Italian and Vichy Generalplan Ost in their colonies in an Axis victory

Lots of deaths due to retaliation for insurgency etc - sure. Some deaths due to forced displacement of population in an area for use by settlers - possibly. Unhealthy potentially deadly working conditions - probable in certain areas. Deliberate killing of a huge percentage of the population (10s of millions) and reducing the rest to slavery - just don't see it.
 
Realistically, Italian fascism was the standard colonial rule: not genocidal for the hell of it, but certainly not particularly fun.
 

elkarlo

Banned
I would think a genocide committed in the colonies to be more likely in the case of Italy, mainly because of the relatively recent commission if atrocities against people's in Europe and Africa who refused Italianization. I can relatively easily imagine a Fascist Italy that decides to get rid of Arabs in its North African territories.

A Vichy France doing the same in the Maghreb, even in Algeria, seems less likely. French colonial rule certainly had its problems, and especially in Algeria Muslims were consigned to secondary status, but the sheer distance in time between Vichy and the atrocities of early French colonial rule is noteworthy. For a couple of generations by the 1940s, France had a relatively workable colonial model operating in the different parts of the Maghreb where Muslims had a stable subordinate role under French rule. There was no recent history of violent conflict to make a final solution doable.
France needed French settlers,a nd really coulnd't get enough. While for Italy the colonies were smaller, and they wanted a valve for their excess population.
France, I feel just was like old skool Rome. Don't rebel and pay your taxes, and outside of that didn't care. While Italy wanted to model their colonies off of Italy and wanted it be an extension of the home country.
I feel that makes Italy more likely to commit genocide, maybe not soon, but eventually they might actually make some plans to depopulate areas on purpose.
 
I would think a genocide committed in the colonies to be more likely in the case of Italy, mainly because of the relatively recent commission if atrocities against people's in Europe and Africa who refused Italianization. I can relatively easily imagine a Fascist Italy that decides to get rid of Arabs in its North African territories.

However Mussolini wasn't hostile to Islam or certain Islamic nationalism - as long to be congenial or friendly to Italy of course. One doesn't go on a horse in Libya to raise a toy sword calling it the Sword of Islam to then plan to oust or worse thousands of Muslim Libyans from the region.
 
Lots of deaths due to retaliation for insurgency etc - sure. Some deaths due to forced displacement of population in an area for use by settlers - possibly. Unhealthy potentially deadly working conditions - probable in certain areas. Deliberate killing of a huge percentage of the population (10s of millions) and reducing the rest to slavery - just don't see it.

Italy under Mussolini did engage in mass killings in its suppression of Libyan Arab rebels in the 1920s and 1930s as part of a program that would have involved substantial population changes. In Europe, meanwhile, killings approaching the level of genocide were imagined as a way of dealing with the rebellious Slovenes. Excluding the possibility of mass killings of colonials to create living space for subjects is, given this past history of ethnically-defined mass murder, not something I would feel comfortable in doing.
 
I don't think that any African holdings would require mass extermination. Just play the different tribes off one another, give your outdated equipment to the loyal ones. Even if you want a French/Italian lebensraum, no need to start exterminating natives before you have the population boom to replace them
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
I could see Italy doing this in Libya, Slovenia, Istria and the Dalmatian coast
What evidence in any of Italy's dealing while under Fascist control indicates that they would INTENTIONALLY kill 80% of the population?

Unlike the Reich, even Mussolini was intelligent to understand that local populations are what you use as part of the whole "exploitation of resources" that makes up a colony. It took a unique mix of flippin' idiocy and unrestrained evil to see a literate population as vermin and not labor.
 
What evidence in any of Italy's dealing while under Fascist control indicates that they would INTENTIONALLY kill 80% of the population?

Unlike the Reich, even Mussolini was intelligent to understand that local populations are what you use as part of the whole "exploitation of resources" that makes up a colony. It took a unique mix of flippin' idiocy and unrestrained evil to see a literate population as vermin and not labor.
Mussolini wanted to flood Libya with Italian settlers so that it would be Italian majority.

As for Slovenia, he did engage in multiple ethnic clensings of Slovenians otl
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Mussolini wanted to flood Libya with Italian settlers so that it would be Italian majority.

As for Slovenia, he did engage in multiple ethnic clensings of Slovenians otl
The Italians planned to flood settlers into Libya. The didn't plan to execute or exterminate through labor 80% of the population.

Slovenia is actually an excellent example of the difference between Italian policies and the Reich's. Italy started out with no plans to cleanse any part of the population, but then vastly overreacted (as fascists tend to do) to resistance by putting tens of thousands of people into concentration camps resulting in thousands of deaths. Interestingly, prior to the surrender in 1943 the Italian fascist government had begun to reverse some of the policies seeing them as counterproductive in stifling dissent and resistance. The Reich walked in with a plan to simply murder 25,000 people to clear space.

It is impossible to compare ANY modern actions to GeneralPlan Ost. The GOAL was to liquidate 80-100% of various populations while outlawing the use of native languages in written form, leaving a sprinkling of the original population to work as illiterate slaves. The plans (there never was a finalized version since, like most everything the Reich did during the war, they were making it up as they went along) was breathtaking in their scope and the sheer vileness of the evil involved.

Fascist Italy was not, in any way, shape, or form, an innocent player, there were plenty of war crimes to cite. GeneralPlan Ost, however, is on an entirely different plane
 
Top