On the evening of September 8, 1943, at 19:42, the metallic voice of Marshal Pietro Badoglio broke the silence of Italian radio: “The Italian government, recognizing the impossibility of continuing the unequal struggle against the overwhelming enemy power, with the intention of sparing the Nation further and more serious disasters, has requested an armistice from General Eisenhower. The request has been granted. Consequently, every act of hostility against the Anglo-American forces must cease on the part of the Italian forces.”
Those brief, generic words marked the end of the alliance with Nazi Germany, but at the same time opened the most dramatic chapter in Italy’s national history. It was not only a military surrender. It was the collapse of an entire political and social system, founded twenty years earlier on the fascist regime and on the myth of a strong, guarantor monarchy.
Badoglio’s Calculation and the King’s Flight
Behind the decision lay a web of interests and personal calculations. After Mussolini was deposed on July 25, Badoglio had been called to lead a government presented as the guarantor of the State’s continuity. Officially, Italy was turning the page. In reality, most of the military, bureaucratic, and political leadership remained the same people who had supported and benefited from fascism. Badoglio himself had been a key figure in the colonial wars and a trusted man of the regime. His goal, more than opening a new democratic season, was to buy time and secure for himself and the King a safe position in the emerging future.
That very night, King Victor Emmanuel III, together with the Queen, the Crown Prince, and the government, left Rome in a hurry to take refuge in Brindisi under Allied protection. A flight that carried the symbolic weight of betrayal: the supreme command abandoned its own soldiers and officers without any clear directives.
The monarchy, which had legitimized itself for twenty years as a pillar of fascism, now tried at the last moment to detach itself, without truly breaking with that past. The result was chaos. Thousands of soldiers found themselves adrift, not knowing whether to continue obeying the Germans or resist, whether to hand over their weapons or fight. In Greece, in Yugoslavia, on the Mediterranean islands, and even in Italy, entire units were captured by the Wehrmacht, often without resistance, because no one had given them precise orders.
Italy Without Leadership
On September 9, the Germans implemented Operation Achse, long prepared: they occupied the peninsula militarily, disarmed Italian troops, and established a regime of terror. Italy found itself split in two: in the south, under Allied and monarchist control; in the north, occupied by the Nazis and soon entrusted to Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic, brought back to power by German tanks.
The Italian army, which numbered millions of men, dissolved within a few days. Around 600,000 soldiers were deported to Germany as military internees. Others managed to escape and join the first resistance groups. Very many simply tried to return home, on foot, along roads devastated by war.
The vacuum left by the monarchy and by Badoglio was not only military but political. Italy found itself without legitimate leadership. Into that void stepped the anti-fascist parties, which for months, indeed for years, had been preparing for reconstruction.
The Return of the Anti-Fascists
After twenty years of dictatorship, the old democratic parties—Socialists, Communists, Action Party members, Republicans, Christian Democrats—resurfaced. Many of their leaders had been persecuted, confined, imprisoned, or forced into exile. Others had maintained an underground presence in the country, often connected to the labor movement or the intellectual world.
With Mussolini’s fall and the armistice, these men returned to center stage. It was not a linear process. Mutual distrust and ideological differences remained strong. But the gravity of the moment imposed unity. Italy was occupied by the Germans, devastated by war, abandoned by its institutional leaders. A force was needed that could organize resistance and at the same time design the future.
On September 9 in Rome, at the home of the Socialist Giuseppe Romita, the Committee of National Liberation (CLN) was founded, bringing together Communists, Socialists, Action Party members, Christian Democrats, and Liberals. The immediate goal was to coordinate opposition to Nazi-fascism. The long-term goal was to prepare the construction of a new, democratic Italy, founded on institutions that would no longer tolerate dictatorships or monarchical complicity.
A Country Divided
September 8 thus marked a historic break: on one side, the old monarchist-fascist world, trying to survive by switching sides and taking shelter under the Allied umbrella; on the other, the anti-fascist forces, who saw in the national tragedy the opportunity to refound Italy on radically new bases.
The Italian population lived those days amid bewilderment and fear. In the countryside and in the cities, fragmentary news arrived: disbanded soldiers looking for civilian clothes, Germans occupying strategic hubs, Allied bombings on railway lines. In this chaos, the first partisan groups were born, often formed by disbanded soldiers or by young men who did not want to be drafted into Salò’s army.
September 8 was not only the surrender of an army. It was the collapse of a ruling class that, after supporting fascism, tried at the last moment to save itself, leaving the country in disarray.
From Defeat to Rebirth
Some have called September 8 “the death of the Fatherland.” For millions of Italians, that date coincided with a sense of abandonment, with moral as well as military defeat. But at the same time, it marked the beginning of a new story.
In the following months, the CLN became the political heart of the resistance. Under its guidance, a people’s war developed against the Nazi occupation and against the fascists of the Italian Social Republic. It was a painful process that cost tens of thousands of lives, but it allowed Italy, in 1945, to present itself not only as a defeated country, but also as a country that had fought for its own liberation.
The monarchy, compromised by ambiguity and by the King’s flight, would never regain credibility. The referendum of June 2, 1946, sanctioned the birth of the Republic. That day, three years after the armistice, the chapter closed ideally: Italy had not only turned the page, it had chosen to refound itself on new bases.
September 8, 1943 remains one of the most painful and decisive dates in our history. It is the day of shame, of disbandment, of a surrender without honor. But it is also the day that opens the door to rebirth. The King’s flight and Badoglio’s opportunism showed the failure of the old system. The return of the anti-fascist parties and the founding of the CLN indicated the path of democracy and resistance.
From defeat a new Italy was born. Not thanks to those who had governed and then betrayed, but thanks to those who, in factories, in the mountains, in the occupied cities, decided that freedom had to be won back with their own hands.
