After The Signing
Only after the signing had taken place was Castellano informed of the additional clauses that had been presented by general Campbell to another Italian general, Zanussi, who had also been in Cassibile since August 31. Zanussi, for unclear reasons, had not informed Castellano about them. Bedell Smith, nevertheless, explained to Castellano that these further conditions were to have taken effect only if Italy had not taken on a fighting role in the war alongside the Allies.
In the afternoon of the same day, Badoglio had a briefing with the Italian Ministers of Navy, Air Forces and War, and with the King's representatives as well. However, he omitted any mention of the signing of the armistice, referring only to ongoing negotiations.
The day of entry into force of the armistice was linked to a planned landing in central Italy and it was left to allied discretion. Castellano anyway understood that the date was intended to be September 12 and Badoglio started to move troops to Rome.
On September 7 a small allied delegation reached Rome to inform Badoglio that the day after would have been armistice day. He was also informed about the arrival of an US airborne division into airports around the city. Badoglio told to this delegation that his army was not ready to support this landing and that most airports in the area were under German control; he asked for a deferral of the armistice of a few days. When General Eisenhower knew this the landing in Rome of US troops was canceled but the day of the armistice was confirmed since other troops were already sailing to southern Italy for other landings.
When the armistice was announced by the allied radios, in the afternoon of September 8, the majority of the Italian Army had not been informed about it and no orders had been issued about the line of conduct to be taken in the face of the German armed forces. Some of the Italian divisions that should have defended Rome were still in transit from the south of France. The King along with the royal family and Badoglio fled from the capital city in the early morning of the 9th, taking shelter in the town of Brindisi, in the south of the country. The initial intention had been to move army headquarters out of Rome together with the King and the PM but only few staff officers reached Brindisi. In the meanwhile the Italian troops, without instructions, collapsed and were soon overwhelmed while some small units decided to stay loyal to the German ally. German forces therefore occupied between the 8th and the 12th of September, without meeting great organized resistance, all of the remaining Italian territory still not under Allied control except Sardinia and part of Apulia. In Rome an Italian governor with the support of an Italian infantry division nominally ruled the city until September 23 but practically speaking the city was under German control since September 11.
On September 3, British and Canadian troops had begun landing in the southernmost tip of Calabria. The day after the armistice declaration, September 9, the Allies also disembarked at Salerno (Operation Avalanche) and Taranto (Operation Slapstick) but they failed to take full advantage of Italian armistice and they were quickly checked by German troops. It took twenty months for the allied forces to reach northern borders of Italy.
Some of Italian troops based out of Italy, in the occupied Balkans and Greek islands, were able to stand some weeks after the armistice but without any determined support by Allied forces they were all overwhelmed by the Germans by the end of September 1943. Only in the islands of Leros and Samos, with British reinforcements, resistance lasted until November 1943 while in Corsica Italian troops, reinforced by French units, forced German troops to leave the island.
Read more about this topic: Armistice Between Italy And Allied Armed Forces