spob34

[Marcello]

Originally Posted by Arralen

Can't believe that they only scrapped their tanks, and continued fighting on foot with their old arty, then waited 3 years for the Allies to supply new tanks

I haven't researched the topic in detail, though I might do that someday, but what you find strange is perfectly logical.
At surrender time most of the country had either already fallen into allied hands or quickly fell into german ones as most army units either melted as the command structure collapsed or were quickly shot to pieces by the wermacht.
Only a few units remained intact in area of the south which the allies had not reached, the germans were not in strenght and the local commanders had kept their cool; the king and some generals hd fled there for what they were worth (not much, but that would be a separate thread).
Now, the italian AFVs that did not fall in the pathetic category by the summer 1943 amounted to little more than relatively few assault guns and tank destroyers; we are talking about numbers in tens range for each type, not a whole lot. Of those some were lost in Sicily against the allies ( apparently all the Semovente 90L53 for example) and most or all of the rest were either captured or destroyed by the germans.
I don't have an exact OOB of those units which survived in the South at hand but from what I recall it was an infantry division tasked with coast defense and a mixed bag of other assorted infantry units; while I can't say with 100% certainty that no armor was there even in the unlikely case they had something that did not fall in the useless category there was the little problem that all the tank plants were in german controlled territory, so any long term use would have been problematic.
The italian units which fought alongside the allies were progressively equipped with allied weapons due to logistical considerations, tanks may not have been issued fo a variety of reasons.