Re d'Italia – The Italian Monarchy
Victor Emmanuel III was crowned King of Italy in the year 1900. He oversaw Italy’s alliance with Germany and Austria prior to the Great War and the betrayal of that alliance during it. After the war many Italians felt hard done by with their minor gains following the war and Benito Mussolini’s Fascists swept to power in 1922 following the March on Rome. Despite being an ex Socialist Mussolini was keen on keeping the monarchy in place and indeed actively supported it. The new Fascist government seemed to go from strength to strength yet their isolation on an increasingly ‘Red’ continent and after the fall of Yugoslavia to Josip Broz (Tito) in 1926 made Mussolini paranoid about Communist expansion and all Communist Party members and suspected Communists were either exiled or executed from that year onward. Yet the unabated rise of the ideology continued even in Italy as a large underground Communist movement began to emerge to question the government. After the French Communists came to power in France in 1932 Mussolini saw little choice but to give all the support he could to the like minded Nazis following their attempted coup of 1933. This would be the decision that, ultimately, destroyed the Fascists as huge amounts of public funds streamed across the Alps towards Hitler’s Munich base. Although coming close to total victory in the early part of the war, Hindenburg’s recalling of Ludendorff from retirement to marshal the defense of the Saar and Rhineland and also his the destruction of all bridges over the Elbe would save the German Republic. From then on the war only got costly for Italy and worse for the Nazis, and in the summer of 1934 any confidence that was left in Mussolini’s government was crushed after the infamous Munich Massacre in which Nazi Brown Shirts pillaged their own city, killing 15,000 and making thousands more homeless. After this the Communists sniffed opportunity and quickly seized the initiative in the south of the country as a mixture of revolutionary workers and peasants as well as dissenting army units and foreign volunteers raced up the peninsula. Rome fell on November 21st and Victor Emmanuel III was captured. Not wanting to seem as brutal as the government they were fighting against the Communists settled for the humiliation and abdication of the King followed by an exile to the Netherlands (where he became reacquainted with Wilhelm II). As the last Fascist strongholds fell in April 1934 after Mussolini was hanged by a mob in Milan Italy joined the Comintern, the manner in which the Communists were swept to power by the people and toppled an undeniably evil government became the hallmark image of the Communist Revolution but would never be repeated again. In 1935 after Haile Selassie’s army shot down an Italian plane flying between Italian Somaliland and Eritrea the Italian army invaded Ethiopia and in 1936 it was incorporated in the Italian overseas provinces. Things then remained relatively quiet for Italy until the outbreak of WWII in 1940. In the early stages of the war Italy was on the frontline, having failed to prepare its army a small German force waltzed into the north almost unopposed until it reached Milan in the west and Ferrara in the south. With their army now in place a brutal trench war took place in northern Italy for many months. Meanwhile they faced utter defeat in Libya to a much larger and superior British army but with troops from Africa they mounted one of the most successful offensives against Germany of the war. Several hundred thousands Italians landed in Dalmatia in early 1941 and wreaked havoc behind the German lines, coming within hours of taking Venice (which would have lead to the entire German Panzer force being destroyed) yet after heavy casualties on both sides the Italians were beaten by the end of the month. Within a couple of months of this German launched Operation Legionnaire which captured all of mainland Italy. The Communist government would linger in Sicily for another year before falling to the first ever Fallschirmjäger drop of early 1942.
Later that year the new Italian state came into existence, with Victor Emmanuel reinstated, it had lost all its overseas territories as well as the Tyrol and Venetia but it did gain the Savoy from France and compared to the other major players of the Comintern (France and the Soviet Union) it got off lightly.
Whilst the Communist Party was universally illegal in the Berlin Pact the Socialist Party was not and after gradually regaining support the Social Democratic Party won a large majority in the 1946 Italian elections. The Party was strongly anti-Monarchist and the King was very unpopular but with blessing form Berlin he held onto his ailing power. Over the course of 1945 and 47 the Italian government slowly reduced the power of the King, hoping they could eventually have him removed. Then on December 27th Victor Emmanuel III passed away leaving the door open for the abolition of the Monarchy.
Crown Prince Umberto was know as a petulant fool who, although more popular in Italy than his father, had gone out of favor in Berlin after making frequent complaints about the extent of German influence in Italy and once calling for the return of Venetia to Italy. Thus Wilhelm III opted against doing anything to stop the Italian Government setting up a referendum on the future of the Monarchy and whether to found a new constitution. This non-interventionist stance would also likely improve Germany’s image to the world as a benevolent protector of Europe rather than its tyrannical master.
Whilst the victory of the Abolitionists (anti-Monarchists) was never under any real doubt however the manner in which the won the referendum was callous and disrespectful. There was a large smear campaign against the Prince, claiming that he was a homosexual and a number of men were brought forward as witnesses to that effect (yet all retracted their remarks fallowing the vote) many in the Berlin Pact showed their disgust for this ‘dirty campaign’ by the Italians and the Kaiser himself condemned it. He has not been against removing a monarch but to treat him so disrespectfully was sacrilege, sadly nothing could be done for poor Umberto he was offered the title of Duke of Wilno by the Kaiser and decided to accept it, traveling to his new home in early 1948. The Italian government now appointed a President in the place of the King and even though it was secure at home the international opinion (even that of their allies) was at a very low level.