As a founding member of NATO Italy was obliged to assign in case of war its military forces to NATO's integrated military command. While the
Italian Air Force would have come under Fifth Allied Tactical Air Force (5 ATAF) in
Vicenza, the Italian Army would have come under
Allied Land Forces Southern Europe (LANDSOUTH) in
Verona. However tensions between Italy and
Yugoslavia over the
Free Territory of Trieste were high and as Yugoslavia was not a
Warsaw Pact member any conflict between the countries would have likely not involved NATO. Therefore on 1 May 1952 the Italian Army re-activated the 3rd Army in
Padua to be able to circumvent NATO's chain of command in case a war would break out between Italy and
Yugoslavia. 3rd Army duplicated the functions of LANDSOUTH with a purely Italian staff. To not violate NATO's integrated military command Italy described 3rd Army in all official documents as "the command designated "3rd Army"". On the same date as the command designated "3rd Army" the army also activated two
corps commands: the
IV Army Corps in
Bolzano and
V Army Corps in
Vittorio Veneto, followed by the
VI Army Corps in
Bologna in 1956 and the
III Army Corps in
Milan in 1957. During peacetime the corps' were assigned to the army's General Staff in Rome, while during wartime, depending on who the enemy would have been, the corps would have been assigned either to 3rd Army or LANDSOUTH. However with the easing of tensions between Italy and Yugoslavia, which culminated in the division of the Trieste Free Territory with the
Treaty of Osimo, the army decided to disband the command designated "3rd Army", along with VI Army Corps on 31 March 1972, with all the functions of higher command resting with LANDSOUTH from that date onward. ==References==