Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories

Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories (AMGOT). The rules annexed to the Hague Convention state that an occupying army must ensure public order and safety. To comply, the Allies formed AMGOT for the military government of Sicily be fore the Sicilian campaign began in July 1943 (and soon became known to the rest of the British Army as Ancient Military Gentlemen on Tour). It was based on British experience in Libya where their Enemy Occupied Territory Administration (EOTA) was operating. The C-in-C, General Alexander, acted as military governor in Sicily and he was advised by a Chief Civil Affairs officer who had a deputy and six divisions under him: legal, financial, civilian supply, public health, public safety, and enemy property. Civil affairs officers naturally came under the control of local military commanders in combat zones. But once an area had become non-operational it was administered quite separately from the occupying forces and was responsible only to the supreme commander, Eisenhower.

AMGOT, having unwittingly helped to revive the Mafia in Sicily, was later extended to Italy, though Marshal Badoglio's government administered the four southern provinces in the name of the king, Victor Emmanuel III, and once Italy became a co-belligerent in October 1943 it operated only in combat zones. AMGOT had some difficulties in north-west Italy at the end of the war when the First French Army refused to withdraw and frustrated AMGOT's establishment there. Roosevelt resolved the situation by refusing the French any more military supplies until they withdrew, which they did on 10 June 1945. There were also some difficulties in Trieste, which Tito's forces had occupied, but this was also solved eventually.

Having a separate chain of command from the army made AMGOT unsatisfactory, and it was not used in Germany or Austria, where the Allied Control Commissions ran the civil administration, or in France, where de Gaulle took over at once.