Fascist Italy and the barbarization of the Eastern Front, 1941--1943

Italian relations with the occupied populations of the Soviet Union between 1941 and 1943 were considerably better than those of their German ally. In explaining this discrepancy, this thesis discards stereotypical notions of a humanitarian Italian national character, arguing that a more complex interplay of tangible factors informed the behaviour of Italian troops in the east. While Italian forces occupied large territories, the Germans dictated policy and did not request Italian participation in harsh policies such as the Holocaust or forced labour deportations. Alongside presenting the war as an ideological crusade to eradicate Bolshevism, Fascist propaganda idealized the role of Italian soldiers as liberators of the Soviet peoples from Communism. Because Italian forces were deployed in regions unsuited to guerrilla warfare, they faced little partisan threat to dissuade them from their sympathy for civilians. Italians were capable of brutality, but circumstances kept it in check.