War Through Italian Eyes

Fighting for Mussolini, 1940-1943

Alexander Henry

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367515614
• eBook ISBN: 9781000410099
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

There is a popular notion that the Italian armed forces of the Second World War were an inferior fighting force. Despite the vast numbers taken prisoner, detailed studies of the experiences of these soldiers remain relatively uncommon and the value of this group to furthering our understanding of the Italian experience of war under Fascism is also rarely acknowledged. The existence in the National Archives of hundreds of pages of transcripts of covert British surveillance of Italian POWs has made it possible to engage with their experiences and opinions in much greater depth. The euphemistically termed 'Special Reports' present historians with a unique insight into how all levels of Italian soldiery viewed Fascist Italy's experience of war, 1940-1943. This book examines reactions to Italian political leadership, the progress of the war, as well as Italian soldiers' 'everyday' views on sex, war, the enemy, death, food, their allies, bravery, race, and killing. These fascinating documents reveal the complexity of the outlook of these men, which persistent – and influential – national stereotypes and historiographical trends fail to acknowledge.

1 CSDIC (UK) and the protocols

Introduction

At the heart of this book are the intelligence protocols themselves, the transcripts of secretly recorded conversations between Italian POWs that were committed to paper by CSDIC (UK). Their role in this research project is central, and as both the transcripts and this centre will be unfamiliar to many readers, the nature of these sources is discussed at length. Fully establishing the context of CSDIC (UK) enables a more rounded reading of the transcripts themselves in later chapters. The documents themselves will be addressed as a source and the following questions asked of them – how many were produced in total? Between what dates were they collected? How were they created? How were the protocols presented and formatted? What was the process by which hushed conversations or boisterous arguments were transformed into neatly typed sides of paper? Who was responsible for their creation and dissemination? How and when was the Centre formed? How did it function as an organisation? How did it evolve and develop with the progress of the war? What, indeed, was its fate after hostilities ended?

Exact numbers

The exact number of CSDIC (UK) transcripts that pertain to Italian prisoners of war is a murky issue. Neitzel has claimed that ‘CSDIC prepared 16,960 protocols from German and 18,903 from Italian personnel.’¹ However, the figure relating to the Italians is revised in Soldaten to 1943.² The number of protocols from CSDIC camps outside the United Kingdom is given as 538,³ although there is no indication as to how many of these are ‘Italian’ transcripts. In the February 1945 table entitled ‘CSDIC (UK), Yearly Comparison of SR Output’⁴ (see Table I), the total number of transcripts from Italian prisoners is 1943.⁵ This corroborates the figure from Soldaten. In contrast, in the National Archives subseries ‘Interrogation reports on Italian prisoners of war’ by adding the record numbers, one arrives at a figure of 1959 listening reports for Italian POWs.⁶

Table I Appendix II – CSDIC (UK), Yearly Comparison of SR Output, WO 208/3451, TNA

Year	PW	Records	Drafts	SRN	SRM	SRA	SRX	SRGG	GRGG	I/SRN	I/SRM	I/SRA	I/SRX	SRIG	Extracts etc.	Total
1939 (4 mths)	169			3		10	16									29
1940	1119			116	13	1081	152			42		22	18		141	1635
1941	1138	5328	3853	572	1	1320	456			270		2	9		85	2715
1942	864	9008	6244	653	142	1061	755			453		27			283	3374
1943	1493	18060	10702	1143	258	1274	442	732	109	539	64	2	115	380	499	5557
1944	3...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 CSDIC (UK) and the protocols
• 2 Reading the sources
• 3 Friends and foes
• 4 Occupation, war crimes and antisemitism
• 5 Warriors of land, sea and air
• 6 Attitudes towards Italian political leadership
• 7 Winning and losing the war
• Conclusion: A hopeful future?
• Bibliography
• Index