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Mussolini and the Salò Republic, 1943–1945 pp 101–125Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Fascist-Style Law and Order

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Part of the book series: Italian and Italian American Studies ((IIAS))

Abstract

In the RSI government, the collapse of law and order proceeded apace. The Germans impaired the royalist Carabinieri, while the National Republican Guard broke down from sheer incompetence. In the resultant void, rogue militias proliferated: Prince Valerio Borghese’s X Mas, the Muti Legion, the Carità band, and an Italian SS. A general free-for-all ensued between federale and rogue militias. Power slipped from the authorities in Salò to a hodge-podge of municipalities, regional authorities, and rogue gangs. Given the competition among provincial heads, federali, questori, and podestà, space was created for the German military to impose their will on local Italian officials. The RSI interior ministry made desultory efforts to harness the militias but was not helped by Mussolini’s lack of willpower to quell the mayhem engulfing the regime. In the general breakdown of authority, Fascist radicals and rogue squads, having seized police functions from local civil and police authorities, were easily able to defy Mussolini’s desultory efforts to reimpose discipline over disorderly local power centers or to break up the disparate irregular Fascist formations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For example, a commander of the Guardia di Finanza , accused of being anti-Fascist, sent a report to his superiors claiming that he had supervised the arrest of Jews and anti-Fascists who were looking to be expatriated to Switzerland. ACS, RSI, SPD, Carteggio riservato, b. 77.

  2. 2.

    “Guardia Nazionale e Polizia Repubblicana,” La Stampa, 20 November 1943.

  3. 3.

    Pier Paolo Battistelli & Piero Crociani, World War II Partisan Warfare in Italy (Oxford & New York: Osprey, 2015), p. 15.

  4. 4.

    Borghi, Tra Fascio littorio e senso dello stato, pp. 119–21.

  5. 5.

    Dolfin, Con Mussolini nella tragedia, pp. 76–77.

  6. 6.

    Ibid., pp. 121–22.

  7. 7.

    Dolfin, Con Mussolini nella tragedia, p. 142.

  8. 8.

    Ibid.

  9. 9.

    Cited in Ganapini, La Repubblica delle camicie nere, p. 179.

  10. 10.

    OO, XXXII: 275–76.

  11. 11.

    Decreto Legislativo del Duce del 18 Decembre 1943, n. 921, in ACS, Ministero dell’Interno RSI, Segreteria del Capo della Polizia, b. 26.

  12. 12.

    Cited in Patricelli, Il nemico in casa, pp. 116–17.

  13. 13.

    Borghi, Tra Fascio littorio e senso dello stato, p. 125.

  14. 14.

    Ganapini, La Repubblica delle camicie nere, pp. 275–95.

  15. 15.

    Klinkhammer, L’occupazione tedesca in Italia, p. 303.

  16. 16.

    Ibid.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., pp. 296–98, 303, 313–15; Toni Rovatti, Leoni vegetariani: la violenza fascista durante la RSI (Bologna: CLUEB, 2011), p. 27.

  18. 18.

    Dolfin, Con Mussolini nella tragedia, p. 277.

  19. 19.

    Ibid., p. 281.

  20. 20.

    Marco De Nicolò, “I prefetti capi di provincia,” in Luca Alessandrini, ed., 1943: Guerra e società (Rome: Viella, 2015), Kindle Loc, 3178.

  21. 21.

    Enzo Collotti, “Documenti sull’attività della Sicherheitsdienst nell’Italia occupata,” Il Movimento di Liberazione in Italia 83 (1966), p. 58.

  22. 22.

    Ganapini, La repubblica delle camicie nere, p. 190.

  23. 23.

    Osti Guerrazzi gives a comprehensive picture of radical takeover in the rural areas of the country in his Storia della repubblica sociale italiana, pp. 79–85.

  24. 24.

    Amicucci, I 600 giorni di Mussolini, p. 68.

  25. 25.

    Cited in Robert Katz, “The New CIA-OSS Documents, 2000–2002,” [Decode document 7184], Kappler to Berlin, October 5, 1943, in Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule: 1922–1945, p. 235; Moellhausen, La carta perdente, p. 120.

  26. 26.

    Rovatti, Leoni vegetariani, p. 59; Pansa , Il gladio e l’alloro, pp. 93–106.

  27. 27.

    Battistelli and Molinari, Le forze armate della RSI, p. 121.

  28. 28.

    Dolfin, Con Mussolini nella tragedia, p. 163.

  29. 29.

    Pansa , Il Gladio e l’alloro, pp. 15–19.

  30. 30.

    Lamb , War in Italy, p. 91; NAW, T-821, Italian Documents 045804–045813.

  31. 31.

    Primo de Lazzari, Le SS Italiane (Milan: Teti Editore, 2002), p. 35. “Before God, I make this sacred oath: In the struggle for my Italian country against all enemies I will be in an absolute and obediant manner at one with Adolf Hitler, the supreme commander of the German army, and as a valorous soldier I will be ready in every moment to give my life in obedience to this oath.”

  32. 32.

    Klinkhammer, L’occupazione tedesca in Italia, p. 268.

  33. 33.

    Lamb, War in Italy, p. 89.

  34. 34.

    Ricciotti Lazzero, Le SS italiane: Storia dei 20,000 che giurarono fedeltà a Hitler (Milan: Rizzoli, 1982), pp. 18–19.

  35. 35.

    Patricelli, Il nemico in casa, p. 88.

  36. 36.

    Avagliano and Palmieri , L’Italia di Salò, p. 233.

  37. 37.

    Klinkhammer, L’occupazione tedesca in Italia, p. 555, n. 90.

  38. 38.

    Ibid., p. 317.

  39. 39.

    Ibid., p. 555, n. 91.

  40. 40.

    Lazzero, Le SS italiane, p. 259.

  41. 41.

    Cited in Ibid., p. 31.

  42. 42.

    Nicola Guerra, I volontari italiani nelle Waffen-SS: Pensiero politico, formazione culturale e motivazioni al volontariato (Chieti: Solfanelli, 2014), passim.

  43. 43.

    Lazzero documents these outrages in his Le SS italiane, pp. 89–92. See also Sergio Corbatti & Marco Nava, Sentire-pensare-volere. Storia della Legione SS italiana (Milan: Ritter, 2001), pp. 165–67.

  44. 44.

    Cited in Francesco Germinario, L’altra memoria: L’Estrema destra. Salò e la Resistenza (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1999), p. 80; Mario Bordogna, Junio Valerio Borghese e la X flottiglia MAS. Dall’8 settembre al 26 aprile 1945 (Milan: Mursia, 1995), p. 39.

  45. 45.

    Ibid., pp. 48, 56.

  46. 46.

    Moellhausen , La carta perdente, pp. 412–13, n. 98.

  47. 47.

    Jack Greene and Alessandro Massignani, The Black Prince and the Sea Devils: The Story of Valerio Borghese and the Elite Units of the Decima Mas (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2004), p. 149.

  48. 48.

    Cited in Bocca, La repubblica di Mussolini, p. 282, who cites Franz Turchi , Prefetto con Mussolini (Rome: Latinità, 1950), p. 161.

  49. 49.

    Cited in Ibid., p. 282.

  50. 50.

    Marco Gasparini and Claudio Razeto, 1944: Diario dell’anno che divise l’Italia (Rome: Castelvecchi, 2014), p. 329.

  51. 51.

    Lamb , War in Italy, pp. 250–51.

  52. 52.

    Zara Algardi, Processo ai fascisti Anfuso, Caruso, Graziani e Borghese di fronte alla giustizia. Esame storico-giuridico (Florence: Parenti, 1988), p. 197.

  53. 53.

    Bocca , La repubblica di Mussolini, p. 282.

  54. 54.

    Osti Guerrazzi, Storia della Repubblica sociale italiana, p. 98.

  55. 55.

    ACS, Ministero dell Interno RSI, Gabinetto, b. 46.

  56. 56.

    Bocca, La Repubblica di Mussolini, pp. 192–95.

  57. 57.

    Ibid., pp. 191–92.

  58. 58.

    ACS, Ministero dell’Interno, RSI, Segreteria del Capo della Polizia, b. 75.

  59. 59.

    Ganapini, La repubblica delle camicie nere, p. 54.

  60. 60.

    Bertoldi, Salò, pp. 211–12.

  61. 61.

    Cited in Ganapini , La repubblica delle camicie nere, p. 53.

  62. 62.

    Massimiliano Griner, La “pupilla” del Duce: La Legione autonoma mobile Ettore Muti (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2004), p. 138.

  63. 63.

    Ganapini , La repubblica delle camicie nere, pp. 53–54.

  64. 64.

    Griner, La “pupilla” del duce, p. 139.

  65. 65.

    Ibid., pp. 138–41.

  66. 66.

    Ganapini , La repubblica delle camicie nere, p. 288.

  67. 67.

    Battistelli and Molinari, Le Forze Armate della RSI, p. 204.

  68. 68.

    Ibid.

  69. 69.

    Cited in Griner, La “pupilla” del Duce, pp. 121–22.

  70. 70.

    Cited in Ibid., p. 129.

  71. 71.

    Ibid., p. 105.

  72. 72.

    Osti Guerrazzi, “Fascisti repubblicani a Roma,” in Violenza, tragedia e memoria della Repubblica sociale italiana, pp. 166–67.

  73. 73.

    Lepre, La storia della repubblica di Mussolini, pp. 110–11; Moellhausen , La carta perdente, pp. 166–69.

  74. 74.

    Gasparini and Razeto, 1943, p. 209.

  75. 75.

    Dollmann, Roma Nazista, p. 309.

  76. 76.

    Ibid., pp. 310–11.

  77. 77.

    Ibid., p. 309.

  78. 78.

    Cited in Dianella Gagliani’s preface to Riccardo Caporale, La “Banda Carità,” Storia del Reparto Servizi Speciali (1943–45) (Lucca: Edizioni S. Marco Litotipo, 2005), p. 13.

  79. 79.

    Caporale, La “Banda Carità.” Una ‘leggenda’ nera,” in Gianfranco Porta, ed., La RSI: La Repubblica voluta da Hitler (Rome: Ediesse, 2005), pp. 170–71.

  80. 80.

    Ibid., p. 199.

  81. 81.

    Ibid., pp. 353–57.

  82. 82.

    Ibid., pp. 174–75.

  83. 83.

    Ibid., p. 206.

  84. 84.

    Coco, Polizie speciali, pp. 164–65.

  85. 85.

    Ibid.

  86. 86.

    Katz, The Battle for Rome, p. 297.

  87. 87.

    Gasparini and Razeto, 1944, p. 240.

  88. 88.

    Bertoldi, Salò, p. 209. Saewecke worked for the CIA from 1949 until 1951 and then for the German federal police. In 1998, he was tried in abstentia for having fifteen Italian partisans shot in 1944.

  89. 89.

    Bertoldi, Salò, pp. 209–10.

  90. 90.

    Klinkhammer, L’occupazione tedesca in Italia, p. 298; Gagliani , Brigate nere, p. 294.

  91. 91.

    Cited in Toni Rovatti, “La violenza dei fascisti repubblicani. Fra collaborazionismo e guerra civile,” in Gianluca Fulvetti e Paolo Pezzino, eds., Zone di guerra, geografie di sangue: L’Atlante delle stragi naziste e fasciste in Italia (1943–1945) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2016), p. 160.

  92. 92.

    Lutz Klinkhammer , Stragi naziste in Italia 1943–1944 (Rome: Donzelli, 2006), p. 51.

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  1. Department of History, West Chester University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    H. James Burgwyn

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Burgwyn, H.J. (2018). Fascist-Style Law and Order. In: Mussolini and the Salò Republic, 1943–1945. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76189-3_6

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