Their baptism of fire came in January 1944, opposing the American landings at Anzio. Members of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Italian SS Infantry Regiment, led by a former Blackshirt lieutenant-colonel, Delgi Oddi, distinguished themselves in capturing a number of prisoners, together with a much-needed haul of Thompson sub-machine-guns. A determined effort by the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division to break the Italian line shattered, saving the entire Italo-German position, while continuing to trap the Americans at the Anzio beachhead. Of the 650 Italian SS men who participated, just forty-six survived. Dead and living had raised the high criteria Mussolini demanded of them. “They set a great example of faith and love of our homeland,” he said as he awarded Italy’s Silver Medal to the 2nd Battalion’s banner. “They resisted with indomitable tenacity and bravery in combat for many days, making an oath with the blood of 70% of their soldiers, and writing one of the most beautiful pages of glory in the highest traditions of the real Italy.”²⁸

Himmler added, “Because of the demonstration of courage and sense of duty displayed by the volunteers of the Italian SS, they are henceforward designated as units of the Waffen-SS, with all the duties and rights that implies.”²⁹

In August 1944, the 29th SS Division, supported by the renowned Folgore parachute regiment and several Blackshirt formations, mounted a successful anti-partisan sweep throughout northern Italy. Beginning with about 20,000 anti-Fascist militants in May 1944, their numbers reached ten times that number by war’s end. As early as 1943, they were a serious threat to the Salo Republic and its ally. Their destruction of an important ammunition train on its way to the fighting at Monte Cassino on 20 December additionally killed 500 German troops. By year’s end, some 2,200 partisan sorties had been carried out. On 4 June 1944, they were strong enough to get Badoglio fired and depose King Victor Emmanuelle, who fled into exile.

Accordingly, the Italian SS devoted much of its time to battling the underground movement, eventually accounting for the deaths of more than 35,000 partisans. Another operation aimed at them was undertaken in October, 1944 against the insurgent Vinadio fortress, near Turin, by the SS Italiana in conjunction with the Brigate Nere. Equivalent to the German Volkssturm, it was made up mostly of older men and teenage civilians, one of numerous auxiliary formations fighting parallel to the RSI’s forze armate. “The origin of the partisan movement which is scourging Italy,” Mussolini explained, “dates back to 8 September, when hordes of soldiers could not regain their homes, and so joined the anti-Fascist fugitives, escaped convicts, and those set free from concentration camps. Besides the war between the armies, civil war has thus broken out, with episodes of savagery such as, until yesterday, would have been thought impossible on Italian soil.”³⁰

Italy’s regular ‘armed forces’ were divided over the split between the Anglo-American south and the Fascist north. The Esercito had fallen directly under the control of Marshal Badoglio, who put its 100,000 men, about 50,000 less than Mussolini’s Salo Republic, at the disposal of the Allies. But most did not join out of any affection for their new superiors. Rather, service in the army was for many the only source for food and shelter. Hence, the quality of Badoglio’s divisions was not invariably first-rate, and desertions were commonplace.