Two of the three major Axis powers of World War II—Nazi Germany and their Fascist Italian allies—committed war crimes in the Kingdom of Italy.
Research funded by the German government and published in 2016 found the number of victims of Nazi war crimes in Italy to be 22,000, double the previously estimated figure. Most victims were Italian civilians, sometimes in retaliation for partisan attacks, and Italian Jews. This figure does not include Italian military internees: approximately 40,000 of them died in German captivity.
The killing of Italian civilians by frontline units of the Wehrmacht and SS has commonly been viewed as stemming from a sense of betrayal the Germans felt due to the Italian surrender; and by a feeling of racial superiority. However, some historians have argued that the reasons for atrocities and the brutal behaviour were more complex, often resulting from the military crisis caused by the German retreats and the fear of ambushes.
Only a few perpetrators were ever tried for these war crimes. Few of these served prison sentences because of Germany's refusal to prosecute and extradite war criminals to Italy. The Italian government, in the early postwar decades, also made little effort to bring German war criminals to justice by demanding extradition: it feared that such demands would in turn encourage other countries to demand the extradition of Italian citizens accused of war crimes committed while Italy was allied with Nazi Germany.
Background The Kingdom of Italy, until 8 September 1943, was an ally of Nazi Germany and part of the Axis powers. After the Armistice of Cassibile on 8 September and the surrender of Italy to the Allies, the fascists established the Italian Social Republic, the Repubblica Sociale Italiana or RSI, in the northern regions remaining under German control. The new republic, with Benito Mussolini as head of state, was a German puppet state: its government was under German control.
Even before these events Germany had begun distrusting Italy as an ally and, by July 1943, had begun sending substantial numbers of troops to northern Italy while fighting against the Allies took place in Sicily and southern Italy, preparing for an occupation of northern and central Italy. By the time Italy surrendered, 200,000 German soldiers were deployed in northern Italy. The official purpose was to protect it from an Allied invasion, and to secure supply lines. In reality, the goals included disarming the Italian Army and occupying the part of the country, thereby securing Italian economic resources for Germany's benefit.Gentile, p. 2–3
War crimes committed by German soldiers pre-date the Italian surrender. For example, at Castiglione di Sicilia, 16 civilians were murdered by the 1st Fallschirm-Panzer Division Hermann Göring on 12 August 1943.
Victims The Holocaust in Italy
Italian Jews suffered far less persecution in Fascist Italy than the Jews in Nazi Germany did in the lead up to World War II. In the territories occupied by the Italian Army in France and Yugoslavia after the outbreak of World War II, Jews even found protection from persecution.Gentile, p. 10 The Italian racial laws of 1938 worsened their situation and the latter aided Nazi Germany after the Italian surrender on 8 September 1943 as it provided them with lists of Jews living in Italy. Of the estimated 40,000 Jews living in Italy at the time, comprising Italian citizens and foreign refugees, 8,000 perished during the Holocaust.
SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, the Supreme SS and Police Leader in Italy was tasked with overseeing the final solution, the genocide of the Jews. Wolff assembled a group of SS personnel under his command that had experience in the extermination of Jews in Eastern Europe. Odilo Globocnik, appointed as Higher SS and Police Leader for the Adriatic coastal area, had been responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews and Gypsies in Lublin, Poland, before his assignment to Italy.Gentile, p. 4 Karl Brunner was appointed as SS and Police Leader in Bolzano, South Tyrol, Willy Tensfeld in Monza for upper and western Italy and Karl-Heinz Bürger was placed in charge of anti-partisan operations.Gentile, p. 5
The security police and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) were under the command of Wilhelm Harster, based in Verona, who had previously held the same position in the Netherlands.Gentile, p. 6 Theodor Dannecker, previously active in the deportation of Greek Jews in the part of Greece occupied by Bulgaria, was made chief of the Judenreferat of the SD and was tasked with the deportation of the Italian Jews. Not seen as efficient enough, he was later replaced by Friedrich Boßhammer, who was, like Dannecker, closely associated with Adolf Eichmann. Dannecker committed suicide after being captured in December 1945 while Boßhammer assumed a false name after the war. He was discovered and sentenced to life in West Germany in 1972 but died before ever serving any time.
The attitude of the Italian Fascists towards Italian Jews changed fundamentally in November 1943: the Fascist authorities declared them to be of "enemy nationality" during the Congress of Verona and begun to actively participate in the prosecution and arrest of Jews. However, the prosecution by Italian authorities did not extend to people descended from mixed marriages.Gentile, p. 15 Initially, after the Italian surrender, the Italian police had only assisted in the round up of Jews when requested to do so by the German authorities. With the Manifest of Verona, in which Jews were declared to be foreigners and, in times of war, enemies, this changed. Police Order No. 5 on 30 November 1943, issued by the minister of the interior of the RSI Guido Buffarini Guidi, ordered the Italian police to arrest Jews and confiscate their property.
Italian civilians Approximately 14,000 Italian non-Jewish civilians, often women, children and elderly, have been documented to have died in over 5,300 individual instances of war crimes committed by Nazi Germany. The largest of those was the Marzabotto massacre, where in excess of 770 civilians were murdered. The Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre saw 560 civilians killed while the Ardeatine massacre saw 335 randomly selected people executed, among them 75 Italian Jews. In the Padule di Fucecchio massacre up to 184 civilians were executed.
Italian military internees
With the Italian surrender on 8 September Germany disarmed a large part of the Italian Army and made them prisoners. Instead of awarding them prisoner of war status they were left with a choice of joining the armed forces of the Italian Social Republic or to become military internees. The majority chose the latter and approximately 600,000 of those were sent to Germany and to work as Nazi forced labour. Of those around 40,000 died through murder, hunger and cold in the harsh conditions they had to endure. In the winter of 1944–45 the Italian military internees were designated civilians by Nazi Germany to integrate them more effectively in the forced labour required for the armament industry. This step was declared illegal by the German government in 2001, thereby declaring them as prisoners of war and barring the survivors from compensation.
Allied servicemen Some Allied servicemen were executed after having been captured by German troops. The commander of the LXXV Army Corps, Anton Dostler, was sentenced to death and executed in 1945 for ordering the execution of fifteen American soldiers who had been captured during a commando raid behind German lines, while SS officers Heinrich Andergassen and August Schiffer as well as Oberscharführer Albert Storz were convicted and executed for the murders of seven other Allied soldiers. Some of the accused used the Commando Order in their defence but this was rejected.
Camps German and Italian run transit camps for Jews, political prisoners and forced labour existed in Italy: Bolzano camp, located in the Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol region, part of the Operational Zone of the Alpine Foothills at the time, operating as a German-controlled transit camp from summer 1944 to May 1945. Borgo San Dalmazzo camp, located in the Piedmont region, operating as a German-controlled transit camp from September 1943 to November 1943 and, under Italian control, from December 1943 to February 1944. Fossoli camp, located in the Emilia-Romagna region, operating as a prisoner of war camp under Italian control from May 1942 to September 1943, then as a transit camp, still under Italian control until March 1944 and, from then until November 1944 under German control.
Apart from those three transit camps Germany also operated the Risiera di San Sabba camp, located in Trieste, then part of the Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral, which simultaneously functioned as an extermination and transit camp. It was the only extermination camp in Italy during World War II and operated from October 1943 to April 1945, with up to 5,000 people killed there.
Apart from designated camps Jews and political prisoners were also held at common prisons, like the San Vittore Prison in Milan, which gained notoriety during the war through the inhumane treatment of inmates by the SS guards and the torture carried out there.
Perpetrators
War crimes by Nazi Germany in Italy were committed by various branches of the German military and security forces. The Gestapo, SS and its Sicherheitsdienst were involved in the prosecution and murder of Italian Jews and the Ardeatine massacre, while Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht units were responsible for the majority of war crimes committed against Italian civilians. The 1st SS Panzer Division was responsible for Boves massacre, shortly after the Italian surrender and, while neither instructed nor authorised to carry out arrests and executions of Jews, participated in both on its own accord immediately after the Italian surrender. The division also looted Jewish property and had to be explicitly stopped by SS corps commander Paul Hausser on the grounds that only the security police and the SD were authorised to carry out those measures.Gentile, p. 11 & 12
The 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division committed the Marzabotto and Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacres, the two worst atrocities in Italy as far as number of victims goes. The division was also involved in the Vinca massacre, where 162 Italian civilians were executed, the San Terenzo Monti massacre, 159 victims, and the San Leonardo al Frigido massacre, 149 victims.
Wehrmacht units were also involved in massacres in Italy, with the 19th Luftwaffe Field Division murdering 57 civilians in the Guardistallo massacre and the 26th Panzer Division up to 184 civilians in the Padule di Fucecchio massacre. Soldiers of the latter division are also alleged to have committed the murder of the family of Robert Einstein, a cousin of Nobel Prize Laureate Albert Einstein. The 1st Fallschirm-Panzer Division Hermann Göring was involved in massacres, at Cavriglia (173 victims), Monchio, Susano and Costrignano (130 victims), Vallucciole (107 victims) and Civitella in Val di Chiana (146 victims).
The German 65th Infantry Division was reportedly responsible for two war crimes. In October 1943, two SAS men were captured after stealing a German vehicle, and executed on order of higher headquarters.The Secret War in Italy: Special Forces, Partisans and Covert Operations 1943–45 by William Fowler, pp. 34–35 On 21 June 1944, a partisan attack on the headquarters of Artillery Regiment 165 (the 65th Division's organic artillery regiment) resulted in a soldier being wounded. The regimental commander ordered a reprisal killing of five Italian civilians.lexicon der wehrmacht