Why Wasn’t There an “Italian Nuremberg / Tokyo War Crimes Trials” After WWII?

From October 1945 to October 1948, almost 1,700 Nazi officers and officials underwent the famous Nuremberg trials, charged with committing war crimes, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. The trials resulted in 200 death sentences, while 279 defendants were to serve life prison terms. Similar trials for similar charges were conducted in Tokyo, from April 1946 to November 1948, bringing to account 28 defendants among the militaristic leadership of Imperial Japan, though for various reasons of benefit to the United States, massive efforts were put in place to make sure the imperial family were not only absolved of any wrong doing, but a major propaganda campaign put in place to give the false impression to the rest of the world that the imperial family had been mere puppet leaders, instead of actively in charge and well aware of the the extreme atrocities as was actually the case. The U.S. also not only absolved the physicians and scientists in charge of the extreme atrocities committed in research facilities like Unit 731, but also paid money for some of their files because they wanted the research that the mass murderers had done on human subjects as it was much more scientifically conducted than the Nazi’s own data, and was thus deemed to be potentially useful in the upcoming potential conflict with the Soviets. See our unsurprisingly age restricted two hours documentary: Swept Under the Rug: The Truth About the Japanese Holocaust, in which we dive into all of that, as well as the shocking number of atrocities the Allies committed in the Pacific theater as well that is likewise generally swept under the rug today. As a little brief aside of that tale, you know when the card carrying Nazi comes out as arguably the greatest hero of the entire story in the Pacific Theater, something has gone very wrong on all sides.

But going back to the topic of today, Nazi leadership were partially held accountable. Some on the Japanese side were made to take the blame for the rest, and that’s the Axis powers sorted, right?

Well, at least the two Axis powers on which most historical accounts and fictional media tend to focus on.

… but what about the oft’ forgotten third wheel, Italy?

Despite the frequently depicted stereotype of ‘Italians as good folk’, Italian regular armed forces, security forces and Fascist militia also conducted atrocities on par with their more talked about axis allies, and the less talked about atrocities of their enemies.

But the victors hold the trials to make their enemies pay for what they did while generally simultaneously sweeping under the rug their own atrocities, and Fascist Italy was one of the losers… so why were they not brought to trial at an ‘Italian Nuremberg’?

Well, let’s dive into it shall we?

And we will kick off by briefly dispelling the myth of the Italian soldier as the ‘chill’ member of the Axis club of uniformed baddies.

Fascist Crimes

At its inception, Italian Fascism did not put forth policies to radically eliminate entire ethnic or religious groups, deemed ‘undesirable’. Nonetheless, after gaining power in October 1922, Benito Mussolini’s regime pursued aggressive nationalist and expansionist policies. First with anti-insurgency actions in Libya, an Italian colony since 1911. Then, with the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. Next, with the occupation of Albania in April 1939. To say nothing of the ongoing occupation of Eritrea and Somalia, under the Italian flag since the late 19th century.

Then, after entering WWII in June 1940, Italian troops participated in the invasion and/or occupation of more territories in France, Greece, Yugoslavia, East and North Africa as well as the Soviet Union.

Across all these territories, and throughout this period, Fascist forces engaged in regular war crimes and crimes against humanity, targeting enemy combatants, partisan forces and civilian populations.

A regular protagonist of such occurrences was General, and later Field Marshal, Rodolfo Graziani.

Graziani had distinguished himself by conducting a brutal anti-insurgency campaign in Libya, culminating with the execution of the resistance leader Omar al-Mukhtar on September 16, 1931. According to historian Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, writing for The Cambridge World History of Genocide, al-Mukhtar was but one among an estimated 83,000 victims of Graziani’s colonial campaign.

Marshal Graziani went on to offer his services during the conquest of Ethiopia, overseeing the mass murder of prisoners, the use of banned weapons such as poison gas, and the bombing of Red Cross hospitals and ambulances.

After achieving victory, Graziani was appointed Viceroy in charge of the new colony. On February 19, 1937, the Viceroy was almost killed in an assassination attempt, which unleashed a wave of reprisals against local officials and civilians. This massacre, known as ‘Yekatit 12’ in the Amharic language, is cited as resulting in perhaps as many as 30,000 deaths.

Some weeks later, on May 20, 1937, Italian troops perpetrated another infamous atrocity, the massacre of up to 1,000 monks at the Debre Libanos monastery.

The case of Marshal Graziani was not an isolated one, with plenty of mass murdering officers to keep him company. One such gentleman was General Mario Roatta, known as ‘the Black Beast’ to his own soldiers. As the head of the Italian Second Army stationed in Yugoslavia from early 1942, he established a reign of terror in Croatia and Slovenia, responsible for the death of more than 13,000 individuals, variously killed by firing squad, beatings, arson, torture, as well as simple malnutrition and disease due to mistreatment in concentration camps.

Climbing down the ranks, we can also find cases of privates and non-commissioned officers who displayed levels of cold-blooded violence on par with the worst of serial killers. A particularly chilling example is that of sergeant Luciano Luberti, known as ‘the executioner of Albenga’.

After serving in an artillery regiment, Luberti enrolled in the Italian SS. This happened in the confusing aftermath of the Italian armistice of September 1943, a military-political mess which we shall cover in detail later. But at the time, Luberti was stationed in Albenga, not far from Genoa, and put in charge of interrogating captured anti-Fascist partisans.

In his new role, he was in charge of countless tortures, beatings, sexual abuses, executions and occasional straight-out murder, thus earning his nickname. After the war, his personal death toll was estimated at around 200, an accusation which he staunchly contested. You see, by his own estimate, he claims it was more like 300.

The extent of Italian atrocities was not lost on the Allied powers, who considered Fascist criminals to be on par with their German and Japanese colleagues. As such, as early as January 1942, the representatives of 18 Allied governments held an Inter-Allied Conference on the Punishment of War Crimes, during which they signed a declaration pledging to investigate, prosecute and judge, to quote, ‘Those guilty or responsible for the commission of acts of violence inflicted upon the civilian populations, whatever their nationality.’

Including Italians, of course!

Following this up, in October 1943, Allied leadership set up the United Nations War Crimes Commission, or UNWCC, as an independent body to investigate evidence of war crimes and identify potential perpetrators. And one month later, on November 1st, 1943, the leaders of the UK, US and USSR adopted the ‘Moscow Declaration’, in which they explicitly agreed that Italian war criminals had to be brought to justice.

In the period from 1943 to 1948, the UNWCC identified over 1,200 Italian nationals suspected of having committed extensive and systematic crimes in territories occupied by the Fascist regime.

And then there were the Fascist concentration camps. The extent of the atrocities here was little known at the time, but in recent years, the efforts of researchers such as Andrea Giuseppini and Roman Herzog have brought to life some rather poignant examples.

In a nutshell, from 1922 to 1943, while Benito Mussolini was the head of government of the Kingdom of Italy, Fascist authorities administered a total of 135 concentration camps, 85 forced labour camps, 651 prisons holding both common criminals and political prisoners, as well as 107 prisoner of war camps.

Going over all of this in any real detail would make this video both demonetized and likely age restricted, let alone be many hours long, so we shall focus on just two examples of the hundreds.

The first is the camp of Dhanaane, built in Somalia at the end of 1935 to detain PoWs from the Italo-Ethiopian war, as well as dissident élites loyal to Emperor Haile Selassie.

Between February and May 1937, the population of the camp sharply increased, following the already mentioned massacres of ‘Yekatit 12’ and Debre Libanos. In the ensuing months, more and more prisoners, including women and children, were concentrated at Dhanaane, and used as slave labour to build roads or fell trees.

Torture, interrogation and arbitrary beatings were frequently carried out in a specially dedicated area. But the more deadly aspect of these facilities was more that of neglect and the general inhumane conditions. Specifically, there were the frequent outbreaks of things like malaria and pneumonia and other health maladies brought about by the sanitary conditions of the camp, described as disastrous by the Italian medics themselves.

Survivor Imru Zelleke reported how the unfortunate who fell ill were taken to a tent outside the camp and simply left to themselves to die. He states, ‘Very few of them resisted more than two or three days before dying.’

Another survivor, civil servant Michel Tessema, denounced the actions of the medical director, Captain Antonino Niosi. In his official reports, Dr Niosi boasted how ‘The prisoners’ health is optimal, their diet is perfect, the healthcare provided is dutiful.’

Mr Tessema had a different perspective:

‘If the prisoners fell ill, the captain said it would have been better for them to die. And he killed them with an injection of strychnine and arsenic. Others, who came to him to be treated, were restrained and subjected to surgery against their will.’

And as for that ‘perfect diet’ much vaunted by the captain, this actually consisted of hardtack, maggot infested rice and polluted water from the camp’s only well, perhaps Dhanaane’s greatest killer. Overall mortality at this camp was estimated by Giuseppini and Herzog’s research at 3,175 deaths.

While that might seem like a small number, it should be noted that Dhanaane was a relatively small facility, which housed a total of 6,500 prisoners while in activity. This puts the death rate at a staggering 49%.

The second example was the brainchild of General Mario Roatta, ‘the Black Beast’. As the head of the Italian Second Army stationed in Yugoslavia, in May 1942 Roatta ordered the construction of a concentration camp on the island of Rab, Croatia. By October, Roatta had ordered some 8,260 prisoners, mostly Slovenian partisans and dissidents, to be housed in the camp, long before construction had been completed. As a result, the internees were crammed into improvised tents or dilapidated shacks, and all with the horrible sanitary conditions.

Italian guards ensured prisoners stayed in line via frequent beatings. But as with Dhanaane, the chief murderers were exposure and malnutrition, brought about by a daily menu of just 80 grams of bread, and a bowl of soup cooked inside fuel drums. Starvation was such a rampant issue that even Fascist Party official Emilio Grazioli filed a complaint with the Second Army in December 1942. General Gambara, from Roatta’s staff, replied that it was, to quote, ‘Right for a concentration camp not to become a ‘fattening camp’. A sick individual is a subdued individual.’

Almost 1500 of those subdued individuals eventually died at Rab, bringing its death rate to 18% – a higher mortality than that of the infamous Nazi camp at Buchenwald.

It should be mentioned that Roatta had also concentrated at Rab some 1,000 Jewish civilians, which he actually went to great lengths to protect from the Germans and the Ustasha, the Croatian fascist militia. Because of this, these Jewish prisoners allegedly enjoyed better living conditions than the other inmates.

Roatta was just one of several officers and civil servants, many of them card-carrying Fascists, who actively sought to shield Jewish civilians from falling victim to the industrialised slaughter carried out by the Nazis. In fact, much like Nazi Germany’s other ally in Japan who went to some effort to take in Jewish refugees, the Fascist Party did not espouse anti-semitic beliefs at least at its inception. Throughout the 1920s and most of the 1930s, many Italian Jews supported the regime, with 171 serving as officers in the armed forces, and 279 as officers in the Blackshirt militia.

That said, as Rome and Berlin got cosier, in September 1938 Mussolini decreed the first in a series of infamous Racial Laws, which severely curtailed the rights and personal liberty of Italian Jews. Of the approximately 46,700 Jews living in Italy as of 1938, 7,129 would be eventually arrested. The vast majority of them would be deported to concentration camps in Germany and Poland, And only 1,016 would survive the end of the war.

So … many crimes were committed. The Allies knew about many of them. So why didn’t the World witness the equivalent of Nuremberg and Tokyo, a large trial bringing to attention and documenting for posterity the scale of those atrocities?

As ever, nothing is black and white and the devil is in the details.

The Armistice

Let’s start with the Italian armistice of September 8, 1943. With this act, the Italian government surrendered to the Allies, and continued the war against the Axis as a ‘co-belligerent’ army alongside Britain, the US, and other allied forces.

As to what all went into this so-called switching of sides, this whole affair would deserve a video of its own. But in brief for now, following Operation Husky, the Allied landings in Sicily, on July 9, 1943, dissent against Mussolini grew exponentially within the armed forces, the Government and the Fascist Party itself. On July 25, during a session of the Fascist Grand Council, party official Dino Grandi launched a motion for Mussolini to be removed, and for full powers to be handed over to King Victor Emmanuel III of Savoy. The motion gained a majority within the Grand Council, prompting the King to seize the occasion and arrest the Duce.

In the aftermath, Victor Emmanuel appointed Field Marshal Badoglio as his new Prime Minister. Keep this in mind: Badoglio himself could be held accountable for his fair share of war crimes as Graziani’s former superior in the Italo-Ethiopian war. He could also be held accountable for crimes against peace, considering his role as Chief of Staff of the armed forces when Italy declared war on France and Britain.

However, after weeks of secret negotiations, on September 3rd, Badoglio’s man General Castellano signed a secret armistice with US general Walter Bedell Smith. On September 8, the agreement was made public, pulling Italy out of the Axis pact.

But then things became messy.

Mussolini was freed by German paratroopers on September 12, with the complicity of Fascist hardliners. Thus, the dictator was reinstated as head of a new state, the Italian Social Republic, in control of the Northern and Central sections of the Italian ‘boot’. The King and Badoglio, supported by the Allied expeditionary forces, retained control of the South.

Thus, Italy was now embroiled in a civil war, layered on top of the larger global conflict still raging. On one side: the Italian Social Republic and German forces deployed to Italy. On the other: the Allies, the ‘co-belligerent’ Italian troops who had disavowed fascism, plus an aggressive partisan movement, which targeted Nazi-Fascist forces deep inside their territory.

As it was the case elsewhere in Europe, partisan action was met with brutal reprisals against civilians, enacted both by local fascists and German nazis. This led to a paradoxical situation: in the setting of a war crimes tribunal, a prospective post-war Italian government could have played the part of both the defendant, and the victim.

As I said: a mess.

Which gets even worse.

Following the September 8 armistice, Badoglio and US General Eisenhower signed a second agreement on September 29, the ‘Instrument of Surrender’. According to its Article 29, the new Italian government was obliged to arrest and surrender into the hands of the United Nations, to quote, ‘Benito Mussolini, his Chief Fascist associates and all persons suspected of having committed war crimes or analogous offences whose names appear on lists to be communicated by the United Nations and who now or in the future are on territory controlled by the Allied Military Command or by the Italian Government.’

Which was all rather awkward, considering that the signatory himself, Marshal Badoglio, could have easily made it on that list! Nonetheless, shortly afterwards, the War Crimes Section of the British Foreign Office made a drastic decision: they would bar British authorities from apprehending any individual who had supported the Allied war effort after September 1943.

This decision would be later adopted by the Combined Chiefs of Staff. This meant that ALL Allied forces – not just the Brits! – were now expected NOT to arrest any suspected war criminal, provided they had joined the co-belligerent army or the resistance movement in Northern Italy.

This was essentially a get-out-of-jail free card for the likes of Badoglio!

But how about those staunch Fascists still active in the Italian Social Republic? Well, the desire to punish them was still alive and kicking, especially amongst Italians themselves! The CLN, the National Liberation Committee overseeing the resistance, had even endorsed a rather radical plan formulated in part by Winston Churchill in late 1943. According to the plan, the United Nations would draft a list of 50 to 100 Italian fascist criminals, who could then be executed on the spot without incurring any punishment on the individuals who killed them. A nationally sponsored hit list, essentially. No jurisprudence needed. Much simpler than involving the courts or allowing for basic human rights. It’s the good guys doing the killings, afterall.

The Executed and the Forgiven

However, the intricacies of the armistice and the civil war already show the signs of Allied ambivalence towards Italian authorities when it came to punishment for crimes. Nonetheless, the Allies were less ambiguous when it came to their war aims: their armies’ advance towards the north of the peninsula was slow, but relentless. By April 1945 the German occupation forces were retreating to Austria and the Fascist loyalist forces were crumbling.

By the 25th of the month, WWII officially ended in Italy, initiating a short, yet intense period of trials, executions, and retribution against Fascists no longer in power.

Benito Mussolini himself and 17 of his top officials were executed by resistance factions on April 28. More Fascist Party officials, police commissioners, military leaders and even regular foot soldiers would be tried and sentenced to death by improvised courts, also set up by the resistance. And although the Italian Civil War had ended, the killings did not: far-left factions within the resistance continued to mete out summary justice against former fascist militias, especially in the infamous ‘triangle of death’, in the Emilia region. The death toll of this lethal wave of revenge is unclear, ranging from 4,500 to 30,000 victims.

But it was ok in this case, because, again, the people doing it were the good guys.

On a more formal level, British occupation forces swiftly organised and conducted 40 trials against Italian war criminals.

On top of this, Italian, pro-Allied authorities, also set about to initiate a process of de-Fascistisation, similar in principle to the process of denazification which the Allies would pursue in Germany and Austria, see our video: How Did Germany Denazify So Quickly After WWII.

In this case, the de-Fascistisation would be carried out by the High Court of Justice for Sanctions Against Fascism and a High Commission. The latter reviewed more than 218,000 cases, attributed to almost 35,000 officials and officers. Not bad as a start for a purge! But by February 1946, the High Commission was dissolved, and its powers transferred directly to the Government.

On June 2, 1946, a referendum abolished the Italian monarchy. The new republican government, featuring a coalition of Christian Democrats and Communists, initiated a strategy of general pacification within Italian society. On June 22, Minister of Justice Palmiro Togliatti – who was also Communist Party Secretary – issued a general amnesty, offered to all those responsible for political and war crimes. There were exceptions of course: the amnesty would not apply to cases of pillage, torture, murder and massacre. High-ranking officials and military officers would also not benefit from this decree.

Togliatti was heavily criticised for this move, and in fact resigned one month later. But the amnesty remained in effect, and applied to far broader effect than its initial intentions. Eventually, out of those 218,000 cases identified by the High Commission, only 738 resulted in a sentence.

Therefore, most of those who had committed the worst atrocities on the ground, especially in Yugoslavia, Libya and Ethiopia still remained unpunished.

To try to counter this, Yugoslavia being the territory with the highest rate of Fascist war criminals, its government would file charges against 764 Italian nationals.

Unsurprisingly, General Roatta was at the very top of the list of criminals compiled by Yugoslavia. And in fact he had been under Allied custody since early 1945.

However, he ultimately got off very lightly thanks to an old entry in his CV … You see, back in the 1930s, Roatta had been the chief of the Italian Military Information Service. As such, he had access to information proving that former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had attempted to keep Mussolini out of the war by offering him some French colonies. Moreover, Roatta had later acquired intelligence about Marshal Badoglio’s conduct after the September 1943 armistice. Badoglio had failed to issue clear orders to his troops stationed in Rome, thus allowing for the capital to fall into German hands.

For both reasons, both British and Italian governments agreed that Roatta was likely to reveal embarrassing secrets should he be tried. Thus, as early as March 1945, Roatta was able to escape custody, with the collaboration of Italian police and British intelligence. The former general thus escaped to Francoist Spain, and after benefitting from the ‘Togliatti amnesty’ of 1946, he lived on as a free man, dying in Rome in 1968.

So, Roatta got away with it … what about the other 763 criminals in the list?

The matter was complicated by the fact that the Italians themselves had been victim to Yugoslav atrocities. In April 1946, new Italian Prime Minister, Christian Democrat Alcide De Gasperi, denounced these crimes to the Allies, especially the massacres perpetrated at the “Foibe” – natural sinkholes in the Karst region. In the last stages of the war, between 3,000 and 20,000 Italians, including civilians, were thrown alive in the “Foibe” by Yugoslav partisans.

Moreover, De Gasperi warned the Allies that extraditing any Italian national to Yugoslavia would impact the public opinion, and likely destabilize the young and fragile Italian democracy. The Prime Minister then reassured all that his government intended to investigate and prosecute war criminals.

Mr De Gasperi was referring to the Italian Commission of Inquiry, set up on May 6, 1946. This was a brain child of his Minister of War, Manlio Brosio, created with the explicit aim of preventing the risk of extraditing Italian nationals to foreign powers. By May 1947, the Commission had identified 39 high ranking individuals for investigation, appearing to proceed in the right direction.

But the initial momentum soon gave way to a slower pace, and resources were diverted into a ‘side-quest’: while investigating Fascist criminals, the Commission also gathered evidence on the Anti-Italian massacres in Yugoslavia.

The final report to the Italian judiciary was submitted only on June 30, 1951. By that time, any interest on the Allied side to stage war crimes trials had fizzled away. So, what was the real deal with the Commission of Inquiry?

According to a 2006 inquest of the Italian parliament, the Commission was never interested in bringing criminals to justice- shocking, I know- but only as a tool to buy time while the government reinforced its ties with the Western Allies. At the same time, the Commission would gather evidence about anti-Italian atrocities at the ‘Foibe’, which could be used as a case to prevent extraditions to Yugoslavia.

This all worked. From 1946 to 1947, Rome resisted any request from Belgrade to extradite, let alone bring to trial, former Fascists active in Yugoslavia. Over the same period, the Western Allies were happy not to get involved. So, Yugoslav leader Marshal Tito could count only on his Soviet counterpart, Josef Stalin, to exert pressure on the Italian government. But by 1948, the two leaders had dramatically broken off relations, which effectively dashed any hope to extradite the likes of the Black Beast to Yugoslavia.

Besides Yugoslavia, the Ethiopian government also was pressuring Rome for the trial of several high ranking officers, including Field Marshals Graziani and Badoglio. Due to the complexities deriving from the September 1943 armistice, described earlier, Badoglio would never be tried, a failure to act which had the UK’s blessing. As per Graziani, in July 1947 the Italian government informed Ethiopian authorities that he would indeed go to court … but nothing happened for several months.

In the interim, diplomatic relations between the two countries had been interrupted, hence Ethiopia could not demand Graziani’s extradition. In November 1948, the Ethiopian ambassador in London turned to British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin for help. Bevin replied only in January 1949, bouncing off the ‘hot potato’ back to Rome: the Ethiopian ambassador should sort the issue with his Italian counterpart, Mr Gallarati Scotti.

The two ambassadors corresponded in September 1949, but the Italian legate refused to escalate the issue to his Minister in Rome. Bevin failed again to intervene, fearing repercussions on the current friendly relations between Britain and Italy. After facing such a barrage of red tape and procedure, the Ethiopian government dropped the issue, hoping that at least Graziani would be tried in his home country.

This did not happen until 1948. His charges, however, did not include the perpetration of massacres in Ethiopia, nor his responsibility for the horrific camps in Somalia and other African colonies.

The officer was in fact charged only for collaborationism, on account of his role in the armed forces of the pro-Fascist, pro-nazi state, the Italian Social Republic. Graziani was found guilty and sentenced to 17 years in prison, but the butcher of Addis Ababa was freed after only two years, thanks to an amnesty. In 1952 he entered the political arena, joining the far-right party Italian Social Movement, or MSI, becoming its honorary president. His appointment lasted until his death, in 1955.

Intricacies of a Peace Treaty

So, to recap, Yugoslavia and Ethiopia failed to bring Italian criminals to justice, in part because of the Allies’ unwillingness to support them. Western powers simply had an interest in maintaining good relations with their former enemy, as exemplified by the negotiations surrounding the Peace Treaty with Italy.

This would be signed in Paris, on February 10, 1947, and it contained Article 45 according to which Italy ‘Shall take the necessary steps to ensure the apprehension and surrender for trial of persons accused of having committed, ordered, or abetted war crimes and crimes against peace or humanity.’

Pretty straightforward, right?

Not really.

The enforcement of such an article was watered down by an additional clause. It stated that, in case of a disagreement regarding Article 45, the issue could be referred to the Ambassadors in Rome of the Soviet Union, UK, US and France.

According to Luigi Prosperi, Assistant Professor in Criminal Law, Utrecht University :

‘This provision was the result of a political compromise between the “Big Three”: on the one hand, UK and US, that were every day less eager to be involved in tracing and arresting the alleged war criminals, fearing the repercussions in the Italian public opinion; on the other, the Soviet Union, the champion of the Yugoslav government’s cause.’

In essence, as of 1947, Moscow was very much willing to bring to justice those responsible for atrocities in Slovenia and Croatia. While the Western Allies were more inclined to secure Italy’s friendship, whatever the cost.

This was similar to what was happening in Germany in the same years. Nazis dealt with, the West decided that the next enemies in Human Wartime Bingo were the Soviets. And as both Germany and Italy bordered countries in Moscow’s sphere of influence and Italy was now home to one of the strongest, if not THE strongest Communist and Socialist Parties in Western Europe, the west needed to keep the current Italian government and public on their side, lest they fall into the Soviet’s lap.

Even with the inclusion of the ‘softening clause’, prof Prosperi states that ‘The Italian authorities received the draft with scorn. According to the Minister of Justice, Fausto Gullo (of the Italian Communist Party), the clause was at odds with Italian nationals’ right to liberty, since they would be exposed to every request of surrender, even the most arbitrary.’

During the Paris Peace Conference, the Italian delegation pushed back on the war crimes clauses. For example, they demanded that any alleged war criminal should not be handed over to the country in which the crimes were committed, and the accused should be offered guarantees of a fair trial. And, very importantly, they protested that the individuals most responsible for crimes against peace or humanity had already been tried, and often executed by the ‘Direct justice of the Italian people.’

Basically, the point made by the Italian delegation was: not all of us Italians were Fascists, many of us actively fought against them, and we exacted justice by ourselves. Are more trials really needed?

In such a complex and delicate situation, UK and US representatives at the Paris Conference decided to disengage from the prosecution of Italian war criminals. All they would do would be to put pressure on Rome to cooperate with any other country who may press charges against said criminals. Washington went a step further: on August 14, 1947, the US Department of State issued a declaration in which they formally renounced the application of Article 45. Throughout 1948, the UK, France, and finally Greece also all renounced, either formally or informally, to enforce Article 45.

So to sum up, in the end, Fascist Italy did not have its own ‘Nuremberg’ for a variety of complex and overlapping reasons. First of all, the nation had been split in two since 1943, fascists and anti-fascists. The Allied wished to cooperate with the latter faction, even if it included individuals who undoubtedly deserved to go to trial for various extreme atrocities.

Second, the post-war government was able to portray Italians both as perpetrators and victims of atrocities, thus ensuring Allied support or delaying efforts for extradition.

Third, similar to what happened in Germany and Japan, post-war tensions with the Soviet Bloc prompted the Western Allies to support the Italian government’s strategy of reconciliation and pacification. Considering the strength and size of the local Communist Party, the West simply needed the Christian Democrats to stay in power, even if it meant foregoing justice.

That said, as alluded to, not every Fascist war criminal got off scot-free. The Duce himself and his closest circle of acolytes were executed at the war’s end. And Italian authorities and partisan factions did carry out both trials and extrajudicial executions of other Fascist officials in the immediate post-war period. This fact actually allowed the government to prevent the Allies from organising a large-scale trial, claiming that direct justice had already been carried out by the Italian people.

Germany and Japan were not dissimilar, in the sense that a great deal of wanted criminals did go to court, but massively more got a slap on the wrist or not even that in some cases. Again, the most egregious of all being the Emperor of Japan himself who, contrary to popular belief since largely because of Allied propaganda in his favour, oversaw and ordered things that would make anyone but the likes of Hitler squeamish, let alone the Emperor’s uncle Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, who directly oversaw and was half in charge of one of the largest massacres in human history, occuring at Nanjing, seeing upwards of a quarter of a million civilians slaughtered in a matter of weeks, along with many thousands of other atrocities committed against the people of that city. Bizarrely it actually would have been massively worse if not for the intervention of a Nazi in the region by the name of John Rabe who is credited as saving many tens of thousands of lives during the event. Noteworthy the other individual besides Prince Asaka in charge of the whole thing, Iwane Matsui, was gone for much of this and upon return and learning the full extent of what had happened tried in vain to put a stop to it, but was quite literally not just ignored, but mocked and laughed at by his subcommanders for this, and more or less forcibly retired in disgrace, while Prince Asaka, who, again, was there the entire time and left in charge during Matsui’s absence, seemingly had zero issue with it all.

While Matsui was still hardly blameless in all of this, to his credit, after being removed from command, he would make a substantial personal donation to a French humanitarian who was working on trying to set up a safety zone for Chinese civilians in Shanghai. He also tried to get improvements made to certain Chinese refugee camps. On top of that, he commissioned a statue of the bodhisattva for mercy, Kannon, named Koa Kannon (Pan-Asian Kannon) in honor of all Chinese and Japanese soldiers dying during the Second Sino-Japanese War. He also subsequently prayed in front of the Koa Kannon in the morning and evening for pretty much the rest of his life, before ultimately being sentenced to death for his part in the massacre.

As for the Emperor’s uncle, Prince Asaka? Well, he would state no such massacre ever happened. He also claimed he did not receive any complaints during the occupation about any such behaviours by his army, nor did he have any knowledge of it…

Unlike Matsui who was sentenced to death, Prince Asaka would be not only protected by, but named by the United States blameless. He then spent the next three and a half decades or so apparently mostly playing golf and designing golf courses until his death in 1981.

Again, check out our two hour documentary Swept Under the Rug: The Truth About the Japanese Holocaust for more details. Many of you likely missed it owing to, by necessity of what we covered, it being both demonetized and age restricted and thus, not exactly promoted by the algorithm to many.

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