Victor Emmanuel III of Italy

Biography

Victor Emmanuel became King of Italy on 29 July 1900, after the assassination of his father Umberto I. The first years of his reign were dominated by Giovanni Giolitti's governments, which promoted industry, introduced universal male suffrage and took Libya in the Italo-Turkish War. Victory over Austria-Hungary in the First World War brought Trento and Trieste into Italy.

In the turmoil after the war he appointed Benito Mussolini prime minister following the March on Rome in 1922. He stayed silent about the regime's abuses and took the additional crowns of Ethiopia in 1936 and Albania in 1939. He advised against entering the Second World War but in June 1940 gave Mussolini sweeping powers to wage it.

After the Allied invasion of Sicily he dismissed and had Mussolini arrested in July 1943 and appointed Pietro Badoglio, whose government signed the Armistice of Cassibile in September. When the Germans responded, the king and government fled to Brindisi, and Italy declared war on Germany in October. After the liberation of Rome in 1944 he handed most of his powers to his son Umberto.

He abdicated in May 1946, shortly before a referendum abolished the monarchy, and went into exile in Alexandria, Egypt, where he died in December 1947.