Armistice of Cassibile

Document hastened end of World War II for Italy

Watched by Major-General Smith (right),
General Castellano signs the armistice

A secret agreement to end hostilities between Italy and the Allies during World War II was signed at Cassibile in Sicily on this day in 1943.

The Armistice of Cassibile was approved by both King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and Pietro Badoglio, who was the serving Prime Minister of the country at the time. It was signed by Brigade General Giuseppe Castellano for Italy, and Major-General Walter Bedell Smith for the Allies.

The signing took place at a Sicilian military camp that had recently been occupied by the Allies, but the news about the agreement was not announced by Italy for another five days.

Germany responded to the announcement when it was made on September 8 by immediately attacking Italian forces in Italy, southern France, and the Balkans. 

And four days after the news of the armistice was made public, the Germans freed the ousted dictator Benito Mussolini from his captivity in the Hotel Campo Imperatore, which was situated on a remote plateau in the Gran Sasso mountain range in Abruzzo.

Mussolini had been deposed as leader by the Fascist Grand Council and arrested on the orders of Victor Emmanuel III on July 25, before being placed under house arrest at the mountain hotel.

In a daring mission, personally ordered by Adolf Hitler, German paratroopers used gliders to land on the mountain where Mussolini was being kept prisoner. They overwhelmed the Carabinieri officers guarding the dictator in the hotel and were able to take him away with them on a waiting aeroplane.

The freed dictator was flown to Vienna and then on to Munich. He was taken to meet Hitler at his headquarters in Poland, who put him in charge of a puppet state in the German-occupied area of northern Italy.

Pietro Badoglio, Mussolini's former chief
of staff, succeeded him as prime minister

Mussolini was to lead this state from his stronghold in Salò,  a resort on Lake Garda, until 1945, when he was caught by Italian partisans while attempting to escape to Switzerland and was immediately executed.

After the Armistice of Cassibile had been signed, the Germans forcefully disbanded the Italian army in the north and centre of the country. 

The King, members of the Italian government, and most of the Navy, went to southern Italy, where they were under the protection of the Allies, and an Italian resistance movement sprang up in the northern part of Italy that was still being occupied by the Germans.

When the Armistice of Cassibile was signed, the Allies held only Sicily and some minor Italian islands. But the day after the armistice was made public, on September 9, 1943, the Allies landed in Italy at Salerno and Taranto.

The agreement signed at Cassibile was considered to be the shorter version of the whole armistice document.

On September 29, 1943, the longer version of the armistice was signed at Malta between Italy and the Allies. It was ratified by Badoglio and Eisenhower aboard the British battleship HMS Nelson. The agreement included details such as a requirement that Mussolini and his Fascist officials be handed over to the United Nations, and that all Italian land, air, and naval forces must surrender unconditionally. 

The armistice signed at Malta was considered to be the Additional Conditions for the Armistice with Italy and it was known as the Long Armistice by the Italians. For the Allies, it was referred to as the Instrument of Surrender of Italy.

The war between the Allies and the Germans in Italy was to continue until May 1945.

The Allies established an airfield at Cassibile,
although the armistice was signed elsewhere

Travel tip:

Cassibile is a village in the comune - municipality - of Siracusa in Sicily, situated 18km (11 miles) from the city of Siracusa, and 21km (13 miles), from the beautiful Baroque city of Noto. The necropolis of Cassibile, which is spread over the hills on either side of the Cassibile river, consists of hundreds of rock cut chamber tombs dating back to the late Bronze and Iron Ages, about 1000 to 700 BC. In the 1960s, Fontane Bianche, on the Mediterranean Sea, was built as a seaside resort for Cassibile. There are  small railway stations at Cassibile and Fontane Bianche that are served by a single-track line from Siracusa. When operating, services take only a few minutes. Despite its significance in history, Cassibile did not have its own electricity supply until 1951, the arrival of which prompted the population of the village, whose economy was largely based on agriculture, to swell gradually from a few hundred at the time of the armistice to 5,800 at the census of 2001. In front of the church of San Giuseppe, there is a small memorial that commemorates the fallen of Cassibile during World War Two as well as marking the signing of the armistice.

Find accommodation in Cassibile with Hotels.com

Salò's Duomo, the Chiesa di Santa Maria Annunziata,
was built close to the shore of Lake Garda

Travel tip:

Salò, a town on the banks of Lake Garda, in the province of Brescia in Lombardy, has become famous for being the seat of government of the Italian Social Republic from 1943 to 1945, which was the Nazi-backed puppet state run by Benito Mussolini. The dictator lived in what is now the Grand Hotel Feltrinelli in Via Rimembranza in Gargnano. The resort has the longest promenade on Lake Garda and a Duomo, the Chiesa di Santa Maria Annunziata, which was built in Lake Gothic style in the 15th century to a design by the architect Filippo delle Vacche from Caravaggio in Lombardy. A museum - il Museo di Salò, also known as MuSa - opened in 2015 in la Chiesa di Santa Giustina in Via Brunati, which has exhibitions about the history of the town, including its brief period as a republic. Noted residents of Salò include Gasparo di Salò, one of the earliest violin makers, who was born there in 1542, and the 20th century film director Luigi Comencini. The poet, playwright and military leader Gabriele D’Annunzio had an estate a short distance away above the town of Gardone Riviera, with panoramic views over the lake.

Hotels in Salò from Expedia

More reading:

Palermo falls to the Allies at start of invasion

Mussolini removed from power and placed under arrest

Nazis free captive Mussolini in daring raid

Also on this day:

301: The founding of San Marino

1695: The birth of musician Pietro Locatelli

1895: The birth of Fascist ‘turncoat’ Giuseppe Bottai

1950: Giuseppe ‘Nino’ Farina becomes first F1 world champion

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2 September

Marie Josephine of Savoy

Italian noblewoman who became titular Queen of France

Marie Josephine Louise of Savoy, who married the future King Louis XVIII of France, was born Maria Giuseppina Luigia on this day in 1753 at the Royal Palace in Turin.  She became a Princess of France and Countess of Provence after her marriage, but died before her husband actually became the King of France.  Marie Josephine was the third child of prince Victor Amadeus of Savoy and Infanta Maria Antonio Ferdinanda of Spain.  Her paternal grandfather, Charles Emmanuel III, was King of Sardinia and so her parents were the Duke and Duchess of Savoy.  Her brothers were to become the last three Kings of Sardinia, the future Charles Emmanuel IV, Victor Emmanuel I and Charles Felix.  At the age of 17, Marie Josephine was married by proxy to Prince Louis Stanislas, Count of Provence, the younger brother of the ill-fated future King Louis XVI of France. Read more…

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Pietro Ferrero - baker and chocolatier

Humble beginnings of €20 billion company

Pietro Ferrero, the founder of the Ferrero chocolate and confectionery company, was born in Farigliano, a small town in Piedmont, on this day in 1898.  A baker by profession, he moved to nearby Alba in 1926 with his wife and young son, Michele, before deciding to try his luck in Turin, where in 1940 he opened a large pastry shop in Via Sant’Anselmo.  Trading conditions were tough, however, and the business was not a success.  The family returned to Alba in 1942, setting up a smaller bakery in Via Rattazzi, at the back of which Pietro created a kind of confectionery laboratory.  He had hit upon the idea of trying to find alternative materials from which to make products, largely because the high taxes on cocoa beans meant conventional chocolate-based pastries were expensive to make.   Hazelnuts, on the other hand, were plentiful in Piedmont.  Read more…

Andrea Illy – businessman and writer

Family dream was to make the best coffee in the world

Andrea Illy, who is the chairman of coffee makers illycaffè, was born on this day in 1964 in Trieste, the capital of Friuli Venezia Giulia.  The grandson of the founder of illycaffè, Francesco Illy, Andrea represents the third generation of his family to lead the business. His father, Ernesto Illy, was chairman between 1963 and 2004. His sister Anna and brothers Francesco and Riccardo - a former CEO now vice-president - Illy are on the board of directors.  Andrea graduated with a degree in Chemistry from the University of Trieste and went on to study at SDA Bocconi School of Management in Milan, Harvard Business School and Singularity University in Silicon Valley.  He joined the firm in 1990 as a supervisor of quality control. Inspired by Japanese business methods, Andrea started the Total Quality Programme, which established standards both for the company and the coffee industry. Read more…

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Giuliano Gemma – actor

Talented Roman became award-winning film star

Actor, stuntman and sculptor Giuliano Gemma was born on this day in 1938 in Rome.  He started working in the film industry as a stuntman but was then offered a real part in the film Arrivano i titani (The Titans Arrive), by director Duccio Tessari.  After this his career took off and he appeared in Luchino Visconti’s Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), as Garibaldi’s General.  Gemma starred in many spaghetti westerns, such as A Pistol for Ringo, Blood for a Silver Dollar, Wanted and Day of Anger. He sometimes appeared in the credits of the films under the name Montgomery Wood.  For his portrayal of Major Matiss in Valerio Zurlini’s The Desert of the Tartars, he won a David di Donatello award.  Gemma had many other film roles, often appeared on Italian television and also worked as a sculptor. His daughter, Vera Gemma, also became an actor.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The French Revolution, by Christopher Hibbert

Concise, convincing and exciting, this is Christopher Hibbert's brilliant account of the events that shook 18th-century Europe to its foundation. With a mixture of lucid storytelling and fascinating detail, he charts the French Revolution from its beginnings at an impromptu meeting on an indoor tennis court at Versailles in 1789, right through to the 'coup d'etat' that brought Napoleon to power ten years later.  In the process he explains the drama and complexities of this epoch-making era in the compelling and accessible manner he has made his trademark. If you want to discover the captivating history of the period, The French Revolution is for you. Described as 'a spectacular replay of epic action' by Richard Holmes in The Times, the book earned effusive praise from The Good Book Guide, who called it 'unquestionably the best popular history of the French Revolution' to be written in the English language.

Christopher Hibbert was educated at Radley and Oriel College, Oxford. An infantry officer during World War Two, he was awarded the Military Cross in 1945. His many acclaimed books include The Destruction of Lord Raglan (which won the Heinemann Award for Literature in 1962), London: The Biography of a City, The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici, The Great Mutiny: India 1857, Garibaldi and His Enemies, and Rome: The Biography of a City. 

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1 September

Tullio Serafin – opera conductor

Toscanini’s successor furthered the career of Callas

The man who helped Maria Callas develop her singing talent, musician and conductor Tullio Serafin was born on this day in 1878 in Rottanova near Cavarzere in the Veneto, on the Adige river just south of the Venetian Lagoon.  Serafin studied music in Milan and went on to play the viola in the orchestra at Teatro alla Scala under the baton of Arturo Toscanini.  He was later appointed assistant conductor and then took over as musical director at the theatre when Toscanini left to go to New York.  Serafin conducted at La Scala between 1909 and 1914, from 1917 to 1918 and then returned briefly at the end of the Second World War.  He became a conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1924 and stayed with them for ten years before returning to Italy to become artistic director at the Teatro Reale in Rome.  Read more…

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Michele Giuttari – crime writer and police officer

Cop-turned-novelist with inside knowledge of police investigations

Michele Giuttari, who headed the police in Florence and used his experience working on investigations into Mafia activities and dangerous criminals to become a successful crime writer, was born on this day in 1950 in Novara di Sicilia, a village in the province of Messina in Sicily.  After studying for a degree in Jurisprudence at the University of Messina, Giuttari qualified as a lawyer. He joined the Polizia di Stato as a commissario in 1978 and later rose through the ranks to take charge of the Florentine police between 1995 and 2003.  Giuttari first served in Calabria, where he held positions in the Squadra Mobile of Reggio Calabria and Cosenza. He then joined the Anti-Mafia investigation department and served first in Naples and then in Florence, where he became head of the Judicial Investigation section, and succeeded in jailing several key Mafia figures. Read more… 

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Scipione Borghese – Cardinal and art collector

Pope’s nephew used position to acquire wealth to buy art

Cardinal Scipione Borghese, who was a patron of Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Caravaggio and established a magnificent art collection during his life, was born on this day in 1576 in Artena just outside Rome.  As the nephew of Pope Paul V, Borghese was given the official title of Cardinal Nephew - cardinale nipote - and he had great power as the effective head of the Vatican government. He amassed an enormous fortune through the papal fees and taxes he gathered and he acquired vast amounts of land. He was able to use his immense wealth to assemble a large and impressive art collection.  When Cardinal Borghese’s father suffered financial difficulties, his uncle, Camillo Borghese, stepped in to pay for his education.  After Camillo Borghese was elected as Pope Paul V, he made his nephew a Cardinal and gave him the right to use the Borghese name. Read more…

Vittorio Gassman - actor

Stage and screen star once dubbed ‘Italy’s Olivier’

Vittorio Gassman, who is regarded as one of the finest actors in the history of Italian theatre and cinema, was born on this day in 1922 in Genoa.  Tall, dark and handsome in a way that made him a Hollywood producer’s dream, Gassman appeared in almost 150 movies but he was no mere matinée idol.  A highly respected stage actor, he possessed a mellifluous speaking voice, a magisterial presence and such range and versatility in his acting talent that the Hollywood columnist Sheilah Graham once called him ‘the Lawrence Olivier of Italy’.  He enjoyed a career that spanned five decades. Inevitably, he is best remembered for his screen roles, although by the time he made his movie debut in 1945, he had appeared in more than 40 productions of classic plays by Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Ibsen, Tennessee Williams, and others.  Read more… 

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Guido Deiro - vaudeville star

Accordion player who wowed America

The musician Guido Deiro, who was the first artist to become a star playing the piano-accordion, was born on this day in 1886 in an Alpine village north of Turin.  For a while, in the early part of the 20th century, he and his brother Pietro were among the highest-paid performers on the booming American vaudeville circuit. Using his stage name, which was simply ‘Deiro’, he made more than 110 recordings, which sold in large numbers.  He ‘covered’ many popular hits and well known classical and operatic pieces and wrote compositions of his own, the most famous of them the song Kismet, which became the theme song for the Broadway musical and was used in two film versions of the story, which was based on a play by Edward Knoblauch.  Deiro became something of a celebrity and was seldom short of glamorous female company.   Read more…

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Book of the Day: The New Book of Opera Anecdotes, by Ethan Mordden

Building on the success of his 1985  collection of Opera Anecdotes, Ethan Mordden's follow-up continues where the original left off, bringing into view a new corps of major singers such as Renee Fleming, Roberto Alagna, Deborah Voigt, Jonas Kaufmann and Kathleen Battle. There are also fresh adventures with opera's fabled greats - Rossini, Wagner, Toscanini (whose temper tantrums are always good for a story), Franco Corelli, Luciano Pavarotti and Leontyne Price (who, when the Met's Rudolf Bing offered her the voice-killing role of Abigaille in Verdi's Nabucco, said, "Man, are you crazy?"). While most of Mordden's anecdotes are humorous, some are emotionally touching, such as one recounting a Met production of Mozart's The Marriage Of Figaro in which Renee Fleming sang alongside her own six-year-old daughter. Witty, dramatic, and at times a little shocking, The New Book Of Opera Anecdotes will be a welcome addition to any opera fan's library.

Ethan Mordden, born in Pennsylvania and raised in Venice, Italy, and Long Island, New York, is an American author and musical theater scholar.

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31 August

Altiero Spinelli - political visionary

Drafted plan for European Union while in Fascist jail

Altiero Spinelli, a politician who is regarded as one of the founding fathers of the European Union, was born on this day in 1907 in Rome.  A lifelong Communist who was jailed for his opposition to the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, he spent much of the Second World War in confinement on the island of Ventotene in the Tyrrhenian Sea, one of an archipelago known as the Pontine Islands.  It was there that he and two prisoners, Ernesto Rossi and Eugenio Colorni, agreed that if the forces of Fascism in Italy and Germany were defeated, the only way to avoid future European wars was for the sovereign nations of the continent to join together in a federation.  The document they drew up, which became known as the Ventotene Manifesto, was the first document to argue for a European constitution and formed the basis for the Movimento Federalista Europeo, which Spinelli, Rossi and some 20 others launched at a secret meeting in Milan.  Read more…

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Luca Cordero di Montezemolo – aristocrat and businessman

Former driver who led Ferrari to Formula One success

Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, a former racing driver, chairman of Ferrari and Fiat and president of employers’ federation Confindustria, was born on this day in 1947 in Bologna.  He is one of the founders of NTV, an Italian company that is Europe’s first private, open access operator of 300km/h (186 mph) high-speed trains.  He retains an interest in motor sport as a director of McLaren Group Holdings Ltd. Montezemolo is a descendant of an aristocratic family from Piedmont, who served the Royal House of Savoy for generations. He is the youngest son of Massimo Cordero dei Marchesi di Montezemolo and Clotilde Neri, niece of the surgeon, Vincenzo Neri. His uncle was a commander in the Italian Navy in World War II and his grandfather and great grandfather were both Generals in the Italian Army.  He obtained a degree in law from Rome Sapienza University in 1971. Read more…

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Amilcare Ponchielli - opera composer

Success of La Gioconda put musician on map

The opera composer Amilcare Ponchielli was born on this day in 1834 in Paderno Fasolaro, near Cremona, about 100km south-east of Milan in what is now Lombardia.  Ponchielli's works in general enjoyed only modest success, despite the rich musical invention for which he was later applauded.  One that did win acclaim in his lifetime, however, was La Gioconda, which was first produced in 1876 and underwent several revisions but remained unaltered after 1880.  Well known for the tenor aria, Cielo e mar, and the ballet piece, Dance of the Hours, La Gioconda is the only opera by Ponchielli still performed today and many recordings have been made, featuring some of the biggest stars of recent times.  Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi and Montserrat Caballé are among those to have played the role of Gioconda, written for soprano. Read more…

Gino Lucetti – failed assassin

Anarchist tried to kill Mussolini with grenade

Gino Lucetti, who acquired notoriety for attempting to assassinate Italy’s Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in Rome in 1926, was born on this day in 1900. A lifelong anarchist, part of a collective of like-minded young men and women from Carrara in Tuscany, he planned to kill Mussolini on the basis that doing so would save the lives of thousands of potential future victims of the Fascist regime.  Lucetti hatched his plot while in exile in France, where he had fled after taking a Fascist bullet in the neck following an argument in a bar in Milan, clandestinely returning several times to Carrara to finalise the details.  After enlisting the help of other anarchists, notably Steffano Vatteroni, who worked as a tinsmith in Rome, and Leandro Sorio, a waiter originally from Brescia, he returned to Rome to carry out the attack.  Read more…

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Isabella de’ Medici – noblewoman

Tuscan beauty killed by her husband

Isabella Romola de’ Medici, the daughter of the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, was born on this day in 1542 in Florence.  She was said to have been beautiful, charming, educated and talented and was the favourite child of her father, Cosimo I de’ Medici.  But she died at the age of 33, believed to have been murdered by the husband her family had chosen for her to marry.  While Isabella was growing up she lived first in Palazzo Vecchio and later in Palazzo Pitti in Florence with her brothers and sisters. Her brother, Francesco, who was a year older than her, eventually succeeded his father as Grand Duke of Tuscany.  The Medici children were educated by tutors in classics, languages and the arts and Isabella particularly loved music.  When Isabella was 11 she was betrothed to 12-year-old Paolo Giordano Orsini, heir to the Duchy of Bracciano. Read more… 

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Book of the Day: Reinventing Europe: The History of the European Union, 1945 to the Present, edited by by Brigitte Leucht, Katja Seidel and Laurent Warlouzet

Reinventing Europe provides a thorough exploration of the history of the European Union, tracing its development from inception to recent times. It is the first book of its kind to contextualise the history of the EU within the wider frames of European and global history. The volume also breaks new ground by successfully highlighting the roles individuals, member states, transnational actors and European institutions played in both advancing and slowing down European integration in the EU. With chapters from leading academics in the UK, the US and across Europe who draw on sources in a variety of languages, the book presents a balanced and comprehensive account of this sometimes controversial Union. It is made up of three main parts which in turn cover: a narrative survey of the EU, an historical analysis of the key institutions and policies, critical themes and geographical spaces. 

Brigitte Leucht is Senior Lecturer in German and European Studies at the University of Portsmouth in England; Katja Seidel is Lecturer in History at the University of Westminster; and Laurent Warlouzet is Professor of History and Chair of European History at Paris-Sorbonne University. 

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