German war crimes in Italy

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German war crimes in Italy were committed between September 8, 1943, when Italy left the German alliance system , and May 2, 1945, when German troops surrendered in Italy. These covered the entire spectrum of war crimes , acts of violence defined as crimes against humanity , and deportation offenses committed against Italian military and civilians.

prehistory

Between the end of 1942 and the beginning of 1943, the Axis forces suffered serious losses on the German-Soviet front . The allies of Germany were also affected, the 8th Italian Army was crushed by the Red Army in the winter offensive of 1942 , and its remnants returned to Italy in the spring of 1943. New equipment was missing for their return to the Eastern Front .

On September 9, 1940, an Italian army began invading Egypt . The advance came to a halt about 100 km beyond the Egyptian-Libyan border; on December 8, 1940, the Allies launched a counterattack with Operation Compass . This was so successful that the entire Cyrenaica could finally be occupied and by the beginning of February 1941 the Italian 10th Army was almost completely wiped out.

Hitler hesitated for a long time because he was interested in “his” campaign, the war against the Soviet Union. On January 11, 1941, he issued "Instruction No. 22", in which he ordered the Sunflower Company, among other things . General Erwin Rommel was given the task of leading these German support troops for the oppressed Italians. While Hitler sent some units to Africa from the war-decisive armored force, at the same time he began the Balkan campaign in spring 1941 to further support Italy.

Against this background, the success of the German campaign in Africa was called into question from the start. The Axis powers had to withdraw from North Africa with heavy losses, Army Group Africa capitulated on May 13, 1943 near Tunis , Italy lost its African colonies . In May 1943 the Allies began an air offensive against Italy. On the night of July 9th to 10th, two Anglo-American armies landed in Sicily . As a result, Mussolini's regime collapsed. King Victor Emmanuel III had Mussolini arrested on July 25th.

The new government under Pietro Badoglio began secret negotiations with the Allies on an armistice, which on September 3, 1943 led to the conclusion of the Cassibile Armistice , which was announced on September 8, 1943. The Wehrmacht High Command saw Italy's departure from the alliance and had worked out plans under the cover name " Case Axis " to occupy Italy and take over the Italian positions in the Balkans and southern France. By the time of the Italian armistice, more than 20 divisions had been transferred to Italy so that the initiative could be taken immediately. After the armistice became known, these plans were triggered. About half of the 1.52 million strong Italian army was disarmed and taken prisoner. After Mussolini's liberation, Germany set up a renewed fascist puppet government , the Italian Social Republic, in the company Eiche in the occupied territories . Their militias and military units were mainly used to fight the partisans. Units of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS , some of which had withdrawn from the Eastern Front, tried to stop the Allied advance in Italy and fought the " Resistancea " in northern Italy with the toughest possible means. On October 13, 1943, Italy declared war on Germany and officially rejoined the war on the side of the Allies.

Treatment of the Italian Army

11,400 Italian military personnel lost their lives as a result of criminal or international orders. 44,720 partisans were killed, often in violation of applicable international regulations. 9,180 civilians were killed, men, women, children. Many, and perhaps the most important, of the crimes are documented, but not all. Therefore one has to assume that the numbers are even higher.

Italian troop commanders were shot dead as irregulars if they did not succeed in getting their soldiers to hand over their weapons to the Wehrmacht and surrender within a short time. According to the Hague Land Warfare Regulations , however, as belligerents, these soldiers were entitled to oppose disarmament, and they were not allowed to be treated as irregulars. This was clearly established in the trial of the Southeast Generals charged with war crimes .

On Hitler's orders, some officers of the Wehrmacht had Italian units shot down when they were handed over their weapons and captured: The 1st Mountain Division on the island of Kefalonia executed 5,200 Italian soldiers who had already been disarmed ( massacre on Kefalonia ). Similar mass executions of Italians took place in Albania and Yugoslavia . There were also German murders on Italian soil of prisoners of war who had opposed their disarmament.

The bullet decree of March 4, 1944 provided that captured fugitive prisoners of war and non-working NCOs should be handed over to the Gestapo . The Gestapo took them to Mauthausen concentration camp and shot them in the neck there. If there were a large number, they were gassed.

An order from the commanding general of the XXII. Mountain Army Corps , Hubert Lanz , stated that Italian soldiers found in civilian clothes should be shot completely informally. In doing so, he defied the most primitive rules of martial law .

Over 13,000 Italian prisoners of war drowned when they were supposed to be brought in hopelessly overloaded steamers from the Greek islands to the mainland in 1943. The order to transport them away regardless of whether life-saving equipment was available on board the ships constituted a serious violation of international martial law.

The Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz , ordered that all leading officers from Submarina and other Italian naval agencies should be sentenced if they were responsible for fighting against German naval forces. This order required war crimes from his subordinates.

Around 600,000 soldiers of the Italian armed forces were disarmed, interned and deported to the territory of the empire for forced labor . They were classified as " military internees " in order not to have to recognize them as prisoners of war protected under international law. They were collectively regarded as “traitors” and were therefore often treated worse in the Reich than the Eastern workers . About 40 to 45,000 of them died by the end of the war. The survivors were transferred to civil prison status in 1944 and better cared for afterwards.

German occupation

Within a few weeks after Italy's armistice, Germany increased the strength of Army Group C in Italy to 32 divisions, which were under the command of General Field Marshal Albert Kesselring . The Waffen SS divisions operating in Italy were tactically subordinate to Army Group C. The occupied territory, about two thirds of Italy, was divided into three administrative zones. Ten provinces in the north have been combined in the two “operational zones” “Adriatic Coastal Land” and “Alpine Foreland” (South Tyrol). They were given a civil administration, which was subordinate to the Gauleiter of the neighboring Reichsgaue Tyrol and Carinthia, Franz Hofer and Friedrich Rainer and administered like German provinces. Another 60 km wide "Northwest Alps" operational zone along the Swiss and French borders was placed directly under the command of Army High Command 14. The territory that joined the troops' battle line was also subordinate to the commanding generals of the army corps to the extent that it was militarily necessary . A military administration of the Wehrmacht was set up throughout the rest of the area. After the liberation of the imprisoned Mussolini he officially took over the leadership of this constantly shrinking area. The German military administration existed parallel to this and took over the executive power more and more often because the Italian administration became more and more ineffective as a result of the war weariness and the growing resistance activity of the population. The entire occupied area was subordinated to the Supreme SS and Police Leader SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS Karl Wolff , whose office was made up of a commander of the Waffen-SS, an order police and security service of the Reichsführer SS . Your subordinate authorities coordinated the establishment, monitoring and deployment of Italian police and Waffen SS units that were supposed to suppress the Italian resistance movement. Italian authorities, commandant offices of the Wehrmacht and the authorities of the SS, each with their own troops, coexisted in the Italian Social Republic.

German-Italian relations after the war

After the final collapse of fascism, there was initially a diverse political, personal, and judicial settlement with fascism in Italy. However, this came to an end with the amnesty law of June 22, 1946.

On June 2, 1962, the governments of the Federal Republic of Germany and Italy signed a treaty on benefits for Italian nationals affected by Nazi persecution . In the draft law passed by the Federal Cabinet, it says: In the property contract, the Federal Republic committed itself to pay Italy 40 million DM for outstanding economic questions. This should satisfy all Italian claims from the period from September 1, 1939 to May 8, 1945. In return, Italy had undertaken to release the assets that had not yet been liquidated, as well as confiscated German brands and brands. In the reparation treaty, a payment of DM 40 million had also been made to Italian nationals who had suffered damage to their liberty or health as a result of Nazi persecution. This payment should also finally settle the question of reparation.

In 2008, around 53 individual and class actions relating to Nazi war crimes were pending in Italian courts. In 2008, the Italian Supreme Court of Appeal, the Corte Suprema di Cassazione , decided in the last instance on behalf of the plaintiffs three proceedings in which compensation claims had been made against Germany. The judgment of May 2008 concerned compensation for the deportation for forced labor to Germany; in the Distomo case (June 2008) relatives of Greeks who were victims of retaliation by the 4th SS Police Panzer Grenadier Division for a partisan attack had sued . On October 21, the relatives of two victims were awarded compensation who had been killed in an SS massacre on June 29, 1944 in Civitella in Val di Chiana . In the opinion of the Italian court of appeal, the German-Italian contract does not preclude these claims for compensation. Germany appealed against this decision to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, claiming that, as a sovereign state, it enjoys immunity in Italian courts and that it has already paid flat-rate compensation to Italy for Nazi crimes under bilateral agreements.

Examples of German war crimes in Italy

Web links

See also

Film adaptations

  • The Italian documentary " Die Geige aus Cervarolo " deals with the massacre of Italian civilians by German troops in the Reggian Apennines in spring 1944 and also looks at the trials of the German soldiers in Verona.
  • The film The Collini case deals with the shooting of Italian civilians by SS units and the like. a. the legal processing of war crimes in connection with the statute of limitations scandal of 1968 .

literature

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Schreiber: German war crimes in Italy. P. 8.
  2. ↑ Gerhard Schreiber: The Italian military internees in the German sphere of influence 1943–1945 , Oldenbourg, 1990, p. 507.
  3. ↑ Gerhard Schreiber : Military Slaves in the Third Reich. In: Wolfgang Michalka (Ed.): The Second World War. Analyzes, basic features, research results. Edited on behalf of the Military History Research Office . Munich 1989, ISBN 3-932131-38-X , p. 764 ff.
  4. ↑ Page 15 ( Memento of the original from April 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 659 kB).  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.iicberlino.esteri.it
  5. ↑ quoted from: Heinz-Joachim Fischer: Judgments and complaints. German-Italian consultations in Trieste. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 18, 2008, p. 10.
  6. ↑ The mirror. 24/2008, June 9, 2008, p. 38: The legacy of camp number 7 .
  7. ↑ The mirror. 47/2008, November 18, 2008: Steinmeier wants a joint historians conference with Italy .
  8. ↑ FAZ. November 27, 2008, p. 5.