“Unraveling the Mystery: Why Italy Escaped a Post-War Reckoning for Its Atrocities”
However, after weeks of secret negotiations, on September 3rd, Badoglio’s man General Castellano signed a secret armistice with US general Walter Bedell Smith. On September 8, the agreement was made public, pulling Italy out of the Axis pact.
But then things became messy.
Mussolini was freed by German paratroopers on September 12, with the complicity of Fascist hardliners. Thus, the dictator was reinstated as head of a new state, the Italian Social Republic, in control of the Northern and Central sections of the Italian ‘boot’. The King and Badoglio, supported by the Allied expeditionary forces, retained control of the South.
Thus, Italy was now embroiled in a civil war, layered on top of the larger global conflict still raging. On one side: the Italian Social Republic and German forces deployed to Italy. On the other: the Allies, the ‘co-belligerent’ Italian troops who had disavowed fascism, plus an aggressive partisan movement, which targeted Nazi-Fascist forces deep inside their territory.
As it was the case elsewhere in Europe, partisan action was met with brutal reprisals against civilians, enacted both by local fascists and German nazis. This led to a paradoxical situation: in the setting of a war crimes tribunal, a prospective post-war Italian government could have played the part of both the defendant, and the victim.
As I said: a mess.
Which gets even worse.
Following the September 8 armistice, Badoglio and US General Eisenhower signed a second agreement on September 29, the ‘Instrument of Surrender’. According to its Article 29, the new Italian government was obliged to arrest and surrender into the hands of the United Nations, to quote, ‘Benito Mussolini, his Chief Fascist associates and all persons suspected of having committed war crimes or analogous offences whose names appear on lists to be communicated by the United Nations and who now or in the future are on territory controlled by the Allied Military Command or by the Italian Government.’
