Ugo Cavallero (20 September 1880 – 13 September 1943) was a Marshal of Italy of the Royal Italian Army during the Italo-Turkish War, World War I, and World War II. He served as Commander-in-Chief of the Italian armed forces from December 1940 until his suspension in July 1943, after which he was forced to commit suicide.
Biography[]
Ugo Cavallero was born on 20 September 1880 in Casale Montferrato, Piedmont, in Italy. Cavallero was a member of the Italian nobility and had a privileged childhood, and he became a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Italian Army in 1900. In 1913 he gained a Bronze Medal for Military Valor during the Italo-Turkish War in Libya. In 1915 he transferred to Italian Supreme Command and became a Brigadier-General. During the victories at the Battle of Piave and the Battle of Vittorio Veneto against Austria-Hungary during World War I, he was instrumental in forming the Italian plans, and he retired from the army in 1919 after the war. In 1925 he rejoined the Royal Italian Army and became the Undersecretary of War for Benito Mussolini's new Fascist government. In 1940 he was made a full General.
When Italy entered World War II in June of that year, Cavallero became the commander of the Italian Army Group in Albania. In December 1940 he replaced Pietro Badoglio as the commander of Italy's armed forces but was ignored by both Mussolini and Nazi Germany's leader Adolf Hitler in his requests to remove the loose cannon Erwin Rommel from command of the Deutsches Afrika Korps (DAK) in North Africa. Cavallero was dismissed from military command in July 1943 after the Allied Powers invaded Sicily, as most of Italy's forces on the island surrendered without much resistance. Cavallero was imprisoned by Badoglio's new government as a pro-German and pro-Fascist, although he said that he despised Mussolini. While at Frascati in Lazio, Cavallero shot himself on 13 September 1943 at the orders of the Germans and Italians.