Resistenza senza gloria. IMI: gli Internati Militari Italiani

by Daniele Baggiani

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Eighty Years of Oblivion

The story of the Italian Military Internees – Italienische Militärinternierte, according to the definition imposed by the Third Reich on Italian soldiers who refused to fight for the Wehrmacht after September 8, 1943 – remains an open wound in the memory of the twentieth century. For eighty years, the radical act of more than 850,000 soldiers of the Royal Italian Army who said no to fascism and to collaboration with Nazism, accepting deportation to labor camps,[1], has remained on the margins of public discourse. A forgotten page that today has finally been reconnected to the concept of ‘resistance’.

The absence of the IMIs from the institutionally recognized Resistance[2] Its roots lie in the political culture of the First Republic. The dominant antifascist discourse, in fact, prioritized armed struggle, overshadowing nonviolent dissent. The left was reluctant to include the IMIs within the constellation of the Resistance, as they did not fit the partisan paradigm; the right, on the other hand, largely avoided any confrontation with the choice made by Italian soldiers not to fight for Mussolini and Hitler, since it reflected a clear rejection of fascism by the Armed Forces.

A turning point occurred in the 1990s with the research of Gerhard Schreiber, who was the first to construct an autonomous historiographical profile around the IMIs. This new phase was later enriched by the reflections of authors such as Nicola Labanca and Alessandro Natta, who helped broaden the scope of investigation. The analysis continued into the 21st century with the work of Mario Avagliano and Marco Palmieri, who systematized the sources and clarified the political significance of the collective refusal to enlist in the Italian Social Republic.[3].

Today, despite increased editorial (and commemorative) attention, the place of the IMIs in public consciousness remains uncertain. International initiatives such as those of the Dokumentationszentrum NS-Zwangsarbeit (Center for the Documentation of Nazi Forced Labor) in Berlin have been important.[4]; in the same way the access to letter collections, such as, for example, the Letters from Stalag[5]which gave dignity to the suffering of thousands of soldiers who chose not to fight against the Allies by surrendering to the Nazi occupier.

During the twenty months of captivity, the IMIs were repeatedly pressured to enlist. Around 103,000 gave in: 23,000 joined in the autumn of 1943, another 19,000 later joined the fascist divisions of the Italian Social Republic, while 61,000 were assigned to auxiliary units of the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe by January 1945. The majority—over half a million—refused all collaboration. Their destination was forced labor under brutal conditions in the mines, factories, construction sites, and agricultural fields of the Reich, amidst hunger, disease, humiliation, and Allied bombings. Mussolini’s plan to entice the IMIs with better living conditions and thereby bolster the ranks of the Republican National Army failed miserably, as Mimmo Franzinelli rightly and thoroughly underscores in several sections of his important work, significantly titled Slaves of Hitler[6].

A Legal Segregation

At the announcement of the armistice on September 8, 1943, more than one million Italian military personnel were stationed outside the national territory—in Greece, the Balkans, France, Germany, and even in the territories of the former Soviet Union. Communications were chaotic, orders were contradictory or altogether absent. The military apparatus collapsed within a matter of hours. In many garrisons, high-ranking officers fled or made themselves unavailable, leaving the units without guidance. In the face of the German advance—already planned in detail—hundreds of thousands of soldiers were easily disarmed and captured without a fight[7]. It is the story of many.

The Third Reich decided not to recognize the Italian soldiers captured after the armistice as prisoners of war, classifying them instead under the new designation of Italienische Militärinternierte (IMI). A legally ambiguous category that excluded them from the protections granted by the Geneva Convention. One of the most serious violations of international law perpetrated by the Third Reich against co-belligerent Italy. It was a deliberate choice, which allowed Germany to evade international obligations and freely exploit hundreds of thousands of men as forced labor in the Reich’s industrial, agricultural, and infrastructure sectors.[8].

The classification of the IMIs was both a legal and symbolic act of exclusion. Italian servicemen ceased to be soldiers; they were not considered civilians, nor were they formally recognized as prisoners. The decision was political. The motivations were punitive. In the eyes of the Nazis, Italy had betrayed the Pact of Steel. And the IMIs became the scapegoat. Their legal neutralization thus served as the symbolic sanction for the “betrayal” of 1943, which in practice amounted to a silent subjugation without rights.

The choice made by the IMIs—variously motivated by loyalty to the monarchy, ethical or religious convictions, or a rejection of fascism—was a collective choice that emerged from individual decisions; it was not guided by political parties or higher orders. It was a form of resistance, a moral act, expressed in a collective and radical way, which has been recognized by the most recent historiography as the largest spontaneous act of dissent in Italian history.[9].

Geography and Conditions of Internment

Hundreds of thousands of Italian soldiers captured after September 8, 1943, were scattered across a dense network of over a thousand detention sites spread throughout the territory of the Third Reich, with a concentration in Germany and Poland. The main facilities were identified by the abbreviation Stalag (Stammlager), designated for enlisted men, and Oflag (Offizierslager), designated for officers. However, the internees did not remain there long: they were soon divided into small labor detachments—the so-called Arbeitskommandos – dependent on the central camps but located at mines, quarries, armaments factories, railway construction sites, or agricultural enterprises[10].

The destinations were not chosen at random, but followed the routes of the war industry, with peaks near railway junctions and mining hubs. The map of internment reflected the economic geography of the Reich, characterized by the concentration of heavy industry in central Germany (Krupp, Siemens, Volkswagen, IG Farben) and a network of logistical hubs in the eastern and southern territories, extending to the Rhineland and Upper Silesia.

Map of IMI Prisoner-of-War Camps in Germany

The Ruhr and the Leipzig-Halle region are emblematic. IMIs worked in steel mills, munitions factories, and power plants. Their deployment occurred without any regard for human dignity, guided solely by the efficiency-driven principle of intensive exploitation of human resources. Not men, not even animals—just soulless spare parts. The logic of internment did not follow uniform criteria. The destination of the IMIs was determined by multiple factors: the date and place of capture, military specialization, but above all, the shifting productive needs of the Reich. Environmental and living conditions were harsh everywhere, but they varied significantly from camp to camp, depending on the assigned function, geographical location, and the degree of exploitation imposed. In the vicinity of major industrial centers, the air was polluted with chemical substances; in rural camps, instead, the lack of heating and adequate clothing led to frequent cases of frostbite[11].

Among the most notoriously infamous internment sites were Wietzendorf, reserved for Italian officers; Sandbostel, known for its disastrous sanitary conditions and the high mortality rate due to dysentery and typhus; Altengrabow, one of the oldest, already active during the First World War; and Zeithain, in Saxony, where Italian witnesses reported the use of experimental vaccines on prisoners suffering from infectious diseases, with lethal consequences[12]; and Luckenwalde – STALAG III-A – south of Berlin, a camp holding over 16,000 IMIs, home to a military hospital and the site of a unique experience in cultural resistance: the clandestine publication of the newspaper La Baracca[13]. Mittelbau-Dora was a dreadful camp. Annexed to the Buchenwald concentration complex, it was designated for the underground production of V2 rockets. Prisoners, including hundreds of IMIs, were lowered daily into the tunnels of Nordhausen, forced to work up to 16 consecutive hours without natural light, in environments saturated with metallic dust. The tunnels, carved into basalt, frequently collapsed, and the humidity fostered incurable pulmonary diseases. Many internees died under the rubble, others perished from exhaustion or were beaten to death by SS guards. Many more died from the cold or were collectively shot for even the slightest act of protest[14].

Even in the main camps, where the organization was more structured, this did not imply greater humanity. The internees were not regarded as human beings but as “spare parts”, Inventarisierte Stücke, an expression used in administrative documents by the Germans to refer to the internees in the camps, reduced to registration numbers. Similarly, in the smaller Kommando, the harshness of the labor was compounded by isolation and vulnerability. In forced labor in the stalag and in factories, the IMIs were subjected to the harsh law of productivity, employed as laborers in the armaments industry and in mines, in violation of international law. This was the punishment reserved for the ‘traitor Italians’, carried out on Hitler’s direct order. Labor, hunger, and disease marked the daily life of the IMIs under forced labor. Their diet was based on performance, creating a vicious cycle that killed around 12% of the prisoners. Thousands died from exhaustion.

According to Federico Goddi, the condition of the IMIs slightly improved overall after the ‘civilization’ imposed by the Germans between August and September 1944, which transformed the internees into voluntary workers.

Outside the camps […] the IMIs lived under forced labor conditions that varied depending on their tasks: the worst situations were in the mines, heavy industry, and construction. Better conditions were found in small factories, from the food industry to the electrotechnical sector, or in rural settings, which were usually the least degrading.[15].

There was less oversight by the guards and a freer movement of the military internees even outside the camps. This, along with the introduction of payment in Reichsmarks, allowed access to the black market, which became vital for the survival of many internees. Despite the expected improvements, many IMIs protested against the shift to civilian status. They feared that the change would lead to suspicion of collaboration with the Germans upon their return.

The German crimes against the IMI prisoners, who were forced to endure terrible imprisonment conditions, were denounced immediately after the war, among others, by General Ettore De Blasio, commander of the sorting operations at the Luckenwalde camp, who in September 1945 drafted a report for the General Staff entitled: Nazi Atrocities: Massacre of Italian Prisoners[16]. But the document gained no traction: the government's priorities, at that time, lay elsewhere.

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An Unarmed Resistance

What does it mean to choose resistance when it does not involve taking up arms? It is a question that compels us to reconsider the very boundaries of what we mean by dissent, courage, and sacrifice. Let us remember that imprisonment in the Reich's camps was not the result of a military defeat, but the consequence of a conscious choice: the decision to refuse, “for their dignity as men and as soldiers,” to join the Italian Social Republic and the Wehrmacht—fully aware that this would mean deportation, forced labor, hunger, and death[17]. A silent, daily, unarmed resistance of extraordinary moral strength. In the European landscape of military captivity, the Italian case stands out as a unique exception. No other army among the former allies of the Reich—neither the Hungarian, Romanian, Croatian, nor Slovak—displayed such a collective refusal. Their soldiers were subjected to forced labor, but they were not forced to choose between starvation and swearing allegiance. The IMIs, on the other hand, were subjected to constant political and psychological pressure to enlist in the Italian Social Republic and fight for Hitler[18]. But the overwhelming majority did not give in. Even under extreme conditions, most of the IMIs upheld behavior consistent with their chosen values: dignity, refusal to collaborate, and anti-fascism[21]. All of them took part, in their own right, in the struggle for freedom.

Orazio Leonardi bears witness to this with force in his diary Sandbostel 1943. Anch’io ho detto “no”, one of the rare published memoirs, in which he recounts how choosing not to betray meant adhering, without ambiguity, to a principle of moral integrity[19]. Leonardi survived and returned home; but thousands of others, consistent to the end, paid with their lives for their loyalty. Giovannino Guareschi, an artillery lieutenant, also left a clear testimony of his choice in his prison diary. He wrote:

“I do not consider myself a prisoner, I consider myself a combatant […] I am an unarmed combatant, and I fight without weapons. The battle is hard because the thought of my loved ones far away and defenseless, hunger, cold, tuberculosis, filth, fleas, lice, hardships — these are no less deadly than musket balls […] I serve my country by standing guard over my dignity as an Italian”[20].

Recent historiography has recognized this choice as one of the most significant expressions of the Italian Resistance, although it lies outside the traditional armed struggle model[22]. A collective act, repeated by hundreds of thousands of men, which gave shape to what has consciously been defined as Armedless Resistance.

IMIs: A Political and Historiographical Abandonment

For decades, the story of the Italian Military Internees remained on the margins of public memory and of republican institutions. No national monument was dedicated to them in the early postwar years, nor were they granted a legal status comparable to that of partisans or war veterans. Their sacrifice—silent and unspectacular—fit poorly with the rhetoric of heroism that shaped the official narrative of the Resistance. Unlike veterans’ or partisan associations, the IMIs failed to form a unified front capable of influencing public discourse. Their testimonies circulated in isolated form, through self-published accounts, private memoirs, and articles in local newspapers. To the fragmentation of memory was added a spatial one: the sites of internment, scattered among hundreds of camps across German territory and thousands of Kommando (labour detachments), were in many cases erased, transformed into civilian buildings, demolished, or simply forgotten. The topographical reconstruction of those places is still ongoing today, and notably lacks a centralized database[23].

When the war ended, the return to Italy of approximately 560,000 survivors — 91% of those interned — was not met with honors, but with coldness, if not suspicion. Fascist propaganda had portrayed them as collaborators. A shadow of dishonor hung over them. The monarchy, already delegitimized and on the verge of stepping down, viewed them as uncomfortable witnesses to the cowardly abandonment decreed on September 8. While the veterans of the Great War saw themselves as heroes and became protagonists of the D’Annunzian epic and the March on Rome, the veterans of the Second World War returning from Germany came back as cowards, in disgrace. In this climate, the IMIs, exhausted by two years of captivity, found themselves isolated and invisible, enclosed in a silence that often extended even within their own families for many decades. Repatriation was disorganized, lacking any state coordination. Alongside individual initiatives, religious or Vatican interventions helped enable their return. The psychological conditions of the returnees, marked in both body and spirit, prevented any public elaboration of the trauma. The mental state of these men who had suffered is evident in the fact that only 65,000 of them — less than 10% — enrolled in an ex-IMI association in the sixty years that followed. The prevailing tendency was to internalize the atrocious experience of those years, hiding it from the world.

More than sixty years have passed since their return. Many of them are no longer with us. And finally — in 2006, with a cosmic delay — came the legal recognition of their experience. Article 1, paragraph 1270 of Law no. 296 conferred upon the Italian Military Internees the title of “combatants” for moral and honorary purposes[24]. A very late provision which, while marking a formal turning point, left unresolved many issues related to the symbolic reparation and the historical value of the IMIs’ experience of captivity[25].

A History from Below

Starting in the 1980s and 1990s, thanks to the efforts of the ANEI – National Association of Former Internees – and the opening of several private and public archives, interest in IMI diaries and memoirs began to grow. Among the first voices to emerge was that of Sante Amelio Boscolo Chio, whose diary, written during his captivity, documents the daily living conditions in a German labor camp[26]The memory of the internees suffered for a long time from the fragmentation of sources and the lack of proper editorial circulation. By the end of 1945, it was estimated that around 5,000 captivity diaries existed, but only a small portion was ever published—often through privately printed, low-circulation editions. This gap also contributed to the exclusion of the IMIs from the official canon of the Italian Resistance[27].

Recovering their voice means listening to them. The letters, diaries, and testimonies form a corpus of “writings from below,” not conceived for publication but to ensure the survival of the pain of memory[28]. Giulio Prunai’s diary, written in Stalag IV B, alternates notes on hunger and cold with reflections on dignity and hope[29]. The collection of letters published by Avagliano and Palmieri reveals the power of the prisoners’ language which, despite the constraints of censorship, conveys affection, resistance, and moral awareness[30]. Numerous private texts on internment are preserved at the National Diary Archive Foundation (Fondazione Archivio Diaristico Nazionale) in Pieve Santo Stefano[31]. Faint yet powerful voices. In addition to the well-known published cases of Guareschi, Levi, and Bedeschi[32], there are now around four hundred published memoirs by Italian Military Internees (IMI), often out of print, with print runs ranging from 300 to 2,000 copies. Texts such as the Gusen's Diary by Aldo Carpi, created in illustrated form, bear witness to how artistic expression, too, became a means of survival and psychological resistance in the camps[33]. Beyond words, images too hold a rightful place. Drawings, caricatures, and handcrafted objects made from salvaged materials served as forms of resistance against suffering. The works preserved at the Museum of Internment in Padua and in the ANEI collection in Rome—created by soldier-artists such as Cesare Della Seta—are full-fledged historical documents[34].

No less important has been the recovery of oral memory, initiated in the 1990s through projects promoted by ANEI and the network of Institutes for the History of the Resistance. Hundreds of interviews with former internees were collected and digitized. Some voices, such as that of Luigi Caturelli—interned at Altengrabow and interviewed by the ANEI branch in Florence—offer detailed insight into the countless strategies of daily survival, the solidarity among fellow soldiers, and the difficult process of coping with the trauma of returning home[35]. These documents should not be regarded as the voice of the vanquished, but as the testimony of men who knew how to remain faithful to a morality that compelled them to reject war[36].

This body of memoirs may appear substantial, but in truth it is fragile and incomplete. Given the vast scale of the IMI phenomenon, the number of published accounts is remarkably small. With the main protagonists now gone, the task has fallen to their children and grandchildren. To date, only around 400 memoirs and anthologies by former internees have been published—mostly private editions, out of print, with limited runs ranging from 300 to 2,000 copies; books and booklets that are often difficult to find[37]. Overall, less than one book has been dedicated to each IMI[38]. Let us not forget them by consigning to oblivion the suffering of those who endured the affront of dehumanization. Let us return to their books, which help us grasp the true meaning of what it is to “break a man down”[39].

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Memory Denied, Memory Rediscovered

The memory of the Italian Military Internees endured a long season of denial. It was not only institutional oblivion and historiographical delay that conspired to erase their experience, but also the physical disappearance of the very places of their captivity, which rendered its transmission all the more arduous. The camps that held hundreds of thousands of IMIs—from Sandbostel to Dora-Mittelbau, from Wietzendorf to Zeithain—were dismantled or repurposed after the war, leaving behind only faint traces: fragments of walls, decommissioned stations, repurposed warehouses. Unlike the camps tied to racial deportation, the IMI camps never entered the symbolic geography of Europe’s twentieth-century memory[40].

The topography of internment has remained invisible, absent from school curricula and marginal in institutional narratives. For this reason too, the Italian military internee has never emerged as a central figure in civic rituals or in the “foundational myth” of the Republic. Too military to be equated with the civilian resister, yet too resistant to fit the paradigm of the defeated soldier, the IMI remained on the fringes of every shared narrative. To this invisibility was added the sheer variety of individual experiences. Each IMI endured capture, the camps, the refusal to swear allegiance, and the struggle to survive in his own way. Some were deported to Sachsenhausen, others laboured in the mines of the Harz Mountains or on construction sites in Thuringia. Some perished in captivity; others—like Giovanni Conti, who survived Zeithain—needed years before they could find the words to speak[41]. This plurality defies any easy synthesis, yet it powerfully affirms the collective dimension of an ethical choice—repeated by hundreds of thousands of men.

The return of the IMIs to Italy, between 1945 and 1946, was silent. No official ceremony, no recognition. The veterans returned to a homeland that was building its identity on the armed Resistance, and which did not know how to give meaning to their unarmed refusal. Many suffered serious physical consequences – illnesses, injuries, disabilities – and deep psychological distress. The absence of a symbolic and collective framework made reintegration even more difficult: the trauma was internalized, often kept quiet even within the family. Emblematic is the case of Luigi Solari, who returned from Stalag VIII A with severe respiratory damage, and maintained a stubborn silence broken only by his daughter years later. Or that of Giovanni Pizzi, deported to Deba, who entrusted poetry with the task of guarding the unspeakable memory[42]. It was only from the eighties and nineties that a process of memorial reconstruction began, thanks to the work of associations like the ANEI and the commitment of families. Diaries, letters, objects were recovered, transcribed, published. In many cases, grief was transformed into shared memory[43].

In the face and voice of Sergeant Nicola Ricci, deported to Zeithain and survivor of three years of forced labor, we see today the story of many others. The memory of the IMIs is not only a duty toward the past. It is an investment in the future. It is the sign of a moral resistance that, after being denied, can be found again, recognized, and passed on as an ethical and civil heritage of the Republic to the new generations so they may treasure it.

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Notes on the Text

[1] To which are added in the camps 33,000 political deportees (military and civilians) and 9,000 Gypsies and Jews from Italy and the Aegean.

[2] The Resistenza, with a capital “R”, is understood here in its identification with the armed partisan struggle, according to the consolidated canon of memory. The first major contributions date back to the fifties, with: R. Battaglia, Storia della Resistenza italiana, Torino, Einaudi, 1953; G. Quazza, Resistenza e storia d’Italia, Torino, Einaudi, 1965; e in seguito C. Pavone, A Civil War. Historical essay on morality in the Resistance, Turin, Bollati Boringhieri, 1991; which, although offering new interpretive keys, maintains the politico-military paradigm as central to the opposition against Nazi-fascism.

[3] G. Schreiber, I militari italiani internati nei campi di concentramento del Terzo Reich, 1943–1945. Traditi, disprezzati, dimenticati, Roma, Ufficio Storico SME, 1992; N. Labanca (a cura di), Fra sterminio e sfruttamento. Militari internati e prigionieri di guerra nella Germania nazista (1939–1945), Firenze, Le Lettere, 1992; A. Natta, L’altra Resistenza. I militari italiani internati in Germania, Torino, Einaudi, 1997; M. Avagliano, M. Palmieri, I militari italiani nei lager nazisti. Una resistenza senz’armi (1943–1945), Bologna, Il Mulino, 2021.

[4] The Dokumentationszentrum NS-Zwangsarbeit in Berlin hosts a permanent exhibition titled Tra più fuochi. La storia degli internati militari italiani 1943–1945. The official website offers a dedicated section in Italian: https://www.ns-zwangsarbeit.de/it/internati-militari-italiani/. See also the bilingual catalog (German-Italian) of the exhibition: Tra più fuochi. La storia degli internati militari italiani 1943–1945, catalogo della mostra permanente, Berlino, Dokumentationszentrum NS-Zwangsarbeit, 2017.

[5] M. Avagliano, M. Palmieri (a cura di), Lettere dagli Stalag. La posta dei militari italiani internati in Germania (1943–1945), Torino, Einaudi, 2009; M.E. Ciccarello, “Lettere dagli Stalag: pensieri, sentimenti, emozioni che si fanno storia”, in M@gm@, vol. 16, n. 1, 2018, https://www.analisiqualitativa.com/magma/1601/
articolo_05.htm, consultato il 28/04/2025.

[6] M. Franzinelli, Schiavi di Hitler. I militari italiani nei lager nazisti, Milano, Mondadori, 2023,

[7] Cfr. G. Rochat, Le guerre italiane 1935-1943. Dall’impero d’Etiopia alla disfatta, Torino, Einaudi, 2005, pp. 326–330; N. Labanca, Prigionieri, internati, resistenti. Memorie dell’“altra Resistenza”, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2022.

[8] Cfr. Schreiber, I militari italiani internati, cit., pp. 29-41, 45–51.

[9] Ivi, pp. 261–270. Sulla stessa linea Avagliano, Palmieri, I militari italiani nei lager nazisti, cit., pp. 121–130.

[10] For a precise description M. De Caro, Storia di una resistenza. Gli internati militari italiani, Ciesse Edizioni, 2022, pp. 38–42. On the geographical distribution of the IMI camps and the close connection with the economic apparatus of the Third Reich, see De Caro, Storia di una resistenza¸ cit., pp. 38–42.

[11] Cfr. C. Sommaruga, Per non dimenticare. Bibliografia ragionata dell’internamento e deportazione dei militari italiani nel Terzo Reich (1943–1945), Brescia, ANEI, 2001, pp. 53–56. The author provides a detailed list of the main Stalag and Oflag where the IMIs were imprisoned, with indications regarding their geographical location, the typology of the detainees, and the general living conditions.

[12] The memory of the approximately one thousand Italian internees who died in Zeithain is owed to the great memorial work of the former Dachau deportee Don Giovanni Fortin, promoter of the Temple of the Unknown Internee in Terranegra, in the Province of Padua. Don Giovanni Fortin, a priest from Padua, was arrested in December 1943 for giving refuge to twelve Allied prisoners and deported to the Dachau concentration camp. Having survived imprisonment, he dedicated himself to the commemoration of the IMIs by promoting the construction of the National Temple of the Unknown Internee (Terranegra, Padua), inaugurated in 1955. Internment, dedicated to the memory of the approximately 650,000 IMIs deported to Nazi camps. Don Fortin is buried in the shrine of the Temple, next to the sarcophagus of the Unknown Internee; cf. https://museodellinternamento.it/tempio-2/. We visit the temple whenever we have the opportunity. A tribute to the priest and to these unfortunate boys is duty-bound.

[13] The first Polish prisoners arrived at Luckenwalde in September 1939; they built the barracks that subsequently housed Dutch and Belgians. Then 43 thousand French prisoners of war arrived (including 4 thousand Africans from the colonies), in mid-1940. Yugoslavs and Russians arrived later. At the end of 1943, over 15 thousand Italian military internees joined them, subsequently dispersed to other camps. From this Stalag passed more than 200 thousand prisoners: 8,000 housed in the main camp, the others sent to over 1,000 Arbeitskommandos (working detachments) scattered throughout Brandenburg. The camp was liberated by the Soviet army on April 22, 1945. Cf. ANED – Brescia Section: https://www.deportatibrescia.it/lager-o-campo-prigio/Stalag-iii-a-luckenwalde/.

[14] The barracks were without heating and the prisoners slept on damp straw infested with lice, without sheets or blankets. Witnesses recount that a verbal protest, a slowdown during work or the possession of a stolen potato was enough to be punished with death. Every morning, the “transport of the dead” was carried out on carts pushed by the prisoners themselves toward the mass grave. At Dora the average life of a prisoner did not exceed six months; cf. De Caro, Storia di una resistenza¸ cit., pp. 87–95; Labanca, Fra sterminio e sfruttamento, Le Lettere, 1992, pp. 145–151.

[15] F. Goddi, Guerra e prigionia nella memoria degli internati militari italiani, in F. Focardi (a cura di), Le vittime italiane del nazionalsocialismo. Le memorie dei sopravvissuti tra testimonianza e ricerca storica, Roma, Viella, 2021, pp. 103-120;

[16] Vedi Franzinelli, Slaves of Hitler, cit., passim.

[17] S. Pascale, O. Materassi, Internati Militari Italiani. Una scelta antifascista, Treviso, Editoriale Programma, 2022; cfr. degli stessi autori l’articolo “Internati Militari Italiani, una scelta antifascista”, pubblicato sul sito dell’ANPI – Comitato Provinciale di Udine, https://www.anpiudine.org/internati-militari-italiani-una-scelta-antifascista-di-silvia-pascale-e-orlando-materassi, consultato il 30 aprile 2025. Precedentemente, L. Zani, Internati e resistenti, in Focardi, Le vittime italiane del nazionalsocialismo, cit., pp. 253-280.

[18] Vedi Schreiber, I militari italiani internati, cit., pp. 147–158.

[19] O. Leonardi, Sandbostel 1943. Anch’io ho detto “no”, edited by G. Mezzalira, Bolzano, ANPI Cultural Circle, 2012 (2nd edition), available in .pdf at the link: https://www.deportati.it/static/upl/qu/quaderno5_leonardi.pdf.

[20] G. Guareschi, Il grande diario. Giovannino cronista del lager (1943-1945), Milano, Rizzoli 2008.

[21] Cfr. Labanca, Prigionieri, internati, resistenti, cit., pp. 65–72.

[22] Cfr. Avagliano, Palmieri, I militari italiani nei lager nazisti, cit., pp. 11–15.

[23] Cfr. anche Avagliano, Palmieri, I militari italiani nei lager nazisti, cit., pp. 85–94. The authors denounce the serious delay of historiography in surveying the places of internment. Many camps were demolished without leaving traces, others converted into industrial or agricultural areas. Some initiatives, such as those of the ANEI or the Dora-Mittelbau Memorial, have attempted an initial reconstruction, but a centralized database accessible to the public is still missing.

[24] Cf. law 27 December 2006, n. 296, art. 1, paragraph 1270: “For the purposes of moral and historical recognition, the title of ‘combatants’ is recognized for military personnel interned in Nazi camps after 8 September 1943 who refused to join the Italian Social Republic”.

[25] Cfr. Hammermann, Gli internati militari italiani in Germania, cit., pp. 183–192. The author dedicates a concluding section to the Italian reception of the IMI story, highlighting the absence of institutional initiatives in the first decades and the long silence of the Italian political class, in contrast with the volume of documentation collected by the Allied commands.

[26] M.E. Boscolo Chio, Diario della mia prigionia. Sante Amelio Boscolo Chio Internato n° 183019, Milano, Art&Print Editrice, 2021

[27] The expression appears for the first time in the volume Resistenza senz’armi. Un capitolo di storia italiana (1943-1945). Dalle testimonianze dei militari toscani internati nei lager nazisti, preface by Leonetto Amadei, Florence, Le Monnier, 1984. For the historiographical acquisition see among others Labanca, Prigionieri, internati, resistenti, cit., pp. 33–42; Franzinelli, Slaves of Hitler, cit., pp. 51–74ss.

[28] For example, among others, the issue of the memory of the IMIs is treated by Goddi, Guerra e prigionia nella memoria degli internati militari italiani, cit.; on IMI memoirs A. Palmieri, Gli internati militari italiani. Diari e lettere dai lager nazisti, 1943-1945, Torino, Einaudi, 2009;

[29] Giulio Prunai, La sboba. Diario dell’internato militare n. 30067, Firenze, Edizioni Polistampa, 2020.

[30] M. Avagliano, M. Palmieri (a cura di), Lettere dagli Stalag. La posta dei militari italiani internati in Germania (1943–1945), Torino, Einaudi, 2009.

[31] Cfr. http://archiviodiari.org/

[32] Guareschi, Diario clandestino, cit; P. Levi, Se questo è un uomo, Torino, De Silva, 1947 (poi Einaudi, Torino, edizioni successive); G. Bedeschi, Centomila gavette di ghiaccio, Milano, Mursia, 1966; Id., Fronte greco-albanese: 1940–1941. La tragica epopea degli alpini nella neve e nel fango, Milano, Mursia, 1971.

[33] Aldo Carpi, Gusen's Diary, Milano, Il Saggiatore, 1971; vedi anche: “Aldo Carpi, il pittore deportato salvato dai suoi disegni”, Corriere della Sera, 27 gennaio 2015, https://reportage.corriere.it/senza-categoria/2015/aldo-carpi-il-pittore-deportato-salvato-dai-suoi-disegni-shoah-memoria/.

[34] Cfr. Museo dell’Internamento, Padova; ANEI, Collezione Roma.

[35] ANEI Florence, Oral Archive. Testimony of Luigi Caturelli, collected in 1998. (Text deposited at the Tuscan Historical Institute of the Resistance).

[36] Cfr. Hammermann, Gli internati militari italiani in Germania, cit., pp. 201–215. The final part of the volume analyzes the role of memory and the historiographical delay with which the IMI affair was received in Italy, suggesting a comparison between German and Italian memorial policies.

[37] It can be calculated that, considering unsold copies and purchases by third parties, the copies of biographical books on internment do not reach their number: less than one book each! Cf. C. Sommaruga, Gli internati militari italiani (I.M.I.) nei lager nazisti, "Le pietre raccontano" (The stones tell the story) section, website of the Municipality of Cinisello Balsamo (MI): https://www.comune.cinisello-balsamo.mi.it/pietre/spip.php?article485, accessed 05/02/2025.

[38] It can be calculated that, considering unsold copies and purchases by third parties, the copies of biographical books on internment do not reach their number: less than one book each! Cf. C. Sommaruga, Gli internati militari italiani (I.M.I.) nei lager nazisti, "Le pietre raccontano" (The stones tell the story) section, website of the Municipality of Cinisello Balsamo (MI): https://www.comune.cinisello-balsamo.mi.it/pietre/spip.php?article485, accessed 05/02/2025.

[39] “In an instant, with almost prophetic intuition, the reality revealed itself to us: we have reached the bottom. There is no going lower than this: a more miserable human condition does not exist, and is not thinkable”: P. Levi, Se questo è un uomo, Milano, Einaudi, 1989, p. 19.

[40] Cfr. Hammermann, Gli internati militari italiani in Germania, cit., pp. 183–187. The author emphasizes the physical erasure of the camps and their exclusion from the European symbolic geography of memory.

[41] Giovanni Conti, Dove il silenzio urla. Diario di un internato militare italiano 1943–1945, a cura di M. Conti, Milano, Mursia, 2008; cfr. anche Schreiber, I militari italiani internati, cit., pp. 271–279; Pascale, Materassi, Internati Militari Italiani. Una scelta antifascista, cit., pp. 123–126.

[42] On posthumous testimonies see: F. Cecconi, Prigionieri di guerra. Gli italiani nei campi alleati e tedeschi (1940–1947), Bologna, il Mulino, 2012, pp. 215–219; A. D’Auria, I versi della prigionia. Poesie di Giovanni Pizzi, IMI deportato a Deba, Roma, ANRP, 2018.

[43] For example L. Zaninelli, Gli IMI a scuola: un progetto di educazione alla memoria, in “Memoria e futuro”, III (2021), pp. 44–52. The project proposes training courses and educational tools aimed at integrating the IMI story into the teaching of contemporary history.

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