 During the German occupation, much of the Roman population had lived on the brink of starvation, young people had arrested on the streets to be taken off to work as slave labor in Germany while the Fascist "Milizia" together with the Wehrmacht and SS had committed numerous atrocities.Badoglio by contrast was greeted with widespread hostility when he returned to Rome, being blamed by many Italians as the man together with the king who were responsible for abandoning Rome to the Germans without a fight in September 1943.Umberto had ordered Badoglio to bring in members of the Committee of National Liberation (CLN) into his cabinet after the liberation of Rome to broaden his basis of support and ensure national unity by preventing the emergence of a rival government.