September 8th, 1943 (Part 2)
Furthermore Badoglio was obsessed by the German ferocious reprisals that were taking place almost daily in every part of the peninsula occupied by the Germans and was over-conscious of the possibility of his own capture and execution. Suddenly he instructed Gen. Castellano to cancel the Allies plan.
Such was no doubt the worst decision ever made in war time: it’s very logical to assume that within a few days the Allies, supported by Italian troops, could have pushed the enemy all the way back to Germany, that the war would have been over at least one year earlier and that two million lives, between civilians and military, could have been spared.
On September 8, 1943 Badoglio announced on the air from the United Nation Radio in Algiers: “Cease all acts of hostility against the Anglo-American Forces.” Contemporaneously Eisenhower announced: “Italy has surrendered its forces unconditionally”. In the meantime “Regia Marina”, the Italian Navy, wisely decided to sail to British ports in North Africa or to Malta, the island at the center of the Mediterranean, where they surrendered.
The fleet included 5 very modern battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, torpedo boats for a total of 206 ships. Badoglio truly proved to be a coward the day after the armistice when he convinced the King to leave Rome. The King and Badoglio shamefully abandoned a nation at war at the most critical time, leaving 700 thousands military without instructions and causing the complete collapse of the Italian Army.
Cowardly, Badoglio and the king left Rome in a motor convoy during the night and fled to Pescara on the Adriatic coast, where they embarked on the corvette “Baionetta” of the Italian Royal Navy that took them to Brindisi, a city already liberated by the allies. It was not until September 11th that the War Office in Brindisi sent out orders to treat the Germans as enemies. But.... it was like closing the barn door after the horses had escaped: the Germans by then occupied four- fifths of Italy while most army headquarters had ceased to function.
The German High Command accurately reported to Hitler that by September 14 they had completely disarmed 56 Italian divisions and partially disarmed 29 others with the capture of 700,000 soldiers and an immense amount of war supplies, armament, provisions and weapons. Under the terms of the truce, several thousands brand- new armored tanks and trucks fresh from the Fiat works and the Lancia factories were handed over to the Germans; they should have been in action defending beaches and aerodromes for massive American landings.
Ironically, the Italian Army fared so well on 9 and 10 September in the fighting against the Germans that there can be no doubt they would have been capable of defending the Rome airfields during the four days needed for the full strength of the 82nd Airborne to arrive.
