Why did the Italian goverment collapse so easily?

[Urmel]

A country usually does not surrender without offering major resistance, or taking severe punishment.

The loss of all the colonies bar the Aegean islands, the loss of Sicily, and the impending invasion of the mainland, the loss of thousands of planes and a good part of the navy, the loss of >200,000 men in North Africa and East Africa, all this does not count as 'offering major resistance or taking severe punishment'?

Surely you can't be serious.

[arkroyal]

I would recommend reading the book "Hitlers Italian Allies" it explains the many layers and reasons of the poor performance of Italy in ww2.

[waldzee]

In actual practice it would not be seen as appropriate for the King to dismiss Churchill given that the King usually abstained from actual governance. Again, I am not using a narrow purely legalistic definition of what constitues treason.

I would suggest that you study the functioning of a constitutional parliamentary monarchy - for that is exactly what it `does`. Refer to the`King Vrs Bing`crisis of 1925 in Canada ,as an easily understood example.

[CJK1990]

This subject continues to fascinate me. I still find it an absolute mystery why the collapse happened.

Is it possible that Mussolini was deliberately sabotaging his own war? That would explain many of his otherwise inexplicable actions. I read that after the Germans took over Italy they discovered that he had been hoarding huge quantities of supplies. Why was General Graziani, who lost over 100,000 men in Libya, not only never punished but later appointed defense minister? Why did the Italian navy not even attempt to defend against the invasion of Sicily?

It seems that during strategic discussions the allies had some foreknowledge that Italy would collapse.

[Dili]

It is not surprising since Mussolini "War" was just to get a seat at a Peace Conference in late 40's or begin or 41.
So when the war didn't stopped when it was supposed to all logic of entering it ended.

No one in Italy believed in a long war, not even Mussolini. There were several Fascists and many Generals that were even against the Mussolini "short war" propose.

Nothing shows more the Italian war than when Italians declare war it is the British that attack. Mussolini even forbids Regia Aeronautica to bomb British Naval Base of Alexandria until mid September 40 or so.

[CJK1990]

I've been reading the Wikipedia article about the coup and it seems to confirm a lot of suspicions I've had about Mussolini's complicity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/25_Luglio

The most fascinating tidbit is that Mussolini was actually informed by Grandi on July 22 that he wanted to remove him! And Mussolini tried to deny Grandi told him this later...

So why exactly did il Duce agree to this Grand Council thing, knowing that they wanted to remove him?

A really belated response: here is my source for there being 1,700,000 men in the Italian army. http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA ... ly-27.html By comparison the German forces in 1944 France were no more than a million.

[Dili]

In 1943 Mussolini was in a depression. Everything he said in last 3 years went wrong.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi CJK1990,

The idea that Mussolini was complicit in his own removal is implausible. He could have stepped down at any time.

Mussolini had been ruling autocratically for 20+ years in a constitutional system that had multiple checks and balances that should, theoretically, have held him to account. Yet the Monarchy, Parliament, the Judiciary and his own party's Grand Council had all given him pretty much free rein for two decades. He was habituated to (1) getting his own way and (2) ignoring opposition.

Mussolini went into the Grand Council with this history. He probably thought that either he would win the continued support of his Party's leaders or could ignore any adverse vote.

He had resources available to keep himself in power by force - the "M" Division, the Germans, etc., but he did not resort to them.

I think Dili may be right. The critical factor could be that, by mid 1943, Mussolini was exhausted, ill, depressed and lacked resilience. He simply went back to work and acted as if nothing of import had been decided at the meeting. The waters then closed over his head.

Cheers,

Sid.

P.S. 1,700,000 men under arms is not the same as having an effective army at home. The Germans had refused to allow Mussolini to repatriate most occupation divisions in the Balkans and France. These amounted to most of what were, by Italian standards, the country's first line formations. In Italy itself, around half the remaining divisions were so-called "Coastal Divisions". These were under equipped, static formations with obsolete weaponry and ageing manpower. They had virtually no military value. The Army's armoured and mechanized formations had been lost in their entirety in North Africa and Russia. Those that had been rebuilt had little experience. Generally, Italian weaponry was obsolete and mechanization very limited. And so on.

In short, even if the Italian Army did have 1,700,000 men, few were combat ready within Italy, even by limited Italian standards.

And then we get on to the question of loyalty to his regime. Even Mussolini's own Fascist Blackshirt militias had proved unreliable in trying to put down the strikes in the armaments plants earlier in the year. The Italian Army was the Royal Army, not Mussolini's Army. Its oath was to the King, not the Duce.