The Intricacies of Attempting a Political Purge during the Allied Occupation of Italy, 1943-1945. The Role of the Delegations of the High Commissions Against Fascism (original) (raw)

2024, Occupation Studies Research Network

Abstract

The Kingdom of Italy had been at war for three years when, in July 1943, the fascist regime was abolished by the king, Victor Emanuel III, and replaced by a military dictatorship. Mussolini's removal from the government caused the beginning of a slow reckoning with Italy's political past, complicated by the armistice with the Allies on 8th September, the division of Italy into two occupation zones and the return to power of fascists protected by the Germans in the North. Italy was the first major Axis country to undertake such a process, which proved to be much more complex than expected. In the first half of November 1944, the deputy prosecutor Marcello Scardia, judge of the Court of Pesaro, a city in central Italy that had been liberated and occupied by the Allies on 2nd September, sent to officials of the Italian national government in Rome the first report on his activity as a delegate of the High Commission for Sanctions against Fascism. He had been part of the judicial administration since the second half of the 1930s, and after the armistice with the Anglo-Americans, joined the Resistance. For this reason, thanks to his professionalism and his well-known anti-fascist political affiliation, he was chosen

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