Italian Social Republic

gigatos | January 19, 2022

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Summary

The Italian Social Republic (RSI), also known as the Republic of Salò, was the regime, which existed between September 1943 and April 1945, wanted by Nazi Germany and led by Benito Mussolini, in order to govern part of the Italian territories militarily controlled by the Germans after the armistice of Cassibile.

Its juridical nature is controversial: it is considered a puppet state by most historians as well as by the prevailing doctrine of international law; however, some historians and jurists have questioned the scope of this definition, defining the RSI as an “insurrectional government” (therefore endowed with its own subjectivity) or, in any case, an entity endowed with an original order and not derived from that of Germany. Mussolini himself, however, was aware that the Germans considered his regime as a puppet state.

The current Italian system does not recognize any legitimacy, in fact, in the Legislative Decree of 5 October 1944, n. 249 on the “Structure of legislation in the liberated territories” it is defined as “self-styled government of the Italian Social Republic.

While claiming the entire territory of the Kingdom of Italy, the RSI exercised its sovereignty only over those provinces not subject to the Allied advance and direct German occupation. Initially its administrative activity extended as far as the provinces of Lazio and Abruzzo, withdrawing progressively further north, in conjunction with the advance of the Anglo-American armies. In the north, moreover, the Germans established two “Zones of Operations” including territories that had been parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: the provinces of Trent, Bolzano and Belluno (Zone of Operations of the Prealps) and the provinces of Udine, Gorizia, Trieste, Pula, Fiume and Ljubljana (Zone of Operations of the Adriatic Coast), subjected respectively to the German Gauleiter of Tyrol and Carinthia, de facto although not legally governed by the Third Reich, except for Carniola which was subjected to a special regime. The exclave of Campione d”Italia was included in the Republic only for a few months, before being liberated thanks to a popular revolt supported by the Carabinieri.

The CSR was recognized by Germany, Japan, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, the Republic of Nanking, Manchuku and Thailand, i.e. countries allied to the Axis powers or with Axis troops present within them. Finland and Vichy France, although sailing in the Nazi orbit, did not recognize it. Unofficial relations were maintained with Argentina, Portugal, Spain and, through commercial agents, with Switzerland. The Vatican City did not recognize the CSR.

The juridical-institutional structure of the RSI should have been left to a constituent assembly, as requested by the congress of the PFR (14-16 November 1943). A “social republic” should have been established in line with the programmatic principles, starting with the “socialization of enterprises”, outlined in the document known as the Manifesto of Verona and approved during the congress. Mussolini preferred, however, to postpone the convening of the Constituent Assembly until after the war, limiting himself to having the Council of Ministers of 24 November approve the name RSI.

The Anglo-American advance in the spring of 1945 and the insurrection of April 25, 1945 determined the end of the RSI, which officially ceased to exist with the surrender of Caserta of April 29, 1945 (operational since May 2) signed by the Allies with the German Command South-West also in the name of the military corps of the fascist state as the latter was not recognized by the Allies as valid and autonomous.

Ideological-legal-economic foundations of the Italian Social Republic were fascism, national socialism, republicanism, socialization, co-determination, corporatism and anti-Semitism.

The creation of a Fascist Italian state led by Mussolini was announced by the same on September 18, 1943 through Radio Munich. Three days earlier the unofficial agency of the Reich, the DNB, had announced that Mussolini was “once again assuming the supreme leadership of Fascism in Italy” by issuing the first five order sheets of the Duce.

On September 23, the new Mussolini government was formed at the German embassy in Rome in the absence of the latter, still in Germany. In this phase the expression “Republican Fascist State of Italy” was used. On September 27, the government announced that “the operation of the new Fascist Republican State began”.

On 28 September in its first Council of Ministers at the Rocca delle Caminate, near Forli, the name “National Republican State” was used. The first Official Gazette not to bear the monarchical insignia and headings was the one published on October 19. On October 20, the Minister of the Seals ordered “that the denomination “Kingdom of Italy” in the acts and documents and in all the headings relative to this Ministry and the Offices dependent on it, be replaced by the denomination: “National Republican State of Italy””.

At the third Council of Ministers meeting on 27 October, Mussolini announced “the preparation of the Great Constituent Assembly, which will lay the solid foundations of the Italian Social Republic”, but the State did not change its name. On 17 November, the Verona Manifesto approved by the PFR outlines the creation of a “Social Republic”. On 24 November, the Fourth Council of Ministers resolved that “the national republican state would take the definitive name of the Italian Social Republic” as of 1 December 1943.

The RSI was soon also known as the “Republic of Salò”, after the name of the town on Lake Garda where the Ministry of Popular Culture and the press and foreign agencies were based, so that most of the official dispatches bore the heading “Salò comunica…”, or “Salò informa” or “Salò dice”.

During the Second World War, after the American landing in Sicily and the now considered inexorable defeat of Italy, were sought at many levels solutions to get out of the crisis. On 25 July 1943 the Great Council of Fascism, constitutional body and political directorate of the PNF, with the Order of the Day Grandi had invited Mussolini

In the approval of the agenda there was the vote, if not decisive at least very significant, of Galeazzo Ciano, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and son-in-law of the Duce, and Dino Grandi, an important politician and diplomat who had represented the prestige of Fascist Italy in the world.

In the afternoon of July 25, Mussolini was received by the King at his residence in Villa Savoia. After a brief conversation, which ended with a request for his resignation as Head of Government, Mussolini was arrested and taken by Red Cross ambulance to the barracks of the Legione Allievi Carabinieri in Via Legnano, Rome-Prati, where he was imprisoned for three nights before being transferred elsewhere.

Not at his residence in Rocca delle Caminate, as he had hoped. On 28 July he was embarked in Gaeta on the corvette Persephone and transferred first to Ventotene, then to the island of Ponza and, from 7 August, with the corvette Pantera, to the island of La Maddalena. Finally, from August 28 at the foot of the Gran Sasso, and then climb on September 3 at Campo Imperatore where he remained, controlled by 250 carabinieri and public security guards, until his liberation by a department of German paratroopers led by Otto Skorzeny.

In place of Mussolini, the King had appointed Pietro Badoglio, who immediately quelled the popular euphoria, which arose at the news of the fall of the head of fascism, and extinguished the hopes of peace with the famous radio proclamation characterized by the commitment: “The war continues. After lengthy negotiations, on September 8, the proclamation of the Cassibile armistice with the Allies (already signed on September 3) was made. A general disbandment followed, during which the royal family fled from Rome together with Badoglio, taking refuge in Brindisi. The authorities and the leaders of the State, including the staff of the armed forces, were dismembered, disappeared, were made untraceable, while the German troops took control of the country following a precise plan organized months before (Operation Achse). The peninsula remained divided in two, occupied by Allied forces in the south and German forces in the center north, with Rome held by the Germans until June 4, 1944.

The birth of a Fascist government in German-occupied Italy had already been secretly planned (Operation Achse) by the Berlin leadership before Mussolini”s liberation: at first, a government with Alessandro Pavolini, Vittorio Mussolini and Roberto Farinacci – exiles in Germany after July 25 – was considered, but none of the three seemed to give sufficient guarantees to Germany, while Farinacci refused any assignment. It was then aired the possibility to entrust the government to Giuseppe Tassinari. The liberation of Mussolini resolved the problem.

The liberation of Mussolini had been meticulously organized by the Germans, by direct order of Hitler, and was carried out on September 12 by selected troops led by Kurt Student, Harald-Otto Mors and Major Otto Skorzeny, who after taking possession of the places and freed the prisoner, led him to Munich. Here Mussolini discussed the situation in northern Italy in a series of talks (lasting two days) with Hitler of which no minutes have come. Initially depressed and uncertain, Mussolini was convinced by Hitler, who seems to have threatened to reduce Italy “worse than Poland,” and agreed to form a Fascist government in the north.

On September 15 were issued from Monaco the first directives to reorganize the fascist party, which in the meantime was reconstituting itself spontaneously after the dissolution under the weight of the events of the Armistice, and the MVSN, in part remained armed to the foot. Resuming the program of the Italian Fasci di combattimento of 1919, referring to Mazzini and emphasizing the Republican and Socialist origins and content, on September 17 Mussolini proclaimed through Radio Monaco (a broadcaster received in much of northern Italy) the forthcoming establishment of the new Fascist state. This would have been formalized on the 23rd, installing the first meeting of the Government of the Italian Social Republic in Rome.

In November an embassy of the RSI in Germany was established: Filippo Anfuso was appointed ambassador and presented his credentials to Hitler on the 13th. The Reich reciprocated by sending to Salò Rudolf Rahn, already ambassador in Rome before the armistice, who presented himself to Mussolini on 11 December, the anniversary of the signing of the Tripartite Pact. The headquarters of the institutional bodies, ministries and armed forces of the CSR were distributed throughout northern Italy.

The district of Salò, seat of some of the major government offices, was not only of great scenic beauty, but it was also strategically very important: in addition to its proximity to the arms factories (for example in Gardone Val Trompia, where Beretta and other minor factories were located) and to the iron and steel industries, it boasted the proximity to Milan and to the German border and, in addition to being sheltered by the Alpine arc, it was equidistant from France and from the Adriatic. It was in the heart of the last part of Italy still able to carry out production and therefore able to create goods to be sold, even if at a low price and only to Germany.

The Italian Social Republic had a de facto government, i.e. an executive that operated in the absence of a Constitution, which even though it was drafted was never discussed and approved.

This body, even though it seemed to possess all the essential prerogatives to be considered sovereign (legislative power, authority over the territory, exclusivity of currency and availability of armed forces) exercised them de facto, but not de jure. Benito Mussolini was – even if never proclaimed – Head of the Republic (this is how the Manifesto of Verona defined the figure of the Head of State, while in the mentioned draft Constitution it is called “Duce of the Republic”), Head of the Government and Minister of Foreign Affairs. The Republican Fascist Party (PFR) was led by Alessandro Pavolini. Heir to what remained in the north of the MVSN, the Carabinieri and the Italian Africa Police, the Republican National Guard (GNR) was created with judicial and military police duties, placed under the command of Renato Ricci.

On October 13, 1943, the imminent convocation of a Constituent Assembly was announced, which was to draw up a Constitutional Charter in which sovereignty would be attributed to the people. After the first national assembly of the PFR, held in Verona on November 14, 1943, this announcement was canceled by Mussolini, having decided to convene this Constituent Assembly at the end of the war. On December 20, 1943 the Council of Ministers of the Italian Social Republic decided to overprint the stamps with the effigy of Vittorio Emanuele III so that they could be used in their territories. Only at the end of 1944 will a series with specially illustrated vignettes be issued.

The CSR was actually a German protectorate, exploited by the Nazis to legalize some of their annexations and to obtain cheap labor.

Wanted by the Third Reich as an apparatus to administer the occupied territories of Northern and Central Italy, the State of the RSI was in fact a bureaucratic structure without real autonomous power, which was actually held by the Germans. With the operation of a puppet state, the Germans were able to collect the costs of occupation, established in October 1943 to 7 billion lire, passed subsequently to 10 billion (December 17, 1943) and finally to 17 billion.

The entire apparatus of the Republic of Salò was in fact controlled by the German military, mindful of the “betrayal” that the Italians had consummated with the armistice of September 8. Control was exercised not only over the direction of the war and military affairs, but often also over the administration of the Republic. The same military authorities could in fact also have civil functions. In this way “… a vast network of authorities with military but also civilian competences was established by the Germans in the Italy they controlled…”.

The Social Republic was not allowed to bring back the soldiers interned by the Germans after September 8th, but only to recruit volunteers among them for the constitution of Army divisions to be trained in Germany. In Italy, the fascist volunteers and the militarization of existing organizations provided the RSI with numerically substantial armed forces (between 500 and 800,000 men and women in the army), but these were used, sometimes against their will, mainly in operations of repression, extermination and retaliation against the partisans and the populations accused of offering them support.

Units of the 10th Mas participated however to the fights against the Allies at Anzio and Nettuno, in Tuscany, on the Karst front and on the Senio; the divisions trained in Germany fought on the Garfagnana front (Monterosa and Italy) and on the French front (Littorio and Monterosa). Individual divisions were incorporated into large German units, while in the rear Italian engineer battalions were used by German commands for the construction of defensive works, for the rehabilitation of communication routes damaged by the enemy air offensive and by sabotage, and as combat corps. Marginal contributions to the military operations against the Allies were made by the thin navy of the National Republican Navy and by the flying units of the National Republican Air Force; more intense was the employment of anti-aircraft units, framed in the German FlaK, and paratroopers, on the French and Lazio fronts. The bulk of the Republican Armed Forces was mainly employed as territorial garrison and coast guard.

The territorial integrity of the RSI was not respected by the Germans. On September 10, 1943, with a secret order signed a few hours after the liberation of Mussolini, Hitler granted the Gauleiter of Tyrol and Carinthia to annex to their Reichsgau many provinces of Triveneto. With the liberation of Mussolini and the proclamation of the RSI, Hitler did not go back on his decision, but legitimized it with the establishment of the two zones of Operations of the Prealps (provinces of Trento, Bolzano and Belluno) and of the Adriatic Coast (provinces of Udine, Gorizia, Trieste, Pula, Fiume, Ljubljana), officially for military reasons, but in practice administered by German civil servants who received directly from the Führer “the fundamental indications for their activity”. A decision that served Germany to leave open the question of the borders with Italy, to be redrawn when the war was won.

In the days following September 8, 1943, Pavelić”s Croatia invaded Dalmatia, but Hitler did not grant it also the possession of Rijeka and Zadar, subject to German military command (the former within OZAK). Similarly, the Boka Kotorska Straits were subject to German military command, while Albania – dynastically united to Italy since 1939 through the crown of the House of Savoy – was declared “independent”. The Dodecanese remained under nominal Italian sovereignty, although subject to German military command. For the Autonomous Province of Ljubljana (Provinz Laibach) the gauleiter Rainer even prevented the installation – even if only formal – of the Italian head of the province (equivalent to the prefect) appointed by Mussolini.

During the Nazi occupation, numerous works of art, such as paintings and sculptures, were stolen from their Italian locations and transferred to Germany: for this purpose Hermann Göring established a special Nazi military corps called Kunstschutz (artistic protection).

The relationship between Fascism and Jews, already made difficult and precarious by the racial laws of 1938, suffered a further degradation after the establishment of the Italian Social Republic. The Verona Manifesto established in fact in Article 7 that: “The members of the Jewish race are foreigners. During this war they belong to an enemy nationality”.

Among the raids completely organized and carried out by the Italians of the RSI, the raking of Venice, carried out between December 5 and 6, 1943, is particularly important: 150 Jews were arrested in a single night. The same sad story of the roundup and deportation of Roman Jews (carried out by the Germans under the command of Herbert Kappler) saw the active collaboration of the authorities of the Italian Social Republic and in particular of Commissioner Gennaro Cappa, head of the Race Service of the police headquarters in Rome.

On November 30, 1943, Buffarini Guidi issued Police Order n. 5, according to which Jews had to be sent to special concentration camps. On January 4, 1944 the Jews were deprived of their right to possession. Immediately afterwards, the first confiscation orders began to be issued, and by March 12, 1944, the number of confiscations had already reached 6,768 (orthopedic limbs, medicines, shoe brushes and used socks were also confiscated from the Jews). In the meantime, the deportations began, carried out by the Nazis with the help and complicity of the RSI, as mentioned above. Guido Buffarini Guidi granted the Germans the use of the camp of Fossoli, active since 1942, and preferred to ignore the opening of the concentration camp of Risiera di San Sabba that, although located in the Zone of Operations of the Adriatic Coast, was still part de iure of the Italian Social Republic.

With the appointment of Giovanni Preziosi, in March 1944, as the head of the Directorate for Demography and Race, there was a further tightening of anti-Jewish persecution. New provisions were issued even more vexatious, supported by Alessandro Pavolini and signed by Mussolini. Preziosi also tried, in May 1944, to get the Duce to agree to a bill that provided that all those who could not prove the purity of their “Aryan” lineage since 1800 should not be considered of Italian blood. The ridicule inherent in this proposal pushed Buffarini Guidi to intervene with Mussolini who initially did not sign. “… However, as usual, Mussolini chose a situation of compromise: the law was modified but passed”.

The Jews taken prisoner by the regime were first interned in provincial camps, and then concentrated in the camp of Fossoli, from which the German police organized convoys to the death camps. Michele Sarfatti, a historian of Jewish origin, pointed out that “it is true that the convoys were organized by the German police, but the latter could do so because the Italian police transferred the Jews to Fossoli. And we are in the absence of any order blocking the transfer from the provincial camps to that of Fossoli. From this comes the conviction that there was an explicit or tacit agreement between the Social Republic and the Third Reich”, and that “the government, big industries, and the Holy See had known since the summer of 1942 what was happening. They might not have known about Auschwitz, but they did know about the mass massacres”.

The numbers of Italians of the Jewish religion deported until the fall of the RSI, if compared to the overall size of the Jewish community in Italy (consisting of 47,825 units in 1931, including 8,713 foreign Jews), are high and represent a fourth or fifth part of the total. According to reliable sources, there were 8,451 deportees, of whom only 980 returned; however, 292 Jews killed in Italy must be added to those who disappeared in the concentration and extermination camps. In total, 7,763 Italian Jews were murdered by the Nazi-Fascists.

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Finance and currency

Professor Giampietro Domenico Pellegrini, a teacher of constitutional law at the University of Naples, was appointed Minister of Finance of the new Fascist government. His main task, for the entire duration of his tenure, would be to defend the coffers of the new state from German claims and find a solution to the situation that the behavior of the Nazi troops of occupation had created.

Armed with weapons, Herbert Kappler”s SS men had robbed the reserves of the Bank of Italy in Rome on October 16, 1943, looting about three billion lire (two billion in gold and one billion in hard currency) and transferring it all to Milan. To this sum had to be added many other millions, taken from other public and private banks. The economy risked disaster for reasons related to inflation, because of the occupation currency, a sort of waste paper called Reichskredit Kassenscheine, the counterpart of Am-Lire. To these maneuvers were added the German claims to get the new republic to “pay” for the war that Germany was conducting on its behalf since the Armistice had been signed.

From the very first days after its constitution, the government of the RSI was concerned with regaining firm control of the economy, in order to safeguard the purchasing power of money and avoid inflationary phenomena. The newly appointed Minister of Finance, Giampietro Domenico Pellegrini, had to deal with a serious problem. The Germans, in the days immediately following September 8, had put occupation marks into circulation. This could have triggered inflationary processes, so the problem had to be quickly solved: on October 25, 1943 the monetary agreement between Germany and the RSI was stipulated, by virtue of which the occupation marks had no more value and therefore were withdrawn. On April 2, 1944, the City of Milan, led by the mayor Piero Parini, in order to restore the exhausted municipal coffers, launched a subscription for a public loan called “City of Milan” but, still today, remembered in Milan as “Parini loan”. The established sum of 1 billion liras was quickly covered by popular support and the City of Milan collected 1,056,000,000 liras.

The total expenses of the Italian Social Republic, as stated by Pellegrini himself in the article L”Oro di Salò can be divided as follows:

As can be seen, due to the very high war expenses (contributions paid to the German army and expenses for the repair of damages caused by the indiscriminate bombing of the cities) the profit and loss account closed with a liability of about 300 billion liras. Only the recourse to extraordinary operations, in large part loans obtained both from private banks and from the central bank (it was, in practice, printed money), avoided the financial collapse.

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The socialization of enterprises

According to Benito Mussolini”s intentions, the CSR was supposed to transform the economic organizational structure from a capitalist system, the one found in 1922, to an organic, corporative and participatory one. In the Verona Manifesto (the text of which was elaborated by Angelo Tarchi, Alessandro Pavolini, Nicola Bombacci, and Manlio Sargenti, under the supervision of Benito Mussolini) there were some calls for the socialization of enterprises, which included the participation of workers in the decisions and profits of the company, the nationalization and state management of strategic companies for the nation (including Fiat), the right to work, and the right to home ownership. With these measures Mussolini hoped to gather support among the masses.

The maneuver to enforce socialization had its starting point in the decree appointing Angelo Tarchi as Minister of Corporate Economy. Tarchi would have wanted his offices in Milan, as General Hans Leyers (superintendent of Italian industrial production for the Third Reich”s Ministry of Armaments) had them, but he was sent to Bergamo. By January 11, 1944, the summary program of socialization was ready. Other documents followed, the most important of which was a decree (Decree Law on Socialization) approved on February 12, 1944, in forty-five articles, which defined more precisely the desired new form of the economy of the CSR, in which the following institutions would be fundamental:

Aware that this decree could have aroused the apprehensions of the Germans, the Duce took care to calm them down even before it was approved. Addressing Rudolph Rahn he said that:

Three weeks later, the workers” strikes began (March 1, 1944), paralyzing war production in northern Italy and making it clear to the workers which political forces and parties (anti-fascist) represented them. As a well-known Fascist trade union leader wrote to Mussolini a few months later: “The masses repudiate receiving anything from us…In short, the masses say that all the evil we have done to the Italian people since 1940 exceeds the great good bestowed on them in the previous twenty years, and they are waiting for Comrade Togliatti, who today is pontificating in Rome in the name of Stalin, to create a new country…”. The main leaders of the strike were deported to Germany.

Both the Italian entrepreneurs and the German occupiers saw socialization as a type of regulation that could have disastrous consequences on industrial production in general and war production in particular. General Leyers took care to reassure the owners of the “protected companies”: “… the socialization law is not to be applied to all companies. The law on socialization is not currently in force… If in the future you observe any tendency towards socialization in any of your companies, do not hesitate to inform me personally. In February 1945 the implementation of the socialization law was still almost completely inoperative, but it continued to worry the Italian business community. Angelo Tarchi reported to Mussolini the reactions of Italian industrialists to the socialization proposal, which, according to them, would have paralyzed productive activity.

The National Republican Army (with the National Republican Guard and the Black Brigades) depended, formally, on the government of the RSI, “… even if, in the operational employment they are in fact subordinate to the German military commands…”. The Italian SS depended on General Wolff, while the Xª MAS of commander Junio Valerio Borghese constituted a real personal army.

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National Republican Army

According to the Historical Office of the General Staff of the Italian Army, in the period 1943-1945, the Army of the Social Republic numbered 558,000.

At the top of the military organization of the RSI was the Ministry of National Defense, which, since January 6, 1944 was called Ministry of the Armed Forces. It was headed by former Italian Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, who in turn appointed General Gastone Gambara as Chief of General Staff. Collaborating with the minister were an undersecretary for the Army, one for the National Republican Navy and one for the National Republican Air Force, for each of which there was also a Chief of Staff.

At the hierarchical level, the armed forces were under the Head of State who in peacetime exercised command through the Minister of Defense, in wartime through the Chief of General Staff.

Most of the actions carried out by these units were directed against the partisan movement: the German commanders, not very inclined to trust the Italian soldiers after the facts of September 8th, preferred to avoid involving them in the fighting on the front, and convinced themselves to use them only in the most peaceful moments and sectors of the Gothic Line. This attitude contributed to further depress the morale of those who, especially young conscripts, had responded to Graziani”s announcement with the sincere desire to defend their homeland, seeing themselves forced to take part in the counter-guerrilla actions perpetrated against Italian villages and populations.

In spite of the claims of Fascist propaganda, which wanted to pass off Operation Wintergewitter as a sort of Italian Ardennes offensive, the battle was at least of limited proportions, both for the results obtained (to make a US regimental combat group fall back) and for the size of the units involved (three German battalions and three of the RSI, plus artillery support). By December 31, the front would again stabilize on the starting positions, without any major strategic or tactical change.

Finally, there were units that fought outside the borders: in France, Germany, the Soviet Union, the Balkan Peninsula, and the Dodecanese. The fallen in Italy of this army were about 13,000 soldiers and 2,500 civilians. The prisoners of war were sent by the Allies mainly to the concentration camp of Hereford, Texas.

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The National Republican Air Force

The establishment of an air force for the nascent fascist republic is generally traced back to the appointment of Lieutenant Colonel Ernesto Botto as undersecretary for aeronautics on September 23, 1943, during the meeting of the RSI Council of Ministers.

Botto moved into his office at the Ministry of Aeronautics on October 1st and found himself faced with a very confused situation, the causes of which were to be found in the lack of connections and in German initiatives: the commander of Luftflotte 2, Field Marshal Wolfram von Richthofen, had already begun to assemble the personnel of the Regia Aeronautica to enlist in the Luftwaffe. Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, in turn, had appointed Lieutenant Colonel Tito Falconi as “inspector of the Italian fighter aircraft”, with the task of putting the aforementioned fighter aircraft in fighting condition. Moreover, Richtofen had appointed a commander for the Italian air force in the person of General Müller.

Among mutual misunderstandings, distances and differences of view, the constitution of the Republican Air Force had to wait for Hitler”s personal authorization in November, after Botto”s official protests had gone up the entire German hierarchical ladder. In January 1944 the formation of the units began: a group for each specialty (fighter, on Macchi C.205V Veltro, aerosilurant, on Savoia-Marchetti S.M.79 and transport) with a complementary squadron. Everything, for operations, depended on the German commands. In April a further group of fighters was formed, on Fiat G.55 Centauro.

In June of the same year the changeover to the German Messerschmitt Bf-109G-6 aircraft began, which were also to arm the new 3rd Group; this expansion of the fighter was due both to the growing disengagement of the Luftwaffe from the southern sector and to the good results initially achieved, but these soon came to an end and the rate of losses began to outweigh the number of kills obtained.

In the period between 3 January 1944 and 19 April 1945, the 1st Group recorded 113 sure victories and 45 probable victories in 46 fights. The 2nd group, which came on line in April 1944, by April 1945 had 114 sure victories and 48 probable victories in 48 fights. The air force of the RSI, which also included anti-aircraft artillery and paratroopers, consisted of three Fighter Groups (which countered as far as possible the superiority of the enemy air force), the Faggioni torpedo bomber group and two air transport groups.

The Gruppo Aerosiluranti “Buscaglia-Faggioni”, commanded by Carlo Faggioni, had worse results, suffering heavy losses while attacking the Allied fleet supporting the Anzio bridgehead. In spite of the numerous ships hit (according to the official bulletins), the operational life of the group was rather stingy of recognition: the only torpedo hit after so much effort was the one that damaged a British steamship, hit north of Benghazi, during the period in which the unit operated from bases located in Greece, and a steamer off Rimini on January 5th, 1945. Worthy of note after Faggioni”s death was the raid that the group made against the stronghold of Gibraltar, led by the new commander Marino Marini. As for the transport group (to which a second one was added), it was used by the Luftwaffe on the Eastern front and then disbanded in the summer of 1944.

The other units, in substance, suffered the same fate at the same time: in those months the relationship between the military leadership of the RSI and the Germans had worsened considerably, also because of the diminishing results achieved by the Republican Air Force units, whose equipment and pilots suffered excessive wear and tear. Von Richtofen, who had to further reduce the German air presence in Italy, thought to solve the issue by disbanding the RSI units and replacing them with a sort of “Italian air legion”, structured according to the model of the German Fliegerkorps, whose commander would have been Brigadier General Tessari (who would thus have left the position of undersecretary he held after Botto”s dismissal), flanked by a German General Staff that would have allowed the Luftwaffe to maintain its control over air warfare activities in Italy.

The usual internal rivalries and misunderstandings caused the plan to stall, leaving the RSI effectively without aviation until September, when the process was set in motion again. From October until January 1945, when the 1st group returned from training in Germany, the 2nd was the only fighter unit available to counter Allied action. But the arrival of the new unit changed little the overall situation, which saw the RSI fighters suffering increasing losses.

The last flight missions were carried out on April 19, when the two groups intercepted bombers and scouts, probably American: one of the scouts was shot down, at the cost of a fighter; as for the clash with the bombers, this was disastrous and the RSI planes, taken by surprise by the reaction of the escort, suffered five losses without obtaining any shooting down. In the following days, unable to take off for lack of fuel and subjected to continuous attacks by the partisans, the units destroyed their flight equipment and surrendered.

The National Republican Navy

The formation of a new navy was a much slower and more difficult operation than the troubled affair of the establishment of the other two arms.

The first and biggest problem on the way was that of finding the means: the heavy and most of the light ships, in compliance with the armistice clauses, had set sail for the Grand Harbour of Valletta to surrender themselves to the Allies; the means that had been abandoned in the Italian ports had undergone the now usual operation of sabotage by the crews, so that the German troops could not take possession of them.

Siding with the new republic were Commander Grossi, who had authority over the submarines at the BETASOM base (Bordeaux), and Prince Junio Valerio Borghese, commander of the Xª MAS. The case of the Xª MAS under Borghese”s command deserves a separate discussion, since he had made almost private agreements with the high commands of the Kriegsmarine and, although he and his unit belonged to what had been the Regia Marina, they did not intend to become part of the organization chart of the future navy of the RSI, keeping a safe distance, at least in the initial phase, from political involvement.

The undersecretary for the navy, frigate captain Ferruccio Ferrini, appointed on October 26th, immediately tried to incorporate the “Decima” directly into his armed force (as a subordinate weapon), but with little success and triggering dangerous incidents that almost drove Prince Borghese”s “marò” to armed insurrection against the government (this was, however, one of the reasons for the success and popularity of the Flotilla, that only counting on the image of the commander and his political “independence”, was able to collect an impressive number of volunteers and grew, expanding also to land activities, until it became a kind of autonomous army). These events, together with the scarcity of naval material left in the hands of the Fascists, led the German commands to entrench themselves in positions of distrust and non-cooperation. The substitution of Ferrini with Giuseppe Sparzani (already Chief of Staff) dissolved the German reluctance regarding the establishment of the new naval force, which would have taken place under the condition of placing the naval units of the RSI under German control.

The Navy of Salò, in addition to the Naval Service Area Commands (which constituted its territorial organization), had provided for the establishment of Naval Commands for the employment of military units: one for surface units, one for submarines, and finally one for anti-submarine units. The last one was the only one actually functioning; the submarines for the second one were mainly employed to transport spies and agents beyond the Allied lines; the first one was never established because there would have been no ships to assign to it. The only ships that saw a limited use were two cruisers that were used as anti-aircraft ships moored in the port of Trieste.

It should be remembered that Italy, when the fate of the conflict was about to take a turn for the worse, decided to equip the Regia Marina with two aircraft carriers, the Aquila and the Sparviero, thus remedying a serious strategic shortcoming. At the date of the armistice the two ships were still under construction in the Muggiano (SP) shipyards, therefore in territory controlled by the Axis forces, but they were never completed due to the evolution of the war events. To avoid being sunk by the Germans at the entrance of the port, blocking it, the Aquila was sunk by the raiders of the Regia Marina before the end of hostilities.

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The Republican National Guard

The Republican National Guard was created by the Duce”s Legislative Decree no. 913 of December 8, 1943 – XXII E.F. “Institution of the Republican National Guard”, published in the Italian Official Gazette no. 131 of June 5, 1944. With the subsequent Decree of the Duce n. 921 of December 18, 1943 – XXII E.F. “Ordinance and functioning of the National Republican Guard”, published in the Official Gazette of Italy n. 166 of July 18, 1944, its organization and functioning were established. With the Duce”s Legislative Decree no. 469 of August 14, 1944 – XXII E.F. “Passage of the G.N.R. into the National Republican Army”, the National Republican Guard becomes part of the National Republican Army.

However, Pavolini was able to take advantage of two opportunities offered to him one after the other: the occupation of Rome by the Allies in June, and the assassination attempt on Hitler in July. Mussolini, shaken by these events, gave in and issued a decree (published in the Gazzetta on August 3) for the establishment of the Black Shirts Auxiliary Corps. The new corps, subject to military discipline and to the Military Penal Code of War, was constituted by all members of the Republican Fascist Party between eighteen and sixty years of age not belonging to the Armed Forces, organized in Action Squads; the Secretary of the Party had to transform the leadership of the Party into a Staff Office of the Auxiliary Corps of the Black Shirts Action Squads, the Federations were transformed into Brigades of the Auxiliary Corps, whose command was entrusted to local political leaders. The decree, in a nutshell, as the text stated, meant that “the political-military structure of the Party was transformed into a body of an exclusively military type”.

It was Pavolini who coined the name “Brigate Nere” (Black Brigades), with which he wanted to express their opposition to the partisan formations of the Resistance linked to the left-wing parties, “Brigate Garibaldi”, “Brigate Giustizia e Libertà” and “Brigate Matteotti”. Being secretary of the Party and therefore commander of the Brigades, it was up to him to choose his collaborators: Puccio Pucci, a CONI official, was his closest aide, and the first chief of staff was the consul Giovanni Battista Raggio. Their attempt to exhume the squadrism of the beginnings (but on a larger scale) did not prove to be very effective: of the 100,000 men planned by Pavolini, only 20,000 were formally found, and of these only 4,000 were combatants, i.e., really operational soldiers. They were framed in the so-called mobile Black Brigades, which would have been the only units of this militia to fight against the partisans.

For weapons and means of transport, the Mobile Brigades depended on the German military, who were initially more than happy to count on the Republican Fascists for anti-partisan enterprises, and especially for “dirty work”, such as setting fire to villages, taking women and children into arms, and carrying out deportations, kidnappings, torture and summary executions. To the typical crimes of counter-guerrilla actions, were added those typical of divisions that had enlisted all sorts of elements, even including more than one criminal: the reports of the Republican National Guard list numerous cases of looting, theft, robbery, illegal arrest, violence to property and persons.

The indiscipline and the gratuitous and uncoordinated violence manifested by the Brigades were ascertained by the German commanders themselves, who lost their initial – albeit lukewarm – enthusiasm for their institution by recording how the Brigades were incapable of coordinating with the units of the Wehrmacht and did not obey orders (their violence was such that, in the areas in which they operated, due to popular reaction the partisans increased in number. The commander in chief of the SS in Italy, General Karl Wolff, perhaps to avoid a further aggravation of the problem (but also because he was about to take the initiative of separate talks with the Allies and wanted to make a gesture of “détente”), decided to put out of action the mobile Black Brigades, drying up their supply channels.

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Female auxiliary service

The Women”s Auxiliary Service was a military corps composed solely of women. More than 6,000 women from all walks of life and from all over Italy applied for enlistment. The corps was established by Ministerial Decree n. 447 of April 18, 1944. It was Mussolini himself who considered the creation of a special corps as important as that of the auxiliaries.

For the auxiliaries was provided a salary ranging between 700 liras for the clerical staff and 350 liras of the fatigue staff. The corps was also entrusted with important and risky tasks, such as real sabotage operations. In the Corrispondenza repubblicana of August 15, 1944, the Duce exalted the fighting ardor of twenty-five franche tiratrici fascists of Florence against the Anglo-American invaders, and described the surprise of the Reuters agency and the English newspaper The Daily Mirror expressed by Curzio Malaparte.

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Undivided departments

After September 8, 1943, many officers tried to reorganize the stragglers, forming small units that remained generally autonomous in the nascent CSR.

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CSR Special Services

Several organizations were organized to prepare volunteers for sabotage and information missions in the territories controlled by the Allies. These missions were of course very risky and several volunteers were captured and shot or sentenced to imprisonment.

The National Republican State, born September 23, 1943 had a de facto flag in the Italian Tricolor, which was used until November 30, 1943, when, on December 1, 1943 were made official the national flag and the combat flag for the Armed Forces of the new state called the Italian Social Republic. The combat flag of the Armed Forces of the Italian Social Republic was changed on May 6, 1944.

The national flag was lowered permanently on April 25, 1945, with the dissolution of the oath for military and civilians, as the last act of the Government of Benito Mussolini, while the combat flag was lowered officially on May 3, 1945, with the Surrender of Caserta, actually on May 17, 1945, when the last fighting unit of the Italian Social Republic, the Marine Artillery Section, dependent on the Marine Artillery Company of the Atlantic Unit of Marine Infantry, in Saint Nazaire, naval base for German submarines on the estuary of the Loire (France) – other alternative location was the Fortress of the Atlantic Wall “Gironde Mündung Süd” in Pointe de Grave on the estuary of the Gironde (France) – ceased hostilities and surrendered.

The silver eagle was the traditional symbol of the ancient Roman republic (while the golden eagle was of the Roman empire). The golden fascio littorio is an ancient Roman symbol that was chosen by Mussolini as the official emblem of Fascism. It was intended to represent the unity of the Italians (the bundle of rods held together), freedom and authority as legal power (originally the fascio littorio was used as an insignia by the magistrates who had the imperium, or having the power to preside over trials, judge cases and issue sentences).

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The national flag

The national flag of the Italian Social Republic was made official by three public acts:

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The battle flag

The combat flags of the Armed Forces of the Italian Social Republic were made official by three public acts:

The coat of arms was based on the flag of Italy, the tricolor green, white and red, but with the colors reversed (within the central white band of the coat of arms was inserted a fasces lictor, the symbol of the Republican Fascist Party (the whole was surmounted by a monocephalous eagle with spread wings. Both symbols were taken from Ancient Rome: the fasces lictors were in fact exhibited by the personal guards of consuls before and emperors then, the eagle was the symbol of many legions.

The fall of the Italian Social Republic occurred in three moments:

In 1944 the Anglo-Americans had succeeded in overcoming the lines of resistance along the peninsula and only the Gothic Line stood between them and the conquest of Northern Italy. What remained of the republican state established on September 28, 1943 in Rocca delle Caminate di Meldola, pierced by bombings, guerrilla warfare, rationing, requisitions and sabotage, was increasingly in trouble. A last attempt of symbolic and desperate resistance was planned with the “Ridotto alpino repubblicano” (Republican Alpine Redoubt), but the inconsistency of the forces that should have supported this resistance made the project fail.

The political end of the RSI took place on the evening of April 25, 1945 in the headquarters of the Milanese Prefecture. Decisive factors were the German defeat of 21 April in Bologna following the spring offensive of the Allies and the decision of Mussolini not to defend Milan, added to the failure of surrender agreements through moderate members of the Socialist Party or, in extremis, through the Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster.

After transferring governmental powers to the Minister of Justice and disengaging everyone from their loyalty to the RSI, Mussolini left for Como, unarmed and with intentions of escape, probably to Switzerland, where he had already tried to shelter both his family and his lover Clara Petacci (Claretta). The partisans blocked him in a German truck, dressed as a corporal of the German army.

Confirming his desire to escape are the statements contained in Silvio Bertoldi”s book I tedeschi in Italia, regarding SS Lieutenant Fritz Birzer, who had received orders directly from Berlin in mid-April 1945 not to lose sight of Mussolini. Birzer affirmed that more and better could have been done to avoid the capture of the Duce; in particular because in the last hours of freedom, both the fascist hierarchs and Birzer”s small squad were joined by about 200 men of the Fallmeyer Battalion (named after its commander), in an organized retreat and powerfully armed towards Germany.

The Duce pretended to reach the Italo-Swiss border by disengaging himself from Fritz Birzer, who reached him in a daring and almost grotesque way, given the safeguarding functions that he should have exercised over Mussolini. Once captured, he was executed on April 28 in Giulino. The next day, Mussolini was taken to Milan together with the executed men on the lakeside of Dongo and hung upside down from the canopy of a service station near the place where the massacre of Piazzale Loreto was carried out on August 10, 1944, when 15 partisans and anti-fascists were shot by the Nazi-Fascists and left exposed to ridicule and intimidation for the entire day.

At 14:00 of the same April 29, 1945, the Armed Forces of the RSI were definitively defeated according to the Conventions of The Hague and Geneva because, after a commitment signed by Graziani for a military surrender under the same conditions imposed on the Germans, they were explicitly included in a document with international validity, passed to history as the Surrender of Caserta. This document was related to the capitulation of the German Command of the South-West and of the SS und Polizei in Italy (for the rear) and fixed after three days, at 2 p.m. of May 2nd, the cessation of hostilities on the whole territory.

With the end of the Social Republic, began the negotiations for the peace treaty that will be signed in Paris on February 10, 1947, which will see the final loss of Istria as well as the payment of huge reparations to the victorious countries. However, due to the separate peace of September 8, 1943, Italy was able to avoid being divided into zones of occupation (like Germany) as well as the handing over of its executive powers to the American army (like Japan).

At the end of the war took place a settlement of accounts with the fascists, some of whom, in addition to having participated in various capacities to the oppression of the regime of the twenties and

To put an end to this climate of violence, the Minister of Justice of the provisional government of the CLN, Palmiro Togliatti, decided on an amnesty for common and political crimes, including those of collaboration with the enemy and related crimes, as well as conspiracy to commit murder.

The problem of the nature of the Italian Social Republic as a puppet in the hands of the German occupier was posed by Benito Mussolini himself – using that very term – already in October 1943, in a memorandum drawn up exactly one month after the announcement of the armistice:

This memorandum included a personal appeal to Adolf Hitler in which Mussolini stated that “It is up to the Führer to decide, on this occasion, whether the Italians will be able to voluntarily make their contribution to the formation of the new Europe or will forever have to be an enemy people”. After about a month, and the appeal remained unanswered, according to Giovanni Dolfin, secretary of the Duce, Mussolini expressed himself in relation to the Germans: “It is perfectly useless for these people to insist on calling us allies! It is preferable that they throw away, once and for all, the mask and tell us that we are a people and an occupied territory like all the others!

Mussolini”s pessimistic reading was later confirmed not only by the frequent “reprisals” (actually war crimes) carried out by the Germans against the Italian civilian population and its property, including mass killings – including women and children – and the burning of entire towns, not to mention the systematic looting of the country (from the theft of the gold reserves of the Bank of Italy the transport to Germany of raw materials and industrial machinery necessary to the war effort, or their destruction when they could not be transported, along with the destruction of infrastructure when an advance of the Allied front was feared), but from the same analysis of Italian and German authorities.

Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, the highest military authority of the Italian Social Republic, wrote in the summer of 1944 to Mussolini:

This orientation was on the other hand confirmed in substance by top Nazi exponents, such as Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who explained to Martin Bormann in August 1944:

Again, in December 1944 Mussolini wrote to the German ambassador-political plenipotentiary to the RSI, Rudolf Rahn, to denounce the brutal roundups conducted by the Germans with summary killings of women and burning of villages:

In the second half of January 1945, only three months before the end of the Italian Social Republic, the Council of Ministers approved a document drawing attention to the German prevarications that humiliated the republican government:

According to Mimmo Franzinelli, the abdication of elementary prerogatives for a sovereign state was made evident, to which the RSI was forced by the Germanic occupier, showing “the insignificance of the republican government”. Therefore, the Italian Social Republic is considered by the majority of historians and jurists as a puppet state enslaved to Nazi Germany, which had wanted its creation and militarily occupied the entire territory, completely replacing the fascist authorities in the government of the provinces of Bolzano, Trento and Belluno, united in the Operations Zone of the Pre-Alps (Operationszone Alpenvorland – OZAV), and in those of Udine, Gorizia, Trieste, Pula, Fiume and Ljubljana, which formed the Operations Zone of the Adriatic Coast (Operationszone Adriatisches Küstenland – OZAK).

In addition, all the regions unilaterally declared by the German military authorities as “operation zones”, i.e. the areas behind the front and its rear, for depths of even tens of kilometers, were removed from the administration of the fascist republican authorities (or this was reduced in effect and effectiveness). In these areas martial law imposed by the German military was directly in force and, as the front moved northward from September 1943 to the spring of 1945, this situation affected practically all of central Italy, up to the southern part of Romagna. In any case, the entire administration of the RSI was entirely under German control: according to Lutz Klinkhammer, “a dense network of German offices controlled the fascist administration of the Republic of Salò both on a national and provincial level”.

Benito Mussolini himself, for the duration of his presence in the RSI, and until his capture by the partisans on Lake Como, was always guarded by a large “escort” of SS especially dedicated to “protect” his person, which verified his every movement and “filtered” all his visitors. By the express will of Hitler, Mussolini was even imposed on a personal German doctor who prescribed a particular diet and treated him with pharmacological therapies of his exclusive choice. The nature of the RSI and its degree of dependence on the German “invading ally”, with the consequent debate on Fascist responsibilities in the conduct of the “war on civilians”, are however the subject of different opinions in historiography.

Since the announcement of its foundation, which took place on September 17, 1943 by Radio Monaco, Mussolini tried to present to public opinion the Italian Social Republic as the legitimate successor of the Italian State. In this intent he was favored by the Germans, who, while aiming to strip the fascists of all authority over occupied Italy, were aware that they had to give the RSI a semblance of self-government for propaganda reasons. Hitler”s choice to put Mussolini at the head of the new state was part of this strategy. The Germans also intended to make the CSR appear as a sovereign state to show that the Axis had survived the armistice of the Kingdom of Italy, and to this end they worked, with partial success, to obtain diplomatic recognition of the fascist republic in other states.

Satisfying these propaganda needs entailed recognizing the status of the RSI as an ally, a prospect that worried Joseph Goebbels, who wrote in his diary, five days before the announcement of Radio Munich:

According to Renzo De Felice, the presence of Mussolini at the helm of the RSI actually succeeded in guaranteeing it some margins of autonomy from the Germans, such as to make its definition as a puppet state “misleading”.

Revisionist analyses similar, in some ways, to those expressed by De Felice are criticized, among others, by Mimmo Franzinelli who argues: “The impotence of the authorities of Salò in front of the repeated violence committed by the German ally against the population raises fundamental questions about the real ability of the Mussolini government to intervene, as a function of moderation of violence. “Necessary Republic” to alleviate the suffering of civilians? From a factual examination, the Italian Social Republic appears – on the major issues – not necessary, but rather insignificant or even legitimizing with respect to the Germanic military presence in Italy”.

Modern German historiography has subjected this qualification to critical scrutiny. According to Lutz Klinkhammer, the Fascists were “neither few nor powerless”, “neither was their state merely a puppet” and their responsibilities would be aggravated precisely by the fact that they were “neither ghosts, nor puppets or mere servants of the Germans”. The German historian also believes that Italian historiography is “influenced by a somewhat contradictory vision of Salò”s fascism. In fact, on the one hand the fascism of the years 1943-45 was demonized because of its potential for repression, on the other hand in linguistic usage it was even minimized. This minimization is expressed in terms such as “the republicans”, “puppet state”, “farce state” generally used in the left-wing historiography towards the Salò fascists”.

The term “republican” was coined on April 15, 1793 by Vittorio Alfieri in a letter to Mario Bianchi, to define with contempt all the supporters of the republic during the French Revolution:

It was used for the first time in reference to leaders, members of the army, supporters and militants of the Italian Social Republic in 1943 by Umberto Calosso in a broadcast of Radio London, after the birth of the Italian Social Republic the term “repubblichino” became widely rooted in historiography and advertising in Italy, also to avoid confusion with “Republican” in reference to the new state form of post-war Italy. The diminutive ending was naturally aimed at acting as a derogatory nuance.

The adherents of the Italian Social Republic, proclaimed by the Fascists following the transfer from Rome to Brindisi of King Vittorio Emanuele III, supreme head of the Italian Armed Forces, and his son, the future King Umberto II, used instead the adjective “republican” (for example in the official names of the new Fascist Party and of the military corps of the RSI).

However, this term was not new in the Italian political sphere as even during the war it was used by the Italian Republican Party, a movement of Risorgimento origin that had joined the anti-fascist front and aimed to abolish the monarchy in Italy by establishing a democratic Republic. The anti-fascists, especially those with republican positions (such as communists, socialists and shareholders), who in the meantime had created the National Liberation Committee in the “Southern Kingdom”, refused to call the collaborationist political regime established in the North “republican”.

The historian Luigi Ganapini, author in 1999 of the study La repubblica delle camicie nere (The Republic of the Black Shirts), affirmed to have deliberately avoided in his essay the use of the term “repubblichini”, considering that “history is not made with insults”. The historian Sergio Luzzatto, to identify the period in question, used the adjective “saloino” (in his essay Il corpo del duce), which properly designates the inhabitants of Salò, de facto capital of the RSI.

The Italian Social Republic was recognized by eight Axis States and their allies; of course it was immediately recognized by Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire then by the Kingdom of Romania, the Kingdom of Bulgaria, the Independent State of Croatia of Ante Pavelić, the Slovak Republic of Jozef Tiso and only under German pressure also by the Kingdom of Hungary on September 27, 1943 even if the official recognition was backdated. Manchuku recognized the Italian Social Republic only on June 1, 1944 and there were also unofficial relations with Switzerland through the Swiss consul in Milan and the commercial agent of the RSI in Bern.

Sources