Military internees

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Albania.- Transport of disarmed, captured Italian troops by ship, September 1943

Military internees were privileged status compared to prisoners of war for certain groups of soldiers who were held captive by Germany during World War II . It was initially used for German-friendly prisoner groups from countries whose governments collaborated with Germany and which were not opponents of the war, from Denmark, Slovakia and Finland. A special situation arose in Italy from 1943. Germany viewed the Mussolini regime in Salo as a legal Italian government with which it was not at war and did not recognize the Badoglio government . After Italy signed the Cassibile armistice with the Allies on September 8, 1943 , the German Reich immediately implemented orders to disarm the Italian army and deport the soldiers to work in Germany as “Italian Military Internees (IMI)”. The Italian military internees strengthened the German war economy by around 600,000 workers. Those who refused to work were classified as “prisoners of war”. There was no uniform procedure with these prisoners of war (who are obliged to work under international law). Some of them were treated correctly in accordance with the provisions of the Geneva Convention , some were transferred to concentration camps, some were taken to the operational areas on the Eastern Front for forced labor , and some were shot.

Italian military internees

Italian military interned (IMI) was the German name for those Italian soldiers who were arrested and disarmed by German troops from September to November 1943 after the conclusion of the armistice between Italy and the Allies . However, only those were considered military internees who refused to continue the war on the side of Hitler and Mussolini. There were about 600,000 men. The Wehrmacht had originally planned to treat these soldiers as prisoners of war, but on September 20, 1943, Hitler's orders created the new status of military internees. This status served to deny the formerly allied soldiers the status of prisoners of war , which they under the protection of III. Geneva Convention of 1929 on the Treatment of Prisoners of War . At this point Italy and Germany were not at war either. Only on October 13, 1943 did official Italy declare war on Germany.

Ceremony for the transfer of Italian war internees to civilian employment , propaganda recording, August 1944

With the newly coined term, the Wehrmacht leadership was free to handle the prisoners. The support by the International Committee of the Red Cross was effectively prevented because they were not officially prisoners of war. The military internees were used as forced laborers in the German war economy , initially only men and NCOs, from the second half of 1944 also officers. They did forced labor in the Reich and in the occupied territory in the east, within the Wehrmacht and in all kinds of companies. Italian military internees were also living in internment camps and penal camps, at the end of 1944 there were 15,000. The Italian military internees were sometimes even worse treated than the Soviet prisoners due to the ruthless exploitation of their labor, food deprivation and lack of medical care. About 180,000 men of the military internees changed sides under this pressure and entered German service as combatants, auxiliaries or willing to work or became soldiers for Mussolini's Republic of Salò .

Transfer of Italian war internees from a camp in Berlin to civilian employment (August 1944). German propaganda recording

Mussolini made several attempts to stand up for the military internees. The fact that 600,000 Italians were doing forced labor in German camps under the most deplorable conditions made his Republic of Salò , which upheld the German-Italian alliance, untrustworthy. Germany did not treat the military internees as members of an allied nation, but as spoils of war. Hitler finally agreed to a change of status at a meeting between the two dictators on July 20, 1944, the day of the Stauffenberg assassination attempt . The internees were given civilian employment ( civil workers ), but were still not allowed to leave Germany and were still subject to the control of the Reich authorities.

Companies and factories in which the Italian prisoners had to work welcomed the transfer to civil status. They could now link wages to work performance and thus had a greater influence on the performance of the forced laborers than before. Above all, however, they could now threaten to be sent to a labor education camp . For the internees, civil status was associated with the possibility of going out, which was important for organizing food.

According to German information at the time, around 45,000 military internees perished, around 20,000 in the camps, around 5,400 in the eastern operational area of ​​the army, around 13,300 who were killed in the sinking of prisoner transporters, 6,300 were murdered. That is about 7.5 percent of the total, the actual number can no longer be determined, but it is probably higher. An unknown number of military internees died in massacres staged by fanatical supporters of National Socialism in its final phase : in Pothoff , Unterlüß , Liebenau , Hildesheim , Kassel and Treuenbrietzen .

Legal disputes

After the war, military internees received no redress, either in Germany or in Italy . After the war, they were treated like prisoners of war, for whom - with the exception of the officers - according to Article 27, Paragraph 1 of the Geneva Convention of 1929, there was a general duty to work in the service and according to the instructions of the detaining authorities and who were not entitled to any compensation for the work performed . The Federal Constitutional Court had in 2004 returned a constitutional complaint, which sought to compensation payments.

The highest Italian civil court, on the other hand, the Roman Court of Cassation , confirmed several decisions by subordinate instances in 2008, according to which the former Italian soldiers were entitled to compensation payments from the German state. Her abduction for forced labor was a crime against humanity . The German federal government, on the other hand, relies on the international law principle of state immunity , according to which states and their officials are protected from the jurisdiction of other states, and refers to an amount of forty million D-Marks that Germany paid to Italy more than forty years ago.

literature

Investigations

  • Gerhard Schreiber : Military Slaves in the Third Reich . In: Wolfgang Michalka (Ed.): The Second World War. Analyzes, basic features, research results . Published on behalf of the Military History Research Office. Piper, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-492-10811-3 , ( Piper 811 series ).
  • Gerhard Schreiber: The Italian military internees in the German sphere of influence. 1943-1945. Betrayed - despised - forgotten . Oldenbourg-Verlag, Munich a. a. 1990, ISBN 3-486-55391-7 , ( Contributions to Military History 28).
  • Gabriele Hammermann: Forced labor for the "ally". The working and living conditions of the Italian military internees in Germany 1943–1945 . Niemeyer, Tübingen 2002, ISBN 3-484-82099-3 . At the same time dissertation University of Trier, 1995
  • Christine Glauning, Andreas Nachama: Between all stools. The history of the Italian military internees 1943-1945 . Berlin, 2016, ISBN 978-3-941772-26-7

Autobiographical writings

  • Giuseppe Chiampo: Survival with pen and paper. From the diary of an Italian military internee in Hilkerode / Eichsfeld during World War II . Schmerse, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-926920-36-X .
  • Leonardo Calossi: Notes on internment in Germany 1943–1945. Forced labor using the example of an Italian military internee . Rudolph and Enke, Ebertshausen 2003, ISBN 3-931909-08-5 .
  • Giovanni R. Frisone, Deborah Smith Frisone (eds.): Dall'Albania al Lager di Fullen. Storia di un pittore internato. Ferruccio Francesco Frisone. Documentation and Information Center Emslandlager, Papenburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-926277-19-0 ).
    • Giovanni R. Frisone, Deborah Smith Frisone (Ed.): From Albania to Stalag VI C, branch camp Versen and Fullen. Drawings and notes by the Italian military internee Ferruccio Francesco Frisone 1943–1945 . Documentation and Information Center Emslandlager, Papenburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-926277-18-3

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rüdiger Overmans : The prisoner of war policy of the German Reich in Jörg Echternkamp (ed. On behalf of MGFA ): The German Reich and the Second World War , Volume 9/2, 2005, ISBN 3-421-06528-4 , pp. 825-834
  2. ↑ Mark Spoerer: Forced labor under the swastika . Deutsche Verlagsanstalt Stuttgart Munich 2001, ISBN 3-421-05464-9 , p. 84, p. 106.
  3. ↑ BVerfG, 2 BvR 1379/01 of June 28, 2004, paragraph no. 1-45
  4. ↑ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , June 7, 2008, p. 5