My presentation talks about the role of Italy during the Second World War and how Italy developed

a memory of the war shaped around two pillars: first the creation of a resistance myth, according to
which the entire population united against the Germans and second, the assignation of exclusive
guilt for the war and crimes to the Germans.
The Italian situation has its own peculiarities because you know that Italy played a leading role
fighting alongside Germany and Japan but despite this if you read on the internet, in the newspapers
or in the textbooks you will see that Italy is always described as a weak country, it is often
emphasized the fact that Italy entered the war or passed the racial laws only because it was forced
by Hitler and Germany and there is often the tendency to create a certain contrast between Germans
and Italians.

Germans are described as sadistic murderers while Italians are more humane and tolerant against
Jews and populations that were attacked.

This is of course a false narrative that took shape between September 1943 (date of the Italian
armistice) and 1947 (the year of the Treaty of Peace) and this narrative-building process was
supported and shared by all the Italian political factions of that period that included the crown and
the Badoglio government, together with the National Liberation Committee, which represented a
spectrum of anti-fascist parties, from liberals to communists. Of course, the narrative was created to
prevent Italy from taking responsibility for war crimes.

This myth in Italy is called the myth of Italiani Brava Gente, in English the myth of Good Italians
opposed to Evil Germans.

Before talking about how this narrative was used by the Italian government after the war, I wanted
to show you a website to make you understand how strong and powerful this narrative was.
Unfortunately, I have to say that it is still alive today and that Italian institutions do not put much
effort in order to make it disappear, on the contrary they do everything to ensure it continues to
exist.

It is possible to see how much this stereotype is rooted not only in the Italian but also in the global
collective imagination just by analyzing the words that are used to describe the history of Italy
during the war.

I took as an example the second website that appears on the internet writing the words "holocaust in
Italy".

This website is the official website of the UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL
MUSEUM and it is important to specify that the information we are about to read can be translated
into many languages including English, Italian, Polish, French, German, etc. and this means that
basically everybody in the world can read this information. I don't want to say that this information
is false, but it is in a certain way misleading because it doesn't tell the whole truth of what
happened.

We don't have enough time to read everything, so we will only analyze the sentences in bold during
this presentation.
Let’s start reading the first part of the text that is historical background and I want to focus on the
sentence in bold because in my opinion these are important in order to create the stereotype, I told
you about before.
There was relatively little overt antisemitism among Italians.

Until 1938, Jews could join the Fascist Party.

You know that in this year the Antisemitic legislation was passed, and the site explains that

In part under pressure from Nazi Germany and in part fearing that their “revolution” was
not perceived as “real” in the Italian population, the Fascist regime passed antisemitic
legislation beginning in 1938.

This legislation covered six areas:

 definition of Jews
 removal of Jews from government jobs, including teachers in the public schools
 a ban on marriage between Jews and non-Jews
 dismissal of Jews from the armed forces
 incarceration of Jews of foreign nationality; and
 the removal of Jews from positions in the mass media

Now I wanted to show you the real Articles of the Manifesto (which does not appear on the
website) and I will focus on the last three articles. We can read it very quickly

I think it is not difficult to find differences between the summary presented on the website and the
real manifesto but that’s not all because on the website there is a part dedicated to the antisemitic
legislation and we can read these words:

Although reflected in harsh language on paper, Italian authorities did not always aggressively
enforce the legislation, and sometimes interpreted provisions for making exceptions broadly.
Even in the internment camps, Jews of foreign nationality lived under bearable conditions:
families stayed together and the camps provided schools, cultural activities, and social events.

And then it says that the racial laws eroded the quality of life of Jews.

If we think about the fact that almost eight thousand Jews were killed in Italian concentration
camps, it seems clear to me that the text we are reading is trying to minimize the reality of the facts.

https://www.cdec.it/formazione/percorsi/per-la-storia-della-shoah/statistica-generale-degli-ebrei-
vittime-della-shoah-in-italia-1943-1945/

let's move to the last chapter that is intitled Italian occupied areas.

ITALIAN-OCCUPIED AREAS, as we can read the text makes it clear that the Italian authorities
refused to participate in the mass murders carried out by the Germans; Italy is described as a safe
territory for Jews who even escape from German-occupied areas to live in Italian-occupied areas.

ITALY AND GERMANY

As I’ve already said this information is not false because Italy was a weak country from a military
point of view, but this does not mean that it has no responsibility for what happened. For this
reason. It is important to know and to study that Italy played a leading role, a key ally of the Axis
powers in this war of aggression, Italy occupied numerous European territories committing cruel
war crimes against civilians especially in the Balkans and in the African territories that Italy
attacked.

It is true that Italians saved many Jews during World War II for example they provided assistance
and refuge in occupied territories like Greece, France, and Yugoslavia.

But there were instances where they did not protect Jews for example in the province of Fiume. In
some cases, Jews were turned away or expelled, and there were instances of direct cooperation with
German authorities for example in Russia and Kosovo.

Also, it is important to say that even when Italians protected Jews, their motivations were not
always purely humanitarian, sometimes they did it to maintain prestige or to earn money. Not
infrequently, Italians extorted money or confiscated assets from Jews in exchange for protection.

It is crucial to specify that there was a difference between Italian and German actions and the
behavior of the Italians and Germans but it is important to know that Italy not only saved many
lives, but it was also complicit in the killings committed.

SAVIORS OF JEWS TUTTE E 2 LE SLIDE Despite this, during and after the Second World War
a narrative emerged in which the Italians were portrayed as saviors of Jews, presenting a contrast
between the attitude of Italians and the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany.

For example, in October 1944, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs began to collect information
documenting the actions taken by Italians to rescue Jews in the occupied territories, particularly in
Greece, France, and Yugoslavia.

The aim was to distance the Italians from both Mussolini's racial policies and the extermination of
Jews carried out by the Germans, emphasizing a collective innocence among the Italian people.

SO, TO SUM UP we can say that the central theme of the Italian national memory of World War II
was the contrast between the malevolent / evil Germans and the virtuous / good Italians.

This anti-German sentiment persisted in postwar anti-Fascist and resistance cultures, uniting against
the common German enemy.

WHY WAS THIS NARRATIVE CREATED? What was the main purpose?

WHY PRIMA SLIDE

Italy needed to create a foreign policy that preserved the future of the nation because after the
armistice found itself in the position of being a defeated enemy.

In 1943 Italy was recognized by the allies as a cobelligerent but it was at the mercy of the winners.
Italy had to fulfill the promises contained in the Quebec document in order to be recognized as an
ally with full rights to be treated generously at the peace talks after the war, the Treaty of Peace in
1947.

With this goal in mind, Italian authorities and Italian government did everything possible after
September 1943 to exalt the efforts of the armed forces, the partisans, and in general the Italian
people, victims of Nazi massacres, in the fight against the Germans.
That depiction was delivered by the Italian governments, in the name of national interest and this
line was supported even by the anti-Fascist political elite.

All the parties of Italian politics and the cultural elite of the period had a single objective: to make
Italy appear as a nation victim of Mussolini and victim of Hitler's Nazi Germany.

They started a large-scale campaign that used print press, radio and exhibitions with the purpose of
influencing public opinion in victorious countries, especially Western powers and especially the
United States.

WHY SECONDA SLIDE

One of the major problems that Italy had to face after the war was that of war crimes and the
punishments of their perpetrators.

The United Nations War Commission based in London accused more than a thousand Italians
(soldiers, Carabinieri, members of the Black shirts and government officials). Many others were
cited for violence committed against Allied prisoners of war.

The Italian government, however, refused to extradite the accused, insisting on the right to try them
in Italian courts, and developed a defense strategy based on two arguments:

1) recalling the merits of the Italians’ humanitarian efforts during the war, including saving
Jews lives
2) compiling evidence of war crimes on the part of their accusers, in particular Yugoslavian
partisans.

The ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of War tended to deny or drastically diminish the
severity of the crimes.

We can read in bold the exact words that were used.

They conceded that Italian soldiers may have, on occasion, stolen a hen (their exact words) or
were at most guilty of sporadic excesses, but only in response to the savage barbarity they had
suffered at the hands of the communist partisans. The good Italian soldier would never have
gone beyond a little theft or a justifiable reaction to the violence of the partisans. If in fact any
crimes were committed, they could not be considered “Italian crimes” but rather “Fascist
crimes,” committed exclusively by the out-of-control Black shirts and certainly not by the
Royal Army.

In the end, Rome’s diplomatic actions were successful. Only a few Italian military personnel were
tried and punished by British and American tribunals in Italy for violence against Allied prisoners
of war,

nobody were extradited for the much more serious crimes committed against partisans and civilians
in the occupied territories, and no one were tried in Italy for these crimes. This is in stark contrast to
the treatment received by Germany and Japan. The fact that there was no “Italian Nuremberg,” no
great public trials of Italian war criminals, contributed to the affirmation of the convenient alibi of
the “good Italian.”

INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC OPINION

The international public opinion played an important role in shaping a favorable depiction of
Italians during World War II.

Italians were treated more leniently compared to the Germans in the postwar period. The Germans
faced active postwar surveillance, particularly due to concerns about the resurgence of Nazism and
anti-Semitism and also, they paid for the war crimes committed during the war.

It is also necessary to specify that Italian institutions have been consistently vigilant in safeguarding
the image of the "good Italian."

In 1989, when the BBC aired the documentary "Fascist Legacy" by Ken Kirby, which highlighted
Italian crimes in Ethiopia and the Balkans during World War II, the Italian government began an
official protest with the British government. Subsequently, the documentary was acquired by RAI
(the Italian national broadcast station), and an Italian version was prepared. However, due to
political pressure, it was never broadcast on major networks.

Despite the efforts of some Italian and international historiography to dispel the myth of the "good
Italian" by exposing Italian crimes in the colonies and during World War II, including concentration
camps and racist policies, institutional memory remains hesitant to confront the guilt of fascism.

The prevailing narrative still focuses on celebrating the humanitarian virtues of Italians as "saviors
of the Jews" and recalling the violence endured by Italians from Nazis, rather than acknowledging
the atrocities committed by Italians themselves.

I would like to conclude my presentation by reading a sentence written by Filippo Focardi, an

Italian professor who is working on the recovery of historical memory during the Second World
War. In one of his essays, he wrote:

Italy has a long way to go toward developing a public memory that is not based on playing the
victim and that is not reticent, a memory that is self-critical and responsible, capable of coming to
terms with the legacy of Fascism and moving beyond myths and stereotypes too often abused.