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Epilogue Carrier Epilogue 356 Epilogue Carrier Epilogue Richard Carrier The introduction of this book claimed that Italy’s participation in the war is insufficiently examined, overshadowed by the fascination exerted by Nazi Germany, its armed forces and its leader, Hitler. Hence, for decades, non-Ital- ian scholars and writers passed over Italy’s involvement in the deadly struggle.1 As a consequence, the Anglophone readership not only learned to underplay Germany’s most important military ally between June 1940 and May 1943, but also to disregard the collective tragedy suffered by Italians after September 1943. From then on, too many saw Italy as a theater of operations—and a rather secondary one after 6 June 1944—where Allied and German armies fought bitterly. This collection of essays reveals that such a narrow view is no longer appropriate. Of all the societies engulfed by the world war, the complexity and the pecu- liarity of the Italian experience are stunning.2 To recapitulate is worthy. In a first war, Mussolini fought four different enemies: France, Great Britain, Greece, and finally the Soviet Union. The June 1940 attack on the French alpine border failed, and left Il Duce with an inglorious occupation. War against Great Britain brought on the North African and Mediterranean campaigns, a tragic ordeal for the forze armate that ended in an German-Italian defeat in Tunis in May 1943.3 It also instigated the long bombing campaign of the Royal Air Force (and later the USAAF) against Italy.4 The failed invasion of Greece of 28 October 1940, a most ill-considered and reckless decision, pitted Hitler’s war machine against Yugoslavia and Greece, and destroyed for good Mussolini’s 1 With the exception of the “usual suspects” who dedicated most of their professional life to the study of fascism and its armed forces: MacGregor Knox, Brian R. Sullivan, James Sadkovich, and to a lesser extent, John Gooch. 2 Few have depicted this complexity and peculiarity as well as Nuto Revelli, Le due guerre: guerra fascista e guerra partigiana (Turin: Einaudi, 2005). 3 Still today, not one single monograph has been written in the English language on the Italian North African campaign. Yet, it was the campaign that produced the most enduring myths about Italian military ineffectiveness. For a different view, see Richard Carrier, “Some Reflections on the Fighting Power of the Italian Army in North Africa, 1940–1943,” War in History, 2015, Vol. 22(4), 503–528. 4 On the bombing of Italy between 1940 and 1945, see the unmatched work of Richard Overy, The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War over Europe, 1940–1945 (New York: Viking, 2013), pp. 318–360. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004363762_017 Epilogue 357 illusion of a parallel war. It threw the Italian army into multiple occupations in the Balkans and the Aegean that lasted for twenty-nine months.5 Finally, Mussolini envisaged the deployment of the Corpo di spedizione italiano in Russia to join Hitler’s crusade against Bolshevism (10 July 1941) as a last chance to save his regime’s prestige. The storm that hit von Paulus’ Sixth Army at Stalingrad also crushed, in the subsequent weeks, the Italian Eighth Army’s divisions on the Don. The repatriation of the survivors at the end of the winter of 1943 destroyed any remaining illusion of a Fascist victory in this first war. The days of Mussolini’s regime were now numbered. The Allied invasion of Sicily of 10 July 1943 and the following bombing of Rome6 (19 July) played their part in “one of the most dramatic historical events of the twentieth century.”7 Mussolini’s fall from power on 25 July, una data memorabile (“a memorable date”), unleashed an outbreak of “irresist- ible enthusiasm.”8 For most Italians, the war was over. But in a matter of days, illusions shattered; instead of peace, the country slid into a second, multifac- eted, war. This time, the destinies of all—combatants or civilians, in Italy or abroad—now depended on the decisions and actions of the king’s new gov- ernment, the Allies, and Hitler. The next nineteen months proved divisive and unpredictable, as the fight between foreign powers on Italian soil coincided with a civil war.9 Amidst the ruins of fascism, two political regimes—the royal government and the Italian Social Republic—competed and killed for the loyalty of Italians, and fought for the endorsement of their respective guard- ians, the Allies and the Nazis. It was ironic: for more than twenty years, Victor Emmanuel III and Benito Mussolini shared power; now they both fought, in very different ways, for political survival. No less important was the emergence of one of the most powerful resistance movement of the European war, dedi- 5 Or until May 1945 for the soldiers who decided to fight against Germany after 8 September 1943. See Elena Aga Rossi and Maria Teresa Giusti, Una guerra a parte: I militari italiani nei Balcani, 1940–1945 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011). 6 For an Italian perspective on the bombing of Rome, see Manco Fincardi, “Gli italiani e l’attesa di un bombardamento della capitale (1940–1943),” in Nicola Labanca (ed.), I bombardamenti aerei sull’Italia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012), pp. 213–245. 7 Philip Morgan, The Fall of Mussolini: Italy, the Italians and the Second World War (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2007), see the blurb inside the book jacket. 8 Norberto Bobbio, Dal fascismo alla democrazia: I regimi, le ideologie, le figure e le culture politiche (Milan: Baldini Castoldi, 2008), p. 121. 9 The Allies and the Germans paid a high price for the peninsula: a combined total of 848,000 casualties (dead, injured, missing, and prisoners). See Douglas Porch, The Path to Victory: The Mediterranean Theater in World War II (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), pp. 654–656..
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