Italian war crimes

Italian war crimes

Italian war crimes are a well documented but poorly publicized aspect of the history of Italy during the 20th century.

Italian experts Professor Giorgio Rochat and Professor Angelo del Boca from the University of Turin when interviewed for the BBC documentary Fascist Legacy claimed the following:

"There remains in Italian culture and public opinion the idea that basically we were colonialists with a human face. The Italian is good, and therefore, yes, we did indulge in a few excesses, but within the framework of cooperation and out of love."

"This legend, because that's what it is, is shattered by documents in Italian state archives. In the crude and trite language of bureaucracy, they report unreservedly the massacres, oppression, atrocities, plunder, deportations and violence of all kinds."

It is claimed in the documentary that: "Modern politics are now anti-fascist, based on the respectability of the resistance. All memories of the fascist past are willingly supressed. If the Italians remember anything about the war, it's probably the thousands of Jews they saved from the gas chambers of Germany, or the Italian partisans massacred by the Germans. But Italy never underwent anything like the de-Nazification of post-war Germany, so it is not surprising that Fascism and war crimes are still sensitive issues in Italy. Since Italy's surrended in 1943, not one Italian war criminal has ever been extradited to stand trial for crimes commited abroad despite overwhelming evidence of massive atrocities commited throughout Africa and the Balkans."

In Ethiopia

"...On October 3rd 1935..Italian troops pushed through into Ethiopia. Half a million troops, backed by heavy artillery were launched against inadequately armed tribesmen. Ethiopian resistance was strong but futile. For every Italian killed, 10 Ethiopians died. With complete supremacy in the air, Italian planes could bomb and machine-gun indiscriminately. The carnage among the Ethiopians was appaling. But even so, the Italian advance was too cautious for Mussolini. He decided a younger, more aggressive commander was needed. The new commander-in-chief of the Italian forces was Marshall Pietro Badoglio. Instructed by Mussolini to reach the capital Addis Ababa before the rainy season, Badoglio planned a new and more deadly offensive.

In direct defiance of the 1926 Geneva Protocol, signed by Italy, Italian troops were to be instructed to use poison gas against the Ethiopians. The liquid Ypirite or mustard gas was loaded into canisters to be dropped as bombs, fired as shells, or sprayed from the air like insecticide. A new wave of terror was unleashed upon an ill-prepared population."

Professor Giorgio Rochat from the University of Turin claimed: "Ypirite was used in big 280-kilo bombs dropped by aircraft. Ypirite is a heavy liquid, and if the bomb was dropped correctly, would explode in the air 200 metres from the ground. The Ypirite would turn into a rain of droplets. In this area, death was certain and immediate because the Ypirite droplets penetrated through clothes and skin, burning and destroying the human tissue deep underneath. There is no doubt that Ypirite sowed death and spread terror because it was type of aggression for which the Abyssinians were totally unprepared. They did not even know how to cure those wounded by Ypirite. Chemical warfare in Ethiopia had been prepared on a large scale beforehand, with dozens of thousands of gas to be used by the infantry, dozens of thousands of gas-loaded shells, and hundreds of thousands of mustard gas for the airforce. Badoglio found this equipment ready and used it even before being given an explicit order to do so by Mussolini.

Mussolini gave his authorisation on the 28th of December 1935, an explicit authorisation to use, even on a large scale, any gas or flamethrower whatsoever. Badoglio replied: 'Have already used Ypirite. Should the occasion arise, we'll use flamethrowers.'

"Badoglio's rival and the commander in charge of the Italian forces on the Southern Front was General Rodolfo Graziani. Known as "the butcher of Libya", Graziani ordered not only the widescale use of poison gas, but the throwing of captured rebels from airplanes."

Professor Angelo del Boca from the University of Turin explained: "Rodolfo Graziani had become famous for the part he played in the reconquest of Libya, a war which lasted 10 years and which Graziani had conducted with unprecedented severity, above all in the final phase in Cyrenaica where he deported and decimated entire populations in order to remove all support for the rebelllion. In Ethiopia, on the Southern Front, Graziani acted in the same merciless way. He was the first general to systematically use poison gas. Graziani used all means at his disposal, whether lawful or unlawful in order to beat his adversary Badoglio and be the first to reach Addis Ababa."

"But news about Italy's use of poison gas had leaked out to British newspapers. When Badoglio became concerned about world opinion, Mussolini authorised him to use the broom against the foreigners in the battlezone. 5 days later, Italian airplanes began the first of 90 separate bombing and machine gun raids against international Red Cross hospitals."

Professor Angelo del Boca: "The heaviest attacks on the Red Cross occured on the night of December 30th 1935 in the area of Gogoru on the Southern Front. Having found out that Rastastad Danteo was encamped with his general staff in the vicinity of a Swedish field hospital, Graziani ordered the airport General Benasconi to carry out heavy bombing over the area, even if, he added in he telegram, this meant unintentionally hitting the hospital. Many bombs did in fact fall on the, killing 29 and leaving 50 injured."

"The Italians were convinced that it was the Red Cross doctors, working in the Ethiopian rear zones who were supplying information to the world about the use of gas by the Fascists in Ethiopia."

"In May 1936, after a 7-month campaign, Badoglio took Addis Ababa. The war was over. Italy's East African Empire was at last a reality, and the Fascist regime had reached its pinnacle of success. Throughout every Italian city, crowds hailed Mussolini as the founder of the new Empire and the King Victor Emmanuel the Emperor of Abyssinia. Italian rule in Ethiopia seemed safe from further challenge until the afternoon on February 19th 1937. Graziani, the new viceroy of Ethiopia invited the county's nobility to relebrate the birth of the Prince of Naples at his palace in Addis Ababa. Hundreds of poor and crippled peasants were also invited to receive 2 Maria Theresa dollars each from the viceroy. As Graziani stood on the steps of his palace, 2 Ethiopians who had mingled with the crowd decided to strike out against heavy-handed Italian rule. Bleeding from numerous shrapnel wounds, Graziani was rushed to hospital. Hungarian physicina Dr. Sladislav Sava wrote a vivid account of the events that followed the grenade attack: 'As soon as the Italians realized that no more bombs were to be feared, the shooting was started by Cortese who fired with his revolved into a group of Ethiopian dignitaries. The Italian Carabinieri followed this example. In a few moments, there were more than 300 dead in the courtyard and around the palace alone. Hardly a single Ethiopian escaped alive from the courtyard. The general massacre there was particularly senseless and revolting for the people there were a crowd of aged invalids, blind crippled beggars and poor mothers of little children.' "

"Written account by Robert Hughes, American Minister of Ethiopia: 'The Italians have completely lost their heads. Since the incident, undisciplined bands of blackshirts and labourers armed with rifles axes and clubs, have been roaming the streets, killing all the natives in sight, even women, amid scenes of revolting savagery. Many natives whose huts were burning were either shot as they tried to escape, or were forced to perish in the flames. Not since the Armenian Massacre have I seen such a display of unbridled brutality and cowardice. There have been mass executions in batched of 50 or 100 all over town of wretched people who by no strech of imagination could have anything to do with the incident.'"

Professor Angelo del Boca: "The toll of the massacres in Addis Ababa and other places in Ethiopia was extremely high. 30,000 victims according to some Ethiopian estimates, 4,000 to 6,000 according to other, perhaps more reliable sources. But retaliation was not yet over. Not having been able to lay hands on the real instigators and executors of the attack, Graziani also killed off what remained of the Ethiopian intelligentsia. He also had 449 monks and deacons of the Conventional City shot on the mere suspicion that they had been able to obtaion protection in Debra Lebanos. And also thousands of fortune tellers and balladiers whose only crime was to have predicted the impending end to Italian domination. According to Ethiopian government estimates, the total number of deaths during the 7 months of war and the 5 years of Italian rule is 760,000. But this figure has certainly been inflated to get more reparations from Italy. One could perhaps suggest a figure of 200,000 victims, but I make no claims of scientific accuracy. It's easier to note the figures, although they're still approximate, with regards to the effects of the repression in Libya from 1911 to 1932. There was certainly more than 100,000 victims, half of whom were made up of soldiers and guerillas, and the other half made up of civilians."

"There is no town or village in Ethiopia where gallows were not erected. They were the symbol of a brigade-style but very effective justice. They were there to command respect and terror. Italian executioners were often photographed in front of the gallows or holding the chopped-off heads of Ethiopian by the hair. In this merciless and brutal exhibitionism, they were, above all, displaying their contempt for those people whom they saw as socially and culturally inferior."

In Yugoslavia

Slovene-Italian Historical and Cultural Commission

In October 1993, Slovenia and Italy "agreed upon the establishment of the mixed Slovene-Italian Historical and Cultural Commission with the task of conducting a comprehensive in-depth study of all the relevant aspects of the history of political and cultural relations between the two nations." The commission included experts from both countries. The Commission adopted the final report unanimously at its session in Udine on 27 June 2000: http://www.kozina.com/premik/indexeng_porocilo.htm#kazal

The following are mostly summaries and quotes from the report, along with some further explanations.

Background

With the rise of national identities in the Habsburg Monarchy, problems appeared in regards to how relations in a multinational empire were to be controlled. The Slovene-Italian and Croat-Italian conflicts were part of this wider phenomenon. Modernisation and economic changes played a large part as well.

The dispute between Italians on one side and Slovenes and Croats on the other was substantially determined by, on the one hand, Italians wanting to retain their politico-national and socio-economic state of possession, and on the other, Slovenes and Croats wanting to change the existing situation. Italians living in Austria-Hungary were encouraged by the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy. Also, the Valleys of Natisone, Torre and Resia (Venetian Slovenia) became part of the Italian state and linguistic paculiarities of the Slavs who lived there were repressed.

"In all three parts of the Austrian littoral (Trieste, the Gorizia and Gradisca counties, Istria) Slovenes and Italians were living side by side. In the County of Gorizia the national delimitation was the most clear along the dividing line running in the direction north-south. Gorizia was the only ethnically mixed town, in which the number of Slovenes grew to such an extent that prior to World War I, the Slovene politicians believed that Slovenes would soon be the majority population in this town by the Isonzo river. In Trieste the majority population was Italian while in the surroundings the Slovene population prevailed. In this case the size of the Slovene population also increased. Slovenes lived in northern parts of Istria, mostly in the surroundings of coastal towns in which Italians prevailed. In the entire Istrian peninsula the national and political movement of Slovenes merged with the Croatian one, which sometimes hindered separate discussion of both south Slav components of the peninsula. The characteristic feature of Italian and Slovene settlements on the Austrian littoral consisted in Slovenes forming mostly the rural population, and Italians mostly the urban population. This phenomenon is not to be considered as absolute. One should not forget the Italian rural areas in Istria and the County of Gorizia, the so-called East Friuli, as well as the Slovene population in the towns of Trieste and Gorizia which grew in number as already mentioned."

But the urban-rural divide did play a strong role in national politics. Slovenes claimed that "the town belongs to the land", while Italians believed that "the cultural and civilian tradition of towns should create the image and the character of the surrounding territory".

"With the outbreak of World War I, the programme of irredentism became a constituent part of the Italian national policy programme, although the conviction prevailed (at least until spring 1918) that the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy - considerably reduced in terms of its territory - would survive the war despite everything. Even before Italy entered into war, the Italian diplomat Carlo Galli, on the assignment of his Government, met with Slovene representatives during his mission in Trieste. For the Slovene leadership these were the first official contacts with a foreign state. But already by signing the London Pact (1915) the Italian Government had adopted the programme of expansionism which, apart from the national principle, also considered geographic and strategic reasons. The general loyalty of Slovenes to the Austrian State drew from the publishing of the first news on the imperialistic aspect of the London Pact and from the solutions contained in the Pact with respect to the eastern border of the Kingdom of Italy, as well as due to the attitude of the Italian military authorities in the first occupied zones. The defeat of Italians at Kobarid/Caporetto brought about a switch in relation to Slovenes, since it gave place to the policy of dialogue between the nations under the Austro-Hungarian yoke, which culminated at the Rome Congress in 1918 and in the agreement with the Yugoslav Committee. While loyalty to the Habsburg Monarchy seemed increasingly contradictory to the processes of the internal disintegration of the Austrian State, the right to self-determination and the idea about South Slavic solidarity started to spread. During the final stages of war and after it, the contrast between the Slovene and Yugoslav thesis on the "ethnic" border and the Italian thesis advocating a geographic and strategic border became perfectly clear. The first one was based on the conception that the towns belonged to the countryside, and that the "ethnic" border substantially coincided with the Italian-Austrian border from 1866. The Italian thesis prevailed in the peninsula thanks to the most radical flows of the politico-psychological need to offer to the public opinion the tangible signs of territorial gains in order to ensure for the towns and for the Istrian coast, which were mostly Italian, a safe border as a compensation for the enormous sacrifices of war."

"Italy, the winner of World War I, had thus concluded the process of national unification and, in addition to Slovenes in towns and smaller centres with an Italian majority, simultaneously also encompassed within its borders entirely Slovene areas, even those situated outside the borders of the former Austrian littoral and which had not been covered by the concept of the Italian Venezia Giulia formulated over the last decades. Among different nations living in the occupied and subsequently annexed territory, this fact gave rise to controversial reactions: Italians accepted the new situation with enthusiasm; Slovenes, however, who were striving to achieve national unification and who opted for the newly emerging Yugoslav state at the end of the war, suffered a severe trauma upon inclusion into the Italian state. The new frontier in the northern Adriatic, fixed by the London Pact of 1915 and largely confirmed by the Treaty of Rapallo (1920), running along the watershed between the Black and the Adriatic Sea, tore away from their country of origin one fourth of the national body (327,230 people according to the Austrian census of 1910, 271,305 people according to the Italian census of 1921, 290,000 people according to the estimates of Carlo Schiffrer), but the larger number of Slovenes in Italy did not affect the status of the Venetian Slovenes (about 34,000 according to the 1921 census), who had already been living under Italy, and who were treated by the authorities as a completely Italianised group, and were therefore recognised no rights as a nation whatsoever."

"The authorities adopted numerous restrictive measures - dissolved municipal administration and national councils, limited freedom of association, sent people to court-martials, imprisoned prisoners of war, sent intellectuals to internment camps and expelled them, thus undermining the recovery of cultural and political life of the Slovene community. At the same time the occupation authorities also supported manifestations of Italianism in order to prove to the negotiators who were to define the new frontier that the country was Italian."

"Although the myth about the "mutilated victory" and D'Annunzio's march to Rijeka did not directly concern the territory populated with Slovenes, the feelings were nevertheless running high and soon enabled "frontier Fascism" to break through to power; it proclaimed itself as an ensign of the Italian interests along the eastern border and, assuming an anti-Slavic attitude combined with antibolshevism, united a large part of local Italian forces. Many Slovenes joined the socialist movement because of their faith in its principles of social justice and national equality, turning it, by their presence, in a revolutionary direction: for this reason the fascists forged the notion of "Slavo-communists" and further stirred up the feelings of extreme nationalism." An important event was the burning down of the Slovene National Centre by Fascist squads in 1920 under the pretext of the retaliation to riots in Split.

After the Fascists took control of the state, severe Fascist Italianisation policies were implemented. "All schools were italianised, teachers were mainly retired, transferred to the central part of the state, or were dismissed and forced to emigrate. Slovenes had limited access to employment in public service, several hundreds of cultural, sports, youth, social, and professional associations as well as dozens of business co-operatives and financial institutions, national centres, libraries, etc. were closed down. Political parties and periodicals were prohibited, any representation of national minorities was abolished and the use of the language in public was prohibited. The Slovene and Croatian minorities ceased to exist as political entities. Assimilation pressure exerted by the fascists in the efforts to achieve an "ethnic improvement" of Venezia Giulia was not limited to political suppression. In addition to the italianisation of place names or mandatory use of the already existing Italian names, the italianisation of surnames and first names, the authorities encouraged the emigration of Slovenes, their assignment to the central part of the country and to colonies,and planned an internal agrarian colonisation of the Littoral by settling Italians there. Through economic measures they endeavoured to transform the structure of the Slovene community in its foundations in order to bring it into line with the stereotype of an uncultured and provincial Slav who, following the removal of higher classes, would fall an easy prey to assimilation into the "superior" Italian culture. These comprehensive plans were accompanied by the utmost brutal political persecution. It is true that the majority of European countries at that time paid almost no regard to the rights of ethnic minorities in their own territory, if they did not actually try to oppress them in one way or the other; despite that, the fascist policy of "ethnic improvement" was also unscrupulous because national intolerance, sometimes combined with real racism, was accompanied by totalitarian measures taken by the regime."

A militant anti-fascist organization called TIGR which was made up of Slovenes and Croats emerged. The organization was supported by the Italian Communist Party, as well as Britain.

"In Venezia Giulia, Fascism attempted to realise a programme of total destruction of the Slovene and Croatian national identity. The success of these endeavours was only moderate, not due to a lack of will, but to the fact that neither in this field nor in any other were there enough resources available; consequently, the totalitarianism of the fascist regime often lagged far behind its intentions. The assimilation policy had decimated the Slovene population in Trieste and Gorizia, the intellectuals and the middle-class representatives were scattered and the rural population turned into a working class. Nevertheless, the latter were united and stubbornly persisted on their own land.

The most lasting effect of the fascist policy was that it had instilled the idea into the minds of Slovenes that Italy stands for Fascism and, with rare exceptions (some Slovenes accepted Fascism), made them reject almost everything that seemed to be Italian."

Period 1941 - 1945

"World War II was sparked off by the Axis and introduced a new dimension to Slovene-Italian relations, by which these were marked decisively ever since. On the one hand, both the attack on Yugoslavia in April 1941 and the occupation strained the relations between the two nations to the extreme, on the other hand, the war period brought about drastic changes in the relations between Slovenes and Italians. In 1941, with the occupation of Yugoslavia, Italy had reached the peak of its political power; the occupation and fragmentation plunged Slovenes into the abyss. At the end of the war, the Slovene nation celebrated victory, and in 1945 most Italians in Venezia Giulia feared ruin of the nation.

The destruction of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was accompanied not only by the fragmentation of the state, but also of Slovenia: a nation of one and a half million people, which was divided among Germany, Italy and Hungary, and which was under threat of becoming extinct, therefore Slovenes decided to fight against the occupying forces." Italy also invaded Dalmatia and other parts of Yugoslavia.

"Italy's attack on Yugoslavia was the peak of the long-term fascist and imperialist policy directed at the Balkans and the Danube Basin. Contrary to the provision of military law, which does not allow for annexation of a territory occupied by military force before a peace treaty has been signed, Italy annexed the Ljubljana Province to the Monarchy. About 350,000 inhabitants of the Ljubljana Province were granted national and cultural autonomy by a statute; however the occupying forces were determined to achieve fast integration of the country into the Italian fascist system and to subordinate its institutions and organisations to their Italian counterparts. Influenced by the political, cultural and economic attraction of Italy, the local population were to be gradually made fascist and italianised. At first, the fascist occupier was confident that Slovenes would be subjugated by the supposed superiority of Italian culture, therefore the Italian occupation policy was milder at the beginning.

At first, Slovenes saw a lesser evil in the Italian occupation regime compared to Nazism, therefore some political forces collaborated with Italians, although they did not welcome Fascism. After initial uncertainty, the majority of Slovenes trusted in the victory of the Allied Forces and saw the future of the Slovene nation in the anti-fascist coalition camp. Furthermore, two basic strategic views had been formed among the Slovene political factors. The first was a demand for immediate resistance against the occupier, advocated by the Liberation Front. The latter formed the first partisan units and started with military operations against the occupying forces. The response of the liberation movement to the Italian plans for cultural cooperation was "cultural silence". Members of all social classes regardless of their political and ideological beliefs joined the Liberation Front. Another option was entertained by the representatives of liberal and conservative parties, who directed Slovenes towards gradual illegal preparations for liberation and the settlement of accounts with the occupier at the end of the war. It is certain that the Liberation Front and the opposing camp headed by the London-based royal emigrant government had the common goal of establishing a United Slovenia, which was to include, within the scope of the Yugoslav federation, all regions which were considered to be Slovene." Similar was the situation in areas inhabited by Croats. The Slovene and Croatian Partisans also cooperated with the Italian Communist Party to varying extents, and with Italian Partisans (especially after Italy's capitulation later on).

"As a response to the increasing success of partisan fighting and strong opposition of the population against the occupier, Mussolini transferred competence from civilian authorities to military commands, so that the latter could introduce brutal repression. The occupation regime was based on violence expressed by various prohibitions, deportations to, confinement and internment in many camps all over Italy (Rab, Gonars and Renicci), in proceedings before military courts, confiscation and destruction of property, burning down of homes and villages. There were thousands of dead: fallen in battle, sentenced to death, shot as hostages, killed as civilians. About 30,000 people, mostly civilians, women and children, were deported to concentration camps. Many of them died of suffering. Plans were made for a mass deportation of Slovenes from the Ljubljana Province. The violence reached its peak during the four-month Italian military offensive launched by the Italian occupying forces in the summer of 1942 in order to regain control over the entire province.

In the spirit of the "divide and rule" policy, the Italian authorities supported the Slovene anti-Communist forces, in particular Catholic political forces, which at that time, out of fear from a communist revolution, considered the partisan movement to be a greater threat and thus agreed to collaborate. As a result, MVAC ("village guards") were formed, which were organised by Italian commands into voluntary anti-Communist militia and engaged successfully in the fight against the partisans, although they were not trusted completely by Italians.

The struggle for liberation soon spread from the Ljubljana Province among the Slovene population on the Littoral, who had lived under Italian rule for a quarter of a century. Thus, the issue of national affiliation of the greater part of this territory was reopened, revealing not only the total inefficiency of the fascist regime policy towards Slovenes, but also the general defeat of Italian policy on the eastern border. Already at the beginning of the war, the authorities had adopted a series of precautionary measures against the Slovene population on the Littoral: internment and confinement of leading personalities, mobilisation of national conscripts in special battalions, removal of population along the borders, death sentences, pronounced by a special tribunal for the protection of the state at the Second Trieste Trials.

"In the days following 8 September 1943, members of the Italian armed forces and of the Italian civil administration were able to leave the Slovene territory unhindered, even with the help of the local population. The capitulation of Italy certainly meant a decisive turning point in Slovene-Italian relations. The concept of Italians as the conquering or ruling nation and Slovenes as the subjected or repressed nation, which had predominated till then, underwent a fundamental change."

Retribution killings

The liberation movement spread particularly among the Slovene population; the Italian population was held back by the fear of Slovenes assuming the leading role in the partisan movement, since their national claims were unacceptable to the majority of the Italian population. They were also deterred by the news of the killings of Italians in the autumn of 1943 in Istria where the Croatian liberation movement was active (the so-called "Istrian foibe"). The killings were motivated not only by national and social factors, but also by a wish to strike at the local ruling class; therefore the majority of the Italians living in this area were concerned whether they would survive as a nation and whether their personal safety was in danger.

In 1945

Most Slovenes and Italians in favour of the Yugoslav solution welcomed enthusiastically the expansion of Yugoslav military control from the already liberated partisan territories to the entire Venezia Giulia. Slovenes experienced double liberation: from the German occupation and from the Italian state. At the same time, the population of Venezia Giulia in favour of Italy experienced Yugoslav occupation as the darkest moment in their history due to the fact that in the areas of Trieste, Gorizia and Koper, it was accompanied by a wave of violence, manifested in the arrests of several thousands, mostly Italians, and also the Slovenes who opposed the Yugoslav communist political plan. Some of the arrested were released at intervals; the violence was further manifested in hundreds of summary executions - victims were mostly thrown into the Karst chasms (foibe) - and in the deportation of a great number of soldiers and civilians, who either wasted away or were killed during the deportation; in prisons and in the prisoner-of-war camps in various parts of Yugoslavia (Borovnica should also be mentioned).

These events were triggered by the atmosphere of settling accounts with the fascist violence; but, as it seems, they mostly proceeded from a preliminary plan which included several tendencies: endeavours to remove persons and structures who were in one way or another (regardless of their personal responsibility) linked with Fascism, with the Nazi supremacy, with collaboration and with the Italian state, and endeavours to carry out preventive cleansing of real, potential or only alleged opponents of the communist regime, and the annexation of Venezia Giulia to the new Yugoslavia. The initial impulse was instigated by the revolutionary movement which was changed into a political regime, and transformed the charge of national and ideological intolerance between the partisans into violence at the national level.

The Istrian exodus

In the years following World War II, most of the Italians population of Istria and Dalmatia left for Italy as life was made very difficult for them. They were not able to express their national identity freely in an authoritatian regime. The number of people who left is between 200,000 and 300,000. The ones who remained were mostly retired workers and farmers and left-wing intellectuals.

Improvement of relations

"The conclusion of the London Memorandum of Understanding did not solve all open bilateral issues, not even the issue of minority treatment; however, it did put an end to one of the most tense periods in Slovene-Italian relations and - on the basis of the Udine Agreements (1955, 1962) - brought about a new period of gradual establishment of border cooperation and steady growth of cultural and economic relations. As soon as the Treaty of Peace was concluded, Italy and Yugoslavia, despite the unsolved problems, started to establish ever closer contacts, so that in the late sixties the border between them was considered to be the most open border between two European countries with different social systems. The credit for this goes mostly to both minorities. Consequently, after decades of heated discussions, and despite periodic deadlocks, the neighbouring nations finally found their way towards promoting fruitful cooperation."

References

• Lidia Santarelli: "Muted violence: Italian war crimes in occupied Greece", Journal of Modern Italian Studies, September 2004, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 280–299(20); Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group [1]
• Effie G.H. Pedaliu: "Britain and the ‘Hand-Over’ of Italian War Criminals to Yugoslavia, 1945–48", Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 39, No. 4, 503-529 (2004)[2]
• Pietro Brignoli: Santa messa per i miei fucilati, Longanesi & C., Milano, 1973 [3]
• H. James Burgwyn: "General Roatta's war against the partisans in Yugoslavia: 1942", Journal of Modern Italian Studies, September 2004, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 314–329(16) [4]
• Gianni Oliva: 'Si ammazza troppo poco'. I crimini di guerra italiani 1940-43. ('There are to few killings'. Italian war crimes 1940-43, Mondadori, 2006, ISBN 88-04-55129-1
• Alessandra Kersevan: "Un campo di concentramento fascista. Gonars 1942-1943", Comune di Gonars e Ed. Kappa Vu, 2003
• Alexxandra Kersevan: Lager italiani. Pulizia etnica e campi di concentramento fascisti per civili jugoslavi 1941-1943. Editore Nutrimenti, 2008
• Slovene-Italian Historical and Cultural Commission [5]