Umberto II of Italy

Early life

Umberto was born at the Castle of Racconigi in Piedmont. He was the third child and the only son of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and his wife, Jelena of Montenegro. As such, he was heir apparent from birth since the Italian throne was limited to male descendants. He was accorded the title Prince of Piedmont, which the Royal Decree formalised on 29 September 1904.

During the crisis of May 1915, when Victor Emmanuel III decided to break the terms of the Triple Alliance by declaring war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he found himself in a quandary as the Italian Parliament was against declaring war; several times, the king discussed abdication, with the throne to pass to the 2nd Duke of Aosta instead of Umberto. The British historian Denis Mack Smith wrote that it is not entirely clear why Victor Emmanuel was prepared to sacrifice his 10-year-old son's right to succeed to the throne in favour of the Duke of Aosta.

Umberto was brought up in an authoritarian and militaristic household and was expected to "show an exaggerated deference to his father"; both in private and public, Umberto always had to get down on his knees and kiss his father's hand before being allowed to speak, even as an adult, and he was expected to stand to attention and salute whenever his father entered a room. Umberto was given the formal military education of a Savoyard prince and like the other Savoyard princes before him, Umberto received an education that was notably short on politics; Savoyard monarchs customarily excluded politics from their heirs' education with the expectation that they would learn about the art of politics when they inherited the throne.

Umberto was the first cousin of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia. In a 1959 interview, Umberto told the Italian newspaper La Settimana Incom Illustrata that in 1922 his father had felt that appointing Benito Mussolini as prime minister was a "justifiable risk".

Career as Prince of Piedmont

State visit to South America, 1924

As Prince of Piedmont, Umberto visited South America, between July and September 1924. With his preceptor, Bonaldi, he went to Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile. This trip was part of the political plan of Fascism to link the Italian people living outside of Italy with their mother country and the interests of the regime. In Brazil, visits were scheduled to the national capital Rio de Janeiro and the State of São Paulo, where the largest Italian colony in the country lived. However, a major rebellion broke out on 5 July 1924, when Umberto had already departed from Europe, imposing a change in the Royal tour. The prince had to stop in Salvador, the capital of Bahia, to supply the ships, going directly to the other countries of South America. On his return, Umberto could only be received in Salvador again. Governor Góis Calmon, the Italian colony and other entities warmly welcomed the heir to the Italian Throne.

Military positions and attempted assassination

Umberto was educated for a military career and in time became the commander-in-chief of the Northern Armies, and then the Southern ones. This role was merely formal, the de facto command belonging to his father, King Victor Emmanuel III, who jealously guarded his power of supreme command from Il Duce, Benito Mussolini. By mutual agreement, Umberto and Mussolini always kept a distance. In 1926, Mussolini passed a law allowing the Fascist Grand Council to decide the succession, though in practice he admitted the prince would succeed his father.

An attempted assassination took place in Brussels on 24 October 1929, the day of the announcement of his betrothal to Princess Marie José. Umberto was about to lay a wreath on the Tomb of the Belgian Unknown Soldier at the foot of the Colonne du Congrès when, with a cry of 'Down with Mussolini!', Fernando de Rosa fired a single shot that missed him.

De Rosa was arrested and, under interrogation, claimed to be a member of the Second International who had fled Italy to avoid arrest for his political views. His trial was a major political event, and although he was found guilty of attempted murder, he was given a light sentence of five years in prison. This sentence caused a political uproar in Italy and a brief rift in Belgian-Italian relations, but in March 1932 Umberto asked for a pardon for de Rosa, who was released after having served slightly less than half his sentence and was eventually killed in the Spanish Civil War.

Visit to Italian Somaliland

In 1928, after the colonial authorities in Italian Somaliland built Mogadishu Cathedral (Cattedrale di Mogadiscio), Umberto made his first publicised visit to Mogadishu, the territory's capital. The completion and consecration of the cathedral was specifically timed for his arrival in the colony. Umberto made his second publicised visit to Italian Somaliland in October 1934.

Marriage and issue

Umberto was married in the city of Rome on 8 January 1930 to Princess Marie José of Belgium (1906–2001), the daughter of King Albert I of the Belgians and his wife, Queen Elisabeth (née Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria).

They had four children:

Princess Maria Pia (born 1934)

Prince Vittorio Emanuele (1937–2024)

Princess Maria Gabriella (born 1940)

Princess Maria Beatrice (born 1943)

Under the Fascist Regime

Following the Savoyards' tradition ("Only one Savoy reigns at a time"), Umberto was kept apart from active politics until he was named Lieutenant General of the Realm. He made an exception when Adolf Hitler asked for a meeting. This was not considered proper, given the international situation; thereafter, Umberto was more rigorously excluded from political events. In 1935, Umberto supported the war against the Ethiopian Empire, which he called a "legitimate war" that even Giovanni Giolitti would have supported had he still been alive. Umberto wanted to serve in the Ethiopian war, but was prevented from doing so by his father, who did, however, allow four royal dukes to serve in East Africa. Umberto conformed to his father's expectations and behaved like an army officer; the prince obediently got down on his knees to kiss his father's hand before speaking. However, Umberto privately resented what he regarded as a deeply humiliating relationship with his cold and emotionally distant father. Umberto's attitude toward the Fascist regime varied: at times, he mocked the more pompous aspects of Fascism and his father for supporting such a regime, while at other times, he praised Mussolini as a great leader.

Italian expansion during the Second World War

Umberto shared his father's fears that Mussolini's policy of alliance with Nazi Germany was reckless and dangerous, but he made no move to oppose Italy becoming one of the Axis powers. When Mussolini decided to enter the Second World War in June 1940, Umberto hinted to his father that he should use the royal veto to block the Italian declarations of war on Britain and France, but was ignored. After the war, Umberto criticised the decision to enter the war, saying that Victor Emmanuel was too much under "Mussolini's spell" in June 1940 to oppose it. Following Italy's entry into the war, Umberto ostensibly commanded Army Group West, made up of the First, Fourth and the Seventh Army (kept in reserve), which attacked French forces during the Italian invasion of France. Umberto was appointed to this position by his father, who wanted the expected Italian victory to also be a victory for the House of Savoy, as the King feared Mussolini's ambitions. A few hours after France signed an armistice with Germany on 21 June 1940, the Italians invaded France. The Italian offensive was a complete fiasco, with Umberto's reputation as a general only being saved by the fact that the already defeated French signed an armistice with Italy on 24 June 1940. Thus, he could present the offensive as a victory. The Italian plans called for the Regio Esercito to reach the Rhone river valley, which the Italians came nowhere close to reaching, having penetrated only a few kilometres into France.

After the capitulation of France, Mussolini kept Umberto inactive as an Army commander. In the summer of 1940, Umberto was to command a planned invasion of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Still, Mussolini subsequently cancelled the invasion of Yugoslavia in favour of invading the Kingdom of Greece. In June 1941, supported by his father, Umberto strongly lobbied to be given command of the Italian expeditionary force sent to the Soviet Union, saying that, as a Catholic, he fully supported Operation Barbarossa and wanted to do battle with the "godless communists". Mussolini refused the request, and instead gave Umberto the responsibility of training the Italian forces scheduled to participate in Operation Hercules, the planned Axis invasion of Malta. On 29 October 1942, he was awarded the rank of Marshal of Italy (Maresciallo d'Italia). During October–November 1942, in the Battle of El Alamein, the Italo-German force was defeated by the British Eighth Army, marking the end of Axis hopes of conquering Egypt. The Axis retreated back into Libya. In November 1942, as part of the Battle of Stalingrad, the Red Army launched Operation Uranus, which saw the Soviets annihilate much of the Italian expeditionary force in Russia and encircle the German 6th Army. The disastrous Italian defeats at Stalingrad and El Alamein turned Umberto against the war and led him to conclude that Italy must sign an armistice before it was too late. In late 1942, Umberto had his cousin, the 4th Duke of Aosta, visit Switzerland to contact the British consulate in Geneva, where he passed on a message to London that the King was willing to sign an armistice with the Allies in exchange for a promise that he be allowed to keep his throne.

Attempts at armistice

In 1943, Marie José, Princess of Piedmont, involved herself in vain attempts to arrange a separate peace treaty between Italy and the United States. Her interlocutor from the Vatican was Giovanni Battista Monsignor Montini, a senior Papal diplomat who later became Pope Paul VI. Her attempts were not sponsored by her father-in-law, the King, and Umberto was not (directly at least) involved in them. Victor Emmanuel III was anti-clerical, distrusting the Catholic Church, and wanted nothing to do with a peace attempt made through Papal intermediaries. More importantly, Victor Emmanuel was proudly misogynistic, holding women in complete contempt as the King believed it to be a scientific fact that the brains of women were significantly less developed than the brains of men. Victor Emmanuel simply did not believe that Marie José was competent to serve as a diplomat. For all these reasons, the King vetoed Marie José's peace attempt. After her failure – she never met the American agents – she was sent with her children to Sarre, in the Aosta Valley, and isolated from the political life of the Royal House.

In the first half of 1943, as the war continued to go badly for Italy, several senior Fascist officials, upon learning that the Allies would never sign an armistice with Mussolini, began to plot his overthrow with the support of the King. Adding to their worries were a number of strikes in Milan starting on 5 March 1943, with the workers openly criticising both the war and the Fascist regime which had led Italy into the war, leading to fears in Rome that Italy was on the brink of revolution. The strike wave in Milan quickly spread to the industrial city of Turin, where the working class likewise denounced the war and Fascism. The fact that during the strikes in Milan and Turin, Italian soldiers fraternised with the striking workers, who used slogans associated with the banned Socialist and Communist parties, deeply worried Italy's conservative establishment. By this point, the successive Italian defeats had so psychologically shattered Mussolini that he become close to being catatonic, staring into space for hours on end and saying the war would soon turn around for the Axis because it had to, leading even his closest admirers to become disillusioned and to begin looking for a new leader. Umberto was seen as supportive of these efforts to depose Mussolini, but as Ciano (who had turned against Mussolini by this point) complained in his diary, the prince was far too passive, refusing to make a move or even state his views unless his father expressed his approval first.

On 10 July 1943, in Operation Husky, the Allies invaded Sicily. Just before the invasion of Sicily, Umberto had gone on an inspection tour of the Italian forces in Sicily and reported to his father that the Italians had no hope of holding Sicily. Mussolini had assured the King that the Regio Esercito could hold Sicily, and the poor performance of the Italian forces defending Sicily helped to persuade the King to finally dismiss Mussolini, as Umberto informed his father that Il Duce had lied to him. On 16 July 1943, the visiting Papal Assistant Secretary of State told the American diplomats in Madrid that King Victor Emmanuel III and Prince Umberto were now hated by the Italian people even more than Mussolini. By this time, many Fascist gerarchi had become convinced that it was necessary to depose Mussolini to save the Fascist system, and on the night of 24–25 July 1943, at a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council, a motion introduced by the gerarca Dino Grandi to take away Mussolini's powers was approved by a vote of 19 to 8. The fact that the majority of the Fascist Grand Council voted for the motion showed just how disillusioned the Fascist gerarchi had become with Mussolini by the summer of 1943. The intransigent and radical group of Fascists led by the gerarchi Roberto Farinacci, who wanted to continue the war, were only a minority, while the majority of the gerarchi supported Grandi's call to jettison Mussolini as the best way of saving Fascism.

Partition of Italy

On 17 August 1943, Sicily was taken and the last Axis forces crossed over to the Italian mainland. On 3 September 1943, the British Eighth Army landed on the Italian mainland at Reggio Calabria while the U.S. 5th Army landed at Salerno on 9 September 1943, a few hours after it was announced that Italy had signed an armistice. Adolf Hitler had other plans for Italy, and in response to the Italian armistice ordered Operation Achse on 8 September 1943, as the Germans turned against their Italian allies and occupied all of the parts of Italy not taken by the Allies. In response to the German occupation of Italy, neither Victor Emmanuel nor Marshal Pietro Badoglio made any effort at organised resistance; they instead issued vague instructions to the Italian military and civil servants to do their best and fled Rome during the night of 8–9 September 1943. Not trusting his son, Victor Emmanuel had told Umberto nothing about his attempts to negotiate an armistice nor about his plans to flee Rome if the Germans should occupy it. For the first time in his life, Umberto openly criticised his father, saying the King of Italy should not be fleeing Rome and only reluctantly obeyed his father's orders to go south with him towards the Allied lines. The King and the rest of the Royal Family fled Rome via a car to Ortona to board a corvette, the Baionetta, that took them south. A small riot occurred at the Ortona dock as about 200 senior-ranking Italian military officers, who had abandoned their commands and unexpectedly showed up, begged the King to take them with him. Almost all of them were refused permission to board, making the struggle to get to the head of the queue pointless. With the exceptions of Marshal Enrico Caviglia, General Calvi di Bergolo and General Antonio Sorice, the Italian generals simply abandoned their posts on the night of 8–9 September to try to flee south, which greatly facilitated the German take-over, as the Regio Esercito was left without senior leadership. On the morning of 9 September 1943, Umberto arrived with Victor Emmanuel and Badoglio in Brindisi.

In September 1943, Italy was partitioned between the south of Italy, administered by the Italian government with an Allied Control Commission (ACC) having supervisory powers, while Germany occupied northern and central Italy with a puppet Italian Social Republic (popularly called the Salò Republic), headed by Mussolini holding nominal power. By 16 September 1943, a line had formed across Italy with everything to the north held by the Germans and to the south by the Allies. Because of what Weinberg called the "extraordinary incompetence" of Badoglio, who, like Victor Emmanuel, had not anticipated Operation Achse until it was far too late, thousands of Italian soldiers with no leadership were taken prisoner by the Germans without resisting in the Balkans, France and Italy itself, to be taken off to work as slave labour in factories in Germany, an experience that many did not survive. How Victor Emmanuel mishandled the armistice was to become almost as controversial in Italy as his support for Fascism. Under the terms of the armistice, the ACC had the ultimate power with the Royal Italian Government in the south, being in many ways a similar position to the Italian Social Republic under the Germans. However, as the British historian James Holland noted, the crucial difference was that: "In the south, Italy was now moving closer towards democracy". In the part of Italy under the control of the ACC, which issued orders to the Italian civil servants, freedom of the press, association and expression were restored along with other civil rights and liberties.

Outing and appointment as regent

In the Salò Republic, Mussolini returned to his original republicanism and, as part of his attack on the House of Savoy, Fascist newspapers in the area under the control of the Italian Social Republic outed Umberto, calling him Stellassa ("Ugly Starlet" in the Piedmontese language). The Fascist newspapers reported in a lurid, sensationalist, and decidedly homophobic way Umberto's various relationships with men as a way of discrediting him. It was after Umberto was outed by the Fascist press in late 1943 that the issue of his homosexuality came to widespread public notice.

As the Allies freed more and more of Italy from the Salò Republic, it became apparent that Victor Emmanuel was too tainted by his previous support of Fascism to have any further role. A sign of how unpopular the House of Savoy had become was that on 28 March 1944, when the Italian Communist leader Palmiro Togliatti returned to Italy after a long exile in the Soviet Union, he did not press for an immediate proclamation of a republic. Togliatti wanted the monarchy to continue as the best way of winning the Communists' support after the war. For the same reason, Count Sforza wanted a republic as soon as possible, arguing the House of Savoy was far too closely associated with Fascism to enjoy moral legitimacy, and the only hope of establishing a liberal democracy in Italy after the war was a republic. By this point, the government of Pietro Badoglio was so unpopular with the Italian people that Umberto was willing to accept the support of any party with a mass following, even the Communists. The fact that contrary to expectations, Togliatti and Badoglio got along very well, led to widespread fears amongst liberal-minded Italians that a Togliatti-Badoglio duumvirate might emerge, forming an alliance between what rapidly was becoming Italy's largest mass party and the military. The power and influence of Badoglio's government, based in Salerno, was very limited, but the entry of the Communists, followed by representatives of the other anti-Fascist parties, into the Cabinet of that government in April 1944 marked the moment when, as the British historian David Ellwood noted, "...anti-Fascism had compromised with the traditional state and the defenders of Fascism, and the Communist Party had engineered this compromise. A quite new phase in Italy's liberation was opening". Besides the "institutional question", the principle responsibility of the Royal Italian Government was the reconstruction of the liberated areas of Italy. As the Allies pushed northwards, aside from the damage caused by the fighting, the retreating Germans systematically destroyed all of the infrastructure, leading to a humanitarian disaster in the liberated parts. Umberto, together with the rest of his father's government, spent time attempting to have humanitarian aid delivered.

Liberation and republicanism

Most of the Committee of National Liberation (CLN) leaders operating underground in the north tended to lean in a republican direction. Still, they were willing to accept Umberto temporarily out of the belief that his personality and widespread rumours about his private life would ensure that he would not last long as either Lieutenant General of the Realm or as King, should his father abdicate. After the liberation of Rome on 6 June 1944, the various Italian political parties all applied strong pressure on Umberto to dismiss Pietro Badoglio as prime minister, as the Duke had loyally served the Fascist regime until the Royal coup on 25 July 1943, which resulted in the social democrat Ivanoe Bonomi being appointed prime minister. On 5 June 1944, Victor Emmanuel formally gave up his powers to Umberto, finally recognising his son as Lieutenant General of the Realm. After the liberation of Rome, Umberto received a warm welcome from ordinary people when he returned to the Eternal City. Mack Smith cautioned that the friendly reception that Umberto received in Rome may have been due to him being a symbol of normalcy after the harsh German occupation as opposed to genuine affection for the prince. During the German occupation, much of the Roman population had lived on the brink of starvation, young people had been arrested on the streets to be taken off to work as slave labourers in Germany, while the Fascist Milizia, together with the Wehrmacht and SS, had committed numerous atrocities. Badoglio, by contrast, was greeted with widespread hostility when he returned to Rome, being blamed by many Italians as the man, together with the King, who was responsible for abandoning Rome to the Germans without a fight in September 1943.

Umberto had ordered Badoglio to bring members of the Committee of National Liberation (CLN) into his cabinet after the liberation of Rome to broaden his basis of support and ensure national unity by preventing the emergence of a rival government. Umberto moved into the Quirinal Palace, while at The Grand Hotel, the Rome branch of the CLN met with the cabinet. Speaking on behalf of the CLN in general, the Roman leadership of the CLN refused to join the cabinet as long as Badoglio headed it but indicated that Bonomi was an acceptable choice as prime minister for them. Lieutenant General Sir Noel Mason-MacFarlane of the ACC visited the Quirinal Palace and convinced Umberto to accept Bonomi as prime minister because the Crown needed to bring the CLN into the government, which required sacrificing Badoglio. As Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin were willing to see Badoglio continue as prime minister, seeing him as a force for order, Umberto could have held out for him. However, as part of his efforts to distance himself from Fascism, Umberto agreed to appoint Bonomi as prime minister. Reflecting the tense "institutional question" of republic vs. monarchy, Umberto, when swearing in the Bonomi cabinet, allowed the ministers to take either their oaths to himself as the Lieutenant General of the Realm or to the Italian state; Bonomi himself chose to take his oath to Umberto while the rest of his cabinet chose to take their oaths only to the Italian state. Churchill especially disapproved of the replacement of Badoglio with Bonomi, complaining that, in his view, Umberto was being used by "a group of aged and hungry politicians trying to intrigue themselves into an undue share of power". Through the Allied occupation, the Americans were far more supportive of Italian republicanism than the British, with Churchill in particular believing the Italian monarchy was the only institution that was capable of preventing the Italian Communists from coming to power after the war.

King of Italy

Umberto earned widespread praise for his role in the following three years, with the Italian historian Giuseppe Mammarella calling Umberto a man "whose Fascist past was less compromising" than that of Victor Emmanuel and who, as Lieutenant General of the Realm, showed certain "progressive" tendencies. In April 1946, a public opinion poll of registered members of the conservative Christian Democratic party showed that 73% were republicans, a poll that caused immense panic in the monarchist camp. The American historian Norman Kogan cautioned the poll was of Christian Democratic members, which was not the same thing as Christian Democratic voters who tended to be "...rural, female, or generally apolitical". Nonetheless, the poll led to appeals from Umberto to the ACC to postpone the referendum, leading to the reply that the De Gasperi cabinet had set the date for the referendum, not the ACC. The possibility of losing the referendum also led to the monarchists to appeal to Victor Emmanuel to finally abdicate. De Gasperi and the other Christian Democratic leaders refused to take sides in the referendum, urging Christian Democratic voters to follow their consciences when it came time to vote.

In the belated hope of influencing public opinion ahead of a referendum on the continuation of the monarchy, Victor Emmanuel formally abdicated in favour of Umberto on 9 May 1946 and left for Egypt. Before departing for Egypt, Victor Emmanuel saw Umberto for the last time, saying farewell in a cold, emotionless way. Worried about its future under a Communist government, the Catholic Church framed the referendum not as a choice between republic and monarchy, but Catholicism and Communism. Priests warned churchgoers that "all the pains of hell" would be reserved for those who voted for a republic. On the day before the referendum, 1 June 1946, Pope Pius XII, in a sermon on St. Peter's Square, said in what was widely seen as endorsing Umberto: "What is the problem? The problem is whether one or the other of those nations, of those two Latin sisters [elections were taking place in France on the same day] with several thousands of years of civilisation, will continue to lean against the solid rock of Christianity;... or on the contrary, do they want to hand over the fate of their future to the impossible omnipotence of a secular state without extraterrestrial ideals, without religion, and without God. One of these two alternatives shall occur according to whether the names of the champions or the destroyers of Christian civilization emerge victorious from the urns". Umberto believed that the support from the Catholic Church would be decisive and that he would win the referendum by a narrow margin. The De Gasperi cabinet accepted Umberto as King, but refused to accept the standard appellation for Italian kings "by the Grace of God and the will of the people".

In exile

Umberto II lived for 37 years in exile, in Cascais, on the Portuguese Riviera; the 1948 constitution of the Italian Republic not only forbade amending the constitution to restore the monarchy but, until 2002, barred all male heirs to the defunct Italian throne from returning to Italian soil. Female members of the Savoy family were not barred, except former queens consort.

Together with their four children, Umberto and Marie José took part in the ship tour organized by Queen Frederica and her husband King Paul of Greece in 1954, which became known as the "Cruise of the Kings" and was attended by over 100 royals from all over Europe. Since the ship tour began in Naples, the family could only board in Corfu, Greece, as they were not allowed to set foot on Italian soil. On this trip their daughter Princess Maria Pia met her future husband Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia.

Relations between Umberto and Marie José grew more strained during their exile, and their marriage broke up, with Marie José moving to Switzerland. At the same time, Umberto remained in Portugal, though, as devout Catholics, the couple did not divorce.

Umberto II died on 18 March 1983 in Geneva, Switzerland and was interred in Hautecombe Abbey, France, which for centuries was the burial place of the members of the House of Savoy.

Titles, styles, honours, and arms

Titles and styles

Umberto was granted the traditional title of Prince of Piedmont at birth. This was formalised by Royal Decree on 29 September 1904.

Honours

SS Principe Umberto, a passenger and cargo ship built in 1908, named after him, sunk in 1916.