On the night between July 24 and 25, 1943, the Italian Grand Council of Fascism approved a motion of no confidence against Il Duce Benito Mussolini. On the same day, King Victor Emmanuel III replaced him with MarshalPietro Badoglio and had him arrested.
After the Germans occupied Rome, SS-Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Kappler was ordered to serve as Chief of the Security Police and Security Service for all SS and police units deployed in Rome. Kappler reported that Mussolini was being held at Campo Imperatore Hotel, a ski resort high in the Apennine Mountains.
The mission to liberate Mussolini was codenamed Operation Oak. It was a German paratroops operation planned by Major Harald Mors and approved by General Kurt Student. The Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, personally selected Lieutenant Colonel Otto Skorzeny to carry out the mission. On September 12, 1943, the commandos landed DFS 230 gliders on the mountain; only one crashed, causing some minor injuries to the passengers.
The special troopers overwhelmed Mussolini’s captors – 200 Carabinieri guards – without a single shot being fired
The special troopers overwhelmed Mussolini’s captors – 200 Carabinieri guards – without a single shot being fired. Carabinieri General Ferdinando Soleti told them to stand down or be executed for treason. Skorzeny formally greeted Mussolini with the words: “Duce, the Führer has sent me to set you free!” to which Mussolini replied: “I knew that my friend would not forsake me.”
Mussolini was first flown from Campo Imperatore in a Luftwaffe Fieseler Fi 156C-3/Trop Storch STOL liaison aircraft, initially to the airfield of Pratica di Mare, near Rome. He then embarked in an Heinkel He 111 bomber aircraft on to Vienna, where Mussolini stayed overnight at the Hotel Imperial and was given a hero’s welcome.
Meanwhile, when the armistice was announced on September 8, 1943, the Italians were caught by surprise since they did not expect it until September 12.
General Field Marshal Albert Kesselring immediately moved to secure Rome, where he expected an Allied airborne and seaborne invasion. He gave an order to close on the city, while a detachment made an unsuccessful attempt to seize the Italian Army staff at Monterotondo.
Kesselring’s two divisions were faced by five Italian divisions, two of them armoured, but he managed to overcome the opposition, disperse the Italian forces and secure the city in two days. All over Italy, the Germans swiftly disarmed Italian units.
When Greece fell in April-May 1941, the country was divided into occupation zones, with the Italians getting the bulk of the mainland and most islands. The 33rd Infantry Division ‘Acqui’ had been the Italian garrison of Cephalonia since May 1943, and consisted of 11,500 soldiers and 525 officers. Acqui also had naval coastal batteries, torpedo boats and two aircraft. Since June 18, 1943, it was commanded by General Antonio Gandin.
Meanwhile, the Germans decided to reinforce their presence throughout the Balkans. On July 5-6, Lieutenant-Colonel Johannes Barge arrived with 2,000 men, a battery of self-propelled guns and nine tanks.
To make matters even more complicated, after the overthrow of Mussolini, Marshal Badoglio had agreed to the unification of the two armies under German command in order to appease the Germans. Therefore, technically, both General Carlo Vecchiarelli and Gandin were under German command, even though Italy had implemented an armistice agreement with the Allies. This gave the Germans the justification to treat any Italians disobeying their orders as traitors.
Gandin presented his troops with a poll, essentially containing the three options presented to him by Barge. The response from the Italian troops was in favour of the third option, which was to resist the Germans, by a large majority, even though there is no available information as to the exact size of the majority. Therefore, on September 14, Gandin refused to surrender anything except the division’s heavy artillery and told the Germans to leave the island.
As the negotiations stalled, the Germans prepared to resolve the issue by force, and presented the Italians with an ultimatum. On September 15, the German Luftwaffe began bombarding the Italian positions with Junkers Ju87 Stukas dive-bombers.
On the ground, the Italians initially enjoyed superiority, and took about 400 Germans prisoner. On September 17, however, the Germans landed the Battle Group Hirschfeld under the command of Major Harald von Hirschfeld. At the same time, the Germans started dropping propaganda leaflets calling upon the Italians to surrender. The leaflets stated:
“Camerati Italiani, ufficiali e soldati, why fight against the Germans? You have been betrayed by your leaders!... lay down your arms!! The road home to your patria will be opened up for you by your German camerati.”
After several days of combat, at 11am on September 22, following Gandin’s orders, the last Italians surrendered, having run out of ammunition and suffering 1,315 casualties. According to German sources, the losses were 300 Germans and 1,200 Italians. After that, about 5,000 Italian soldiers were massacred by the Germans following Hitler’s order of September 11, 1943, to execute captured Italian officers.
In Corfu, the 8,000-strong Italian garrison comprised elements of three divisions, including the Acqui’s 18th Regiment. On September 24, the Germans landed a force on the island, and by the next day they were able to induce the Italians to capitulation.
All 280 Italian officers on the island were executed during the next two days on the orders of General Lanz, in accordance with Hitler’s directives. The bodies were loaded onto a ship and disposed of in the sea.
Meanwhile, in northern Italy, Mussolini was taken to Germany for a meeting with Hitler in Rastenburg at his East Prussian headquarters. On September 23, 1943, Mussolini declared that the coup d’état had been defeated and proclaimed the Republica Sociale Italiana (RSI-Italian Social Republic) which was effectively a German puppet state, with Mussolini as both head of state and prime minister.
The RSI claimed Rome as its capital but the de facto capital became the small town of Salò on Lake Garda, midway between Milan and Venice, where Mussolini resided along with the foreign office of the RSI. Neither the Germans nor Mussolini wanted him to return to Rome. Fearing possible civil unrest and uneasy over the proximity of Rome to the Allied lines, the Germans advised against Mussolini’s return there following his liberation.
The RSI was recognised diplomatically only by Germany and its satellites. The state had no constitution or organised economy, and its financing was dependent entirely on funding from Berlin. The RSI took revenge against 19 members who had voted against Mussolini on the Grand Council by means of the Verona trial, which handed down a death sentence to all the accused. Only two of the 19 were in RSI custody (Emilio De Bono and Mussolini’s own son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano). They were executed on January 11, 1944.
On September 22, 1943, the last Italians surrendered, having run out of ammunition. After that, about 5,000 Italian soldiers were massacred by the Germans
In the meantime, the Allies launched Operation Avalanche, the invasion of Salerno on September 9, 1943, by the US Fifth Army (composed of the US VI Corps, the British X Corps and the US 82nd Airborne Division). In order to secure surprise, the army decided to assault without preliminary naval or aerial bombardment. However, tactical surprise was not achieved. Kesselring succeeded in coping also with these attacks.
The dividing line between the Commander-in-Chief South under the command Kesselring and Army Group B under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel responsible for German troops in Italy as far south as Pisa, was the line Pisa-Arezzo-Ancona.
Kesselring’s advocacy of a defence of Italy as far south of Rome as possible had gained considerable force after the Italian Army ceased to be dangerous and after the Allies had failed to land near Rome. But Hitler did not accept Kesselring’s strategic concept. Kesselring complied with the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces instruction by ordering Colonel General Heinrich von Vietinghoff’s Tenth Army on September 14 “to fall back upon the Rome area” after completion of the operations at Salerno, regardless of whether the Fifth Army had been forced back into the sea or not.
Relevant artefacts and information can be seen in Heritage Malta’s National War Museum in Valletta.
(To be continued)
Charles Debono is curator, National War Museum.