Italian Civil War in the context of "Italian Co-belligerent Army"

Italy entered World War II on 10 June 1940 by invading France, joining the German offensive already in progress. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini did so opportunistically as the Allied powers (chiefly France and the United Kingdom) seemed on the verge of collapse. The Italian war aim was to expand its colonial empire at the expense of the French and the British. While France surrendered on 22 June 1940, the United Kingdom and its allies continued to fight far beyond the point which Mussolini had thought possible, ultimately leading to the defeat and dissolution of Fascist Italy in 1943 when Mussolini was deposed in a bloodless coup d'état.

Italy's Axis partner, Nazi Germany, was ready for its defection and occupied central and northern Italy after the armistice of Cassibile in September 1943. After freeing Mussolini from captivity, the Germans set him up as the leader of a new puppet state in the north, the Italian Social Republic. This provoked Italian resistance against the German occupation and also a civil war between pro- and anti-fascist Italians. In the Allied-held south, the Kingdom of Italy officially became a co-belligerent of the Allies and declared war on Germany on 13 October 1943.

The Italian Social Republic (Italian: Repubblica Sociale Italiana, IPA: [reˈpubblika soˈtʃaːle itaˈljaːna]; RSI, known prior to December 1943 as the National Republican State of Italy (Italian: Stato Nazionale Repubblicano d'Italia; SNRI), but more popularly known as the Republic of Salò (Italian: Repubblica di Salò, IPA: [reˈpubblika di saˈlɔ]), was a German puppet state with limited diplomatic recognition that was created during the latter part of World War II. It was a collaborationist regime in German-occupied Italy, established after the German invasion of Italy in September 1943 and disbanded with the surrender of Axis troops in Italy in May 1945. The German occupation triggered widespread national resistance against it and the Italian Social Republic during the liberation of Italy and the Italian civil war.

The Italian Social Republic was the second and last incarnation of the Italian Fascist state, led by the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his reformed Republican Fascist Party. The newly founded state declared Rome its capital but the de facto capital was Salò (hence the colloquial name of the state), a small town on Lake Garda, near Brescia, where Mussolini and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were headquartered. The Italian Social Republic nominally exercised sovereignty in Northern and Central Italy, but was largely dependent on German troops to maintain control.

An institutional referendum (Italian: referendum istituzionale, or referendum sulla forma istituzionale dello Stato) was held by universal suffrage in the Kingdom of Italy on 2 June 1946, a key event of contemporary Italian history. Until 1946, Italy was a kingdom ruled by the House of Savoy, reigning since the unification of Italy in 1861 and previously rulers of the Kingdom of Sardinia. In 1922, the rise of Benito Mussolini and the creation of the Fascist regime in Italy, which eventually resulted in engaging the country in World War II alongside Nazi Germany, considerably weakened the role of the royal house.

Following the Italian Civil War and the Liberation of Italy from Axis troops in 1945, a popular referendum on the institutional form of the state was called the next year and resulted in voters choosing the replacement of the monarchy with a republic. The 1946 Italian general election to elect the Constituent Assembly of Italy was held on the same day. As with the simultaneous Constituent Assembly elections, the referendum was not held in the Julian March, in the province of Zara or the province of Bolzano, which were still under occupation by Allied forces pending a final settlement of the status of the territories.

The government of Italy is that of a democratic republic, established by the Italian constitution in 1948. It consists of legislative, executive, and judicial subdivisions, as well as of a head of state, known as the president.

The Constitution of the Italian Republic is the result of the work of the Constituent Assembly, which was formed by the representatives of all the anti-fascist forces that contributed to the defeat of nazis and the fascist forces during the Italian Civil War. Article 1 of the Italian constitution states:

The Italian Resistance (Italian: Resistenza italiana [reziˈstɛntsa itaˈljaːna]), or simply La Resistenza, consisted of all the Italian resistance groups who fought the occupying forces of Nazi Germany and the fascist collaborationists of the Italian Social Republic during the Second World War in Italy from 1943 to 1945. As a diverse anti-fascist and anti-Nazist movement and organisation, the Resistenza opposed Nazi Germany and its Fascist puppet state regime, the Italian Social Republic, which the Germans created following the Nazi German invasion and military occupation of Italy by the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS from 8 September 1943 until 25 April 1945.

General underground Italian opposition to the Fascist Italian government existed even before World War II, but open and armed resistance followed the German invasion of Italy on 8 September 1943: in Nazi-occupied Italy, the Italian Resistance fighters, known as the partigiani (partisans), fought a guerra di liberazione nazionale ('national liberation war') against the invading German forces; in this context, the anti-fascist partigiani of the Italian Resistance also simultaneously participated in the Italian Civil War, fighting against the Italian Fascists of the collaborationist Italian Social Republic.