Franklin D. Roosevelt

Joint Message with Churchill to Marshal Badoglio on the Armistice with Italy.

September 10, 1943

It has fallen to you in the hour of your country's agony to take the first decisive steps to win peace and freedom for the Italian people and to win back for Italy an honorable place in the civilization of Europe.

You have already freed your country from Fascist servitude. There remains the even more important task of cleansing the Italian soil from the German invaders. Hitler, through his accomplice Mussolini, has brought Italy to the verge of ruin. He has driven the Italians into disastrous campaigns in the sands of Egypt and the snows of Russia. The Germans have always deserted the Italian troops on the battlefield, sacrificing them contemptuously in order to cover their own retreats. Now Hitler threatens to subject you all to the cruelties he is perpetrating in so many lands.

Now is the time for every Italian to strike his blow. The liberating armies of the Western World are coming to your rescue. We have very strong forces and are entering at many points. The German terror in Italy will not last long. They will be extirpated from your land and you, by helping in this great surge of liberation, will place yourselves once more among the true and long-proved friends of your country from whom you have been so wrongfully estranged.

Take every chance you can. Strike hard and strike home. Have faith in your future. All will come well. March forward with your American and British friends in the great world movement toward Freedom, Justice, and Peace.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joint Message with Churchill to Marshal Badoglio on the Armistice with Italy. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/210901

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