Badoglio Proclamation

The Badoglio Proclamation was a speech read on Ente Italiano per le Audizioni Radiofoniche (EIAR) at 19:42 on 8 September 1943 by Marshal Pietro Badoglio, Italian head of government, announcing that the Armistice of Cassibile between Italy and the Allies signed on the 3rd of September had come into force.

[2]The abandonment of Rome by the military high command, the head of government Badoglio, King Victor Emmanuel III and the king's son, Crown Prince Umberto, their move towards Pescara then Brindisi, and above all the proclamation's use of a format which did not give the clauses of the armistice in a clearly comprehensible form (which was largely wrongly interpreted as meaning a complete end to the war) all led to confusion.

More than half of all Italian soldiers laid down their arms and returned home (as referred to in the title of the 1960 film set at the time, Tutti a casa).

At the same time part of the Italian armed forces decided to remain loyal to the king, giving rise to the Italian resistance (one of whose first examples ended in the massacre of the 33rd Infantry Division "Acqui" on Cephalonia by the Germans) and part joined the free individuals, parties and movements such as the Brigata Maiella.

Other branches, especially in the north, such as the Xª Flottiglia MAS, decided to remain loyal to fascist Italy and the Germans.

Anti-Badoglio graffiti in Verbania-Pallanza (piazza del Municipio), after the whitewash painted over it had faded, reading Down with Badoglio, down with traitors to the PNF