Editing Victor Emmanuel III (section)

===Efforts to save the monarchy===
As Italy's fortunes worsened, the popularity of the King suffered. One coffee-house ditty went as follows:

{{poemquote|1=<nowiki />
''Quando Vittorio era soltanto re''
''Si bevea del buon caffè.''
''Poi divenne Imperatore''
''Se ne sentì solo l'odore.''
''Oggi che è anche Re d'Albania''
''Anche l'odore l' han portato via.''
''E se avremo un'altra vittoria''
''Ci mancherà anche la cicoria.''
}}

{{poemquote|
When our Victor was plain King,
Coffee was a common thing.
When an Emperor he was made,
Coffee's odour it did fade.
Since he got Albania's throne,
Even the odour has flown.
And if we have another victory
We're also going to lose our [[Chicory Root Extract|chicory]].<ref name= "The Little King">[https://web.archive.org/web/20080607214208/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,794043,00.html The Little King] ''Time Magazine'', 5 January 1948</ref>
}}

By early 1943, Mussolini was so psychologically shattered by the successive Italian defeats that he was so depressed and drugged as to be almost catatonic at times, staring blankly into space for hours while high on various drugs{{citation needed|date=November 2020}} and mumbling incoherently that the war would soon turn around for the Axis powers because it had to.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 302}}  Even Victor Emmanuel was forced to concede that Mussolini had taken a turn "for the worse", which he blamed on "that woman" as he called Mussolini's mistress, [[Clara Petacci]].{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 302}}  On 15 May 1943, the king sent Mussolini a letter saying Italy should sign an armistice and exit the war.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 302}}  On 4 June 1943, Grandi saw the king and told him that he had to dismiss Mussolini before the Fascist system was destroyed; when the king rejected that course under the grounds that the Fascist Grand Council would never vote against Mussolini, Grandi assured him that it would, saying the majority of the ''gerarchi'' were now against Mussolini.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 302}}  Using the Vatican as an intermediary, Victor Emmanuel contacted the British and American governments in June 1943 to ask if they, the Allies, were willing to see the House of Savoy continue after the war.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 303}}

On 19 July 1943, Rome was [[Bombing of Rome in World War II|bombed for the first time]] in the war, further cementing the Italian people's disillusionment with their once-popular{{citation needed|date=January 2016}} King. When the King visited the bombed areas of Rome, he was loudly booed by his subjects who blamed him for the war, which caused Victor Emmanuel to become worried about the possibility of a revolution which might bring in a republic.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 304}}  By this time, plans were being discussed within the Italian elite for replacing Mussolini. Victor Emmanuel stated that he wanted to keep the Fascist system going after dismissing Mussolini, and he was seeking to correct merely some of "its deleterious aspects".{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 304}}  The two replacements that were being mooted for Mussolini were Marshal [[Pietro Badoglio]] and his rival, Marshal [[Enrico Caviglia]].{{Sfn |Mack  Smith | 1989 | p = 304}}  As Marshal Caviglia was one of the few officers of the ''Regio Esercito'' who kept his distance from the Fascist regime, he was unacceptable to Victor Emmanuel who wanted an officer who was committed to upholding Fascism, which led him to choose Badoglio who had loyally served Mussolini and committed all sorts of atrocities in Ethiopia, but who had a grudge against ''Il Duce'' for making him the scapegoat for the failed invasion of Greece in 1940.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 304}}  In addition, Badoglio was an opportunist who was well known for his sycophancy towards those in power, which led the king to choose him as Mussolini's successor as he knew that Badoglio would do anything to have power whereas Caviglia had a reputation as a man of principle and honour.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 304}}  The king felt that Badoglio as prime minister would obey any royal orders whereas he was not so certain that Caviglia would do the same.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 304}}  On 15 July 1943, in a secret meeting Victor Emmanuel told Badoglio that he would soon be sworn in as Italy's new prime minister and the king wanted no "ghosts" (i.e. liberal politicians from the pre-fascist era) in his cabinet.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 304}}

====Coup d'état against Mussolini====
{{Main|Fall of the Fascist regime in Italy}}
On the night of 25 July 1943, the [[Grand Council of Fascism]] voted to adopt an ''Ordine del Giorno'' (order of the day) proposed by Count [[Dino Grandi]] to ask Victor Emmanuel to resume his full constitutional powers under Article 5 of the ''Statuto.'' In effect, this was a [[motion of no confidence]] in Mussolini.

The following afternoon, Mussolini asked for an audience with the king at [[Villa Ada|Villa Savoia]]. When Mussolini tried to tell Victor Emmanuel about the Grand Council's vote, Victor Emmanuel abruptly cut him off and dismissed him in favour of Badoglio. He then ordered Mussolini's arrest.

Publicly, Victor Emmanuel and Badoglio claimed that Italy would continue the war as a member of the [[Axis powers|Axis]]. Privately, they both began negotiating with the [[Allies of World War II|Allies]] for an armistice. The king was advised by his generals to sign an immediate armistice, since German troops in Italy were still outnumbered by Italian troops.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 307}}  But Victor Emmanuel was unwilling to accept the Allied demand for unconditional surrender, and as a result, the secret armistice talks in Lisbon were dragged out over the summer of 1943.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 308}}  Besides rejecting unconditional surrender as "truly monstrous", Victor Emmanuel wanted from the Allies a guarantee that he would keep his throne; a promise that Italian colonial empire in Libya and the Horn of Africa would be restored; that Italy would keep the part of Yugoslavia that had been annexed by Mussolini; and finally the Allies should promise not to invade the Italian mainland, and instead invade France and the Balkans.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 309}}  Mack Smith wrote that these demands were "unrealistic" and caused much time to be wasted in the Lisbon peace talks as the Allies were willing to concede that Victor Emmanuel could keep his throne and rejected all of his other demands.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 309}}  In the meantime, German forces continued to be rushed into Italy.

====Armistice with the Allies====
On 8 September 1943, Victor Emmanuel publicly announced an [[Armistice of Cassibile|armistice with the Allies]].  Confusion reigned as Italian forces were left without orders, and the Germans, who had been expecting this move for some time, quickly [[Operation Achse|disarmed and interned Italian troops]] and took control in the occupied Balkans, France and the [[Dodecanese campaign|Dodecanese]], as well as in Italy itself. Many of the units that did not surrender joined forces with the Allies against the Germans.

Fearing a German advance on Rome, Victor Emmanuel and his government fled south to [[Brindisi]]. This choice may have been necessary to protect his safety; indeed, Hitler had planned to arrest him shortly after Mussolini's overthrow. Nonetheless, it still came as a surprise to many observers inside and outside Italy. Unfavourable comparisons were drawn with [[George VI of the United Kingdom|King George VI]] and [[Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon|Queen Elizabeth]], who refused to leave London during [[the Blitz]], and of [[Pope Pius XII]], who mixed with Rome's crowds and prayed with them after Rome's working-class neighbourhood of [[Quartiere San Lorenzo]] had been destroyed by bombing.

Despite the German occupation, Victor Emmanuel kept refusing to declare war on Germany, saying he needed a vote by Parliament first, though that had not stopped him from signing declarations of war on Ethiopia, Albania, Great Britain, France, Greece, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and the United States, none of which had been sanctioned by Parliament.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 321}}  Under strong pressure from the Allied Control Commission, the king finally declared war on Germany on 8 October 1943.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 321}}  Ultimately, the Badoglio government in [[Southern Italy]] raised the [[Italian Co-Belligerent Army]] (''Esercito Cobelligerante del Sud''), the [[Italian Co-Belligerent Air Force]] (''Aviazione Cobelligerante Italiana''), and the [[Italian Co-Belligerent Navy]] (''Marina Cobelligerante del Sud''). All three forces were loyal to the King. Relations with the Allied Control Commission were very strained as the king remained obsessed with protocol, screaming with fury when General [[Noel Mason-Macfarlane]] met him wearing shirt sleeves and shorts, a choice of attire he considered very disrespectful.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 320}}  Victor Emmanuel was ultra-critical of the slow progress made by the [[United States Army North|American 5th Army]] and the [[British 8th Army]] as the Allies [[Italian Campaign (World War II)|fought their way up the Italian peninsula]], saying he wanted to return to Rome as soon as possible, and felt that all of the Allied soldiers fighting to liberate Italy were cowards.{{Sfn |Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 321}}  Likewise, Victor Emmanuel refused to renounce the usurped Ethiopian and Albanian crowns in favour of the legitimate monarchs of those states, claiming that the Fascist-dominated Parliament had given him these titles and he could only renounce them if parliament voted on the matter.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 320}}

On 12 September, the Germans launched [[Operation Eiche]] and rescued Mussolini from captivity. In a short time, he established a new Fascist state in northern Italy, the [[Italian Social Republic]] (''Repubblica Sociale Italiana''). This was never more than a German-dominated [[puppet state]], but it did compete for the allegiance of the Italian people with Badoglio's government in the south.

By this time, it was apparent that Victor Emmanuel was irrevocably tainted by his earlier support of the Fascist regime. At a 10 April meeting, under pressure from ACC officials [[Robert Daniel Murphy|Robert Murphy]] and [[Harold Macmillan]], Victor Emmanuel transferred most of his constitutional powers to his son, [[Umberto II of Italy|Crown Prince Umberto]].<ref>Holland, James ''Italy's Year of Sorrow, 1944–1945'', New York: St. Martin's Press, 2008 p. 249.</ref> Privately, Victor Emmanuel told General [[Noel Mason-MacFarlane]] that by forcing him to give power to Umberto, the Allies were effectively giving power to the Communists.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 326}}

By this time, however, events had moved beyond Victor Emmanuel's ability to control. After Rome was liberated on 4 June, he turned over his remaining powers to Umberto and named him [[Luogotenente|Lieutenant General of the Realm]], while nominally retaining the title of king.