Italy's World War II is divided into two main moments: the fascist war fought alongside Germany in Europe and Africa and the liberation war fought in Italy against Germany in support of the Allied advance.

Unfortunately, the liberation war is the only one really remembered in Italy, complete with a national holiday on April 25, the day of the surrender of German forces in Italy and the victorious partisan uprising in the main cities of the Po Valley. At the end of the conflict, no one wanted to remember the failures and war crimes of 1940-1943. It was of no interest to the parties that were heirs to the partisan struggle (communists, socialists, Christian Democrats, liberals), who preferred to focus on the side that had seen them fight and overcome the Nazi invader. It did not, of course, interest the armed forces, which gladly preferred to forget a war that was certainly not honorable. Nor did it interest the remaining diehard fascists, whose new founding myths were more related to the civil war fought in Italy against the partisans than to monarchical fascism. Finally, it did not even interest the Allies, who now needed a stable and armed Italy against the Soviet threat. That is why they allowed Italy to protect its war criminals from Yugoslav, Greek or Ethiopian demands. Likewise, Italy renounced prosecution of German war criminals for what they had done in Italy. In both cases these were officers or relatives of officers whom it was more useful to have serving in the reconstruction of the German-Italian armed forces than in prison.

From this convergence of interests developed a popular narrative that essentially absolved Italy of responsibility for the war, all of which was blamed on Mussolini and the "fatal mistake" of allying with Hitler. And in any case, Italian soldiers, in this popular view, were not as bad as the Germans: they treated other peoples with friendship, respectfully courted their women and even defended them from German abuse. I quote a scene from a film by the beloved comic actor Totò in "The Two Colonels": "Meanwhile, having learned of Italy's military difficulties in countering the British battalion, the German army sends Major Kruger, along with a supply of powerful war mortars. The German officer misses no opportunity to treat the Italians, and in particular the colonel, with condescension. Di Maggio, however, openly rebels against the German's order to bombard the country and kill women, old men and children to flush out the British, and is then sentenced to death for insubordination by a German court-martial."

There would be little to add to this scene, which sums up well how Italy in the early postwar decades viewed its participation in the conflict. Even when brought to light in the following decades, the subject of Italian war crimes is still little known and debated in Italy and still arouses a certain embarrassment and reluctance even among intellectuals, politicians and slices of the population who are not extreme right-wingers.