Suchergebnisse

The shooting of 335 people in the Fosse Ardeatine in reprisal for an attack by Italian partisans on a German police unit in Rome was not only one of the biggest German reprisals in Western Europe, but it has become, over the last 50 years, the most heatedly discussed criminal act by the National Socialists in Italy. As often happens when events become symbolic, public discourse strays from what one may - with all caution - call "historical reality". The article tries, on the one hand, to establish the range within which interpretation may properly take place when facts discovered by new research into sources are added to what is already known. Answers are given to questions which have been open to free-wheeling interpretations of, for example, the composition of the police unit hit by the partisans' attack. On the other hand, questions remaining open are discussed in the context of historical evidence. Was there, for example, really a "Führerbefehl" which ordered the reprisal and was used as an important piece of evidence by the defence in the postwar trial of the Germans responsible for the shooting? The reconstruction of the event in the larger framework of the German occupation of Rome is completed by a final treatment which explores the questionable juridical status of reprisals which took place against civilians during wartime before the introduction of the Geneva conventions of 1949. It briefly explains whether such reprisals were sanctioned by international law and if so, under which circumstances. (Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte / FUB)