Cavallero, Marshal Count Ugo

Cavallero, Marshal Count Ugo (1880–1943), Mussolini's most outstanding military commander who served as chief of the Italian High Command from December 1940 to February 1943 (see Comando Supremo).

Cavallero served with great distinction during the First World War, rising to the rank of brigadier-general. He left the army in 1920 and later served for three years as under-secretary of war. In November 1937 he was appointed commander of Italian forces in East Africa but resigned in May 1939 after which Mussolini made him president of the Pact of Steel co-ordinating committee. He succeeded his rival Badoglio as head of the Comando Supremo and then, in early December 1940, also took personal command of the Albanian Front where the Greeks were counter-attacking Italian forces in the Balkan campaign. There, his efforts to save Klissoura failed, but he stopped the Greeks from taking Valona.

He returned to Rome in May 1941, demanded, and received, greater control of the army, and began to create a proper High Command staff which had at least some authority over all three services. For nearly two years he tried to deal with Mussolini's demands for victories which were beyond the capabilities of his forces; with German insistence that Italy conform to German strategic policies; and with the large, ill-equipped, poorly trained Italian armed forces which were widely dispersed on a number of fronts. But in January 1943, after the Axis had been driven out of Libya by the second El Alamein battle, he was dismissed. When Mussolini fell from power in July 1943 Cavallero was arrested by Badoglio, but was released by the Germans after Italy's armistice with the Allies that September. The same month he apparently committed suicide while a guest of Kesselring after refusing to fight on the side of the Germans.