Brava Gente myth

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In recent historical research, the Italian narrative is referred to as the Brava Gente myth , which in the years after the liberation from Italian fascism mainly described the Italian officers and common soldiers as "decent people" ( italiani brava gente ) and in contrast to the Germans generally not associated with war crimes and atrocities.

The “twenty black years” of the fascist dictatorship from 1922 to 1943 ( ventennio nero or ventennio fascista ), named after the black shirts , were remembered by the experience of the two years of German occupation from 1943 to 1945 (biennio) with the memory of partisan war , internment and deportation for forced labor . The persecution of political opponents of the regime, the suppression of the Slovenes and Croats in the north-eastern border areas, the war crimes committed especially in the colonies ( Italian East Africa and Italian Libya ), in Greece , the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia as well as the participation of the Italian Social Republic in As a result, with a few exceptions, the Holocaust went unpunished and for a long time went unnoticed.

In addition, the resistance myth, cultivated by the great anti-fascist coalition of the parties of the constitutional arc, as the founding myth of the new Italian state with its focus on the “war of liberation” from 1943 to 1945, also led to a neglect of the black two decades in research and historical didactics.

literature

  • Tom Bentley: Empires of Remorse: Narrative, postcolonialism and apologies for colonial atrocity . Routledge, Abingdon (Oxon) / New York 2016, ISBN 978-1-138-81538-4 . Chapter The Italian apology for colonialism in Libya , pp. 145-167.
  • Angelo Del Boca: Fascism and Colonialism - The Myth of the Decent Italians. In: Irmtrud Wojak, Susanne Meinl (ed.): Genocide and war crimes in the first half of the 20th century. Campus, Frankfurt a. M. 2004, ISBN 3-593-37282-7 , pp. 193-202.
  • Angelo Del Boca: Italiani, brava gente? Un mito duro there that . Neri Pozza, Vicenza 2005, ISBN 978-88-545-0495-0 .
  • Isabelle Bosch: Bravo italiano e cattivo tedesco ?: Depiction of the National Socialist and Fascist dictatorships in Italian school history books . Eckert. Posts 2016/2
  • Davide Conti: L'occupazione italiana dei Balcani. Crimini di guerra e mito della "brava gente" (1940-1943) . Odradek, Rome 2008, ISBN 978-88-86973-92-2 .
  • Filippo Focardi: Il cattivo tedesco e il bravo italiano. La rimozione delle colpe della Seconda Guerra Mondiale. Editori Laterza, Rome / Bari 2013.
  • Filippo Focardi: Italy's Amnesia over War Guilt. The "Evil Germans" alibi. In: Mediterranean Quarterly , Volume 25, No. 4 (January 2015), pp. 5-26.
  • Claudio Fogu: Italiani brava gente . The legacy of fascist historical culture on Italian politics of memory. In: Richard Ned Lebow u. a .: The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) / London 2006, pp. 147-176
  • Alexis Herr: The Holocaust and Compensated Compliance in Italy. Fossoli di Carpi, 1942-1952. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke (Hants) / New York 2016, ISBN 978-1-137-59898-1 . Chapter The Politics of Blame , pp. 93-112.
  • Aram Mattioli : «Viva Mussolini!». The appreciation of fascism in Berlusconi's Italy. Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, ISBN 350676912X .
  • Paolo Fonzi: Beyond the Myth of the “Good Italian”. Recent Trends in the Study of the Italian Occupation of Southeastern Europe during the Second World War. In: Südosteuropa , Volume 65 (2017), No. 2, pp. 239-259.

Movie

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Claudio Fogu: Italiani brava gente . The legacy of fascist historical culture on Italian politics of memory. In: Richard Ned Lebow u. a .: The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) / London 2006, pp. 147–176, here p. 147.
  2. ↑ Thomas Schlemmer: The royal Italian army in the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union . In: Fascism in Italy and Germany: Studies on Transfer and Comparison . Ed .: Sven Reichardt, Wallstein 2012, ISBN 9783835322059 , p. 148 ff.
  3. ^ Frank Vollmer: The political culture of fascism: sites of totalitarian dictatorship in Italy . Böhlau 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-23106-4 , p. 699 ff.
  4. ↑ Ruth Nattermann: From the memory of the survivors to critical research - The memory of the Shoah in Italy . In: The Shoah in History and Memory . Ed .: Claudia Müller, Patrick Ostermann, Karl-Siegbert Rehberg, transcript Verlag 2015, ISBN 978-3-8376-2794-7 , p. 28.
  5. ^ Lutz Klinkhammer: Novecento instead of Storia contemporanea? In: Contemporary History as a Problem: National Traditions and Perspectives of Research in Europe . Ed .: Alexander Nützenadel and Wolfgang Schieder, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2004, ISBN 3-525-36420-2 , p. 113 ff.