Eric Gobetti: E allora le foibe?

The author of the short book reviewed here, historian and journalist Eric Gobetti from Turin, has a feel for unusual or provocative titles. For instance, he entitled his book about the Italian occupation of large parts of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia since April 1941 "The cheerful occupation" (L'occupazione allegra). Normally, we would not expect even the worst cynics to refer to the burning down of villages, the establishment of concentration camps, the taking of hostages, and mass executions during the two-year Italian occupation of parts of Yugoslavia as "cheerful." Nor can the failure to mention these war crimes during the peace negotiations between the allied powers and Italy be described as "cheerful" either. In fact, the use of the adjective refers to the subsequent denial of the crimes committed during the Italian occupation, which was reinforced with the help of the myth of the "good Italian," who never harmed anyone but, on the contrary, was always the victim of violence inflicted by others: victims of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS, when, in 1943, the Italian occupation troops in the area from the Greek islands to the Rhȏne Valley were disarmed and taken into captivity and/or subjected to forced labour, and victims of the Yugoslav partisans, who were responsible for killing civilians in Italy’s eastern border regions in September 1943 and again in May 1945.