Armistice of Cassibile

The Armistice of Cassibile was an armistice that was signed on 3 September 1943 between the Kingdom of Italy and the US and UK during World War II. It was made public five days later. It was signed by Major General Walter Bedell Smith for the Allies and Brigade General Giuseppe Castellano for Italy at a conference of generals from both sides in an Allied military camp at Cassibile, in Sicily, which had recently been occupied by the Allies. The armistice was approved by both Italian King Victor Emmanuel III and Marshal Badoglio, who was the Prime Minister of Italy at the time. Germany responded by attacking Italian forces in Italy (8–19 September), southern France and the Balkans, and freeing Benito Mussolini (12 September). The Italian forces were quickly defeated, and most of Italy was occupied by German troops, who established a puppet state, the Italian Social Republic. The king, the Italian government, and most of the Navy escaped to territories occupied by the Allies. Fall of the Fascist regime in Italy After the surrender of the Axis powers in North Africa on 13 May 1943, the Allies bombed Rome on 16 May, invaded Sicily on 10 July and prepared to land on the Italian mainland. In the spring of 1943, preoccupied with the disastrous situation of the Italian military during the war, the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, removed several figures from the government whom he considered to be more loyal to King Victor Emmanuel III than to the Fascist regime. To help the execution of his plan, the King asked for the assistance of Dino Grandi (1st Count of Mordano), one of the leading members of the Fascist hierarchy who, in his younger years, had been considered the sole credible alternative to Mussolini as leader of the National Fascist Party. The King was also motivated by the suspicion that the Count of Mordano's ideas about Fascism might be changed abruptly. Various ambassadors, including Pietro Badoglio himself, proposed the vague possibility of succeeding Mussolini as dictator.