🥴 Note! Pope Leo XIV visited four African countries (Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon) including Muslim Algeria three weeks ago for eleven days.
On the other hand, there is a very surprising fact; that is; no Roman Catholic Pope has ever visited Ethiopia, the oldest Christian country in the world. Besides the Vatican Pope, no Russian Orthodox Patriarch, no Russian or Soviet leader, and no Tsar has ever visited Ethiopia, which is connected to the Russian people through Alexander Pushkin. The United States sent its first and last president in 2015. Like the jihadist New York City Mayor Mamdani, the East African Muslim Barack Hussein Obama. What is the secret?
👹 Genocidal Abiy Ahmed Ali: “I am a Muslim! Allah
Snackbar”
Ninety years
after its invasion of Ethiopia, Italy continues to honour the
perpetrators of crimes it should instead confront.
Ninety years ago, on 3 October 1935, Italian troops invaded Ethiopia,
opening one of the darkest chapters in modern history. Ethiopia,
uniquely independent when the Berlin Conference of 1884–85 started
the European ‘Scramble for Africa’, suddenly faced an assault by
a state determined to complete the colonial map.
The campaign was not a sideshow. It was the last large-scale European
colonial conquest in Africa — a deliberate war of aggression that
defied the League of Nations and shocked contemporaries. Italian
planes dropped mustard gas on soldiers and civilians alike. Entire
villages were bombed and burned; survivors were deported to camps.
Tens of thousands died.
Yet for decades, this invasion has remained at the margins of public
memory. Italians tend to recall the fall of fascism or the
devastation of the Second World War, while the Ethiopian war – and
earlier aggressions in Libya, Somalia and Eritrea – are still
dismissed as an embarrassing footnote. This year’s 90th anniversary
is unlikely to be treated differently.
The myth of
the ‘good Italian’
A central reason lies in the enduring myth of ‘italiani brava
gente’ — the belief that Italians were somehow ‘better’
colonisers. As the historian Angelo Del Boca has shown, this
narrative was cultivated from the very start of Italy’s expansion
in 1885. Governments and cultural institutions promoted the idea that
they brought roads, railways and architecture rather than chains and
massacres. For decades, textbooks framed Italy’s presence in Africa
as a civilising mission, while popular culture romanticised the
colonies as lands of adventure. Echoes of this narrative still
linger.
But the
story collapses under the weight of evidence.
The conquest of Ethiopia was meant to be Mussolini’s crowning
achievement: proof that a ‘new Roman Empire’ could be built in
the 20th century. Yet Italy’s imperial ambitions pre-dated fascism.
Liberal governments, with full backing from the monarchy, had seized
Eritrea and Somalia in the 1880s and 1890s; attempted and failed to
conquer Ethiopia in 1896 at Adwa; and in 1911 invaded Ottoman Libya,
carrying out mass deportations and pioneering aerial bombing of
civilians. These campaigns foreshadowed the brutality of the 1935
assault.
From
conquest to oppression
In 1935, Italian forces advanced from Eritrea and Italian Somaliland,
deploying tanks, aircraft and chemical weapons in violation of the
1925 Geneva Protocol. On 5 May 1936, Marshal Pietro Badoglio entered
Addis Ababa at the head of his victorious troops and proclaimed the
end of hostilities — yet the war was far from over. Less than a
quarter of Ethiopia’s territory had been occupied, and at least 100
000 soldiers loyal to Emperor Haile Selassie remained at arms. What
followed was a hidden war of resistance, largely suppressed by
censorship, that lasted until February 1937. The war is estimated to
have claimed the lives of around 70 000 Ethiopian soldiers and
between 120 000 and 200 000 civilians.
Italian control lasted until 1941, when Ethiopian resistance, British
intervention and the Second World War brought down Italian East
Africa.
Even as clashes continued, Mussolini declared the creation of Italian
East Africa, merging Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia into a single
colony, and crowned King Vittorio Emanuele III as Emperor of
Ethiopia.
Occupation was marked by systematic violence. The most infamous
episode was ‘Yekatit 12’, when reprisals after an assassination
attempt on viceroy Rodolfo Graziani left more than 30 000 civilians
dead. Villages were razed to the ground, populations deported and
forced into labour on infrastructure projects under brutal
conditions. Resistance was met with executions, mass imprisonment and
concentration camps where thousands died from disease and starvation.
Italian authorities dismantled traditional governance, imposing
language and culture in a bid to eliminate Ethiopian self-rule.
Italian control lasted until 1941, when Ethiopian resistance, British
intervention and the Second World War brought down Italian East
Africa. Haile Selassie was restored to the throne, but the scars of
occupation – physical, social and political – remained.
Silence and
denial
After 1945, Italians struggled to confront fascism’s crimes abroad.
Successive governments found it easier to stress Italy’s victimhood
under Nazism than its role as a colonial aggressor. Unlike Germany,
Italy never underwent a systematic reckoning with its imperial past.
This amnesia also reflects a deeper issue rooted in the post-war
period, when the Resistance was elevated to a founding myth of the
new Republic. The heroism of some 200 000 partisans and their
supporters allowed the country to reimagine fascism not as a national
project, but as a tragic aberration inflicted on Italians. In this
version of history, Italians emerged as victims, absolved from the
complicities that sustained two decades of dictatorship — a far cry
from the antifascist intellectual Piero Gobetti’s indictment of
fascism as ‘the autobiography of the nation’. This narrative,
however, left no room to acknowledge responsibilities for the crimes
committed during the occupation of Ethiopia and the other colonies.
The result is striking: public commemorations of the Ethiopian
invasion are minimal. When the subject surfaces, it is often
accompanied by nostalgia for roads, bridges or Art Deco buildings.
Public figures have even celebrated the modernist legacy of ‘our
architecture’, reflecting an aestheticised memory that sidelines
violence. The return of the Axum obelisk from Rome to Ethiopia in
2005, after decades of dispute, remains one of the few symbolic acts
of acknowledgement. When it was re-erected in 2008, critics, such as
then-minister Vittorio Sgarbi, opposed the restitution and, years
later, even encouraged attempts to ‘get it back’ on grounds of
alleged neglect, implying Italians would be better at preserving the
monument. Apart from Italian-Libyan diplomatic reparations in 2008 –
when Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi apologised ‘for the suffering
inflicted during the colonial period’ and signed a treaty worth $5
billion in investments and compensation – Italy has never publicly
reconciled with its colonial violence through state apologies or
reparations. Debates exist in academia and among activists, but not
at the level of official national policy.
In a political climate where PM Meloni defends nationalist narratives
that echo fascist talking points, Italy continues to honour the
perpetrators of crimes it should instead confront.
However, remembering the Ethiopian war is not just an academic
exercise. It speaks directly to questions of historical
responsibility and the politics of memory in Europe. While statues of
imperial figures spark fierce debate across much of the Western
world, Italy’s colonial record is largely absent. Even the Black
Lives Matter wave had limited traction beyond 2020’s mass rallies.
Perhaps the most visible flashpoint was the statue of Indro
Montanelli in Milan – defaced in 2020 over his admitted ‘marriage’
to a 12-year-old Eritrean girl during the colonial war – which
triggered a culture-war backlash rather than a sustained reckoning;
the mayor refused to remove the monument.
Acknowledging this past would also give depth to Italy’s
contemporary relationship with Africa. Migration, trade and
development policy are all shaped by historical ties, whether
recognised or not. Pretending colonial ventures were benign does
nothing to build mutual respect. Ninety years after the invasion,
Italy does not need rituals of guilt, but it does need clarity. In a
political climate where Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni defends
nationalist narratives that echo fascist talking points, Italy
continues to honour the perpetrators of crimes it should instead
confront. In 2012, the town of Affile inaugurated a monument to
Rodolfo Graziani, the viceroy who ordered the 1937 Addis Ababa
massacre, while nearby Filettino – home to the Graziani family –
still hosts a public park bearing his name, renovated with regional
funds as recently as 2017. Confronting the full reality of Italy’s
colonial past, and the violence it inflicted on others, is more
urgent than ever.
🔥Italians
Committed Terrible Crimes, Then Forgot Them: Addis Ababa Fascist
Massacre & Poison Gas 19 Feb 1937
M & Ms: Modi, Macron, Mohammad, Meloni all
travel to Addis Ababa to congratulate the genocidal PM of the
fascist Galla-Oromo Islamic Regime of Ethiopia, Black Mussolini
aka Abiy Ahmed, for massacring 2 million
Orthodox Christians.
👹 In 1937
Benito Mussolini proclaimed himself "Protector of Islam"
☪ The Union of Ishmael
and Esau that is shaking the world continues!
❖ People of the flesh are united in persecuting those of the
spirit!
☪
Under the
fascist Viceroy Rodolfo Graziani, General Pietro Maletti commanded
the 45th Muslim Colonial Battalion (composed of Libyan, Eritrean and
Somali colonial soldiers, the so-called Askaris), which was used in
the devastating Debre Libanos massacre in Ethiopia in May 1937.
♰
The Debre Libanos Massacre
• May 20, 1937
☪ Fascist Italy Used
Muslim Soldiers to Massacre. 2,000 Monks & Pilgrims at The Debre
Libanos Monastery
Debre Libanos
1937 (Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Italy)
This volume
calls attention to the worst massacre of Christians that has occurred
on the African continent, a 1937 attack.
Six previously unseen
photos document the story of a massacre that took place in Ethiopia
in May 1937, a massacre long forgotten by many. Report by Antonello
Carvigiani, whose meticulous research has always kept alive the
memory of an unspeakable massacre.
The massacre in Ethiopia in May 1937, specifically the atrocities
surrounding the Debre Libanos monastery, represents a dark, often
overlooked episode of the Italian occupation. Following an
assassination attempt on Viceroy Rodolfo Graziani on February 19,
1937 (known in Ethiopia as Yekatit 12), Italian forces enacted brutal
reprisals that culminated in a massive killing operation in May 1937.
While Ian Campbell’s research highlights the overall "Addis
Ababa massacre" (February 1937), the subsequent repression in
May 1937 was focused on crushing the spiritual heart of the
resistance.
The
Debre Libanos Massacre (May 1937): Between
May 20 and 29, 1937, Italian fascist forces massacred approximately
2,000 monks and pilgrims at the Debre Libanos monastery, the most
famous sanctuary of Ethiopian Christianity.
The
Reprisal Logic: The attack was
ordered by Viceroy Graziani, who suspected the monks of "conniving"
in the assassination attempt, despite limited evidence.
Targeted
Repression: Beyond the
monastery, the Italian authorities launched systematic killings of
Ethiopian intellectuals, nobility, and clergy throughout May and the
following months, often using portable gallows.
Cover-Up:
The atrocity was largely kept quiet in Italy, with official records
reporting far fewer deaths than the actual count.
Long-Term
Impact: The massacres of 1937
decimated a huge percentage of the educated population and decimated
the clergy, aiming to break the spirit of Ethiopian resistance
against colonial rule.
The event is extensively detailed by historian Ian Campbell,
particularly in his work The Massacre of Debre Libanos, Ethiopia
1937: The Story of One of Fascism's Most Shocking Atrocities.
Graziani did
not limit his reprisals to the streets of Addis Ababa. His suspicions
soon fell on the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Convinced, without
credible evidence, that church leaders had supported the attack
against him, he authorized another mass killing.
Italian forces
rounded up monks, deacons, students, and pilgrims. Over several days,
they were taken to execution sites and shot. Estimates place the
death toll between 1,500 and 2,000 people.
The victims
were unarmed religious figures. The massacre struck at the heart of
Ethiopian spiritual and cultural life and was intended to weaken
national identity and resistance.
Graziani viewed
the Ethiopian Orthodox Church as a threat because of its influence
and deep roots in society. Under his rule, churches were closed,
clergy were arrested, and religious leaders were executed or exiled.
Educated
Ethiopians, nobles, and former officials were also targeted.
Teachers, writers, and community leaders were killed or imprisoned.
Graziani aimed to destroy any group capable of organizing resistance
or preserving Ethiopian autonomy.
After World
War II
After Italy’s
defeat in World War II, Rodolfo Graziani was arrested. Ethiopia asked
that he be extradited to face trial for the massacres and brutal
reprisals carried out during the Italian occupation. The request was
ignored.
Instead of
being sent to Ethiopia, Graziani was tried in Italy on limited
charges related to his collaboration with the fascist regime. He
received a short sentence and served only a few months in prison. The
man whose campaigns had left thousands dead in Ethiopia was never
brought before an Ethiopian court and never answered directly for the
violence of the occupation.
In the last
years of his life, Graziani returned to public life. He entered
politics through the Italian Social Movement, a party formed by
former fascists after the war, and in 1953 he became its honorary
president, largely because of his long career during the fascist
period in Italy. He died two years later, in 1955, without ever
facing trial in Ethiopia for the violence carried out under his
command.
The memory of
the atrocities committed during the occupation, however, did not
fade. In Ethiopia, February 19 is commemorated each year as Martyrs’
Day, marking the anniversary of the 1937 killings in Addis Ababa that
followed the assassination attempt on Graziani. The day honors the
thousands of civilians who were killed during the brutal reprisals.
Controversy
over Graziani’s legacy has continued even decades after his death.
In 2012, a memorial dedicated to him was built in the Italian town of
Affile. The monument sparked outrage in Italy and strong protests
from Ethiopia, where many saw it as an attempt to honor a man whose
campaigns had left thousands of Ethiopians dead during the
occupation.
📖 “Holy War: The Untold Story of Catholic Italy’s
Crusade Against the Ethiopian Orthodox Church”. By
Ian Cambell
His stunning book explores the Catholic
Church’s support for and encouragement of Mussolini’s campaign
against the Ethiopian Orthodox Church during Italy’s invasion and
occupation of Ethiopia from 1935 to 1943. Italian forces targeted the
Orthodox Church; they ransacked and destroyed hundreds of churches
and summarily executed several thousand Ethiopian clergy. Amicable
relations had long existed between the Catholic Church in Rome and
the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, but the Roman episcopate embraced
Mussolini’s regime and its aggressive foreign policy in the
mid-1930s. In 1935, Pope Pius XI openly supported the invasion of
Ethiopia as a crusade against a country of heretics, schismatics,
pagans, and infidels. This papal support of the war, reinforced by
church sermons across Italy, helped mobilize volunteers to join the
Italian army to fight in Ethiopia. Eloquent and based on
authoritative archival research in both Ethiopia and Italy,
Campbell’s book sheds new light on a key episode in African
history.
That Mussolini wished to conquer Abyssinia is well known; that
Italy’s Catholic Church also sought the eradication of the
venerable Ethiopian Orthodox Church is not.
In 1935, Fascist Italy invaded the sovereign state of Ethiopia—a
war of conquest that triggered a chain of events culminating in the
Second World War. In this stunning and highly original tale of two
Churches, historian Ian Campbell brings a whole new perspective to
the story, revealing that bishops of the Italian Catholic Church
facilitated the invasion by sanctifying it as a crusade against the
world’s second-oldest national Church. Cardinals and archbishops
rallied the support of Catholic Italy for Il Duce’s invading armies
by denouncing Ethiopian Christians as heretics and schismatics, and
announcing that the onslaught was an assignment from God.
Campbell marshalls evidence from three decades of research to expose
the martyrdom of thousands of clergy of the venerable Ethiopian
Church, the burning and looting of hundreds of Ethiopia’s ancient
monasteries and churches, and the instigation and arming of a jihad
against Ethiopian Christendom, the likes of which had not been seen
since the Middle Ages.
Finally, Holy War traces how, after Italy’s surrender to the
Allies, the horrors of this pogrom were swept under the carpet of
history, and the leading culprits put on the road to sainthood.
Reviews
💭 ‘This stunning book explores the Catholic Church’s
support for and encouragement of Mussolini’s campaign against the
Ethiopian Orthodox Church during Italy’s invasion and occupation of
Ethiopia from 1935 to 1943. … Eloquent and based on authoritative
archival research in both Ethiopia and Italy, Campbell’s book sheds
new light on a key episode in African history.’ — Foreign Affairs
💭 ‘Holy War is one of the most significant—and most
chilling—books you are likely to read on global Christian history.’
— The Christian Century
💭 ‘Three cheers for Holy War [which] has turned the caring
Italian Army myth upside down and inside out in what is the perfect
antidote to Louis de Bernieres’ Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. […]
Holy War is the ‘go for’ book if you want to learn as much as you
need to know about an invasion that helped shape the rest of the
1930s, a paving stone towards World War in 1939.’ — ColdType
💭 ‘A devastating, persuasive read. Campbell’s book
exposes the Catholic Papacy’s complicity in Fascist forces’
unrestrained assault on Ethiopia, and its switch from cordial
relations with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church to attempting to destroy
it.’ — Mia Fuller, Gladyce Arata Terrill Distinguished Professor
of Italian Studies, University of California, Berkeley
💭 ‘This book shines a revealing light on the ecclesiastical
thinking of the 1935–41 period, the murky compromises it
encouraged, and the savagery it condoned. Original and ambitious, it
will have a significant audience in Ethiopia, Italy and beyond.’ —
Paul Gifford, Emeritus Professor of Religion, SOAS University of
London, and author of Christianity, Development and Modernity in
Africa.
💭 ‘Exhaustively researched and eloquently written,
Campbell’s Holy War is a hugely important contribution to our
understanding of the violence involved in the Italian invasion and
occupation of Ethiopia in the 1930s. It is moving, shocking and
scholarly in equal measure.’ — Richard Reid, Professor of African
History, University of Oxford, and author of Shallow Graves: A Memoir
of the Ethiopia–Eritrea War.
Where Are Those Crowns?
by Ian Campbell. November 2021
In May 1937, troops under Italian command moved into the remote area
around the monastery of Debre Libanos in Ethiopia. They had been sent
there by Rodolfo Graziani, one of the commanders of the Italian
invasion of the country in October 1935 and now the viceroy of
Italian East Africa. In February 1937 he had survived an
assassination attempt in Addis Ababa. In retaliation, the Italians
had killed at least 19,000 people over the next three days (a fifth
of the city’s population), a massacre that became known by the date
on which it began, Yekatit 12. People were burned alive in their
homes or beaten to death in the streets. Others were placed in
detention camps, where conditions were appalling, and tortured or
executed. But this wasn’t enough for Graziani. He claimed that his
attempted assassination had been planned by the Ethiopian Church and,
as he recovered in hospital, began to plan the destruction of its
most important centre, the monastery at Debre Libanos, founded in the
13th century. The pretext for the attack was that the two men who had
tried to kill Graziani in Addis had supposedly passed through the
lands surrounding the monastery as they made their escape (Debre
Libanos is sixty miles or so north of the city). The plan – which
survives in the archives of the Italian administration – was to
kill the entire religious community there. Graziani’s subordinate
General Maletti was chosen to carry out the massacre, commanding a
Muslim battalion made up of Eritreans, Libyans and Somalis. It is an
uncomfortable truth for those on the far right who look up to
Mussolini, while also promoting Islamophobia, that the Italian army
enabled a form of jihad against the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
Pilgrims gathered at the monastery every year to celebrate the feast
day of its founder, St Tekle Haymanot, on 20 May. Maletti began to
round up people as they arrived at the site. On 19 May, Graziani
ordered the summary execution of ‘all monks without distinction’.
‘Please assure me this has been done,’ he went on, ‘informing
me of the number of them.’ Orders were also given to burn the
buildings and bodies. The massacre is described by Ian Campbell in
Holy War, in horrific detail. In order to hide the extent of the
killing, most of the victims were taken from the monastery in trucks.
They were shot, mainly with machine guns, and buried where they fell
in mass graves. Those who refused to get into the trucks were shot on
the spot. Many of the victims were elderly, some were children and
all were unarmed. Campbell estimates that between 1200 and 1600
‘pilgrims and clergy’ were killed that day. He shows that what
happened at Debre Libanos was part of a series of massacres aimed at
destroying the Ethiopian Church as an institution. Villages and homes
in other parts of the country were attacked; churches were burned
down and sacked. Graziani reported back to Rome in bureaucratic
language, repeatedly using the phrase ‘all prisoners have been
shot.’ Italy’s ‘total war’ in Ethiopia prefigured the way the
Nazi army would act; far from being a meek follower of Hitler,
Mussolini was ahead of him.
Campbell underlines the parallels between historic crusades and the
massacres, but there are closer comparisons. The burnings, the
pleasure in violence, the extremity of the destruction are
reminiscent of the methods used by the squads who brought fascism to
power in Italy itself in 1921-22. In Ethiopia, these squads were
given free rein against an ‘uncivilised’ and ‘heretical’
external enemy, and they went about their task with gusto and
frightening efficiency. The violence and destruction seems to have
brought pleasure to some of the perpetrators – many of them took
photographs showing their victims with severed heads or limbs.
Despite this savage repression, resistance to the Italians continued.
In fact, the strategy of massacres backfired, pushing the Church in
Ethiopia (what remained of it) into a much more active role against
the Italian occupiers. This, in turn, led to a policy reversal by the
Italians, who tried to incorporate the Ethiopian clergy into the
occupying regime. But the damage had been done. ‘Catholicism, now
clearly identified with the enemy, had become as unpopular there as
it had been after the religious wars of the early 17th century,’
Campbell writes. ‘For the Roman Church, the great crusade had been
a disaster.’
In 1941, the Italians were kicked out of Ethiopia after a humiliating
military defeat. Haile Selassie, who had lived in exile in Bath since
leaving the country in 1936, returned and in his first speeches
remembered the ‘young men, the women, the priests and monks whom
the Italians pitilessly massacred’. Ethiopia tried several times in
the 1940s to have named Italians charged through the UN War Crimes
Commission, not just for these massacres but for the use of poison
gas and the bombing of hospitals during the initial invasion, as well
as the ‘total destruction of Abyssinian chiefs and notables’, as
Graziani put it in a telegram to another army officer. But their
efforts were thwarted by geopolitical considerations. Britain played
a leading role in this: Ethiopia wanted Pietro Badoglio, Graziani’s
predecessor as viceroy of East Africa and the prime minister of Italy
between 1943 and 1944, to be tried, but after the war Britain
considered him a valuable counterweight to Italian communism.
Campbell’s account of the massacre of Debre Libanos is the
centrepiece of more than twenty years of work. He has travelled to
many of the massacre and burial sites over a period of decades,
talked to the last surviving witnesses and examined the Italian
archives. He argues that the systematic destruction of the Ethiopian
Church was part of a holy war launched by the Catholic Church in
alliance with the fascists. At times, this interpretation is pushed
too far. The Church’s support of fascism – especially after the
Lateran Pacts of 1929, which ended the historic split between the
Catholic Church and the the Italian state – is sometimes seen as
amounting to complete backing for Italy’s actions in Ethiopia.
Certainly, some Catholics and clergy were in favour of the slaughter
as part of a so-called ‘civilising mission’. But this wasn’t
true of the whole Church; the pope, Pius XI, seems to have been
reluctant to lend his support.
Graziani still has a reputation in Italy, and even abroad, as a
heroic soldier, seen separately from the regime he served so
faithfully. He is not often remembered as a war criminal. There is
even a mausoleum and memorial park in his native village of Affile,
south of Rome, opened only ten years ago and built with the help of
public funds. Somehow, the idea of Italy as a nation of Captain
Corellis, mandolin-carrying, reluctant invaders, still survives.
One of the most fascinating episodes in the book concerns the looting
of artefacts and relics from Ethiopia (the Italians also purloined
cash for their own bank accounts). When Graziani returned to Italy in
1938 he took 79 crates of stolen material with him. Campbell
describes some photographs of an exhibition at the Museo Coloniale in
Rome in 1939 in which a number of what look like Ethiopian crowns can
be seen in a glass case. They were almost certainly pinched from
Debre Libanos, which, as one of the holiest places in the Ethiopian
Church, housed a number of treasures. But it is another photograph
that really raises questions. This one depicts two famous Italian
partisans next to what appear to be the same crowns, still with their
museum labels attached.
As Mussolini and Graziani fled north in the wake of the liberation of
Italy in 1945, they took as much money and as many treasures with
them as they could carry. When Mussolini was captured by Italian
partisans disguised as German soldiers in April 1945, near a place
called Dongo on Lake Como, he had money and other possessions with
him, which became known as the Gold of Dongo. Mussolini was shot the
next day, probably by the communist partisan Walter Audisio, who is
one of the men standing in front of the crowns. But what happened to
the Gold of Dongo? Nobody knows. Where are those crowns now?
In defeat Graziani was much smarter than Mussolini. He made sure he
surrendered to the Allies, rather than being captured by the
partisans. This meant he survived, and despite being sentenced to
nineteen years for collaborating with the Nazis he only served a few
months in prison (there was no equivalent of the Nuremberg trials for
Italian fascists). After his release he became an active member of
the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano, and wrote a bestselling
memoir in which he claimed he had merely been ‘defending the
fatherland’. For many, he remained a war hero, his image
encapsulated in the much reproduced photo of him in uniform, hair
swept back, jaw jutting, sleeves rolled up. At his funeral in 1955
there was an open show of fascism on the streets of Rome for the
first time in years, with mourners raising their arms in the fascist
salute. Nobody mentioned Debre Libanos.
