Fascist Legacy

Did You Know?

• The second part, A Pledge Betrayed, aired on 8 November 1989 and exposes British and American hypocrisy that prevented extradition of 1,200 Italian war criminals.
• Yugoslavia, Greece and Ethiopia provided full documentation of crimes for the most wanted Italian war criminals: Pietro Badoglio, Mario Roatta and Rodolfo Graziani.

Part one

The first part, titled A Promise Fulfilled, aired on 1 November 1989 and contains two sections. The first section covers Pietro Badoglio's use of mustard gas and bombing of Red Cross hospitals during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, as well as revenge massacres following an attempted assassination of the Italian governor. The second section addresses Italian war crimes against Slovene and Croatian civilians in occupied Yugoslavia, including the Rab concentration camp and atrocities in the village of Podhum near Rijeka.

Historical truth

On 9 September 1943, the day of the Allied invasion of the Italian mainland, anti-fascist Nicola Bellomo, commander of the XII MVSN Zone, formed a makeshift force and counterattacked Germans trying to occupy the port of Bari, during which he was wounded. Bellomo may have been considered a threat to the Badoglio government; after being sentenced to death, he chose not to escape when his prison door was intentionally left open.

Italian public media

Italian public broadcaster RAI purchased a copy of the documentary but for years did not show it to Italian audiences, as it would have challenged the prevailing view that focused on Italian partisans fighting Germans and on the Foibe massacres, while ignoring Italian war crimes against ethnic Slovene civilians. This view largely survives in Italy, unlike in France where both the Resistance and Vichy France are publicly acknowledged. In the 1950s two Italian filmmakers were jailed for depicting the Italian invasion of Greece, forcing the Italian public and media into repression of collective memory, leading to historical amnesia and revisionism. In 2004 the private channel La7 showed large excerpts; screenings were also organized by anti-fascist groups and members of the Slovene minority in Italy.