Summer 1942

Abstract

On June 8, Roatta wrote a rather worried letter to Robotti in which he insisted that the general “reestablish order in the province.” Roatta’s intentions were specific. They were to destroy “the central directing organization” of the “subversive movement,” a fairly important phrase because with it Roatta recognized that the Resistance had a single and acknowledged command structure, one of the criteria used to identify the enemy as a “legitimate belligerent.” To obtain this result, among the methods to be used were the preventive internment in concentration camps of anyone who might be recruited by the “rebels”; the protective internment of collaborators in danger; the killing of hostages; reprisals, including the destruction of houses or villages, but only in the cases set out in the circular 3 C; the work of “dividing” the rebels, arming anticommunist Slovenians (“setting one against the other”); the “massive” movement of residents out of specific areas. From a strictly military viewpoint, Roatta gave highly detailed directives on the organization and garrisons and raid operations, but above all gave the clear order “always to move forward with the greatest energy and decision, and to kill our adversaries inexorably and immediately along with those who help them. During the raids, whoever makes any hostile act, or gives any help to the rebels, shall immediately be shot.”¹