I know that the Italians did declare war on the Germans in 1943, but how active were the Italians in fighting the Germans? Did any larger scale battle occurs between the fomrer allies, or was is left almost singularly to the Allied forces???

Golikell,
the thing it's a bit more complicated than what you described it. In July 1943 after the fall of Mussolini, who was "dismnissed" from his own party (the Fascist party) the new italian government started to negotiate with the allies the surrender of Italy. Italy was looking for a separate peace, but the negotiations went up to the 3rd on Sep when finally Italy surrended without conditions. The armistice was meant to be kept secret for a while, until the allied could take control of Rome, but being nthis not possible in a short term the announce was given on the 8th on sep.
By the way German troops started to arrive massively Italy in mass from June.
Italy was not recognized as an "allied country" by the allied and we were considered as cobelligerent. Our contribution to the continuation of the war was not as significant as the one of the other countries, and we continued to fight on the side of the allied often with minor or support and logistics roles.
At the same time the Germans put Mussolini to the head of the Repubblica Sociale Italiana having control of northern Italy. So actually there was in Italy a situation of Civil War that ended on April 25th 1945, two days after the death of Mussolini, date of the surrending of the German Troops in Italy.
Ciao

Thanks for that Fabio. During these mino support operations, did the Italians use their own arms and armour? Did these vehicles have any special markings?

Thanks Fabio...
never realised before.
You learn something every day.
Nice explanation.

Cheers
Peter
:-)

So the "Southern Army" (or cobelligerent) made extensive use of the few trucks and cars that were available in Southern Italy (the Government was in Puglia). The allied allowed only the use of a few armoured cars (AB41) to us and no AFVs at all!
All the rest of the equipment was provided by the allied (mostly by the English). For the markings it was an almost complete chaos. I've got evidence only of a few bren carriers and jeeps, and it's years that I'm chasing the pics of the AB41s but without any succes.
After the first months we started to wear english uniforms too but with Italian traditional markings.
If you want to have an idea of the uniforms you can visit my site at the address www.cavalleriaitaliana.it and following the link Uniformi > Dal 1940 ad oggi you can find a few few tables shwoing them (only for what concerns the Cavalry...)
Ciao

Thanks Fabio. You triggered my curiosity here. I happen to have a resinf AB41 and to have this in a setting with Italians and Allies working together seems very tempting to me.

HI all
I might be moving off the mark here but as a point of interest after Germany fell my dads reg were sent to a place called Pola now called Pula i think it was on the border between Italy and Yugoslavia .(Adriatic)
There was a small naval base there and sunk were they had been moored aginst the harbour wall were quite a few midget submarines.
What was strange was there was an amunition dump on a island and my dad used to guard it with other brits ,but he used to do it with a german pow dad had a sten gun he had a pick axe handle very strange.they became quite good friends and he asked my dad if he could get a letter to Germany to his familey.
Before my dad could get the info from him the Yugoslaves blew the amunition dump up killing the german pow and and quite a few brits.
A few weeks later my dads company commander was killed by a yugoslavian women at a parade carring a bunch of flowers, both had survived the war but get killed in effect on peace keeping duties... sound familer
Tango 20 chris cheers