Pietro Badoglio

Biography

Pietro Badoglio was born in 1871 at Grazzano Monferrato in Piedmont, the son of a modest landowner. He entered the Royal Military Academy in Turin in 1888 and was commissioned in the artillery. He served in Eritrea during the First Italo-Ethiopian War and in Libya during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911-12.

In the First World War he was promoted to major general for his handling of the capture of Monte Sabotino in 1916 and became deputy chief of staff late in 1917, although he shared responsibility for the defeat at Caporetto. After the war he was made a senator and served as army chief of staff, then was sent to Brazil as ambassador. Reconciled with Mussolini, he became chief of the general staff in 1925 and Marshal of Italy in 1926. As governor of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica from 1929 to 1933 he directed, with Rodolfo Graziani, the repression of Libyan resistance, in which much of the population of Cyrenaica was confined to concentration camps.

In late 1935 he replaced Emilio De Bono in command of the invasion of Ethiopia, used poison gas against the Ethiopian armies and entered Addis Ababa in May 1936. He was briefly the first viceroy of Italian East Africa and was made Duke of Addis Ababa. He resigned as chief of the general staff after the failed invasion of Greece in December 1940.

When the king dismissed and arrested Mussolini on 25 July 1943, Badoglio became prime minister. His government signed the armistice with the Allies on 3 September, and after it was announced on 8 September he fled Rome with the king to Brindisi, leaving the armed forces without orders against the German response. Italy declared war on Germany in October, and he led the government until June 1944. He was never tried for war crimes in Africa and died in his home town in 1956.