Italy would eventually recover from the war and, along with France, Germany (divided into West Germany and East Germany) and the low countries, would become one of the founding members of the European Union. Significant partisan actions took place in northern Italy. The royal government remained in control of the south, declared war on Germany, and declared itself as the government of all of Italy shortly before the end of the war in the spring of 1945, sparking a brief but destructive civil war. Badoglio and the king escaped to Brindisi in southern Italy without giving any order to the army. The new royal government of Marshal Pietro Badoglio signed an armistice with the allies, but most of the country was quickly occupied by the Germans who established a puppet government under Mussolini's leadership, the Italian Social Republic, in Northern Italy with its capital in the small town of Salò, located between Milan and Venice. The Allies then launched a naval invasion of Italy in the summer of 1943 and Mussolini's government collapsed. Not long after, they were brutally beaten back by Richard O'Connor during operation Compass, and the Italian army was pushed back into Libya and eventually expelled from Africa completely with huge losses in both materiel and manpower, whether destroyed/killed or captured by the Allies. Later, Italy invaded British-controlled Egypt with 150.000 men compared to 3.500 British, capturing 50 miles of territory before being forced to stop due to logistical problems. Later, in 1941, Italy joined Germany and Hungary in the invasion of Yugoslavia and managed to conquer and annex most of coastal Dalmatia along with some other inland regions from Yugoslavia.Īside from these successes, however, Italy's war effort went beyond poorly, With Italy being unable to make significant gains in France before the french surrender and then suffering a humiliating defeat in Greece later in 1940. Despite the Pact of Steel with Germany, Italy did not join in the war until June 1940, planning to get a share of Allied territory with the defeat of France (Corsica, Savoy and Nice). Italy conquered Ethiopia and Albania prior to its entry into World War II. This seeming betrayal outraged Italy as a whole and is today seen as one of the contributing factors to the rise of Fascism in Italy. Regions Italy had long considered as Italian, such as Corsica, Savoy, Nice and Tunisia, remained under French control, while what German colonies there were went mostly to the British. But at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference the three pre-eminent powers (the US, the UK and France) largely broke with their promises to lesser allies: Italy gained only the provinces of South Tyrol and Trieste, while the British and French divided the colonial world between them and Dalmatia was handed over to the newly-founded Yugoslavia. With the war's end, Italy had anticipated its promised reward would be commensurate with Italian losses in the Alps. In exchange for promises of significant territorial expansion, Italy had sided with the French and British. Italy was a member of the victorious Entente when World War 1 ended in 1918. Italy's location in the center of the Mediterranean causes Italy to be a dominant force in the region. Italy is surrounded by the Adriatic Sea to the East and the Mediterranean sea to the South and west. Italy borders France to the Northwest, Switzerland and Austria to the North, and Yugoslavia to the East. It is dominated by the Alps to the north, the Apennine mountains through most of the mainland, and flatlands in the south and Sicilian Island. Its terrain is mainly made of hills, with the peninsula having some coastal plains on the east and west sides of its rugged central spine. It also contains territory in Zara (on the Dalmatian coast) and the Dodecanese (Aegean Sea), with African colonies in Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia. Italy is located in Southern Europe and consists of the Italian peninsula and the islands of Sicily and Sardinia to the west.
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