For the 1964 Italian film of the same name, from which the term derives, see Attack and Retreat.
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Italian troops watch the burning of a Croat farmhouse in 1941
"Italians, the good people" (Italian: Italiani brava gente) is a phrase adopted by historians to refer to Italian popular beliefs about the allegedly limited, even non-existent, participation of Fascist Italy and the Royal Italian Army in the Holocaust and war crimes committed by Axis soldiers during World War II. The phenomenon is also known as the myth of the good Italian.[1][2]
A form of historical revisionism which emerged under the post-war republic, it was argued that Italian soldiers had been "good" or "decent people" (brava gente) who had acted with humanity and compassion, supposedly inherent Italian values, in contrast to their ideologically motivated and brutal German allies.[3] In particular, it argued that the Italians had not participated in, or even had opposed, the Nazi persecution of Jews in occupied parts of Eastern Europe.[4][5] By extension, the term is sometimes applied to describe popular beliefs about the Italo-Ethiopian War (1935–36) or non-Jewish responses to the Holocaust in Italy.[6]
Notable examples of the phenomenon in popular culture are the film Mediterraneo (1991) directed by Gabriele Salvatores and the novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin (1994) by Louis de Bernières which was also adapted into a film in 2001.[4] The myth avoided "a public debate on collective responsibility, guilt and denial, repentance and pardon" but has recently been challenged by historians.[4] The myth parallels the popular beliefs about the "Clean Wehrmacht" popular in post-war West Germany or the "victim theory" in Austria.
The 2012 report of the Italian-German Historical Commission noted that "Just as today the myth of the decent behaviour of the Wehrmacht on Italian soil cannot survive in Germany, the survival of the myth of Italiani brava gente in reference to the Second World War is equally unacceptable".[7]
^Paolo Favero, Italians, the “Good People”: Reflections on National Self-Representation in Contemporary Italian Debates on Xenophobia and War, in Outlines - Critical practice studies, No. 2 (2010), p. 138-153
^Diego Guzzi, The myth of the "Good Italian", the antisemitism and the colonial crimes, in Constelaciones - Revista de Teoría Crítica, No. 4 (2012), p. 255-264
^Bartolini, Guido (2 October 2018). "'Italiani brava gente' as a Transmedial Phenomenon". Interdisciplinary Italy. Arts and Humanities Research Council. Retrieved 31 July 2020.
^ abcPetrusewicz, Marta (2004). "The hidden pages of contemporary Italian history: War crimes, war guilt and collective memory". Journal of Modern Italian Studies. 9 (3): 269–270. doi:10.1080/1354571042000254700. S2CID 143230795.
^Rodogno, Davide (2005). "Italiani brava gente? Fascist Italy's Policy Toward the Jews in the Balkans, April 1941-July 1943". European History Quarterly. 35 (2): 213–240. doi:10.1177/0265691405051464. S2CID 143672344.
^Wilcox, Vanda (2021). "Imperial Thinking and Colonial Combat in the Early Twentieth-Century Italian Army". The Historical Journal. 65 (5): 1333–1353. doi:10.1017/S0018246X21000741. ISSN 0018-246X. S2CID 240134142.
^Caprara, Maurizio (20 December 2012). ""Italiani brava gente" Un mito da sfatare al pari della Wehrmacht" (in Italian). Corriere della Sera. Retrieved 16 September 2020.
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