Rejecting the military to serve the Nazis. Italian conscientious objectors in Gaeta’s jail from 1948 to 1972

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the Italian conscientious objectors imprisoned in the military jail of Gaeta from 1948 to 1972, who shared the prison with the two ex-Nazi officials Herbert Kappler and Walter Reder, responsible for the most pitiless massacres that occurred in Italy during WWII. The study is based on interviews with and diaries and memoirs by conscientious objectors who were in jail for rejecting the military and knew Kappler and Reder. While existing studies on the topic centre on legal and normative aspects of conscientious objection, this analysis concerns the personal experience of the objectors in jail and investigates the relationships between the prisoners and the two war criminals. The interviewees have revealed the many privileges reserved to Kappler and Reder, adding to what had already been reported by journalistic investigations and political parliamentary interrogations. They have also stated that many of them were pushed to become the orderlies of Kappler and Reder. They carried goods to the apartments of the two ex-Nazis, set the room for Kappler’s wedding and call them ‘Colonel’ and ‘Major, not to worsen their conditions in jail. In conclusion, the article demonstrates that in Gaeta in those years a paradoxical scenario existed: the objectors were deprived of their pacifist identities and inserted into a military structure governed by the military law; the two war criminals, conversely, were allowed to save their Nazi identity by wearing their uniforms, being called ‘Major’ and ‘Colonel’ and continuing to give orders. Symbolically, the official version saying that democratic Italy was constructed on the defeat of Fascism was thus totally upended.