In August 1943 the Governorate administrative personnel left Dalmatia and returned to the Italian peninsula: the area was ruled by the Italian military until mid-September 1943 when was occupied by German troops. After the disappearance of the province, all the area -that under Italian presence was spared the bloody guerrilla that happened in Ante Pavelic's Croatia- started to be involved in the massacres of the Yugoslavian civil war during WWII.