1When the Italian Army went to war, the military penal code in force dated back to 1869. This code contained only a few minor changes compared to its predecessor, enacted by the King of Sardinia on 1 October 1859. The latter, in turn, strictly followed the 1840 code. The military penal code thus drew its inspiration from pre-constitutional principles. It did not incorporate the innovations that had inspired the 1889 general penal code (Zanardelli’s Code), which had banned the death penalty. The text governing the military was therefore backwards and repressive. Designed for brief conflicts and a very mobile army, it was inadequate for modern armed forces and typical modern war crimes. The brief section entitled ‘Criminal Procedure in War Time’ contained only a few paragraphs, and it was even more severe than the already harsh rules enforced in peace time.

2The Ministry of War enacted the Regole pel combattimento (Rules of Combat) in 1913. They also had disciplinary references and increased the military legal system’s repressive potential.

3It is common knowledge that the Italian government forced Parliament to declare war. During war time, Parliament was fundamentally deprived of power: only a few parliamentary meetings were held. Parliament lost its supervisory role for war management and there were only two ‘secret commissions’, the first held during the spring of 1917 and the second during the weeks that followed the Caporetto rout. The government shared its war power only with the GHQ, and fully accepted its influence. This antidemocratic and unusual alliance did not permit Parliament to enhance laws concerning the army and war zone. The government allowed the GHQ to enact proclamations and memoranda on military topics and on war efforts in the war zone. These documents had the same value as a law for soldiers and civilians in the war zone regarding matters of war and military topics. Obviously, such extralegal measures had a stronger repressive character.

4Three sources of law legalised summary justice in the Italian army in different ways: the military criminal code, Regole pel combattimento (Rules of combat), and Cadorna’s proclamations and memoranda.

51) Paragraph 40 of the military criminal code provided that anyone who had the power to lead soldiers had the duty ‘to use any possible means’ to prevent the following crimes: disbanding, mutiny, rebellion, assault or resistance against an armed force, desertion with conspiracy, rebellion against justice, plunder, and mutiny or rebellion of prisoners. Enforcement was set out in paragraphs 117 and 168. Paragraph 117 provided imprisonment if a soldier failed in his duty to use all possible means to prevent mutiny or riot. Paragraph 168 established that one who was obliged to use violence to stop mutiny, riot, pillage or plunder was unpunishable.

6Nevertheless, the code did not explicitly require recourse to summary justice. The most distinguished jurisprudents justified the use of summary justice by arguing that the code did not exclude it. By saying so, they thus violated the ‘principle of legality’ that states that Nullum crimen, nulla poena, sine lege. Other countries instituted rough justice for similar crimes, but their codes explicitly prescribed it (e. g. the Austro-Hungarian code).1

72) The 1913 Regole pel combattimento (Rules of combat) tried to rectify the described shortcoming. They explicitly provided that: ‘Should anyone exert a harmful influence on the courage of his comrades or subordinates with words, cries or acts of insubordination, he must be immediately executed by any officer present’. This rule was much clearer than the cited paragraph of the military criminal code, but there was doubt about its legitimacy because it introduced a form of punishment that had not been explicitly provided for by any superior juridical source, i. e., the code.

8Although the Regole contained specific summary punitive provisions, and the criminal code based summary punishment on the ‘any possible means’ formula, they both required that the crimes demonstrated specific elements:

• they had to be committed in the course of fighting;
• the offenders had to be apprehended in the act of committing the crime;
• the offenders had to refuse the order to put an end to their crime;
• the crime had to represent a clear and present danger for the detachment’s solidity and security.

93) Commander in Chief of the General Staff (GHQ) Luigi Cadorna enacted proclamations and memoranda. These acts reminded commanders of their duty to enact summary justice. If they failed to do so, Cadorna threatened them with severe consequences. In fact, as we have seen, though general rules set out already weak limits to extrajudicial executions, these rules began to be ignored to an ever greater degree from the beginning of war.

10Cadorna enacted memorandum No. 1 Disciplina di Guerra (War discipline) on 24 May 1915 and memorandum No. 3525 on 28 September 1915. These memoranda were the cornerstones of the full legalisation of rough justice, and they pervaded the army’s attitude and behaviour towards any breach of discipline, mutiny or riot.

11Memorandum No. 3525 thus stated: ‘Every soldier must be sure that his superior will be a father or a brother, but he also must be persuaded that his superior has the sacred power to immediately shoot reluctant and cowardly men. Everybody must know that if someone ignominiously tries to surrender or retreat, bullets from the rear lines or from the Carabinieri posted at the rear will hit him before he brings shame on himself, provided that his officers’ bullets have not shot him dead’.

12Cadorna sent a telegram to every army commander on 29 October 1915, transmitting the following order.

[You must] take the strongest and most extreme actions with no restriction or delay, [...] even against an entire detachment. The General Staff will stand by officers of every rank if they act firmly in those situations.2

13On 26 May 1916, during the Strafexpedition,3 Cadorna sent a message to the commander of the Altipiano troops, General Clemente Lequio, ordering him to: ‘[Take] the strongest and harshest measures: to shoot if necessary the persons responsible for this enormous outrage without regard for their rank’.4 On the same day he wrote to the commander of the First Army, General Guglielmo Pecori Giraldi:

You must use extreme rigour against any possible fugitive soldier in the rear. Soldiers must know that if they retire from the line without their chiefs’ order, they will suffer merciless fire of rifles, machine guns and artillery from their own detachments.5

14Cadorna sent a telegraphic memorandum to commanders of all armies on 1 November 1916. He openly supported some shootings without trial that had taken place in the Seventy-fifth Infantry Regiment and the Sixth Bersaglieri Regiment the day before. He wrote:

I remind you that there is not any other effective means to restrain collective crimes than immediately shooting the people chiefly responsible. When it is not possible to identify them, commanders have the right and duty to draw some soldiers among the suspects and shoot them [...]. I absolutely and indeclinably oblige all commanders.6

15In this way he prescribed decimation, having previously complained about its exclusion from the code.7

16Cadorna told the armies to proceed with decimation on 1 November 1916. Only8 in June 1917 did he officially ask the Prime Minister to legalise the practise, omitting any mention of the previous prescriptions. This fact stands as proof of the government’s lack of political control over Cadorna’s actions. The Italian government did not openly approve of Cadorna’s criminal acts, but all the same it did not prosecute Cadorna and the commanders who ordered decimations.

17We have used the following sources for this research.

1. The Report on Summary Shootings during World War I, drawn up by General Military Attorney General Donato Antonio Tommasi.9 During the ‘Commission of inquiry on Caporetto’, some news about summary shootings appeared to cause tremendous outcry. They became one of the main arguments of the socialist campaign against the management of the war. General Alberico Albricci, Minister of War, asked Tommasi to conduct an investigation among armies and army corps. He gave Tommasi an order to verify how many summary shootings took place, and to verify their legitimacy. The Tommasi report records 153 victims plus three cases of undefined deaths. He defined some shootings as illegal and denounced Cadorna’s and General Della Noce’s10 responsibility as creators of a terrorist disciplinary atmosphere in the Italian Army.
2. Documents from the Central State Archive in Rome and the Army General Staff Historical Archive. They revealed to us a great deal of previously unknown cases.
3. Reports about summary executions from memoirs and war diaries. We chose to use only testimonies from the shooters or reliable witnesses. We relied on newspapers only if they were confirmed by other sources.

18At the end of our research, we found the names of 294 victims of Italian summary executions. Among them, twenty-seven were civilians and two were Austrian soldiers who were killed after being held prisoner. We also found eight cases of Italian bombings and firings against Italian detachments. This occurred because troops were disbanding or trying to surrender. Italian officers could not calculate the number of deaths, but we know that this number was high because Italian commanders used to employ strong firepower against crowds of desperate soldiers11.

19Moreover, we have found only few well-founded cases of rough justice during the Caporetto retreat. Although we are sure that there was a large and indiscriminate use of summary justice during the rout, we could find ‘only’ fifty victims. General Andrea Graziani’s itinerant firing squads executed many soldiers during the rout; we have found proof of thirty-six victims. Nowadays that period is regarded as a black hole in contemporary Italian history.

20Overall, we can estimate at least 350 victims of rough justice in Italy (Pluviano and Guerrini 2004: 267-273). Our research has identified the real dimension of the phenomenon: it was not thousands of people, as the antimilitarist had asserted, nor a few dozen men, as the main military establishment had maintained for a very long time; in fact, there were several hundred victims. We are sure, however, that our research has not exhausted this subject because we employed a method of approximation by defect. Further studies will surely find new cases.

21Nonetheless, our research has led to two important conclusions:

1. While the previous official number of recognised victims of rough justice amounted to 150 deaths, this figure has now more than doubled.
2. The phenomenon of summary justice was not an extreme or unusual one; in fact, it was an important and fully accepted part of capital punishment. It caused one third of executions during the war, as at least another 750 men were shot after trial.12 This shows that officers of a great number of detachments used rough justice as a means to enforce discipline during the war and on each front. However, it is obvious that this means was applied much more largely in the bloodiest battles and arenas (mainly at the Carso-Isonzo front).

22This is the year-by-year subdivision of summary executions:

231915–thirty-one, with twenty-six civilians, plus two cases with an undetermined number of deaths;

241916–eighty-three, with one civilian, plus four cases with an undetermined number of deaths;

251917–160 plus two cases with an undetermined number of deaths;

261918–sixteen deaths.

27There were also five more victims, three of which are indicated by Tommasi and two of which are documented by transcripts of trials against officers. We do not know the place and date of these last executions.

28It is well known that the Italian army and police also killed many protesters during riots and rallies against the war all around the country, mostly during 1917. However, our research was devoted solely to estimating the number of civilians killed near the front line. The bloodiest riots, called ‘bread turmoil’, took place during the spring and summer of 1917; in these demonstrations, the most active protesters were women and boys. The strongest repression took place in Turin from 21 to 25 August; at this time, the Italian government imposed martial law and the army shot at the crowd. Some fifty protesters were killed (Procacci 2005: 73).

29Among the civilian victims of summary justice, twenty-six lived in the Austrian territories occupied by Italians during the first weeks of war. Twenty-four of them were slaughtered between 29 May and 13 June 1915. Most of them were Slovenian farmers living between Monte Nero and Caporetto, but there were also some Italians-peaking inhabitants of Villesse, near the sea. All the victims had been accused of spying or hostile acts against Italian troops. Twelve were killed on two different occasions: at Villesse (29 and 30 May 1915) and at Idrsko (4 June). At Idrsko, Italian officers ordered a true decimation in which six men were killed. These facts are reported in documents, but it is not unlikely that other similar events happened in that area and remain yet unknown. During the first weeks of war, all along the recently occupied area, the Italian Army sparked blind violence against the pro-Habsburg Slavic population. Italians perpetrated atrocities and did not restrain themselves from enacting rough justice. Indeed, harsh sentences were passed, people were deported without trials, and thousands of inhabitants were confined to very distant places.

30We have also considered the murder of two Austrian prisoners by an Arditi lieutenant (Italian assault troops), which occurred on 14 September and 11 October 1918. We have found many similar cases in combattants’ memoirs and diaries, but we have chosen not to report them because it is difficult to establish whether they are real or ‘war myths’. In any case, it has to be set clear that not only Italian soldiers killed war prisoners.

31We divided the victims of rough justice into two groups according to the officers’ compliance or failure to comply with the rules. We excluded from this subdivision all civilians, soldiers that were shot during the Caporetto rout, and cases that presented inaccurate documentation.

32The first group, the cases in which officers disrespected the rules, has a doubtful legitimacy and includes the so-called ‘executions in cold blood’. It comprises 214 victims in sixty-one instances of summary justice, plus one case that has an unknown number of deaths. This group includes the majority of executions that followed only Cadorna’s orders. These executions took place after a lapse of time from the crime, sometimes behind the lines, often against soldiers not engaged in fighting. Thus, they lacked two of the main justificatory elements: flagrancy and danger for security of the front. Instead of applying summary justice, officers could have sent the offenders to a military court or to a court-martial where soldiers would have probably suffered a very harsh judgement anyway.

33The second group, the cases in which officers respected the rules, includes acts of rough justice that occurred in deep fighting, in flagrancy or in self-defence. We have recorded twenty-three events; sixteen of them produced twenty-one victims, and seven of them led to an unknown number of deaths. Only a minority of the acts of rough justice thus brings with it clear proof of legitimacy.

34This second kind is the most difficult to ascertain because the executions took place during the fighting, they caused few victims, and fewer witnesses were present. It has to be added that it is possible that the officer who ordered the execution died during the same action. In addition, officers frequently preferred to preserve the executed men’s families from the shame and economic detriment associated with the execution of the relative (this also happened for victims belonging to the first group).

35While the second kind of summary justice had a certain diffusion in other belligerent armies, the first kind occurred almost exclusively in the Italian forces. We have found a similar attitude only in the Bulgarian army, which shot large numbers of its own soldiers with even greater ruthlessness than the Italians (Dimitrova 2005). Moreover, the Bulgarian army coupled pitilessness against its own soldiers with an uncommon cruelty against people who lived in occupied Serbia. Serbians suffered mass rapes, deportations, attempts at cultural genocide, and slaughter (Bianchi 2008).

36Following an in-depth examination of summary justice, it becomes clear that victims represented an accurate cross-section of both the Italian Army and society. Among the victims were soldiers from all around Italy, farmers and workers, young and old, illiterate and educated persons, heroes and cowards, patriots and rebels and people without any opinion. Anyone could commit a crime, perhaps simply in a state of momentary bewilderment. Nobody was safe from summary justice. Extrajudicial punishment had no specific target; only a few ‘true subversives’ were shot. A wide variety of circumstances and kinds of crimes brought soldiers to executions: riot and mutiny; disbanding; desertion to the enemy or at the rear; one day of delay returning from leave; pillage; insubordination; violence or insults against officers; murder; self-inflicted wounding.

37These crimes could be committed individually or collectively. Often, they were the result of fatigue, exasperation, or desperation, although some were conscious refusal of war and its management. Usually the executed soldiers involved in mutinies or riots did not express a total refusal of war. Instead, it seems that they were sure to be treated unequally in comparison with other detachments, they felt their protest as a common demand to be dispatched to a quieter front (Carnia and Trentino), to stay away from the bloody Carso-Isonzo front.

38Much was up to chance, and the outcomes of a ‘criminal action’ could be very different. For the same charge, a soldier could suffer summary justice, a death sentence after an ordinary trial, a few months of imprisonment or simple disciplinary punishment. It depended on the military situation, and the attitude of the commander and officer.

39Among soldiers, summary justice was a well-known subject and they kept its memory alive; far from the front, however, civilians discussed it very little during the war because of censorship. On the contrary, the GHQ thought it useful for disciplinary purposes to spread news of extrajudicial executions among soldiers. General Staff also allowed the facts to be exaggerated in order to terrorise those who tried ‘to escape the war’ and in order to condition officers’ attitudes towards soldiers. Instead, military leadership agreed with the government to avoid those facts becoming common knowledge in the country. They were afraid to foment a parliamentary and general debate about military discipline during the war.

40The first real news about summary justice began to appear at the beginning of 1919, and scandal broke out that summer when the Commission of enquiry on Caporetto published its Report. The fight for truth had been mainly fought by Socialists: their daily newspaper– Avanti!–afforded considerable space to testimonies about summary justice. The government and General Staff had great difficulty in handling this scandal, because it reached a part of public opinion that was usually untouched by Socialist propaganda. The dimension of the phenomenon shocked ex-servicemen and families of the fallen. Therefore, the Italian government readily used the occupation of Fiume by D’Annunzio to again impose preventive press censorship, also taking into account that the first post-war general election was approaching. The Socialist party had widely used criticism against war management and military justice, and topics of rough justice had a very large audience among voters.

41We know that 350 victims of rough justice are a seemingly negligible detail in comparison with 650,000 deaths in fighting. The point that draws attention is that these men were killed in defiance of every rule and that this fact was a sad Italian peculiarity. In addition, this took place despite the already existing harsh Italian laws and regulations in force at the time.

42After quick comparative research – which we shall have to expand – we have inferred that European armies rarely employed rough justice (exceptions could be made for Bulgarians and, possibly, for Russians). Few cases have been found among the French, English, German and Austro-Hungarian armies that occurred in deep fighting. They did not have General Staff approval (exceptions are the 1918 German army offensives)13, and they immediately sparked scandal among the public and politicians.

43Nevertheless, we have to remember that other European armies were much more merciless than the Italians towards civilians. It is true that the Italian army also shot some civilians suspected of espionage both after and without trial, and that it deported thousands of pro-Habsburg inhabitants away from the ‘redeemed lands’. Indeed, Germans and Austro-Hungarians killed thousands of civilians without trial both in the eastern and in the western occupied territories; the French shot a large number of ‘spies’ and the English army machine-gunned Chinese, Egyptian and Indian militarised workers of the Labour Corps on some occasions.

44Italian military justice against civilians in Albania both during and immediately after the war is worth separate consideration. Courts-martial were very harsh against disbanded irregular troops (also enlisted by Italians) and rebels. It was thus very difficult to distinguish irregulars and rebels from ordinary bandits who traditionally oppressed local populations. During an initial investigation, we found twelve trials followed by seventeen death sentences and a number of other harsh sentences.14

45If we add victims of rough justice to victims of trials, we find the true number of Italian victims of capital punishment during World War I: there were at least 1,100. This was definitely the highest number among the beligerent countries. This number of victims occurred in spite of the shorter period of fighting and a smaller or equal number of soldiers engaged. This happened mainly because General Staff acted without any political oversight by either the government or Parliament. This was also demonstrated by the fact that the number of rough and regular executions increased year after year, unlike in France, for instance.15 Although the French mutinies in the spring of 1917 represented a very serious crisis known worldwide, the French army used the death penalty moderately (Rolland 2005: 380-384) and few episodes of rough justice took place.16

46In our opinion, it is very important that the Italian army chose to use harsh repression almost exclusively to maintain detachments’ solidity, at least until the end of 1917.17 Repression was considered the most effective, easy and unexpensive means of keeping soldiers at the front line. In fact, Italian military courts’ ample activity and harsh sentences were rarely equalled in other armies. The documentation about rough justice we have collected clearly shows one fact: this extreme kind of repression increasingly blurred the border between judicial and disciplinary proceedings. This mingling was illegal because disciplinary proceedings were thought to be an instrument to quickly repress minor, non-criminal offences (at officers’ discretion). Cadorna’s attitude, although illegal, influenced the majority of officers. These behaviours made it almost impossible to distinguish where disciplinary measures ended and where military justice began.18

47At the end of World War I and later, during the 1970s, a heated debate took place on military justice. Many people and some scholars thought that the death penalty and summary justice were the decisive factors in forcing Italian soldiers to fight. We do not entirely agree with this opinion. It is true that fear of repression played a very important role, but Italian soldiers also fought very well because of many other motives among which undoubtedly stand atavistic submissiveness, trust in their officers, detachment ties, and national sentiments.

48We think that with regard to the real intentions of military leadership, the goals of this repressive strategy were not restricted to war requirements. Cadorna and the most important generals wanted to keep the army untouched by the social and cultural advancements that Italy had known for the past twenty years. Indeed, military leadership and part of the political and economic elite planned to create a ‘new Italian’ through harsh war discipline. This ‘new Italian’ would be the cornerstone of a ‘community of fighters and producers’, impervious to every idea of improvement and social advancement. They believed that war could turn into a reactionary source. This idea was fully developed by Fascism.

49We would like to make a last political and historical remark. Cadorna and his main political and military supporters were clearly the main driving forces responsible for cruel shootings without trials, the enormous number of death sentences, and harsh repression, both in the army and in the country as a whole. The King, the government, Parliament and main political party leaders, with the exception of the Socialist Party, had been the instigators. These authorities sometimes criticised General Staff, but they never had the courage to cast doubts publicly on its systems and aims.

50While Cadorna destroyed the remains of a ‘liberal State’ taking up an inadmissible political role and preparing the field for a reactionary and dictatorial involution, these representative and constitutional organs did not lift a finger. It appears clear that the majority of them did not find themselves in stark disagreement with Cadorna’s praxis and projects.