The Pope at War, page 37
“It is not,” objected one of the women, her voice raised. “I serve a General who is with Badoglio and he says the city is full of Germans.”
The Swiss journalist who witnessed this scene added a note of her own: “As a matter of fact everybody knows that Rome is packed full of German troops. Yesterday, crossing Piazza Navona, I noticed that all the adjacent streets were full of armored cars. There were at least a hundred of them.”[14]
* * *
—
As August wore on, the police forces of the new government were rounding up and jailing more of the former Fascist elite. Some had succeeded in fleeing to Germany, Ciano among them. It was a move he would soon come to regret. Mussolini himself had been moved from one island imprisonment to another and would soon be brought back to the mainland to a remote mountaintop. Mussolini’s wife, Rachele, was left alone, but his lover, Clara, along with the rest of her family, was arrested. Indeed, for Badoglio’s government, the Petacci family came to symbolize the corruption of the Fascist government, and word of the reversal of the Petacci family’s fortunes produced widespread glee. From her jail cell, Clara wrote to Mussolini, assuring him that she, her mother, and her sister prayed day and night to the Madonna of Pompeii for his liberation. “I have faith,” she told him, “I have faith.” “The Führer will save you, I feel it!” she wrote later in August. “It is not only I who need you, but the world, History.” In Rome, a group of Ursuline nuns moved into the newly vacated Petacci mansion, setting up an orphanage. It housed fifty children quite comfortably.[15]
For the precarious Italian government, the drama could hardly have been greater. The Allies were demanding unconditional surrender and threatening further bombardment and invasion of the mainland. Badoglio’s public proclamations of loyalty to the Axis cause were antagonizing the Allies yet doing little to reassure Germany. At the end of the month, Foreign Minister Guariglia drafted a memo for Badoglio setting out the unappetizing choices they faced:
The Germans viewed Italy as a crucial shield for keeping the Allies far from the Reich. This left the government with only two alternatives. It could continue along its current path and drag its feet on the war while making whatever concessions were necessary to Germany to keep it at bay. Alternatively, it could break off relations with Germany. For this second path to have any chance of success, there would need to be sufficient Italian military force to hold off the Germans long enough to reach a military and diplomatic agreement with the Allies. It would also require having the Allies immediately begin furnishing all the basic goods that Italy had been importing from Germany.
Guariglia was pessimistic. Should the government renounce its alliance with the Reich, German troops would immediately occupy Rome. Italian soldiers in the Balkans would be herded into German prison camps, and the disorganized Italian troops in Italy would likely meet the same fate. The hundreds of thousands of Italians who were working in Germany would be imprisoned. The basic materials and foodstuffs Italians needed to survive would be cut off. Italy, or at least a large part of it, would be occupied by the Germans, a situation that would be made worse by the Germans’ thirst for revenge for Italy’s betrayal.
Perhaps, thought Guariglia, the Allies would soon succeed in crossing over from Sicily onto the Italian mainland, but if so, their advance up the peninsula would be slow. Meanwhile Rome would be devastated, and Italy would be carved in two, oppressed by a dual enemy occupation. “The truth is we do not have the force necessary to undertake a policy that can allow the country to enter into a conflict with Germany.” Nor did Guariglia have any faith in the British. He told Badoglio it was a dangerous illusion to think Britain was positively disposed toward them. Indeed, Britain would rather treat Italy as a defeated enemy than a belated ally and had been careful not to promise that if it renounced Fascism, it could retain any of its hard-won African colonies.
The Americans and British, whom Guariglia referred to as “our enemies,” thought not of Italy’s interests but only of their own. They would land wherever it most suited their goals, and, Guariglia concluded, “it might be more convenient for them to have the Italians and Germans massacre each other, weakening Italy’s defense, before they intervene.”[16]
* * *
—
While the pope had been careful to do nothing that might turn the Germans against the Vatican, Italy’s situation had become so desperate, he now decided—against the advice of Cardinal Maglione—to risk sending a secret emissary to the United States. The pope entrusted Enrico Galeazzi, the Vatican’s chief engineer, with the task. Galeazzi had accompanied the then Cardinal Pacelli on his lengthy tour of the United States in 1936 and had close ties to New York’s Archbishop Spellman. Responsible for much of the day-to-day administration and facilities of Vatican City—Tittmann described him as “the uncrowned governor of the Vatican State”—and long enjoying a close personal bond with the pontiff, he seemed a good choice.[17]
Galeazzi was to give Roosevelt a two-part message from the pope. Part one explained that while both the Italian government and its people sought peace, they were unable to put this wish into practice due to the German military forces in the country. Not only were the Italians not in a position to force the Germans out, but they would be helpless should the Germans decide to take control of Rome. And here the pope expressed his greatest fear: “In such an eventuality, it is predicted that Vatican City, which houses the diplomatic representatives of the Allied countries, would not be spared and the very august person of the Holy Father might also be in danger.”
Secondly, the pope warned that Communism was fast spreading in Italy, especially among the working class. Contributing to the Communist appeal were “the very serious damage and massacres produced by the recent terrorist bombings of the Italian cities, which have caused great resentment among the people, who had earlier been well disposed toward the Allies and especially toward the Americans, pushing them increasingly toward…communism.” The pope warned that since the fall of Fascism there was clear evidence of well-organized Communist attempts at subversion. “That said,” the papal message concluded, “it is easy to predict how difficult, not to say impossible, it would become for the Holy See and the government of the universal Church should Italy fall in the hands of communism.”[18]
With this secret mission under way, the pope decided a public appearance was also in order. What perhaps the pope did not realize was that the announcement of his planned address would trigger sky-high expectations among Romans. When they learned he would broadcast a special radio message to the world on September 1, the fourth anniversary of the war, rumors exploded. Perhaps, people thought, he would be announcing his success in arranging an end to the bombing of Rome or, indeed, even an end to the war in Italy.
Sitting on his throne, dressed in his white robe, a white skullcap atop his head, the pope spoke into the microphone in his nasal voice. Thousands crowded into St. Peter’s Basilica and Square, where loudspeakers broadcast the pope’s words. His delivery, never one of his strong points, came in staccato bursts of three or four words at a time, the pontiff carefully emphasizing each phrase. Elsewhere in Rome, crowds gathered in cafés whose radios blared at their highest volume.
Those who were hoping to hear good news were disappointed. The French ambassador told of a “certain delusion” caused by the pope’s remarks, which while expressing heartfelt wishes for a “just and lasting peace,” offered nothing more specific. “As in his preceding messages, the Holy Father energetically affirmed his impartiality with respect to all of the belligerents, his equal solicitude of all peoples.” Osborne, the British envoy, reporting on the speech to London, wrote that while a number of his diplomatic colleagues thought the pope’s main motive in speaking was to appeal to the Allies for better treatment of Italy, “I rather think he felt it was time for him to make the front page and re-pledge himself as champion of peace.”
Although many Romans felt let down, Pius XII still, as they saw it, remained their best bet for extracting them from impending disaster. Italy’s hapless government certainly inspired little confidence. When, following the broadcast, the pope stepped out from his apartment to the window and raised his arm, a sea of hands in the huge crowd below shot up, waving their hats and their white handkerchiefs to salute God’s vicar on earth.[19]
* * *
—
The newly formed government’s secret talks with the Allies began in Lisbon in mid-August. At the end of the month, they moved to a newly established Allied military base in southeastern Sicily. Robert Murphy for the Americans and Harold Macmillan for the British flew there from Algiers to finalize the negotiations with Prime Minister Badoglio’s emissaries, Generals Giuseppe Castellanos and Giacomo Zanussi. Roosevelt and Churchill had set out the terms of the armistice and were impatient for the Italian government to sign on. But since the meetings in Lisbon, the Italian attitude had become more cautious. As German troops continued to pour into Italy from the north, Badoglio, his fears fanned by his foreign minister, was growing increasingly nervous. They would not sign the agreement, the Italian generals now insisted, unless the Allies could guarantee that they would land troops north of Rome at the same time as the armistice was announced. Murphy reported to Roosevelt: “They asserted that if we only land south of Rome the Germans will take the city and everything north of it. In their minds the slaughter, pillage and destruction would be too awful to contemplate.”
If the Italians were trying to put pressure on the Allies, they were playing with a weak hand. Should they fail to sign the surrender terms now, Murphy and Macmillan warned them, three things would happen:
The King and the present Italian Government would be all through as far as the Allies are concerned.
We would be obliged to incite disorder and anarchy throughout Italy….
We would obviously be obliged to bomb relentlessly and on a large scale until all the major Italian cities, including Rome, would be reduced to ashes and piles of rubble.[20]
That evening, the two Italian generals flew back to Rome to inform Badoglio of the ultimatum.
“It is clear,” Eisenhower wrote to the War Department in Washington, “that the Italian Government will not pluck up courage to sign and announce an armistice unless they are assured of Allied troops being landed in the Rome area and to give them some guarantee of protection against the Germans.” In light of this, “We believe that the employment of an Airborne Division for this purpose…would be a good gamble, because the success of AVALANCHE [the landing planned on the mainland near Salerno south of Naples] may very likely turn upon obtaining a degree of Italian help that will materially delay movement of German forces.” Eisenhower concluded, “Consequently, under my instructions to support any Italian units that would actually fight the Germans, I have determined to employ an Airborne Division in the Rome area if we can be sufficiently assured of the good faith of the Italians.”[21]
The next day, September 2, 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill sent a joint response to Eisenhower: “We highly approve your decision to go on with AVALANCHE and to land an airborne Division near Rome on the conditions indicated.”[22]
On September 3 Eisenhower flew to Sicily to be present for the ceremony in which Castellanos, acting on behalf of Badoglio, would sign the surrender agreement. It was to be made public a few days later, when the Allies would land a major force near Salerno and airlift troops to Rome. The plan depended on having the Italians safeguard Rome’s airfields to allow the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division to land and help prevent the Germans from occupying the city. Roosevelt and Churchill planned to issue a joint announcement of Italy’s surrender on September 8. Badoglio was told to make it public at the same time.[23]
But all threatened to come undone at the last moment. The day before the armistice was to be announced, Badoglio abruptly tried to put it off, saying he could no longer guarantee control of the airfields outside Rome that the Allied airborne troops would need to land. Early on the day when the armistice was supposed to be made public, he sent Eisenhower an unwelcome message: “Owing to changes in the situation which has broken down and the existence of German forces in the Rome area it is no longer possible to accept immediate armistice since this proves that the capital would be occupied and the government taken over forcibly by the Germans.”
The Allies would now be unable to airlift troops to Rome, but they had already launched Operation Avalanche and urgently needed the armistice to be announced before the troops landed on the Italian mainland. In sending Badoglio’s message on to Washington, Eisenhower made clear his own view of what should be done: “we would like to have…your thought on whether or not we should proceed with the armistice announcement for the tactical and deception value it might have. Certainly the Italian government itself deserves no consideration.”[24]
Washington’s response came quickly: “It is the view of the President and the Prime Minister that the agreement having been signed you should make such public announcement regarding it as would facilitate your military operations. No consideration need be given to the embarrassment it might cause the Italian Government.” Eisenhower sent Badoglio a final ultimatum: “I intend to broadcast the acceptance of the Armistice at the hour originally planned…. If you or any part of your armed forces fail to cooperate as previously agreed, I will publish to the world full records of this affair. Today is X day, and I expect you to do your part.”[25]
Dragging his feet, Badoglio made his announcement only late in the evening, after Italy’s capitulation had already been broadcast on the radio. People took to the streets. Some among the young were singing, dancing, and waving Italian flags, but many of their elders experienced more mixed emotions, pained at their nation’s humiliating defeat and fearful of what was to come. A few thousand Romans streamed into St. Peter’s Square, where they shouted out their hopes for peace and beckoned the pope to come to his window. But the pope would not grant their wish. Knowing how vulnerable Rome now was to German occupation, the pope was not eager to be seen celebrating Italy’s betrayal of its Axis ally. When, despite their repeated calls, he failed to appear at his window, the disappointed crowd slowly drifted away.[26]
In the hours after the announcement of the armistice, Italy’s seventy-four-year-old king anxiously followed news of the approach of German troops. Fearing that the Quirinal Palace might not be secure, he spent the night sleeping on a couch in the palazzo housing Italy’s War Ministry. Word came late at night that German forces had begun advancing on Rome, occupying the old port city of Civitavecchia to the northwest and the naval fortress town of Gaeta to the south. Only one road leaving Rome, Via Tiburtina, remained clear, but it would not stay that way very long. It was still dark at five a.m. on September 9, 1943, when a caravan of five cars formed in the courtyard of the palazzo. The king and queen got into the first car, a gray-green Fiat 2800, Prime Minister Badoglio and the king’s adviser Duke d’Acquarone into the second, and Prince Umberto into the third. A phalanx of carabinieri on motorcycles led the way. Over the next two hours, many of Italy’s top generals and admirals followed their example, as did a bevy of valets and household servants of the royal family who brought hastily prepared baggage. All made their way east across the Apennines, headed for the Adriatic port city of Pescara.
Among those missing from the royal caravan was the king’s daughter Mafalda, who was in Bulgaria at the time to be with Giovanna, her younger sister, for the funeral of Giovanna’s husband, King Boris. Mafalda would never see her father again, for shortly after her return to Rome later in the month, the Gestapo seized her and flew her to Berlin. From there she would be sent to the concentration camp at Buchenwald, where she would die a gruesome death.[1]
Princess Mafalda
On the royal party’s arrival at Pescara’s airport, Victor Emmanuel had expected to find a plane waiting to take him south to safety. He never did board a plane there, although whether it was because of fear of German aerial interception or refusal of the Italian airmen to participate in such a humiliating spectacle remains unclear. The royal party decided instead to summon a naval warship for the evacuation. As they waited for its arrival, news of the king’s attempted escape began to circulate through Pescara, triggering fears of popular protest. At the last moment, the warship Bayonet was redirected to Ortona, a small port town to the south. There the king, queen, prime minister, and fifty-six other members of the royal party boarded the small war vessel, which set off immediately to Brindisi, on Italy’s heel. In their haste to escape, neither Badoglio nor the king nor the military chiefs of staff had given instructions for the army or the government ministers whom they left behind. Raffaele Guariglia, the foreign minister, had spent the night preparing dispatches for Italy’s diplomats abroad informing them of the armistice; no one had told him the king and prime minister were leaving.[2]
Later that morning, on learning of the flight of the king and his prime minister, two of Guariglia’s assistants rushed to the Vatican to let the pope know. Guariglia himself took refuge in the Spanish embassy to the Holy See, where he would remain for the next nine months. Later that day an Italian military officer representing what was left of the military command came to see Monsignor Montini, the man closest to the pope, seeking Pius XII’s help. Might the pope prevail on the Allies to hasten the arrival of their troops in Rome? The pope left the request unanswered. With Rome about to be occupied by the Germans, this was no time to antagonize them.[3]
“Ever since Mussolini’s exit,” Goebbels wrote in his diary that day, “we have anticipated and expected this development…. We can now set in motion what the Führer really wanted to do immediately after Mussolini’s fall.” Within hours of the armistice announcement, German soldiers occupied the cities of northern Italy without encountering any notable resistance. Meanwhile the Allies were focused on Operation Avalanche, landing their troops near Salerno, south of Naples.[4]
The Swiss journalist who witnessed this scene added a note of her own: “As a matter of fact everybody knows that Rome is packed full of German troops. Yesterday, crossing Piazza Navona, I noticed that all the adjacent streets were full of armored cars. There were at least a hundred of them.”[14]
* * *
—
As August wore on, the police forces of the new government were rounding up and jailing more of the former Fascist elite. Some had succeeded in fleeing to Germany, Ciano among them. It was a move he would soon come to regret. Mussolini himself had been moved from one island imprisonment to another and would soon be brought back to the mainland to a remote mountaintop. Mussolini’s wife, Rachele, was left alone, but his lover, Clara, along with the rest of her family, was arrested. Indeed, for Badoglio’s government, the Petacci family came to symbolize the corruption of the Fascist government, and word of the reversal of the Petacci family’s fortunes produced widespread glee. From her jail cell, Clara wrote to Mussolini, assuring him that she, her mother, and her sister prayed day and night to the Madonna of Pompeii for his liberation. “I have faith,” she told him, “I have faith.” “The Führer will save you, I feel it!” she wrote later in August. “It is not only I who need you, but the world, History.” In Rome, a group of Ursuline nuns moved into the newly vacated Petacci mansion, setting up an orphanage. It housed fifty children quite comfortably.[15]
For the precarious Italian government, the drama could hardly have been greater. The Allies were demanding unconditional surrender and threatening further bombardment and invasion of the mainland. Badoglio’s public proclamations of loyalty to the Axis cause were antagonizing the Allies yet doing little to reassure Germany. At the end of the month, Foreign Minister Guariglia drafted a memo for Badoglio setting out the unappetizing choices they faced:
The Germans viewed Italy as a crucial shield for keeping the Allies far from the Reich. This left the government with only two alternatives. It could continue along its current path and drag its feet on the war while making whatever concessions were necessary to Germany to keep it at bay. Alternatively, it could break off relations with Germany. For this second path to have any chance of success, there would need to be sufficient Italian military force to hold off the Germans long enough to reach a military and diplomatic agreement with the Allies. It would also require having the Allies immediately begin furnishing all the basic goods that Italy had been importing from Germany.
Guariglia was pessimistic. Should the government renounce its alliance with the Reich, German troops would immediately occupy Rome. Italian soldiers in the Balkans would be herded into German prison camps, and the disorganized Italian troops in Italy would likely meet the same fate. The hundreds of thousands of Italians who were working in Germany would be imprisoned. The basic materials and foodstuffs Italians needed to survive would be cut off. Italy, or at least a large part of it, would be occupied by the Germans, a situation that would be made worse by the Germans’ thirst for revenge for Italy’s betrayal.
Perhaps, thought Guariglia, the Allies would soon succeed in crossing over from Sicily onto the Italian mainland, but if so, their advance up the peninsula would be slow. Meanwhile Rome would be devastated, and Italy would be carved in two, oppressed by a dual enemy occupation. “The truth is we do not have the force necessary to undertake a policy that can allow the country to enter into a conflict with Germany.” Nor did Guariglia have any faith in the British. He told Badoglio it was a dangerous illusion to think Britain was positively disposed toward them. Indeed, Britain would rather treat Italy as a defeated enemy than a belated ally and had been careful not to promise that if it renounced Fascism, it could retain any of its hard-won African colonies.
The Americans and British, whom Guariglia referred to as “our enemies,” thought not of Italy’s interests but only of their own. They would land wherever it most suited their goals, and, Guariglia concluded, “it might be more convenient for them to have the Italians and Germans massacre each other, weakening Italy’s defense, before they intervene.”[16]
* * *
—
While the pope had been careful to do nothing that might turn the Germans against the Vatican, Italy’s situation had become so desperate, he now decided—against the advice of Cardinal Maglione—to risk sending a secret emissary to the United States. The pope entrusted Enrico Galeazzi, the Vatican’s chief engineer, with the task. Galeazzi had accompanied the then Cardinal Pacelli on his lengthy tour of the United States in 1936 and had close ties to New York’s Archbishop Spellman. Responsible for much of the day-to-day administration and facilities of Vatican City—Tittmann described him as “the uncrowned governor of the Vatican State”—and long enjoying a close personal bond with the pontiff, he seemed a good choice.[17]
Galeazzi was to give Roosevelt a two-part message from the pope. Part one explained that while both the Italian government and its people sought peace, they were unable to put this wish into practice due to the German military forces in the country. Not only were the Italians not in a position to force the Germans out, but they would be helpless should the Germans decide to take control of Rome. And here the pope expressed his greatest fear: “In such an eventuality, it is predicted that Vatican City, which houses the diplomatic representatives of the Allied countries, would not be spared and the very august person of the Holy Father might also be in danger.”
Secondly, the pope warned that Communism was fast spreading in Italy, especially among the working class. Contributing to the Communist appeal were “the very serious damage and massacres produced by the recent terrorist bombings of the Italian cities, which have caused great resentment among the people, who had earlier been well disposed toward the Allies and especially toward the Americans, pushing them increasingly toward…communism.” The pope warned that since the fall of Fascism there was clear evidence of well-organized Communist attempts at subversion. “That said,” the papal message concluded, “it is easy to predict how difficult, not to say impossible, it would become for the Holy See and the government of the universal Church should Italy fall in the hands of communism.”[18]
With this secret mission under way, the pope decided a public appearance was also in order. What perhaps the pope did not realize was that the announcement of his planned address would trigger sky-high expectations among Romans. When they learned he would broadcast a special radio message to the world on September 1, the fourth anniversary of the war, rumors exploded. Perhaps, people thought, he would be announcing his success in arranging an end to the bombing of Rome or, indeed, even an end to the war in Italy.
Sitting on his throne, dressed in his white robe, a white skullcap atop his head, the pope spoke into the microphone in his nasal voice. Thousands crowded into St. Peter’s Basilica and Square, where loudspeakers broadcast the pope’s words. His delivery, never one of his strong points, came in staccato bursts of three or four words at a time, the pontiff carefully emphasizing each phrase. Elsewhere in Rome, crowds gathered in cafés whose radios blared at their highest volume.
Those who were hoping to hear good news were disappointed. The French ambassador told of a “certain delusion” caused by the pope’s remarks, which while expressing heartfelt wishes for a “just and lasting peace,” offered nothing more specific. “As in his preceding messages, the Holy Father energetically affirmed his impartiality with respect to all of the belligerents, his equal solicitude of all peoples.” Osborne, the British envoy, reporting on the speech to London, wrote that while a number of his diplomatic colleagues thought the pope’s main motive in speaking was to appeal to the Allies for better treatment of Italy, “I rather think he felt it was time for him to make the front page and re-pledge himself as champion of peace.”
Although many Romans felt let down, Pius XII still, as they saw it, remained their best bet for extracting them from impending disaster. Italy’s hapless government certainly inspired little confidence. When, following the broadcast, the pope stepped out from his apartment to the window and raised his arm, a sea of hands in the huge crowd below shot up, waving their hats and their white handkerchiefs to salute God’s vicar on earth.[19]
* * *
—
The newly formed government’s secret talks with the Allies began in Lisbon in mid-August. At the end of the month, they moved to a newly established Allied military base in southeastern Sicily. Robert Murphy for the Americans and Harold Macmillan for the British flew there from Algiers to finalize the negotiations with Prime Minister Badoglio’s emissaries, Generals Giuseppe Castellanos and Giacomo Zanussi. Roosevelt and Churchill had set out the terms of the armistice and were impatient for the Italian government to sign on. But since the meetings in Lisbon, the Italian attitude had become more cautious. As German troops continued to pour into Italy from the north, Badoglio, his fears fanned by his foreign minister, was growing increasingly nervous. They would not sign the agreement, the Italian generals now insisted, unless the Allies could guarantee that they would land troops north of Rome at the same time as the armistice was announced. Murphy reported to Roosevelt: “They asserted that if we only land south of Rome the Germans will take the city and everything north of it. In their minds the slaughter, pillage and destruction would be too awful to contemplate.”
If the Italians were trying to put pressure on the Allies, they were playing with a weak hand. Should they fail to sign the surrender terms now, Murphy and Macmillan warned them, three things would happen:
The King and the present Italian Government would be all through as far as the Allies are concerned.
We would be obliged to incite disorder and anarchy throughout Italy….
We would obviously be obliged to bomb relentlessly and on a large scale until all the major Italian cities, including Rome, would be reduced to ashes and piles of rubble.[20]
That evening, the two Italian generals flew back to Rome to inform Badoglio of the ultimatum.
“It is clear,” Eisenhower wrote to the War Department in Washington, “that the Italian Government will not pluck up courage to sign and announce an armistice unless they are assured of Allied troops being landed in the Rome area and to give them some guarantee of protection against the Germans.” In light of this, “We believe that the employment of an Airborne Division for this purpose…would be a good gamble, because the success of AVALANCHE [the landing planned on the mainland near Salerno south of Naples] may very likely turn upon obtaining a degree of Italian help that will materially delay movement of German forces.” Eisenhower concluded, “Consequently, under my instructions to support any Italian units that would actually fight the Germans, I have determined to employ an Airborne Division in the Rome area if we can be sufficiently assured of the good faith of the Italians.”[21]
The next day, September 2, 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill sent a joint response to Eisenhower: “We highly approve your decision to go on with AVALANCHE and to land an airborne Division near Rome on the conditions indicated.”[22]
On September 3 Eisenhower flew to Sicily to be present for the ceremony in which Castellanos, acting on behalf of Badoglio, would sign the surrender agreement. It was to be made public a few days later, when the Allies would land a major force near Salerno and airlift troops to Rome. The plan depended on having the Italians safeguard Rome’s airfields to allow the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division to land and help prevent the Germans from occupying the city. Roosevelt and Churchill planned to issue a joint announcement of Italy’s surrender on September 8. Badoglio was told to make it public at the same time.[23]
But all threatened to come undone at the last moment. The day before the armistice was to be announced, Badoglio abruptly tried to put it off, saying he could no longer guarantee control of the airfields outside Rome that the Allied airborne troops would need to land. Early on the day when the armistice was supposed to be made public, he sent Eisenhower an unwelcome message: “Owing to changes in the situation which has broken down and the existence of German forces in the Rome area it is no longer possible to accept immediate armistice since this proves that the capital would be occupied and the government taken over forcibly by the Germans.”
The Allies would now be unable to airlift troops to Rome, but they had already launched Operation Avalanche and urgently needed the armistice to be announced before the troops landed on the Italian mainland. In sending Badoglio’s message on to Washington, Eisenhower made clear his own view of what should be done: “we would like to have…your thought on whether or not we should proceed with the armistice announcement for the tactical and deception value it might have. Certainly the Italian government itself deserves no consideration.”[24]
Washington’s response came quickly: “It is the view of the President and the Prime Minister that the agreement having been signed you should make such public announcement regarding it as would facilitate your military operations. No consideration need be given to the embarrassment it might cause the Italian Government.” Eisenhower sent Badoglio a final ultimatum: “I intend to broadcast the acceptance of the Armistice at the hour originally planned…. If you or any part of your armed forces fail to cooperate as previously agreed, I will publish to the world full records of this affair. Today is X day, and I expect you to do your part.”[25]
Dragging his feet, Badoglio made his announcement only late in the evening, after Italy’s capitulation had already been broadcast on the radio. People took to the streets. Some among the young were singing, dancing, and waving Italian flags, but many of their elders experienced more mixed emotions, pained at their nation’s humiliating defeat and fearful of what was to come. A few thousand Romans streamed into St. Peter’s Square, where they shouted out their hopes for peace and beckoned the pope to come to his window. But the pope would not grant their wish. Knowing how vulnerable Rome now was to German occupation, the pope was not eager to be seen celebrating Italy’s betrayal of its Axis ally. When, despite their repeated calls, he failed to appear at his window, the disappointed crowd slowly drifted away.[26]
In the hours after the announcement of the armistice, Italy’s seventy-four-year-old king anxiously followed news of the approach of German troops. Fearing that the Quirinal Palace might not be secure, he spent the night sleeping on a couch in the palazzo housing Italy’s War Ministry. Word came late at night that German forces had begun advancing on Rome, occupying the old port city of Civitavecchia to the northwest and the naval fortress town of Gaeta to the south. Only one road leaving Rome, Via Tiburtina, remained clear, but it would not stay that way very long. It was still dark at five a.m. on September 9, 1943, when a caravan of five cars formed in the courtyard of the palazzo. The king and queen got into the first car, a gray-green Fiat 2800, Prime Minister Badoglio and the king’s adviser Duke d’Acquarone into the second, and Prince Umberto into the third. A phalanx of carabinieri on motorcycles led the way. Over the next two hours, many of Italy’s top generals and admirals followed their example, as did a bevy of valets and household servants of the royal family who brought hastily prepared baggage. All made their way east across the Apennines, headed for the Adriatic port city of Pescara.
Among those missing from the royal caravan was the king’s daughter Mafalda, who was in Bulgaria at the time to be with Giovanna, her younger sister, for the funeral of Giovanna’s husband, King Boris. Mafalda would never see her father again, for shortly after her return to Rome later in the month, the Gestapo seized her and flew her to Berlin. From there she would be sent to the concentration camp at Buchenwald, where she would die a gruesome death.[1]
Princess Mafalda
On the royal party’s arrival at Pescara’s airport, Victor Emmanuel had expected to find a plane waiting to take him south to safety. He never did board a plane there, although whether it was because of fear of German aerial interception or refusal of the Italian airmen to participate in such a humiliating spectacle remains unclear. The royal party decided instead to summon a naval warship for the evacuation. As they waited for its arrival, news of the king’s attempted escape began to circulate through Pescara, triggering fears of popular protest. At the last moment, the warship Bayonet was redirected to Ortona, a small port town to the south. There the king, queen, prime minister, and fifty-six other members of the royal party boarded the small war vessel, which set off immediately to Brindisi, on Italy’s heel. In their haste to escape, neither Badoglio nor the king nor the military chiefs of staff had given instructions for the army or the government ministers whom they left behind. Raffaele Guariglia, the foreign minister, had spent the night preparing dispatches for Italy’s diplomats abroad informing them of the armistice; no one had told him the king and prime minister were leaving.[2]
Later that morning, on learning of the flight of the king and his prime minister, two of Guariglia’s assistants rushed to the Vatican to let the pope know. Guariglia himself took refuge in the Spanish embassy to the Holy See, where he would remain for the next nine months. Later that day an Italian military officer representing what was left of the military command came to see Monsignor Montini, the man closest to the pope, seeking Pius XII’s help. Might the pope prevail on the Allies to hasten the arrival of their troops in Rome? The pope left the request unanswered. With Rome about to be occupied by the Germans, this was no time to antagonize them.[3]
“Ever since Mussolini’s exit,” Goebbels wrote in his diary that day, “we have anticipated and expected this development…. We can now set in motion what the Führer really wanted to do immediately after Mussolini’s fall.” Within hours of the armistice announcement, German soldiers occupied the cities of northern Italy without encountering any notable resistance. Meanwhile the Allies were focused on Operation Avalanche, landing their troops near Salerno, south of Naples.[4]
