The expression Failed defense of Rome (also conceptually referred to as the German occupation of Rome) refers to the events that took place in the Italian capital and the surrounding area, beginning on 8 September 1943, and in the days immediately following the Armistice of Cassibile and the immediate military reaction of the German Wehrmacht forces deployed to the south and north of the city, in accordance with the operational directives established by Adolf Hitler in the event of Italian defection (Operation Achse).

[8] The "failed defense" occurred as a result of a series of contexts (actions and decisions of the political and military leadership) that rendered the fighting futile, which in any case began independently as early as the evening of 8 September and on the 10th also recorded the participation of civilians.

[9] According to other estimates, 414 Italian soldiers and 183 civilians were killed in the fighting in those days, supported by units and divisions of the Motor Armored Corps and the Capital Defense, which were also joined by handfuls of private citizens.

The unacceptable risk on the German side of seeing its forces involved for a long time in the battle for Rome, instead of being free to move quickly to the Allied beachhead at Salerno was skillfully avoided by Kesselring by engaging in negotiations with the Italian military authorities and taking advantage of the chaos within them brought about by the abandonment of command posts by most politicians and generals, followed by a deceptive "peaceful cohabitation" agreement, soon betrayed with the complete occupation of the capital by the Wehrmacht.

On 11 September the military commander, General Calvi di Bergolo, issued a communiqué stating that German troops were to remain outside the city's territory; however, on the same day Field Marshal Kesselring declared that Rome was part of the war territory, that the city was subject to the German rules of war, that "strike organizers, saboteurs and sharpshooters [would] be shot," and that the Italian authorities were to "prevent all acts of sabotage and passive resistance.

On the evening of 7 September two American officers (Maxwell Taylor and William Gardiner) secretly arrived in Rome to agree on the details of the operation and officially announce that an armistice was to be signed at 6:30 p.m. the next day.

In response, on the morning of 8 September General Eisenhower sent an ultimatum radiogram to Marshal Badoglio and demanded the return of the two American officers; moreover, after suspending - as requested - Operation Giant 2 at the scheduled time, he announced the stipulation of the armistice between Italy and the Allied forces from the airwaves of Radio Algiers.

[15] The proclamation had been broadcast over the radio at 7:42 p.m. At around 9 p.m. the king with the queen accompanied by their son Umberto and numerous aides-de-camp, ordinance officers, service personnel and a voluminous luggage, had moved to the Ministry of War; Marshal Badoglio and Duke Acquarone were already on the scene, and General Ambrosio arrived shortly afterwards.

[30] As a result of these contacts, between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. on 9 September, the Grenadiers of Sardinia were verbally ordered from Rome to leave the disputed Magliana Bridge for an agreed transit of German troops to the north.

By the early hours of 9 September, the Italian units arrayed on the coast had already been neutralized by German attacks, and the head of the government Pietro Badoglio and the king (who held the position of commander of the armed forces) were fleeing toward Pescara.

It took several hours, however, to fully re-establish contact with the eight German divisions (including the two deployed south and north of the capital) at that time under Kesselring's orders, although those around Rome were well connected by radio and field telephones.

The pincer movement of the two German divisions converging on the city from the south and north, respectively, overwhelmed in a short time the reaction of the few units that, on the initiative of individual officers and with the support of the civilian population, had attacked them from La Storta, at Montagnola and at Porta San Paolo,[70] and the Germans took control of the capital in a short time, while the large Italian units as a whole - twice as numerous as the enemy in numbers - remained paralyzed in the absence of coherent orders, and thus fell prey to the former ally, without even being able to fight it.

[71] On the Via Cassia, the Ariete Armored Division was preparing a defensive stronghold, for the protection of which Second Lieutenant Ettore Rosso and a group of sappers from the CXXXIV Mixed Engineer Battalion were laying a mine field.

Upon the arrival of the Grosser kampfgruppe[72] of the 3rd Panzergrenadier-Division, consisting of about thirty armored vehicles and two motorized infantry battalions, Rosso placed two trucks across the road to block the pass.

[81] Continuing to advance on the routes converging on Rome from the coast, the Germans faced the defensive perimeter arranged by the Grenadier Division of Sardinia under the energetic command of General Gioacchino Solinas.

The Germans, to stall for time, immediately attempted negotiations, but Solinas replied that he would grant “harmless passage” to the north only on condition of the release of the Mezzocammino depot, weapons and captured prisoners.

In total, the grenadiers and other aggregated formations had left 27 dead at the Magliana Bridge, including, in addition to Sterpetti, gold medalists Orlando De Tommaso and Vincenzo Pandolfo.

The extreme resistance was fueled by the intervention of the Lancieri di Montebello, the 4th Tank Infantry Regiment, the Genova Cavalry, the II Bersaglieri and the Allievi Carabinieri, with civilian volunteers also participating in the fighting.

[88] At 8:30 p.m. on 8 September 1943, Communists Luigi Longo and Antonello Trombadori (a former officer of the Bersaglieri, wounded in the Albanian War)[89] and Catholic Adriano Ossicini met with General Giacomo Carboni, commander of the Motorized-Armored Army Corps post of Rome, to have a shipment of weapons delivered to them to distribute to the population in preparation for the German attack.

[93] Weapons stored in Via Galvani were used at Porta San Paolo by adherents of the Catholic Communist Movement,[94] while much of the remaining cargo was seized on the night of 9-10 September by the police on the orders of Commander Carmine Senise.

[95] At dawn on 9 September 1943, while the Grenadier Division was engaged in the defense of the Magliana Bridge, in the city that had been abandoned to itself, political groups struggled to get their bearings on the situation and to make contact with government organs.

In the afternoon, a group of civilians including medical student Rosario Bentivegna, a future Gappist, attempted an action against the infantry barracks on Viale Giulio Cesare to obtain weapons, but were defeated.

[98] The Gaetano Giardino Institute, attached to Fort Ostiense, housed about four hundred war orphans and mentally handicapped children, cared for by thirty-five Franciscan nuns, under the direction of Don Pietro Occelli.

Shortly after 6:00 a.m. a dense and sustained rifle fire announced that the Germans were now established at EUR, in the present Palace of Italian Civilization, in the Exposition office building and on the shelves of the parish basilica of Saints Peter and Paul.

[105] Aladino Govoni,[98] future military commander of Bandiera rossa and captain of the grenadiers was on temporary leave for family reasons; after rushing unarmed to the Magliana, he had his service pistol brought to him and fought on the Ostiense.

[112][113] Also taking part in the fighting were Romualdo Chiesa,[98] Alcide Moretti and Adriano Ossicini of the Catholic Communist movement; Fabrizio Onofri of the PCI and students Mario Fiorentini and Marisa Musu, future Gappisti.

At 5 p.m., the Germans took Porta San Paolo; while Second Lieutenant Enzo Fioritto tried to slow them down with a desperate action,[117] the will to fight still animated a crowd of demonstrators led by actor Carlo Ninchi[118] from the side of the Testaccio district.

At the same time Filippo Caracciolo and Emilio Lussu, armed with a Beretta 7.65, rushed in, attempting to rejoin Baldazzi's formation, but were immediately forced to fall back by the advancing enemy.

In a last-ditch defense, some grenadiers blocked the arches of Porta San Giovanni with streetcars from the nearby Santa Croce depot, gathering about a hundred men, including military and civilians.

The fact that King Victor Emmanuel III and the political and military leadership had fled to Brindisi did not, in the eyes of the population, relieve the officers in charge of coordinating the defense of the capital of responsibility, especially considering that, in a memo delivered on 24 April 1943 to members of the British cabinet by Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, it was stated that “the series of Axis defeats in Russia and North Africa and the difficult condition of its expeditionary force in Tunisia were prompting the Italians to hope for a quick victory of the Allies in order to get out of the war.”[128] However, there were Italian troops around Rome totaling more than 80,000 men, which could have countered the Germans in their goal of securing control of the Italian capital and to make a quick influx of troops and reinforcement materials at that time essential to repel the Allied landing at Salerno.