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The 11th-century Abbey of Monte Cassino, almost completely destroyed by Allied bombings in 1944, stands as a powerful symbol of the huge devastation Italy suffered during the war. Nearly four million Italians served in the Italian Army during the Second World War and nearly half a million Italians (including civilians) lost their lives between ...
At different points, various Italian states participated in the war, some on both sides, [c] with limited involvement from England, Switzerland, and the Ottoman Empire. The Italic League established in 1454 achieved a balance of power in Italy, but fell apart after the death of its chief architect, Lorenzo de' Medici, in 1492. [1]
The military history of Italy chronicles a vast time period, lasting from the military conflicts fought by the ancient peoples of Italy, most notably the conquest of the Mediterranean world by the ancient Romans, through the expansion of the Italian city-states and maritime republics during the medieval period and the involvement of the historical Italian states in the Italian Wars and the ...
The Risorgimento movement emerged to unite Italy in the 19th century. Piedmont-Sardinia took the lead in a series of wars to liberate Italy from foreign control. Following three Wars of Italian Independence against the Habsburg Austrians in the north, the Expedition of the Thousand against the Bourbons of the Two Sicilies in the south, and the Capture of Rome, the unification of the country ...
Operation Achse (German: Fall Achse, lit. 'Case Axis'), originally called Operation Alaric (Unternehmen Alarich), was the codename for the German operation to forcibly disarm the Italian armed forces after Italy's armistice with the Allies on 3 September 1943.
Italy entered the war with an army of 875,000 men, but the army was poorly led and lacked heavy artillery and machine guns, their war supplies having been largely depleted in the war of 1911–12 against Turkey. Italy proved unable to prosecute the war effectively, as fighting raged for three years on a very narrow front along the Isonzo River ...
The Italian Army of World War II was a "Royal" army.The nominal Commander-in-Chief of the Italian Royal Army was His Majesty King Vittorio Emanuele III.As Commander-in-Chief of all Italian armed forces, Vittorio Emanuele also commanded the Royal Air Force (Regia Aeronautica) and the Royal Navy (Regia Marina).
On 13 October 1943, the Allies recognized Italy as a co-belligerent in the war against Germany. Thereafter, the Italian Co-Belligerent Army and the Italian partisans fought alongside the Allies against German troops and the collaborationist National Republican Army ; an aspect of this period is the Italian civil war .