page_title: Four days of Naples
section_title: Liberation of Naples
hierarchical_section_title: Four days of Naples / Liberation of Naples
caption_attribution_description: English: The British Army in Italy 1943 Daimler scout car of 1st King's Dragoon Guards at the town hall in Naples, 1 October 1943.
context_page_description: The Four days of Naples refers to the popular ad hoc World War II uprising in Naples, Italy between September, 28-30 1943 against German occupying forces, immediately prior to the arrival in Naples of Allied forces on October 1st that same year.
  The spontaneous uprising of Neapolitan and Italian Resistance against German occupying forces — despite limited armament, organization or planning — nevertheless successfully disrupted German plans to deport Neapolitans en masse, destroy the city and prevent Allied forces from gaining a strategic foothold.
  The city of Naples was subsequently awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valor, the four days are celebrated annually, and were the subject of the 1962 film, The Four Days of Naples.
context_section_description: At 09:30 on 1 October, armoured patrols of the King's Dragoon Guards was the first allied unit to reach Naples followed by the Royal Scots Greys reinforced by troops of the 82nd Airborne Division. At the end of the day, the German commander-in-chief in Italy—Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring—considered the retreat successfully concluded.
  Statistics for the four days of Naples vary: according to some authors, 168 rioters and 159 unarmed citizens were killed; according to the post-war Ministerial Commission for the recognition of partisan victims, casualties amounted to 155, while the registers of the Poggioreale cemetery listed 562 deaths.
  In contrast to other resistance episodes in Italy after the 8 September armistice, which also involved Italian fascists, most of the fighting occurred between Italians and Germans. The revolt prevented Germans from organizing resistance in Naples against an Allied offensive, and furthermore from or destroying the city before a German retreat — as Adolf Hitler had ordered.
  On 22 December, generals Riccardo Pentimalli and Ettore Del Tetto, who had abandoned Naples to the Germans after September 8th, were sentenced by the High Court of Justice to 20 years in military prison,  for active collaboration with Germans. Domenico Tilena, head of the fascist provincial section during the riots, was sentenced to six years and eight months.
caption: Daimler scout car of 1st King's Dragoon Guards at the town hall in Naples, 1 October 1943
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