The Armistice of Cassibile (Italian: Armistizio di Cassibile) was signed on 3 September 1943 by Italy and the Allies, marking the end of hostilities between them during World War II. The armistice was approved by both Victor Emmanuel III and Marshal Pietro Badoglio, who was serving as Prime Minister of Italy at the time. The signing of the armistice was kept secret on that day, and was announced to the media on 8 September.
It was signed by Major-General Walter Bedell Smith for the Allies and Brigade-General Giuseppe Castellano for Italy, at a summit in an Allied military camp at Cassibile, Sicily, which had recently been occupied by the Allies. Nazi Germany, having anticipated the armistice, responded by attacking Italian forces in Italy, southern France, Greece, Yugoslavia, the Dodecanese, and freeing Benito Mussolini on 12 September. The Italian armed forces were forcefully disbanded in the north and center of the country, with most of Italy being occupied by the Germans, who established a puppet state, the Italian Social Republic led by Mussolini. The king, the Italian government and most of the Navy fled to southern Italy under the protection of the Allies. An Italian resistance movement emerged in German-occupied 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 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.
The secret rebels later involved Giuseppe Bottai, another high member of the Fascist Directorate and Minister of Culture, and Galeazzo Ciano (the 2nd Count of Cortellazzo and Buccari), the second most powerful man in the Fascist Party and Mussolini's son-in-law. The conspirators devised an "Order of the Day" for the next meeting of the Grand Council of Fascism (Gran Consiglio del Fascismo), which contained a proposal to restore direct control of politics to the King. After the Council, held on 25 July 1943, a majority vote adopted the "order of the day", and Mussolini was then summoned to meet the King and was dismissed as prime minister. Upon leaving the meeting, Mussolini was arrested by the carabinieri and spirited off to the island of Ponza. Badoglio became President of the Council of Ministers or the Prime Minister of Italy. However, Grandi had been told that another general of more significant personal and professional qualities (Marshal Enrico Caviglia) would have taken the position. On July 27, the new First Badoglio government began to undertake measures by banning all Fascist organizations throughout Italy as well as disbanding the National Fascist Party and its other elements associated with it.
The appointment of Badoglio did not change the position of Italy as Germany's ally in the war. However, many channels sought a peace treaty with the Allies. Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler sent several divisions south of the Alps, officially to help defend Italy from Allied landings but really to control the country.
Three Italian generals (including Brigade General Giuseppe Castellano) were separately sent to Lisbon to contact Allied diplomats. However, to open the proceedings, the Allies had to determine who was the most authoritative envoy, and the three generals had started to quarrel about who had the highest authority. In the end, Castellano was admitted to speak with the Allies at the British Embassy to set the conditions for the armistice of Italy. Among the representatives of the Allies were the British Ambassador to Portugal, Sir Ronald Hugh Campbell, and two senior officers sent by Dwight Eisenhower: major-general Walter Bedell Smith (US Army, Eisenhower's chief of staff) and brigadier Kenneth Strong (British Army, Eisenhower's assistant chief of staff for intelligence).
On 27 August, General Castellano returned to Italy and, three days later, briefed Badoglio about the Allied request for a meeting to be held in Sicily, which had been suggested by the British Ambassador to the Vatican.
To ease communication between the Allies and the Italian government, a captured British Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent, Dick Mallaby, was released from Verona Prison and secretly moved to the Quirinale. It was vital for the Germans to remain ignorant of any suggestion of Italian surrender, and the SOE was the most secure method under the circumstances.
Badoglio still considered it possible to gain favourable conditions in exchange for the surrender. He ordered Castellano to insist that any surrender of Italy be conditioned on a landing of Allied troops on the Italian mainland. The Allies held only Sicily and some minor islands.
On 31 August, Brigade General Castellano reached Termini Imerese, in Sicily, by plane and was transferred to Cassibile, a town near Syracuse. It soon became evident that the two sides in the negotiations had adopted somewhat distant positions. Castellano pressed the request for the Italian territory to be defended from the inevitable reaction of the German Wehrmacht against Italy after the signing. In return, he received only vague promises, including launching a parachute division over Rome. Moreover, the actions were to be conducted contemporaneously with the signing, not to precede it, as the Italians had wanted.
The following day, Castellano was received by Badoglio and his entourage. Italy's Foreign Minister, Raffaele Guariglia, declared that the Allied conditions were to be accepted. Other generals, such as Giacomo Carboni, maintained that the Army Corps deployed around Rome was insufficient to protect the city because of the lack of fuel and ammunition and that the armistice had to be postponed. Badoglio did not pronounce himself in the meeting. In the afternoon, he appeared before the King, who decided to accept the armistice conditions.
A confirmation telegram was sent to the Allies. The message, however, was intercepted by the Wehrmacht, the German armed forces, which had long since begun to suspect that Italy was seeking a separate armistice. The Germans contacted Badoglio, who repeatedly confirmed the unwavering loyalty of Italy to its German ally. The Germans doubted his reassurances, and the Wehrmacht started to devise an effective plan, Operation Achse, to take control of Italy as soon as the Italian government had switched allegiance to the Allies.
On 2 September, Castellano set off again to Cassibile with an order to confirm the acceptance of the Allied conditions. He had no written authorization from Badoglio, the head of the Italian government, who wanted to dissociate himself as much as possible from the forthcoming defeat of his country.
The signing ceremony began at 14:00 on 3 September. Castellano and Bedell Smith signed the accepted text on behalf of Badoglio and General Eisenhower, respectively. The armistice includes that all Italian land, air, and naval forces must cease hostilities against the Allies. A bombing mission on Rome by 500 airplanes was stopped at the last moment and had been Eisenhower's inducement to accelerate the procedure of the armistice. Harold Macmillan, the British government's representative minister at the Allied Staff, informed Winston Churchill that the armistice had been signed "without amendments of any kind".