When Odilo Globocnik, SS and police leader in Lublin, Poland, transferred to the Italian OZAK region in late 1943, he took with him a group of around 100 men who had run the notorious Aktion Reinhard extermination camps--Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor--where 1.5 million people (mostly Jews) had been killed. This book describes the little-known activities of this group, known as Abteilung R (Reinhard), in the OZAK region from 1943 to 1945. Here they not only continued persecuting Jews, but also became involved in the fight against the armed resistance movement, participated in security tasks, anti-partisan operations, retaliation operations including arresting and killing of civilians, and ran the infamous Risiera di San Sabba police camp in Trieste. The book also covers the SS-Wachmannschaften (SS guards units) of the OZAK, military units that were formed locally and had links with Abteilung R. There are also chapters on uniforms and insignia, as well as photographs related to anti-partisan operations in the region.

This is a study of the early writings of Virginio Gayda (1885-1944), a talented but amoral Italian journalist whose career spanned two world wars. A keen observer, prolific writer and propagandist during his stint as the newspaper La Stampa’s special correspondent in Habsburg Vienna, Gayda lent his considerable skills to promote an aggressive foreign policy. No one did more than he to poison relations between the Italian and Yugoslav peoples. His is the story of a respected journalist who chose an ultranationalist path to fascism and international fame. Not uninfluenced by rank careerism and material reward he forsook his roots to embrace the antisemitic “race” laws of 1938 and Italy’s disastrous partnership with Nazi Germany.

"Originally published in Great Britain in 2020 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd., London."

With the proclamation of the Armistice, the whole territory that included Friuli-Venezia Giulia, the Provinces of Ljubljana and Istria, considered of vital importance for the communication lines and for the supply of the German Army in Italy, was absorbed by the Reich, under the jurisdictional form of the so-called Zone of Operations of the Adriatic Coast (O.Z.A.K.). The government of the R.S.I. attempted to restore its authority in the O.Z.A.K. even in the military field, but German interference was always fierce. The reconstituted Legions of the M.V.S.N. were prevented to join the G.N.R. and the Germans imposed on these units the denomination of Territorial Defense Militia (Milizia Difesa Territoriale M.D.T.), formally part of the G.N.R., but autonomous in the reality. The M.D.T. was configured as a "Landschutz", that is a defense unit of the territory. In parallel, the Prefect Coceani and the Podestà Pagnini promoted the establishment of a self-defense unit, the Civic Guard, in Trieste, an example followed in other cities in the region.

After the Armistice and the consequent German occupation of the Julian regions, which were in fact annexed to the German Reich with the creation of the Zone of Operations of the Adriatic Coast, the German military authorities decreed the establishment of territorial self-defense units, formed by Italian, Slovenian and Croatian citizens, to flank the German units in the fight against the partisan phenomenon. The Landschutz was thus organized, an ethnically based corps, which had to “contribute to the maintenance of order and security”, and was formally established by Supreme Commissioner Rainer on October 1, 1943. In the varied panorama of units created during the war with non-German personnel, not enough importance has ever been given to these small units of Territorial Defense, and this volume attempts to provide as in-depth an analysis as possible of the life of the Landschutz.

Odilo Globocnik, a collaborator of Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, was responsible for the deaths of at least 1.5 million people in three Nazi camps in occupied Poland: Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec. Along with Rudolf Hoss, Globocnik may be named as one of the first industrial-style killers in history. Betraying his homeland by conspiring with Hitler to destroy Austria's independence, he then launched the Generalplan-Ost, which was to expel over 100 million Slavs into Western Siberia, and played a pivotal role in Aktion Reinhardt, directing the entire program from early 1942 until September 1943, and writing letters to Himmler detailing goods looted from his victims. Globocnik's Lublin Distrikt gulag was not merely a vehicle for a well-organized pogrom; it also involved creating a highly organized network of ghettos and forced labor camps. By the winter of 1943 nearly all of the Jews of the Lublin Distrikt had been exterminated, leaving only skilled laborers used in Globocnik's industrial conglomerates. His ethnic cleansing teams, assisted by Ukrainian policing units, also cleared the Polish peasant farmers from the Zamosc Lands. Very little has been published on Globocnik, most especially the four years he spent in Lublin. This authoritative biography details every aspect of his life from his ancestry to his suicide after being captured. Information has been researched from more than thirty international archives, Globocnik's SS file, extensive interviews with his lover Irmgard Rickheim and others, a wealth of letters both personal and formal, internal memos and official reports of the SS, diaries, and the reminiscences of survivors. Includes rare photographs, many from the collection of Irmgard Rickheim.

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How did Italy treat Jews during World War II? Historians have shown beyond doubt that many Italians were complicit in the Holocaust, yet Italy is still known as the Axis state that helped Jews. Shira Klein uncovers how Italian Jews, though victims of Italian persecution, promoted the view that Fascist Italy was categorically good to them. She shows how the Jews' experience in the decades before World War II - during which they became fervent Italian patriots while maintaining their distinctive Jewish culture - led them later to bolster the myth of Italy's wartime innocence in the Fascist racial campaign. Italy's Jews experienced a century of dramatic changes, from emancipation in 1848, to the 1938 Racial Laws, wartime refuge in America and Palestine, and the rehabilitation of Holocaust survivors. This cultural and social history draws on a wealth of unexplored sources, including original interviews and unpublished memoirs.

When Italy surrendered in 1943, it sparked a resistance movement of anti-German, anti-fascist partisans. This book explores the tactics, organizational structure and equipment of the brave Italian resistance fighters. Beginning with low-level sabotage and assassinations, the groups continued to grow until spring 1944 when a remarkable, unified partisan command structure was created. Working in close co-ordination with the Allies, they received British SOE and American OSS liaison teams as well as supplies of weapons. The German response was ferocious, and in autumn 1944, as the Allied advance stalled, the SS and Italian RSI looked to eradicate the partisans once and for all. But when the Allies made their final breakthrough in the last weeks of the war the partisans rose again to exact their revenge on the retreating Wehrmacht. From an expert on Italian military history in World War II, this work provides a comprehensive guide to the men and women who fought a desperate struggle against occupation, as well as the German and Italian fascist security forces unleashed against them.

In the Name of the People explores the profile of the perpetrators of Nazi genocide as reflected in postwar German trial sentences. It investigates their social background, their `route to crime', and their role in the Nazi extermination apparatus. In addition, it studies the postwar prosecution of these genocidal criminals in West Germany. It describes and analyses the obstacles, `bottlenecks', and omissions in the prosecuting policies and presents their statistical record. It examines the way in which postwar German courts dealt with these criminals by an in-depth study of the trial sentences against two specific groups of genocidal perpetrators: the `Euthanasia' and `Aktion Reinhard' killers. Through a scrutiny of the argumentation of the various courts' sentences in these cases, it presents a detailed picture of the grounds for acquittal, conviction and punishment. It discusses the controversial differentiation of `murder' and `complicity in murder' with regard to these genocidal perpetrators and highlights the ways in which the courts handled complicated questions, such as acting under superior orders, duress, and coercion. The study is intended for a readership consisting of historians, sociologists, criminologists, legal experts and others interested in the `fieldworkers' and modus operandi of the Nazi genocide and Germany's postwar judicial reaction to it.