[11] The anti-fascist victory led to the execution of Mussolini, the liberation of the country from dictatorship, and the birth of the Italian Republic under the control of the Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories, which was operational until the Treaty of Peace with Italy in 1947.

[22] In late November, the Communists established task forces called Distaccamenti d'assalto Garibaldi, which later would become brigades and divisions[b] whose leadership was entrusted to Luigi Longo, under the political direction of Pietro Secchia and Giancarlo Pajetta, Chief of Staff.

In the absence of orders from General Enzo Galbiati (who had also voted against the dismissal of Mussolini), not even the Blackshirts moved, although they could count on the 1st Armored Division "M", made up of elements loyal to the regime, which was located north of Lake Bracciano.

[50] This sentiment was also supported by the fact that many public officials of the fascist period in key posts had been left in their place by the new government, as remarked by the verse of La Badoglieide: "You called the squadrists back / the anti-fascists you put them in jail / the shirt was no longer black / but fascism remained the master.

Galbiati's successor in command of the corps, Quirino Armellini, issued a circulated memo on July 30 in which he guaranteed Badoglio the harmlessness of the black shirts, stigmatizing "the reaction of the country, unpleasant and often brutal towards the militia", and assuring the will of the new government to continue the war against the Anglo-Americans, described as an enemy "animated by inhuman hatred and by the determined resolve to annihilate" the homeland, to which it was necessary to "oppose our breasts and our weapons, strenuously fighting alongside the ally".

On 3 August, a delegation from the Central Opposition Committee - made up of Ivanoe Bonomi, Alcide De Gasperi, Luigi Salvatorelli, Meuccio Ruini and Giorgio Amendola - presented Badoglio with a declaration "complaining" from the government, "without hesitation and delay which could be fatal, the cessation of a war contrary to national traditions and interests and popular sentiments, the responsibility for which lies and must rest on the fascist regime".

Following the founding of the RSI, the fascists indicated Badoglio as the instigator of the killing and widely celebrated Muti as the first fallen of the civil war, claiming the conspiracy theory as proof that they had not remained inactive after 25 July.

Relevant bloody events were recorded in Sardinia, where the Italian contingent, enjoying a clear numerical superiority and a good quality of the departments available, including the 184th Infantry Division "Nembo", forced the Germans to retreat from the island.

Sardinia was therefore the scene of "one of the first episodes of civil war",[72] when at the announcement of the armistice the XII battalion of the "Nembo", under the command of Major Mario Rizzatti, mutinied to follow the Germans of the 90th Light Infantry Division and then continue the fight against the Anglo-Americans.

[73] The 63rd battalion of the Black Shirts Tagliamento legion, made up of a hundred paratroopers from the Viterbo school, a part of the 10th Arditi department at Civitavecchia,[72] and the soldiers of the 10th MAS Flotilla stationed in La Spezia, was commanded by Prince Junio Valerio Borghese, who reconstituted the body keeping the same name, mainly as a marine infantry.

Despite the attempts by Alessandro Pavolini to create real military units that operated with partisan tactics behind the allied lines, by Mussolini's express will the activity of the fascist resistance movement in the south was limited to espionage, propaganda and sabotage against occupation troops.

However, direct contacts between Borghese's emissaries and the ship's captain Agostino Calosi, as well as with Ivanoe Bonomi and Admiral De Courten, did not lead to any results, due to the opposition of Germany and United Kingdom, who for similar reasons did not like the Italian presence in Julian March.

During the Congress of Verona of the Republican Fascist Party, the news that Ghisellini had been killed provoked a mob reaction that resulted in retaliation on eleven anti-fascists unrelated to the assassination, a gesture defined as "stupid and bestial" by Mussolini himself.

[92] Faced with this series of attacks, the intransigent fascists, Pavolini first of all, had the opportunity to assert their position and impose a crackdown on Mussolini too: at the end of November, Mezzasoma ordered the newspapers to cease all discussion about the possible "pacification".

[102] The Black Brigades and the National Republican Guard distinguished themselves by their lack of discipline and the extreme harshness used in the repression, to the point that on several occasions the German commands themselves and sometimes the Italian Quaestors protested the gratuitous violence, summary executions and their spectacularization through the display of corpses in the streets.

For example, at the end of 1944, General Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin worried about the maintenance of public order, contested the methods of Franz Pagliani's brigade against the fascist authorities of Bologna, and then determined his expulsion from the city at the beginning of 1945.

Despite all efforts, this objective was missed, and the increasingly harsh outbreak of the civil war, combined with the inability of the fascists to independently maintain public order and oppose the partisans, allowed the Germans to erode even the little power that the RSI had managed to get.

[108] In other cases, local agreements were sometimes reached, especially with non-shareholder or communist partisan elements, for example the Green Flames,[109] with tactical purposes or to achieve a patriotic modus vivendi or even with temporary alliances "for the struggle extremist gangs and common criminals" present in large areas of the country.

After the fall of Rome, Koch moved to Milan and became the trusted man of the Minister of the Interior Guido Buffarini Guidi, continuing his repressive action and participating in the internal struggles between the various powers and various police forces of the Republic.

[134] In the territory of the Kingdom during this period, there was the birth of the phenomenon of the bandit Salvatore Giuliano, on whose criminal or political role, adherence with American occupiers or even with fringes of the fascist-republican secret services the historiographic debate is still open.

[136] Even in the South, there was a resurgence of banditry (also of a social nature and driven by the traditional reasons of hunger, desperation and the collapse of every state reference), of common and organized crime, corruption, due to the lack of authority exercised by the Royal Government.

In an attempt to win the Allies' sympathies, he ordered several releases of captured partisans (first of all, Ferruccio Parri) and then on 12 March 1945 he imposed the cessation of anti-partisan operations on the troops under him, except for self-defense and the minimum necessary to save the "necessary appearance".

[143] On the same day, while the gun battles between insurgents and Italian Social Republic and German forces multiplied, Sandro Pertini proclaimed on the radio the general insurrectionary strike in the city of Milan:[144] Citizens, workers!

As in Genoa and Turin, you confront the Germans with the dilemma: to surrender or dieAlso on the same day, the National Liberation Committee for Northern Italy - whose command was based in Milan and was chaired by Alfredo Pizzoni, Luigi Longo, Emilio Sereni, Sandro Pertini, and Leo Valiani (present among others the designated president Rodolfo Morandi, Giustino Arpesani, and Achille Marazza) - proclaimed a general insurrection in all the territories still occupied by the Nazi-fascists, indicating to all the partisan forces active in Northern Italy that were part of the Volunteer Corps of Freedom to attack the fascist and German garrisons by imposing the surrender, days before the arrival of the Allied troops; at the same time, the National Liberation Committee for Northern Italy personally issued legislative decrees,[145] assuming power "in the name of the Italian people and as a delegate of the Italian Government", establishing among other things the death sentence for all fascist hierarchs,[146] including Benito Mussolini, who would be shot and killed three days later.

The Germans were in retreat under the bombing of the allied air force and the American avant-gardes beyond the Po river in Guastalla and Borgoforte were fighting against the "Etna" division, against the "Debiça" battalion of the Italian SS, and against the armoured group "Leonessa".

[148] In Turin, while some Nazi-fascist columns were heading towards Ivrea, to wait for the Allies and surrender, the Italian Social Republic departments gathered some forces and engaged in bitter clashes with the partisans who reached the city from the mountains on 28 April.

"The executions of the exponents of the Italian Social Republic took place quickly and with summary procedures also because - having ascertained the failure to renew the cadres of the old regime in royal Italy - the partisan leaders feared that the definitive transfer of powers to the Anglo-Americans and the return to "legality bourgeois" would have prevented a radical purge.

), and informers and collaborators, but also civil servants and public employees, priests, members of the bourgeoisie opposed to communism, simple citizens, and even adherents to partisan organizations (for example Giorgio Morelli), victims of radical proponents of the class struggle, but also of reckless profiteers and common criminals, who exploited the moment of confusion to pursue their own goals.

[...] It was then decided that the execution was carried out out of sight of the crowd.From an unsigned document of the Ministry of the Interior dated 4 November 1946 and which was not made public at the time, it appears that "the number of people killed, because they were politically compromised, is n. 8,197 while 1,167 were, for the same reason, withdrawn and presumably suppressed".

[171] According to Nazario Sauro Onofri, the initiative to compile this statistic came from then-Minister of the Interior Alcide De Gasperi, who, however, did not disclose the results of the investigation and did not even inform the other members of the government; the methods by which the Ministry obtained such total numbers are not known.