a fight. His plea fell on deaf ears, the Council voting to sign a separate peace with the Allies. The following day, the Italian king, Victor Emmanuel III, dismissed Mussolini, remarking, ‘At this moment you are the most hated man in Italy.’ Mussolini was immediately arrested by his successor, Pietro Badoglio, and imprisoned. The Italian population rejoiced.
On 8 September, Italy swapped sides and joined the Allies, leaving the Germans to face the Allies unencumbered. Naples fell to Allied forces on 1 October, by which time the Germans had evacuated, destroying much of the city, starving the inhabitants and releasing from prisons criminals who immediately began terrorizing the frightened, malnourished and diseased population. Italy’s wish to remain neutral was vetoed by Churchill who demanded Italy’s co-operation against the Germans as the price for the ‘passage back’.
In mid-September, on Hitler’s orders, Mussolini was sprung from his captivity, taken to Germany and returned as a puppet head of a fascist republic in German-occupied northern Italy.
The king promptly deserted his subjects, leaving them leaderless against their former allies. For this act, following the war in 1946, Italy voted to abolish their monarchy for good. On 13 October 1943, Italy reluctantly declared war on Germany. Immediately, the Germans started capturing Italians as prisoners of war, shipping them to internment camps, and began targeting Italian Jews.
The Germans pulled back to the heavily defended Gustav Line, south of Rome, which included the hilltop Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino. In order for the Allies to progress to Rome, the Gustav Line would have to be breached. In January 1944, in an attempt on Monte Cassino, an amphibious assault landed at Anzio, on the west coast of Italy, thirty miles south of Rome, but German forces rushed in reinforcements and held it in check. On 15 February, 250 Allied bombers flattened the monastery at Monte Cassino, but it still took until 18 May, after weeks of close, hand-to-hand fighting, to breach the Gustav Line, forcing the Germans further north.
New Zealand troops capture German soldiers during the Battle of Monte Cassino, May 1944
Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1975-014-31 / CC-BY-SA
The American general, Mark Clark, had orders to give chase and destroy the retreating Germans, but Clark wanted to be the first to capture an Axis capital. Preferring the symbolic glory of taking Rome, Clark ignored his orders and liberated the city on 4 June, after the Germans had already evacuated.
With the end in sight, Mussolini, his mistress, Clara Petacci, and a few followers attempted to escape into Switzerland. Stopped by Italian partisans, Mussolini’s attempts to disguise himself with a Luftwaffe overcoat and helmet failed, and on 28 April 1945, at Lake Como, Mussolini and Petacci were shot. Their bodies were transported to Milan where they were beaten and urinated upon and finally left to hang upside down for public display.
Despite orders from Hitler to ‘stand or die’, German resistance finally collapsed and on 2 May 1945, two days after Hitler’s death, the Germans in Italy surrendered.