Abstract
Historians have long focused on the polycentric aspects of twentieth-century totalitarianisms, portraying them as considerably less monolithic than once believed.2 This is particularly true of the Italian Fascist regime. Contemporary interpretations place the proper emphasis on the competition between different centers of power (the Crown, the party, the various ministries, the interests of industrialists, the Catholic Church …), according Mussolini the role of fulcrum balancing the scales;3 yet they often take the mutual understanding between elites and the regime for granted, assuming that the regime could count on the support of the interest groups represented in the Fascist political system. At the same time, however, the question of the armed forces’ collusion with the regime—of their loyalty to Mussolini’s strategic plans—has also been the subject of debate for many years.4 Several participants in this debate have aimed to demonstrate army leaders’ deliberate subordination to Mussolini and their agreement with the regime’s decisions based on a depth of shared values, thus positing “the affinity between two mentalities: that of career military personnel on the one hand, and that of the Fascists on the other.”5 Other scholars have underlined the “unfinished and incomplete fascistization of the armed forces”6 or even postulated the existence of a rivalry between the regime and the army, with the intent of absolving the military leadership from any responsibility for Fascism’s crimes.
If the guidelines of the Italian Army commands were different from, or indeed opposed to, those of the Party, this would [create] a situation … not merely ambiguous and absurd, but completely nonsensical.
—Eugenio Coselschi, head of the Fascist Party delegation in Zagreb, August 21, 19411
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Martin Broszat, The Hitler State: The Foundation and Development of the Internal Structure of the Third Reich (New York: Longman, 1981); and
Ian Kershaw, The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987).
Enzo Collotti, Fascismo, fascismi (Florence: Sansoni, 1989).
Giorgio Rochat, L’esercito italiano in pace e in guerra: Studi di storia militare (Milan: Rara, 1991).
Davide Rodogno, Fascism’s European Empire: Italian Occupation during the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 147. This assertion seems particularly fitting with regard to certain specific traits, such as anti-Slav racism, anticommunism, and Rome’s “civilizing mission.”
Collotti, “Sulla politica di repressione italiana nei Balcani,” in La memoria del nazismo nell’Europa di oggi, ed. Leonardo Paggi (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1997), 208.
Rochat, Le guerre italiane 1935–1943 (Turin: Einaudi, 2005), 363.
The words are those of Mussolini’s former foreign minister (and son-in-law), Galeazzo Ciano. See Galeazzo Ciano, Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, ed. Malcolm Muggeridge, trans. Stuart Hood (London: Odhams Press Limited, 1948), 436.
Luciano Monzali and Francesco Caccamo, eds., L’occupazione italiana della jugoslavia (1941–1943) (Florence: Le Lettere, 2008).
This is exemplified by the books of Giulio Vignoli, aimed primarily at absolving the Savoy monarchy of any responsibility: Giulio Vignoli, La vicenda italo-montenegrina: L’inesistente indipendenza del Montenegro nel 1941 (Genoa: ECIG, 2002);
Vignoli, Il sovrano sconosciuto: Tomoslavo II re di Croazia (Milan: Mursia, 2006).
See the documentation in Rodolfo Mosca, ed., L’Europa verso la catastrofe (documenti diplomatici raccolti da Galeazzo Ciano) (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1964);
Ciano, Galeazzo Ciano’s Diary: 1939–1943, ed. Muggeridge (London: Heinemann, 1947); and
Ministero degli Affari Esteri, I documenti diplomatici italiani , series 9, vol. 6–10 (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1987–1990).
Egidio Ortona, “Diario sul governo della Dalmazia (1941–1943),” Storia Contemporanea 18, no. 6 (December 1987): 1379.
Marco Cuzzi, L’occupazione italiana della Slovenia, 1940–1943 (Rome: Ufficio Storico dello Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito, 1998).
The expression, used by Rodogno, was coined by Ian Kershaw, who first employed the concept of “working towards the Führer” as a tool to analyze the polycratic nature of the Nazi dictatorship. See Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis (London: W. W. Norton and Co., 2000).
Conflicts among the various authorities in charge reached their peak in the final months of 1941, in the province of Lubljana, and between March and July of the following year in the governorate. Regarding the former, see Cuzzi, L’occupazione italiana, 135–62. For the latter, see Ortona, “Diario sul governo”; and Talpo, Dalmazia: Una cronaca per la storia (1942) (Rome: Ufficio Storico dello Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito, 1990).
The expression became the title for at least two books on Italian war crimes in Yugoslavia: Tone Ferenc, “Si ammazza troppo poco”: Lubiana 1941–1943 (Ljubljana: Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica, 1999);
Gianni Oliva, “Si ammazza troppo poco”: I crimini di guerra italiani 1940–43 (Milan: Mondadori, 2006).
Circolare 3C; cited in Massimo Legnani, “Il ‘ginger’ del generale Roatta,” Italia Contemporanea 209–210 (1997–1998): 159.
Collotti, “Sul razzismo antislavo,” in Nel nome della razza: Il razzismo nella storia d’Italia 1870–1945, ed. Alberto Bugio (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999), 33–61;
Teodoro Sala, “Guerra e amministrazione in Jugoslavia 1941–1943: Un’ipotesi coloniale,” in L’Italia in guerra (1940–1943), ed. Pier Paolo Poggio and Bruna Micheletti (Brescia: Annali della Fondazione “Luigi Micheletti,” 1990–91), 83–94.
Jerzy W. Borejsza, Il fascismo e l’Europa orientale: Dalla propaganda all’aggressione (Rome: Laterza, 1981).
Eric Gobetti, Dittatore per caso (Naples: L’Ancora del Mediterraneo, 2001);
Luca Micheletta, La resa dei conti: Il Kosovo, l’Italia e la dissoluzione della Jugoslavia (1939–1941) (Rome: Editrice Nuova Cultura, 2008).
Even before military operations began, on March 28, 1941, Mussolini advised Hitler to “also keep in mind the Croatian separatist tendencies represented by Dr. [Ante] Pavelic, who is currently a short distance from Rome.” Cited in Alfredo Breccia, Jugoslavia 1939–1941: Diplomazia della neutralità (Milan: Giuffrè, 1978), 602.
For a reconstruction of the short-lived and unsucessful activities of the Slovene consulta, presided over by the former Ban Marko Natlačen, see Ferenc, “Gospod visoki komisar pravi …” Consulta per la provincia di Lubiana. Documenti (Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino, 2001).
Eric Gobetti, L’occupazione allegra: Italiani in Jugoslavia 1941–1943 (Rome: Carocci, 2007), 105–45.
Jozo Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001).
An average of approximately 300,000 men in Yugoslav territory alone. Dragan S. Nenezić, Jugoslovenske oblasti pod Italijom: 1941–1943 (Belgrade: Vojnoistorijski institut, 1999), 203.
I refer here in particular to the intelligence contributions provided in Kninska Krajna by Salvatore Loi: see Gobetti, L’occupazione allegra, 78. Loi later authored two volumes reconstructing his role in these events: Salvatore Loi, Jugoslavia 1941 (Turin: Il Nastro Azzurro, 1953);
Loi, Le operazioni delle unità italiane in Jugoslavia (1941–1943) (Rome: Ufficio Storico dello Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito, 1978).
James H. Burgwyn, Empire on the Adriatic: Mussolini’s Conquest of Yugoslavia, 1941–1943 (New York: Enigma Books, 2005), 271.
In mid-February 1943, a letter from Hitler directly to Mussolini “dedicated a whole three pages to the need to disarm the Chetniks.” Pietromarchi, Diario di Luca Pietromarchi, 1 March 1943; cited in Renzo De Felice, Mussolini l’alleato 1940–1943 (Turin: Einaudi, 1990), 438.
At the beginning of 1943, the operations conducted by the Chetniks of Djurišić led to the killing of roughly 10,000 Muslim civilians. AUSSME, DS, 1069, Report on the mood of the population in the occupied territories, February 1943. “The Italian intervention consisted of requesting that I limit the geographic scope of the conflict,” the Chetnik commander later admitted. Pavle Djurišić cited in Mirko Grmek, Marc Gjidare, and Neven Simac, eds. Le nettoyage ethnique (Paris: Fayard, 1993), 220–23.
Vlado Marković and Radoje Pajović, eds. Saradnja četnika sa okupatorom u Crnoj Gori: Dokumenti 1941–1945 (Podgorica-Cetinje: Subnor, 1996), 206–9, 231–33. The documents are dated November 2 and 7, 1942. According to one scholar, Pirzio Biroli “sent a message to Mihailović already in late 1942, specifying that he wanted a separate peace with the British. General Mihailović duly passed the message on to London.” Anthony Eden to Winston Churchill, 2 December 1942; cited in
Srdjan Trifković, “Rivalry between Germany and Italy in Croatia, 1942–1943,” The Historical Journal 4 (December 1993): 900.
The exact date remains uncertain, but the two intermediaries were supposed to meet in eastern Bosnia sometime between October and December 1942. Stefano Fabei, I cetnici nella seconda guerra mondiale (Gorizia: Libreria Editrice Goriziana, 2006), 158–59; Talpo, Dalmazia (1942), 1253–54. A similar meeting was repeated in March 1943. Bucarelli, “Disgregazione jugoslava,” 57.
Luciano Monzali, “La questione jugoslava nella politica estera italiana dalla prima guerra mondiale ai trattati di Osimo (1914–75),” in Europa adriatica: Storia, relazioni, economica, ed. Franco Botta and Italo Grazia (Rome: Laterza, 2004), 36.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2012 Giulia Albanese and Roberta Pergher
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gobetti, E. (2012). The Royal Army’s Betrayal?. In: Albanese, G., Pergher, R. (eds) In the Society of Fascists. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230392939_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230392939_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-35213-5
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-39293-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)