Artifact Friday: Italian WWII Helmet

Perhaps the most famous military event in World War II, or possibly any war, is the

invasion of Normandy, D-Day, that took place on June 5th, 1944. D-Day marked the turning point

for the war in Europe and the beginning of the end for Adolf Hitler and Germany. But what

if I told you a major Axis Power had already fallen? June 4th, 1944, the very day before D-Day,

the United States’ 5th Army and British 8th Army marched into Rome, Italy. After a grueling

African campaign, deemed Operation Torch, and the invasions of Sicily and Salerno, Operations

Husky and Avalanche, Allied troops were able to take Rome with little resistance from the

Italians. Put simply, the Italians no longer possessed the spirit to fight. With the war at their

doorsteps, the Italian people grew disillusioned with their fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, and

Mussolini lacked the charisma and speechcraft to keep Italian spirits high. Instead, much of the

Italian military laid down their arms after brief resistance to the Allied offensive. The Germans

were quick to force the Italians to surrender to them, their allies, rather than allowing

them to surrender to the Allied Forces out of fear they would turn their guns on the Germans.

The Italians were forced to sit back and watch as their country became a battlefield in a war

they had long grown weary of. This is why June 4th is deemed the ‘Liberation’ of Rome, not a fall

or an occupation.

It is from the Italian troops that we have a helmet in our collection. The M33 Helmet

had been in use by Italy from 1933 – 1992, an admirably long time for a piece of military

equipment. The M33 was designed by Nicola Leszl and meant to replace the French-designed M31 Helmet of World War I. Manufactured by Smalteria e Metallurgica Veneta (SMV), the M33 would go on to see service in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the Ecuadorian–Peruvian War, Croatian War of Independence, the the Bosnian War, and the Kosovo War.

The wars following WWII did not involve Italy. The Helmets, instead, arrived in these conflicts as

Italy began selling off much of its military supply to aid in paying its reparations of $360 million

which it finished paying, in full, by 1952. Due to their lack of resistance against the Allies, the

Italians got off easy for their imperialistic ambitions when compared to Germany which had to

pay $32 billion and only finished their payments in 2010.