The partisans represented far more of an obstacle to Mussolini’s Esercito Nazionale Republicano. He did attract many regular army units, among the most valuable having been the X Arditi Regiment of commando experts. Just a year before, they fought beside Hitler’s Panzer armies on the Eastern Front at Zhitomir, Kiev, Novocobiscoia, Kirovgrad, and numerous other battles. Still in possession of their reconnaissance vehicles, the Arditi commandos became part of the 2nd Fallschirmjäger, a parachute division. Once again with their German allies, they participated in the fighting around the Dutch towns of Eindhoven and Arnhem, where General Montgomery’s Operation Market Garden was so thoroughly shot up. Other Russian Campaign veterans to side with the Duce belonged to the Blackshirted Camicie Nere ‘M’ Assault Legion, thrown in reckless counter-attacks against the Anzio beachhead, performing there with great valor, as attested by the high attrition their ranks suffered.

By mid-1944, the morale of Allied troops in Italy was so low, a mutiny was just narrowly prevented at Anzio. The Americans not only failed to break out of their virtual encirclement, but were still trapped on the beaches they occupied months before. A bitterly popular barracks’ ballad of the period was ‘The D-Day Dodgers’, taken from a public statement made by Lady Astor from the safety of her English country estate, where she contemptuously compared heroic Allied servicemen fighting in the Normandy invasion with ‘lowly’ British infantry (‘D-Day dodgers’ she called them), mired in Italy. The song’s sarcastic words were underscored by the melody to which they were set: an internationally famous German popular song of the period, Lily Marlene. This disaffection for the war was expressed in action by the British 46th Infantry Division, which particularly suffered from severe problems with soldiers going AWOL.

The Regia Marina likewise largely fell under the control of Marshal Badoglio, who saw to the internment of all its surviving capital ships in Allied hands. A few unserviceable cruisers, destroyers and submarines still in port after the armistice were usually scuttled or sabotaged by their crews, in defiance of King Victor Emmanuelle’s orders to the contrary. By contrast, the only ‘fleet’ Mussolini had at his disposal comprised four torpedo-boats, two anti-submarine vessels, and a small number of patrol craft the Germans were able to confiscate from Italy’s western coast harbors after the armistice of 8 September. Five submarines were stationed at Betasom, and another five in the Black Sea. Other Italian warships on station in various oceans of the world were divided in their loyalties.

As many vessels as possible were drafted into the RSI Navy, the Marina Nazionale Republicana, or Divisione Decima, by Junio Borghese, the so-called ‘Black Prince’, commander of the renowned X MAS Flotilla human-torpedoes. Before the Badoglio coup, they had destroyed 265,000 tons of Allied shipping, “compelling the enemy to commit disproportionate resources to defend against a relative few,” according to Greene and Massignani.³¹ It was an historic achievement for a tiny handful of special operations experts Borghese hoped could be repeated on behalf of the Marina Nazionale Republicana. After tireless recruitment, he gathered together enough naval personnel to build a division-strength organization, about 50,000 men, enough for him to spare 5,000 volunteers for training in Germany, where they were to form the basis for an élite marine unit.

Throughout the last months of 1943, Marina Nazionale Republicana commanders had high hopes of building the small but efficient fleet into a valuable fighting force to oppose anticipated enemy landings along the western coasts of the peninsula. The flotilla even operated an underseas unit of midget submarines led by the full-sized Aradam, scuttled in Genoa harbor when word came of the armistice, but since relocated by the Black Prince, and ready to sail in January 1944, loaded with human-torpedoes.

Unlike the Regia Marina, the Regia Aeronautica went over almost in its entirety to the Salo Republic, where it became the Aeronautica Nazionale Republicana (ANR). The 8th Gruppo alone obeyed Badoglio’s order to join his Aeronautica Co-Belligerante. All other units either disbanded or flew north. Typical was the Italian Air Force’s finest fighter in mass-production, the Macchi MC.205, Veltro: Out of sixty-six Greyhounds still in service when the turncoat Marshal proclaimed his Co-Belligerent Air Force, only six remained behind in the south. More tellingly, of the Regia Aeronautica’s 12,000 officers and 167,000 NCOs, less than 200 heeded his call join him. Until the Badoglio armistice, 12,748 Italian airmen perished in the various campaigns, including 1,806 officers. Thousands more were to join them in the civil war that followed.