Armistice of Cassibile

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Major military operations in Italy during World War II

The Cassibile Armistice was the armistice agreement between the Kingdom of Italy under the government of Marshal Pietro Badoglio and two of the allies of the anti-Hitler coalition , USA and Great Britain , during World War II . It was signed on September 3, 1943 in the small Sicilian town of Cassibile near Syracuse and announced on September 8, 1943. With this agreement Italy broke away from the alliance with the German Empire .

prehistory

In the run-up to the invasion of Sicily and before the end of the campaign in Tunisia , General Eisenhower had submitted a proposal to the Combined Chiefs of Staff on April 29, 1943 about the conditions to be requested from Italy for an armistice . These conditions were adopted on May 10th with minor changes. As decided at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, an unconditional surrender of the armed forces was called for. Around the same time, the American Joint War Plans Committee, on behalf of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, began a study of the options for Italy to leave the war. A) a collapse of Italy, b) an unconditional surrender or c) a civil war (most unlikely) were used as possible future scenarios. While the American planners subsequently hoped for a German withdrawal from Italy, which would have opened up numerous new perspectives, the British did not believe in this possibility, nor in a civil war. Rather, they wanted to be able to use the Italian armed forces against the Germans. At least, however, it must be achieved that Italian territory, resources and facilities could be used by the Allies without restriction. The British proposals did not take into account the demand for unconditional surrender, in particular for the Italian government to abdicate and for an Allied military government to take over government. The Combined Chiefs of Staff had not yet received the final decisions of the Allied governments on these issues by the end of July.

Negotiating a ceasefire

On July 10, 1943, British and American troops landed in Sicily as part of Operation Husky . They conquered the island completely against German-Italian resistance by August 17th. In Rome, Benito Mussolini was deposed on July 25 under the impression of looming defeat. The new government under Marshal Pietro Badoglio immediately initiated negotiations with the Western Allies, who made progress in Lisbon by the end of August . First of all, at the beginning of August, Blasco Lanza D'Ajeta was appointed as the new counselor in Lisbon, who informed the Allies of Italy's desire to dissolve the Axis Alliance. Another antennae was stretched out over Alberto Berio to Tangier . Since D'Ajeta had no power to negotiate, followed him during the August succession of the Badoglio government sent Brigadier General Giuseppe Castellano (August 12, with a stopover in Madrid) and later by the Chief of the Army General Staff Mario Roatta he sent after Major General Giacomo Zanussi (in Accompaniment of the British general Adrian Carton de Wiart, a prisoner of war ). Roatta had initially been deliberately left in the dark about Castellano's mission by the head of the Comando Supremo Vittorio Ambrosio , as he was still conferring with the Germans in Bologna on August 15. When no news from Castellano arrived, Zanussi's dispatch, operated by Roatta, was authorized by Badoglio in the second half of August.

Castellano's negotiations had already been successful when Zanussi left Rome on August 24th. They were held with Generals Walter Bedell Smith (USA) and Kenneth WD Strong (Great Britain) in the presence of the diplomatic representative of the USA George F. Kennan in the British Embassy in Lisbon. They presented Castellano with the provisional armistice terms, which were to be accepted unconditionally. These were purely military in nature, all other open questions in which the Italians were interested, such as the future status of the Badoglio government and the admission of Italy to the ranks of the United Nations, should be examined by the Allied governments and possibly elaborated on later, according to Smith . Castellano returned to Rome on August 27 with the terms of the armistice.

Zanussi's mission arrived in Lisbon on August 25th and, after meeting the British Ambassador, it was decided to present the detailed terms of the armistice just received from the Quadrant Conference to Zanussi. Eisenhower, who received the same terms a little later, was not happy about this harsher form of document, since in his opinion it called into question the success of the landing on the Italian mainland, which was imminent in two weeks, which depended on Italian cooperation. It was therefore decided to temporarily remove Zanussi from the game before he could contact his government. He was flown out via Gibraltar to Algiers, the seat of the AFHQ , and there he described details of the Italian strategic and domestic political situation to his allied interlocutors. Eisenhower decided to let Zanussi's interpreter Lanza return to Rome via Sicily with a letter from Zanussi to Ambrosio, in which Ambrosio recommended the immediate acceptance of the terms of the "short" armistice and emphasized cooperation as more important than the terms of the "long" armistice, which however not detailed.

Badoglio found himself in a desperate position as he envisaged a complete overwhelming of the Italian army by the Germans in the event of an Allied landing, the reduction of all of Italy to a battlefield, and the uncertain fate of his government and the monarchy. After consulting with the king and after receiving the news from Zanussi, he decided to send Castellano to the Allies with a new negotiating mandate.

Kenneth Strong, Giuseppe Castellano, Walter Bedell Smith and the diplomat and interpreter Franco Montanari in Cassibile, September 1943

On August 31, the negotiating partners Castellano, Zanussi, Smith and Strong met again in Cassibile, the headquarters of the Allied 15th Army Group. Castellano explained to his counterparts that, since the Italian government could no longer act freely, it was inevitable to demand that the signing of the armistice not be announced before the main Allied landing. Smith, according to his instructions, resisted all modifications of the conditions and also refused to provide the Italians with information on the time and place of the Allied landings. The only way for Italy to save something from the situation is to accept the Allied terms. As a concession to Italian fears about the capital, the prospect of landing an American airborne division on nearby airfields was promised, and an assurance was given that the strength of the Allied troops in Italy would soon be increased to the 15 divisions required by Italy. Italy was supposed to resist the Allied landing forces for Operation Baytown , which was to take place before the main landing. In addition, these conditions are to be accepted within 24 hours, calculated from September 2nd.

Memorial stone at the place of signing, 2016

On September 3, 1943, the so-called "short armistice" was signed. It comprised twelve articles on the cessation of fighting. The "short armistice" initially remained secret; the Allies reserved the right to determine when it would be made public and come into force. General Eisenhower announced him on September 8th at 6 pm on Radio Algiers ; At 19:42, Marshal Badoglio confirmed this on the state broadcaster Ente Italiano per le Audizioni Radiofoniche (EIAR). "September 8th shocked the Italian state nation."

Immediate consequences

Case axis

The announcement of the armistice led to an immediate break between the German Empire and Italy. The German military leadership had prepared the Axis case in the event of an Italian change of front , although Badoglio had assured his loyalty to the German allies during the secret negotiations with the Allies. Among other things, they had relocated more than 20 German divisions to Italy by September 8. The Wehrmacht immediately began to disarm and intern the Italian armed forces, as well as to systematically occupy the country. About half of the Italian army was disarmed and captured, with thousands of Italian soldiers and officers killed by the Wehrmacht, especially in Greece. Mussolini, liberated by a German command company on September 12, 1943, became head of government of a newly formed puppet government of the Third Reich , the Italian Social Republic .

Since the units of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS used for the Axis case had been withdrawn from the Eastern Front in part, one goal of Operation Husky was achieved: German troops were tied up in Italy and the front of the Soviet Union was relieved somewhat. Stalin had long been demanding a second front from his Western allies.

Armistice of Malta

After the “short” armistice, the Allies submitted their additional demands for a “long” armistice to the Badoglio government. In a total of 44 articles in this document, the unconditional surrender and extradition of Mussolini were required, which was not possible because of his liberation. The Surrender Agreement was finally signed on September 29, 1943 on board the HMS Nelson by Marshal Badoglio and General Dwight D. Eisenhower . On October 13, 1943, Italy declared war on the German Reich and rejoined the war on the side of the Allies.

literature

  • Elena Agarossi: A Nation Collapses: The Italian Surrender of September 1943. Cambridge University Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0-521-59199-7 .
  • Albert N. Garland, Howard McGaw Smyth: Sicily and the Surrender of Italy , ( United States Army in World War II, Mediterranean Theater of Operations ), Center of Military History, United States Army, Washington, DC, 1993 ( online ).
  • Gerhard Schreiber : The Italian military internees in the German sphere of influence. 1943 to 1945. Betrayed - despised - forgotten. (= Contributions to military history. Vol. 28). R. Oldenbourg, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-486-55391-7 .
  • Gerhard Schreiber: The end of the North African campaign and the war in Italy 1943 to 1945. In: Karl-Heinz Frieser (Ed.): The Eastern Front 1943/44. The war in the east and on the secondary fronts. (= The German Reich and the Second World War. Vol. 8). Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-421-06235-2 , pp. 1100–1164.
  • Josef Schröder: Italy's exit from the war in 1943. The German countermeasures in the Italian area: the “Alarich” and “Axis” cases. (= Studies and documents on the history of the Second World War. Vol. 10, ZDB -ID 525389-5 ), Musterschmidt, Göttingen et al. 1969.

Web links

Commons : Armistice of Cassibile  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Albert N. Garland, Howard McGaw Smyth: Sicily and the Surrender of Italy , ( United States Army in World War II, Mediterranean Theater of Operations ), Center of Military History, United States Army, Washington, DC, 1993, p. 25 f.
  2. ↑ a b c Rudolf Lill : The Fascist Italy. In: Wolfgang Altgeld , Rudolf Lill: Little Italian History. Reclam, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-15-010558-7 , pp. 371-430, here p. 417.
  3. ↑ full text (Italian)