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Hi, at the moment I am playing the 1943 scenario. Very interesting and exciting scenario. Everything went okay. I could encircle the rest of the Kursk salient after one year bloodiest fighting and are standing in front of Moscow and Leningrad now. In France I could stop the allied, also in Italy. There I made a stand on the hills near to Tarent and destroyed one allied land unit after the other with help of Italy which was still in the war with bad morale. Now I was able to break through to Sicily. After the turn a message plopped up that Mussolini is dismissed and Germany occupied Italy. I hope that this is not intented, because this is bullshit. After Italy was out of the war, all italian units vanished, allied got Albania for free, partisans came in Greece and allied were able to conquer Pourtiers in France. The player is punished for reconquering axis territority. The 100 MPP more does not help the player to plug the holes in the frontline immediately. Also I would be interested if the allied will try to land in Italy again and with which units I should block them. What a bullshit

Hi

Italy's National Morale is fragile and Allied landings can be enough to trigger Mussolini's overthrow.

Even if the Allies are ultimately unsuccessful, i.e. your counterattacks succeed in driving them away, the engine looks at what is happening now (i.e. when they invade) rather than after a sequence of turns, hence the loss of key locations or the presence of Allied troops in Italy can be enough to trigger Italy switching sides.

This is why there is a warning to maintain German units in Italy in order to carry out Operation Axis - the takeover of the country following Mussolini's overthrow.

There are however plus sides to this - you now only have one Major to command, and the extra income can go on one set of research, purchases, diplomacy etc.

Thanks for the answer.

As far as I have understand that there is no connection between the reconquest of Sicily and the war out of Italy. It was just bad luck that Italy went out at that turn. Italy was around 22% NM for several turns, so it was not clear why Italy should go out of the war. But in that turn I had also tried to destroy a british battleship and one italian battleship got a very bad hit. As far as I have recongnize this can also lead to a minimal NM loss (I have seen it when attacking a city and the ship got damage at this attack). So maybe this was the reason why Italy went out of the war.

Is there anything the player can do to rise Italian morale again? I have destroyed some bristish battleships with Reggia Marina but that don`t helped. Would the NM rise, if some italian troops have recaptured Palermo as NM target or is Italy doomed after Operation Husky?

The most anoying thing after Italy went out of the war is, that the player has to use at some point Korps or cavalry to deal with the paritsans hexes and this units are much more expensive then a italian garrison. Anyway, I will try to win the war, although it looks like there will be a stalement.

Recapturing locations does prevent the constant per turn drain on Italy's NM that their occupation by the Allies has on them, although this is only a small amount.

When Italy did change sides in 1943, it did cause problems in the Balkans as suddenly the partisans were able to take advantage of the situation.

There are some notes on Operation Axis in the Strategy Guide that you may wish to refer to.

The reason the trigger threshold is set at 20% is that if it is any lower, it was found that significant Allied successes in one turn could easily prevent Operation Axis from occurring.

Italy is fragile and is as much a liability as an asset to Germany, and the game intends to reflect it... while giving a good chance of Operation Axis being feasible as that does benefit the Axis much more than the outright surrender of Italy to the Allies would.