The Armistice of Cassibile

At 5.15 p.m. on 3 September 1943, in a tent in an Allied military camp at Cassibile, near Syracuse in Sicily, Brigadier General Giuseppe Castellano signed the terms of an armistice on behalf of the head of the Italian government, Marshal Pietro Badoglio. For the Allies the document was signed by the chief of staff of Allied Force Headquarters, General Walter Bedell Smith, while the ceremony was watched by the Allied Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean, General Dwight Eisenhower, who had flown in from North Africa. The document, later called the “short armistice” (armistizio corto), had only twelve clauses and amounted in practice to the unconditional surrender of the Italian armed forces.

A dozen or so hours earlier the British Eighth Army had crossed the Strait of Messina and landed in Calabria (Operation Baytown). Allied troops now stood on the Italian mainland, and the Italian government had just agreed to lay down its arms. Chronologies often state that on this day Italy “dropped out of the war”. That is not accurate: the armistice was secret, neither the Italian army nor most of Badoglio’s ministers knew of it, and formally the Italians fought on at Germany’s side for another five days. The armistice took effect only when it was announced on the evening of 8 September.

Looking for a way out

After Mussolini was overthrown on 25 July 1943, King Victor Emmanuel III and Badoglio announced that “the war goes on”, but from the very first days they were seeking a way out of it. The situation was desperate: Sicily was falling, cities were burning under Allied bombs, and more German divisions were coming into Italy over the Alpine passes – officially as allied assistance, in reality as a future occupation force. The government feared both the Allies and the Germans, and wanted above all to save the monarchy.

The first soundings by diplomats in Lisbon and Tangier at the beginning of August came to nothing. The Allies held to the principle of unconditional surrender proclaimed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt at Casablanca and had no intention of negotiating. So on 12 August a military emissary left Rome: Brigadier General Giuseppe Castellano, a trusted officer of the Chief of the Supreme Command, General Vittorio Ambrosio. He travelled by train under an assumed name, as a member of a Foreign Ministry delegation bound for Lisbon. He spoke no English; Consul Franco Montanari of the Foreign Ministry interpreted for him. Travelling via Madrid, where he met the British ambassador, he reached Lisbon on the evening of 16 August.

A night in Lisbon and the Quebec memorandum

Castellano arrived with a proposal the Allies did not want to hear: Italy would change sides and fight the Germans if the Allies landed in strength north of Rome. Meanwhile, in Quebec, Winston Churchill and Roosevelt agreed on a reply. The so-called Quebec memorandum of 18 August stated that Italy must accept the terms of unconditional surrender, but that how far they would be softened would depend on how much the Italian government and people did against the Germans in the rest of the war. There was no question of an alliance.

At 10 p.m. on 19 August, at the British embassy in Lisbon, Castellano sat down opposite Eisenhower’s envoys: General Bedell Smith and the head of intelligence at Allied Force Headquarters, Brigadier Kenneth Strong, in the presence of Ambassador Ronald Campbell and the American chargé d’affaires, George Kennan. The talks lasted until morning. Bedell Smith read him the military terms of the armistice and the Quebec memorandum; Castellano explained that he had no authority to surrender, but he left with the text of the terms, a radio set and a cipher. Rome’s answer was to arrive by 30 August; no answer would mean rejection of the terms. The Allies also announced that Eisenhower would proclaim the armistice a few hours before the main landing, without revealing either its date or its location.

A second emissary and the “long terms”

Castellano returned to Rome by train through Spain and France and arrived only on 27 August. Worried by the lack of news, the Army Chief of Staff, General Mario Roatta, had meanwhile sent a second emissary to Lisbon, General Giacomo Zanussi. As a token of good faith he took a prisoner with him: the British general Adrian Carton de Wiart, known for having lost an eye and a hand in the previous war, and therefore hard to mistake for anyone else. Zanussi was given by Ambassador Campbell the text of the so-called long terms – a political, economic and financial document drawn up by the British and entitled “Instrument of Surrender of Italy”. He was then flown to Algiers, and afterwards to Sicily.

The appearance of two generals at once surprised the Allies and revealed the chaos in Rome: each centre of power – the king, Badoglio, the Supreme Command and the Army General Staff – was pursuing its own policy. The two envoys met on 31 August at Cassibile, at the headquarters of General Harold Alexander’s 15th Army Group, where Castellano had flown in via Termini Imerese. They did not care for each other. Zanussi merely mentioned the additional terms, Castellano did not ask for the document, and until the day of signing he did not know what it contained.

At Cassibile Castellano set out Rome’s position: Italy would accept the terms if the Allies landed in sufficient strength and close enough to the capital – preferably north of Rome and before the armistice was announced – to protect the government from German revenge. Bedell Smith replied that the armistice would be announced simultaneously with the main landing, not before it, and that he would not reveal where the landing would take place. The only concession concerned Rome: the Allies offered to drop the US 82nd Airborne Division near the capital, which together with the Italian divisions stationed around the city was to defend it against the Germans. Castellano returned to Rome that evening.

The decision in Rome

On 1 September Badoglio gathered his closest associates: the foreign minister, Raffaele Guariglia, General Ambrosio, and the commander of the Motorised Army Corps defending Rome, General Giacomo Carboni. Guariglia and Ambrosio believed the terms had to be accepted. Carboni maintained that his troops could not defend the city against the Germans for lack of ammunition and fuel. Badoglio said nothing. In the afternoon he went to the king, and Victor Emmanuel III decided: the terms were to be accepted. That same day a telegram signifying acceptance was sent to the Allies.

Castellano flew to Sicily again, convinced that he was going merely to confirm this decision. On arrival it turned out that he had no written authority to sign. Badoglio, who did not want his name to appear under a document of defeat, had hoped the telegram would suffice. The Allies refused: without full powers Castellano’s signature would bind no one but himself. On 2 and 3 September further telegrams went from Cassibile to Rome, and the Allies made it clear that their patience was running out. According to some accounts Eisenhower held a large raid on Rome in readiness, called off only after the armistice was signed. On the morning of 3 September Badoglio replied that the telegram of 1 September had already been an “implicit acceptance” of the terms. Only at about 5 p.m. did a telegram arrive with explicit authority: General Castellano “is authorised by the Italian government to sign the acceptance of the armistice terms”. The text of the full powers was deposited with the British minister to the Holy See.

The signature near Syracuse

The ceremony was modest. At 5.15 p.m. Castellano signed the text on behalf of Badoglio, and Bedell Smith on behalf of Eisenhower. The witnesses included Alexander, Brigadier Strong and the British government’s Minister Resident at Allied Force Headquarters, Harold Macmillan. On the Italian side Zanussi and Montanari were present. Eisenhower shook Castellano’s hand, and Macmillan reported to Churchill that the armistice had been signed without any amendments. The Italians returned to their tent, and Alexander invited them to dinner.

The twelve clauses of the “short armistice” contained military terms only. The Italian armed forces were to cease all hostilities against the Allies immediately. Italy was to give no assistance to the Germans, hand over all Allied prisoners, transfer its fleet and air force to places designated by the Allies, place its ports, airfields and its entire territory, Corsica included, at the Allies’ disposal, and withdraw its troops from all fronts to Italy. The Allied Commander-in-Chief reserved the right to take any measures he considered necessary. The final clause announced that Italy would also have to accept political, economic and financial conditions, which would be presented to it later.

Only after the signing did Bedell Smith hand Castellano the text of the “long terms” that Zanussi had been carrying for a week. Castellano was surprised and embittered. Bedell Smith reassured him that the practical significance of these clauses would depend on how far the Italians helped in the fight against the Germans, in accordance with the Quebec memorandum. In the evening Alexander, Bedell Smith and their staff officers went over the details with Castellano: the landing of paratroops near Rome (Operation Giant II), the handover of the fleet and the arrangements for communications. The most important thing – the date on which the armistice would be announced – the Italians did not learn. Castellano inferred from the talks that the landing would take place around 12 September, and reported as much to Rome. The Supreme Command then drew up its plans on the basis of this mistaken date.

The secret

The armistice was to remain secret until a moment of the Allies’ choosing. In Rome only a handful of people knew of it. That same afternoon Badoglio received the new German ambassador, Rudolf Rahn, and assured him of Italy’s loyalty to the alliance. At a meeting with the service ministers he spoke only of “ongoing talks”, without a word about the signature. The army received vague, partly oral instructions for the event of German aggression, but did not know that Italy had already surrendered.

The Germans, for their part, were not deceived. For weeks they had been intercepting signals about the Italian talks, and on 7 September Hitler ordered an ultimatum to be prepared that would place the Italian armed forces under German command. The plan for disarming the Italian army had been lying ready in the staffs since August.

Significance

The signature at Cassibile marked the end of Fascist Italy as an ally of the Reich, but not the end of the war in Italy. Five days later, on 8 September, Eisenhower announced the armistice over the radio, forcing Badoglio to confirm it publicly. The Germans immediately disarmed most of the Italian army, and the king and government fled from Rome to the south. The Allies, who had counted on the surrender opening a quick road to Rome, met determined resistance at Salerno and spent the next twenty months fighting their way up the peninsula.

The “long terms” were signed by Badoglio and Eisenhower on 29 September 1943 off Malta, aboard the battleship HMS Nelson. In October the Kingdom of Italy declared war on Germany and was recognised as a “co-belligerent”, but not as an ally. To this day the Armistice of Cassibile is a matter of dispute in Italy: some see it as a necessary way out of a lost war, others as proof of the incompetence and duplicity of authorities who signed a surrender without preparing either the army or the nation for it.