Although Churchill wanted Italy to become a democratic country, he considered that the monarchy and Marshal Pietro Badoglio, who became Italy’s prime minister after Mussolini was overthrown on July 25, 1943, were the best guarantors of the traditional social order and instrumental for the collaboration of the state apparatus in running occupied Italy, not the anti‐Fascists.

In Eritrea, the [British Military Administration] seemed to consider the anti‐Fascists mostly as troublemakers. For the BMA, the top priority was to avoid disorder in order to economize troops. Thus, the administration did not involve the anti‐Fascists in the government, but even placed obstacles to their activities, “in accordance to accepted policy of avoiding occasions for bitter political controversy,” as Military Administrator Stephen H. Longrigg explained in 1942. The point is that the BMA deemed “the Italian population [to] have remained, for the most part, Fascist,” and it was likely to be right.