Focardi, Filippo, Klinkhammer, Lutz. The question of Fascist Italy’s war crimes: the construction of a self-acquitting myth (1943 – 1948)

In the article “The question of Fascist Italy’s war crimes: the construction of a self-acquitting myth (1943 – 1948)”, historians Filippo Focardi and Lutz Klinkhammer investigate the reasons for the failure of an “Italian Nuremberg”, the absence of trials that established and enabled a legal reckoning with the war crimes committed by Italians during the Second World War. They specifically focus on the occupation of the territories of Yugoslavia and Greece.

According to Focardi and Klinkhammer, the highly divergent claims of the different parties, in the aftermath of the war, played a significant role in the failure of a legal coming to terms with Italian Fascist crimes. The leftist parties (the actionists, the socialists, the republicans and the communists), who, even before the armistice, had denounced and attempted to spread awareness of these crimes, demanded trials against those perpetrators who had participated in the occupations of Yugoslavia and Greece and committed crimes against humanity. However their attempts failed. An important factor in this failure, according to Focardi and Klinkhammer, was the British government’s support for the military, the crown and the moderate anti-fascists. In the aftermath of the war, the communists remained the only ones to continue to demand trials.

Focardi and Klinkhammer also show how, when the Yugoslavian government publicly accused several Italian leaders and militaries, and requested their extradition, the Italian government proceeded in a counterattack strategy. It minimized the perpetration and agency of Italians compared to that of the Germans. This contributed to the creation of the narrative of the “good Italian” versus the “bad German”, a narrative that still holds. Italians in the occupied territories were depicted as “defenders of the oppressed” (336). 

In a similar vein, fearing punitive sanctions from British trials against Italian war criminals, Italy’s government employed a strategy that “accused the accusers” (340), shedding light on the war crimes perpetrated by the Allies against Italian soldiers, for example in North Africa. In addition, it tried to place the public opinion’s attention on episodes in which Italians were the victims.

According to Focardi and Klinkhammer, the different perspectives and interests of the parties regarding the trials of Italian war criminals contributed to intensifying the internal fragmentation of the country. Until recently, the crimes against humanity committed by Italy in the occupied territories have been successfully hidden, forgotten and manipulated. Only in the past two decades has the narrative of the “good Italian” begun to be questioned. 

Author of this entry: Chiara Ausiello.

Filippo Focardi & Lutz Klinkhammer, “The question of Fascist Italy’s war crimes: the construction of a self-acquitting myth (1943–1948).” Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 2004, vol 9, n 3, 330-348.