196-649: The Ardeatine massacre , or Fosse Ardeatine massacre ( Italian : Eccidio delle Fosse Ardeatine ), was a mass killing of 335 civilians and political prisoners carried out in Rome on 24 March 1944 by German occupation troops during the Second World War as a reprisal for the Via Rasella attack in central Rome against the SS Police Regiment Bozen the previous day. Subsequently,
392-683: A truce with Allied forces, without consulting either Mussolini or Hitler. Smaller units like the Black Brigades ( Brigate nere ) led by Alessandro Pavolini and the Decima Flottiglia MAS led by Junio Valerio Borghese (called " principe nero ", the Black Prince) fought for the RSI during its entire existence. The Germans were satisfied if these units were able to participate in anti-partisan activities . In March 1944,
588-722: A "sawdust Caesar ". The new government began secret negotiations with the Allied powers and made preparations for the capitulation of Italy. These surrender talks implied a commitment from Badoglio to leave the Axis alliance . While the Germans formally recognised the new status quo in Italian politics, they intervened by sending some of the best units of the Wehrmacht to Italy. This was done both to resist new Allied advances and to face
784-441: A building, the bomb had actually been hidden in a rubbish cart, pushed into position by a Partisan disguised as a street cleaner, while others acted as lookouts. The fuse was lit when the police were forty seconds from the bomb. The blast caused the immediate deaths of 28 German SS policemen and may have killed two civilian bystanders, one of whom, Piero Zuccheretti, was an eleven-year-old boy, although he might well have been killed by
980-554: A civil or military nature." The organization was proposed by General Francesco Paladino . With German agreement, Marshal Rodolfo Graziani appointed Paladino its first director on 6 October 1943. Its headquarters was initially in Rome and it was under the authority of the Ministry of Defence. Women volunteers served in uniform as noncombatants in paramilitary units and police formations ( Servizio Ausiliario Femminile ). The commander
1176-616: A collective entity. In July 1943, the Allies landed on the island of Sicily, preparing to invade the mainland, and Rome was bombed for the first time. On 24 July 1943, the Fascist Grand Council , which the dictator Benito Mussolini had not convened since 1939, met and overwhelmingly voted no confidence in Mussolini. The following day, anxious to extricate his country from an unsustainable war, King Victor Emanuel III ,
1372-884: A column of German vehicles passing through Via Rasella was responsible for provoking the Italians who then hurled grenades from the building alongside Palazzo Tittoni; the counter-measures are not yet known: it is however foreseen that for every German killed 10 Italians will be executed. L'ing. Ferraro hopes to provide further details later. Katz elaborated on this in 2003 in The Battle for Rome: The Germans, The Allies, The Partisans, and The Pope, September 1943 – June 1944 , using evidence from recently released OSS and Vatican sources that certain German diplomats, notably Eugen Dollmann , Himmler's representative in Rome and German Consul Eitel Möllhausen had gone to Pope Pius' personal liaison to
1568-660: A column of the German 11th Company, 3rd Battalion, Police Regiment "South Tyrol" was attacked by an ambush of Partisans , while marching and singing on a prescribed route that led through the Piazza di Spagna into the narrow street of Via Rasella. Organised by the Nazis to intimidate and suppress the Resistance, the battalion had been raised in October 1943 from ethnic German speakers of the northern Italian province of South Tyrol ,
1764-645: A completely totalitarian state . During the preceding twenty years of the Fascist association with the Savoy monarchy of the Kingdom of Italy, some of the actions of the Fascists had been restricted by the monarchy. However, the formation of the RSI allowed Mussolini to be the official head of an Italian state and it also allowed the Fascists to return to their earlier republican stances. In one way or another, most of
1960-510: A huge number of civil servants and soldiers recruited from all over the country introduced many more words and idioms from their home languages— ciao is derived from the Venetian word s-cia[v]o ("slave", that is "your servant"), panettone comes from the Lombard word panetton , etc. Only 2.5% of Italy's population could speak the Italian standardized language properly when
2156-471: A little over one million people in the United States speak Italian at home. Nevertheless, an Italian language media market does exist in the country. In Canada, Italian is the second most spoken non-official language when varieties of Chinese are not grouped together, with 375,645 claiming Italian as their mother tongue in 2016. Italian immigrants to South America have also brought a presence of
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#17327723622292352-657: A local vernacular. These dialects, as they are commonly referred to, evolved from Vulgar Latin over the course of centuries, unaffected by formal standards and teachings. They are not in any sense "dialects" of standard Italian, which itself started off as one of these local tongues, but sister languages of Italian. Mutual intelligibility with Italian varies widely, as it does with Romance languages in general. The Romance languages of Italy can differ greatly from Italian at all levels ( phonology , morphology , syntax , lexicon , pragmatics ) and are classified typologically as distinct languages. The standard Italian language has
2548-544: A man of God ... among them". The main concern of the SS had been the speedy fulfilment of the quota. Some were residents of Via Rasella who were home at the time of the Partisan attack; others had been arrested and tortured for suspected Resistance and other anti-Fascist activities, while still others had been casually picked up on the streets or arrested at their homes on the basis of tips from Fascist informants. The youngest of them
2744-678: A new Fascist state under the protection of the Wehrmacht. Mussolini balked; he was tired of the responsibilities of the war and unwilling to retake power. Hitler told him the alternative would be a German military administration that would treat Italy no differently from other occupied countries. Hitler also threatened to destroy Milan , Genoa and Turin unless Mussolini agreed to set up a revived Fascist government. Reluctantly, Mussolini agreed to Hitler's demands. Mussolini returned to Italy and settled in Milan, from where on 15 September he announced
2940-552: A new constitution, but that was cancelled by Mussolini on 14 November 1943 and delayed until after the end of the war. The disintegration of the Italian Social Republic at the end of the war meant that no new constitution was written. The RSI was led by the Republican Fascist Party , established on 18 September 1943 out of the disbanded National Fascist Party . The party's official newspaper
3136-724: A newspaper owned by Paolo Berlusconi , brother of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi , to re-label the World War II Partisans responsible for the attack on Via Rasella as "terrorists". In response, the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation officially ruled that the act in Via Rasella had been a legitimate act of war and not a terrorist attack and ordered the publisher to pay punitive damages of 45 thousand euro. Nevertheless, some historians, such as Richard Raiber and István Deák, continue to imply that
3332-658: A poetic and literary origin in the works of Tuscan writers of the 12th century, and, although the grammar and core lexicon are basically unchanged from those used in Florence in the 13th century, the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. However, Romance vernacular as language spoken in the Italian Peninsula has a longer history. In fact, the earliest surviving texts that can definitely be called vernacular (as distinct from its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae known as
3528-417: A renewed interest in linguistics in the 16th century, sparked a debate that raged throughout Italy concerning the criteria that should govern the establishment of a modern Italian literary and spoken language. This discussion, known as questione della lingua (i.e., the problem of the language ), ran through the Italian culture until the end of the 19th century, often linked to the political debate on achieving
3724-575: A result. Starting in late medieval times in much of Europe and the Mediterranean, Latin was replaced as the primary commercial language by languages of Italy, especially Tuscan and Venetian. These varieties were consolidated during the Renaissance with the strength of Italy and the rise of humanism and the arts . Italy came to enjoy increasing artistic prestige within Europe. A mark of
3920-566: A school of cadets ) and civilians, the Germans occupied Rome. They announced the imposition of German military law with summary execution for violators. Three days later (on 12 September), Nazi commandos led by Waffen-SS officer Otto Skorzeny , tracked down and rescued Mussolini from his hidden prison in the Gran Sasso and set him up in the puppet regime of the so-called "Republic of Salò" in Northern Italy . In October 1943
4116-622: A second political party called the National Republican Socialist Rally (RNRS), later rebranded as the Italian Socialist Republican Party) under the leadership of Edmondo Cione. The party supported a leftist view of fascism strongly focused on the socialization of the economy, and included several former socialists, such as Pulvio Zocchi, Carlo Silvestri, and Walter Mocchi. It also published a newspaper called L'Italia del Popolo . It
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#17327723622294312-493: A seven-vowel system, consisting of /a, ɛ, e, i, ɔ, o, u/ , as well as 23 consonants. Compared with most other Romance languages, Italian phonology is conservative, preserving many words nearly unchanged from Vulgar Latin . Some examples: Italian Social Republic The Italian Social Republic ( Italian : Repubblica Sociale Italiana , Italian: [reˈpubblika soˈtʃaːle itaˈljaːna] ; RSI ; German : Italienische Sozialrepublik ), known prior to December 1943 as
4508-479: A single language is that they have evolved so that they are no longer mutually intelligible ; this diagnostic is effective if mutual intelligibility is minimal or absent (e.g. in Romance, Romanian and Portuguese), but it fails in cases such as Spanish-Portuguese or Spanish-Italian, as educated native speakers of either pairing can understand each other well if they choose to do so; however, the level of intelligibility
4704-546: A strategy of cover-up and concealment—" Night and Fog "—designed to confuse, grieve, and intimidate surviving relatives, according to Robert Katz . Misconceptions about the Fosse Ardeatine Massacre abound. Foremost among these is the notion that the Partisans responsible for the Via Rasella attack were ordered to come forward and turn themselves over to the SS and wilfully declined to do so. Although it
4900-400: A television interview by ABC television reporter Sam Donaldson , brought back to Italy for trial, and sentenced to house arrest in the home of his lawyer, Paolo Giachini. He died on 11 October 2013 from natural causes at age 100. His last request to have his remains returned to Argentina to be buried alongside his wife was denied by Argentina. The Vatican issued an "unprecedented ban" on holding
5096-709: A territory that Adolf Hitler had annexed to the German Reich after the September "betrayal" by the Italian government. Many of its citizens had since opted for German citizenship. The soldiers of the battalion were veterans of the Royal Italian Army who had seen action on the Eastern Front and had chosen service in the SS rather than face another tour in the East with the Wehrmacht . The attack
5292-513: A united Italian state. Renaissance scholars divided into three main factions: A fourth faction claimed that the best Italian was the one that the papal court adopted, which was a mixture of the Tuscan and Roman dialects. Eventually, Bembo's ideas prevailed, and the foundation of the Accademia della Crusca in Florence (1582–1583), the official legislative body of the Italian language, led to
5488-427: Is 89% with French, 87% with Catalan , 85% with Sardinian , 82% with Spanish, 80% with Portuguese , 78% with Ladin , 77% with Romanian . Estimates may differ according to sources. One study, analyzing the degree of differentiation of Romance languages in comparison to Latin (comparing phonology , inflection , discourse , syntax , vocabulary , and intonation ), estimated that distance between Italian and Latin
5684-691: Is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire . Italian is the least divergent language from Latin , together with Sardinian (meaning that Italian and Sardinian are the most conservative Romance languages). Spoken by about 85 million people, including 67 million native speakers (2024), Italian is an official language in Italy , San Marino , Switzerland ( Ticino and
5880-708: Is also spoken by a minority in Monaco and France, especially in the southeastern part of the country. Italian was the official language in Savoy and in Nice until 1860, when they were both annexed by France under the Treaty of Turin , a development that triggered the " Niçard exodus ", or the emigration of a quarter of the Niçard Italians to Italy, and the Niçard Vespers . Giuseppe Garibaldi complained about
6076-534: Is higher than that between Sardinian and Latin. In particular, its vowels are the second-closest to Latin after Sardinian . As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive. Italian is the official language of Italy and San Marino and is spoken fluently by the majority of the countries' populations. Italian is the third most spoken language in Switzerland (after German and French; see Swiss Italian ), although its use there has moderately declined since
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6272-402: Is increasingly hard to draw the line between freedom fighting and terrorism. In his opinion, Hague Conventions regulating irregular warfare has been "more a failure than success". "What is needed," Deák stresses, "is a recognition of reality, namely that future wars will increasingly consist of civilians shooting at soldiers from hiding and frightened soldiers killing innocent civilians. And what
6468-460: Is markedly lower between Italian-Spanish, and considerably higher between the Iberian sister languages of Portuguese-Spanish. Speakers of this latter pair can communicate with one another with remarkable ease, each speaking to the other in his own native language without slang/jargon. Nevertheless, on the basis of accumulated differences in morphology, syntax, phonology, and to some extent lexicon, it
6664-408: Is needed, in the aftermath of such a sobering recognition, is an attempt to create a new international law for the more efficient regulation of this type of horrible warfare." Robert Katz's book, The Battle for Rome , Deák concludes, "provides fine arguments for this necessary debate". Immediately after the war Roman Partisan leaders, including Rosario Bentivegna, the medical student who had set off
6860-504: Is neither a co-official nor a protected language in these countries. Some speakers of Italian are native bilinguals of both Italian (either in its standard form or regional varieties ) and a local language of Italy , most frequently the language spoken at home in their place of origin. Italian is a major language in Europe, being one of the official languages of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and one of
7056-462: Is not difficult to identify that for the Romance varieties of Italy, the first extant written evidence of languages that can no longer be considered Latin comes from the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. These written sources demonstrate certain vernacular characteristics and sometimes explicitly mention the use of the vernacular in Italy. Full literary manifestations of the vernacular began to surface around
7252-525: Is sometimes claimed that the reprisal victims were predominantly Jewish, only 75 of the 335 victims selected for death in the caves were Jewish, this having been a criterion for selection (because Jews were known to be marked for death anyway). In fact, the victims comprised, in Robert Katz 's words, "rich, and poor, doctors and lawyers, workers and shopkeepers, artists and artisans, teachers and students, men and teenage boys from every walk of life, and even
7448-648: Is the main working language of the Holy See , serving as the lingua franca (common language) in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as the official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta . Italian has a significant use in musical terminology and opera with numerous Italian words referring to music that have become international terms taken into various languages worldwide. Almost all native Italian words end with vowels , and
7644-549: Is used, and the town of Chipilo near Puebla, Mexico; each continues to use a derived form of Venetian dating back to the 19th century. Other examples are Cocoliche , an Italian–Spanish pidgin once spoken in Argentina and especially in Buenos Aires , and Lunfardo . The Rioplatense Spanish dialect of Argentina and Uruguay today has thus been heavily influenced by both standard Italian and Italian regional languages as
7840-456: Is written in both Latin and Hebrew: "Clamavi ad Te, Domine";"שיר המעלות, ממעמקים קראתיך י-ה". For a number of reasons, including (but not limited to): the large number of victims; the fact that many of them were innocent civilians casually taken only to make up the number of those to be killed; the cruel methods implemented (even by Nazi standards) to carry out the massacre; the fact that the reprisal order had come directly from Adolf Hitler , and
8036-509: The Il Globo (Australia) and the La gazzetta del Sud Africa (South Africa). Italian is widely taught in many schools around the world, but rarely as the first foreign language. In the 21st century, technology also allows for the continual spread of the Italian language, as people have new ways to learn how to speak, read, and write languages at their own pace and at any given time. For example,
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8232-991: The La Voce del Popolo ( Croatia ), the Corriere d'Italia (Germany), the L'italoeuropeo (United Kingdom), the Passaparola ( Luxembourg ), the America Oggi (United States), the Corriere Canadese and the Corriere Italiano (Canada), the Il punto d'incontro (Mexico), the L'Italia del Popolo ( Argentina ), the Fanfulla (Brazil), the Gente d'Italia ( Uruguay ), the La Voce d'Italia ( Venezuela ),
8428-515: The Osservatore Romano , deploring the violence of "the guilty parties who escaped arrest" (presumably the Partisans, however Stephen Walker in his book Hide and Seek writes that "the wording is worthy of examination" and speculates that this is a reference to "the Nazis who rounded up over 300 people and then butchered them.") and urging Roman citizens to continue to exercise restraint to prevent further sacrifices of innocent people. "In
8624-690: The Adriatic Sea and five in the Black Sea ) and one larger submarine, CM1 . Troops of the Decima Flottiglia MAS (the elite Italian frogman corps) fought primarily as a land unit of the RSI. Some of the naval personnel at the BETASOM submarine base in Bordeaux , France , remained loyal to Mussolini. The fall of the Fascist regime in Italy and the disbandment of the MVSN or " Blackshirts " saw
8820-791: The Allied landings in Sicily , on a motion by Dino Grandi , the Grand Council of Fascism voted a motion of no confidence in Prime Minister Benito Mussolini . Mussolini's authority had been undermined by a series of military defeats from the start of Italy's entry into the war during June 1940, including the bombing of Rome , the loss of the African colonies in the East African and North African campaigns ,
9016-444: The Committee of National Liberation (CLN). On 3 September 1943, the Badoglio government signed an unconditional surrender, which U.S. General Eisenhower made public on the eve of the Fifth Army 's amphibious landing at Salerno (8 September). At the same time, Badoglio issued the Badoglio Proclamation , directing Italian troops to end hostilities against the Allies but to oppose attacks "from any other quarter". The following day,
9212-401: The Gallo-Italic linguistic panorama of Northern Italy , the Italo-Dalmatian , Neapolitan and its related dialects were largely unaffected by the Franco- Occitan influences introduced to Italy mainly by bards from France during the Middle Ages, but after the Norman conquest of southern Italy , Sicily became the first Italian land to adopt Occitan lyric moods (and words) in poetry. Even in
9408-407: The Grand Council of Fascism —with the support of King Victor Emmanuel III — overthrew and arrested Mussolini . The new government began secret peace negotiations with the Allied powers but when the Armistice of Cassibile was announced on 8 September, Nazi Germany was prepared and quickly intervened. German troops seized control of the northern half of Italy , freed Mussolini , and brought him to
9604-465: The Grisons ), Corsica , and Vatican City . It has official minority status in Croatia , Slovenian Istria , and the municipalities of Santa Tereza and Encantado in Brazil . Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia . Italian is included under the languages covered by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Romania , although Italian
9800-402: The Independent State of Croatia (NDH) declared that the Treaties of Rome of 18 May 1941 with the Kingdom of Italy were null and void and annexed the portion of Dalmatia that had been ceded to Italy as part of those treaties. The NDH attempted to annex Zara , which had been a recognized territory of Italy since 1919, but Germany prevented the NDH from doing this. Because of these actions,
9996-399: The Kingdom of Italy in the Dodecanese ). Italian is widely spoken in Malta , where nearly two-thirds of the population can speak it fluently (see Maltese Italian ). Italian served as Malta's official language until 1934, when it was abolished by the British colonial administration amid strong local opposition. Italian language in Slovenia is an officially recognized minority language in
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#173277236222910192-698: The Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia ), although the masses kept speaking primarily their local vernaculars. Italian was also one of the many recognised languages in the Austro-Hungarian Empire . Italy has always had a distinctive dialect for each city because the cities, until recently, were thought of as city-states . Those dialects now have considerable variety . As Tuscan-derived Italian came to be used throughout Italy, features of local speech were naturally adopted, producing various versions of Regional Italian . The most characteristic differences, for instance, between Roman Italian and Milanese Italian are syntactic gemination of initial consonants in some contexts and
10388-446: The LXXXXVII "Liguria" Army under Graziani and were placed to guard the western flank of the Gothic Line facing France. The fourth RSI division, the 1st Italian "Italia" Infantry Division , was attached to the German 14th Army in a sector of the Apennine Mountains thought least likely to be attacked. On 26 December 1944, several sizeable RSI military units, including elements of the 4th Italian "Monterosa Division" Alpine Division and
10584-405: The National Republican State of Italy (Italian: Stato Nazionale Repubblicano d'Italia ; SNRI ), but more popularly known as the Republic of Salò (Italian: Repubblica di Salò , Italian: [reˈpubblika di saˈlɔ] ), was a German puppet state and fascist rump state with limited diplomatic recognition that was created during the latter part of World War II . It existed from
10780-423: The Placiti Cassinesi from the province of Benevento that date from 960 to 963, although the Veronese Riddle , probably from the 8th or early 9th century, contains a late form of Vulgar Latin that can be seen as a very early sample of a vernacular dialect of Italy. The Commodilla catacomb inscription is also a similar case. The Italian language has progressed through a long and slow process, which started after
10976-399: The Pope 's wishes, Badoglio also unilaterally declared Rome an open city , i.e., a demilitarized zone, a declaration the Allies would refuse to recognise and the Germans to respect. The Germans, anticipating an Italian defection, meanwhile began moving more and more troops into Italy ( Operation Achse ). Foreseeing a German invasion, a coalition of Anti-Fascist parties and Monarchists formed
11172-406: The Western Roman Empire's fall in the 5th century. The language that came to be thought of as Italian developed in central Tuscany and was first formalized in the early 14th century through the works of Tuscan writer Dante Alighieri , written in his native Florentine . Dante's epic poems, known collectively as the Commedia , to which another Tuscan poet Giovanni Boccaccio later affixed
11368-440: The de facto capital became the small town of Salò on Lake Garda, midway between Milan and Venice , where Mussolini resided along with the foreign office of the RSI. While Rome itself was still under Axis control at the time, given the city's proximity to Allied lines and the threat of civil unrest, neither the Germans nor Mussolini himself wanted him to return to Rome. On 18 September, Mussolini made his first public address to
11564-461: The de facto capital was Salò (hence the colloquial name of the state), a small town on Lake Garda , near Brescia , where Mussolini and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were headquartered. The Italian Social Republic nominally exercised sovereignty in Northern and Central Italy , but was largely dependent on German troops to maintain control. In July 1943, after the Allies had pushed Italy out of North Africa and subsequently invaded Sicily ,
11760-406: The 111 Italian lecturer sections belonging to foreign schools where Italian is taught as a language of culture. As of 2022, Australia had the highest number of students learning Italian in the world. This occurred because of support by the Italian community in Australia and the Italian Government and also because of successful educational reform efforts led by local governments in Australia. From
11956-458: The 13th century in the form of various religious texts and poetry. Although these are the first written records of Italian varieties separate from Latin, the spoken language had probably diverged long before the first written records appeared since those who were literate generally wrote in Latin even if they spoke other Romance varieties in person. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the use of Standard Italian became increasingly widespread and
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#173277236222912152-438: The 1970s. It is official both on the national level and on regional level in two cantons : Ticino and Grisons . In the latter canton, however, it is only spoken by a small minority, in the Italian Grisons . Ticino, which includes Lugano , the largest Italian-speaking city outside Italy, is the only canton where Italian is predominant. Italian is also used in administration and official documents in Vatican City . Italian
12348-436: The 3rd Italian "San Marco" Marine Division, participated in Operation Winter Storm . This was a combined German and Italian offensive against the United States Army 's 92nd Infantry Division . The battle was fought in the Apennines. While limited in scale, this was a successful offensive and the RSI units did their part. The RSI military was under the command of General Alfredo Guzzoni while Field Marshal Rodolfo Graziani ,
12544-442: The Ardeatine Caves site ( Fosse Ardeatine ) was declared a Memorial Cemetery and National Monument open daily to visitors. Every year, on the anniversary of the slaughter and in the presence of the senior officials of the Italian Republic , a solemn state commemoration is held at the monument in honour of the fallen. Each year, 335 names are called out, a simple roll call of the dead, to reinforce that 335 discrete individuals symbolise
12740-425: The Ardeatine caves in truckloads and then, in groups of five, put to death inside the caves. Because the killing squad mostly consisted of officers who had never killed before, Kappler had ordered several cases of cognac delivered to the caves to calm the officers' nerves. The officers were ordered to lead the doomed prisoners into the caves with their hands tied behind their backs and then have them kneel down so that
12936-571: The Axis forces north of the Gothic Line , Mussolini declared that "he would fight to the last Italian" and spoke of turning Milan into the " Stalingrad of Italy", where Fascism would make its last glorious fight. Despite such strong rhetoric, Mussolini considered evacuating Fascists into Switzerland, although this was opposed by Germany, which instead proposed that Mussolini and key Fascist officials be taken into exile in Germany. Further disintegration of support for his government occurred as fascist and German military officials secretly tried to negotiate
13132-439: The Banda Koch on Germany's behalf. The RSI took revenge against the 19 members who had voted against Mussolini on the Grand Council with the Verona trial ( processo di Verona ) which handed down a death sentence to all of the accused but one. Only six of the 19 were in RSI custody ( Giovanni Marinelli , Carlo Pareschi , Luciano Gottardi , Tullio Cianetti , Emilio De Bono and Mussolini's own son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano ). With
13328-413: The Fosse Ardeatine monument resulted from a national competition and was a collaboration between five architects (Nello Aprile, Cino Calcaprina, Aldo Cardelli, Mario Fiorentino & Giuseppe Perugini) and two sculptors (Francesco Coccia & Mirko Basaldella ). The massive bronze gate by Mirko Basaldella used the ubiquitous barbed wire of battlefields and concentration camps as inspiration, merging it with
13524-484: The Fourteenth Army, whose jurisdiction included Rome. General Mackensen endorsed the recommendation. In turn, the staff of the German Commander-in-Chief South ( Oberbefehlshaber Süd ), passed this on to the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW). That night, Adolf Hitler authorised the reprisal, stipulating that it be carried out within 24 hours. Commander-in-Chief South Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring , considered this an order, one he interpreted as calling for
13720-463: The German army began moving in on Rome, and that night the King and Badoglio fled the city for Pescara , whence by sea to Bari , leaving a leadership vacuum. The Royal Italian Army , although outnumbering the German soldiers three to one, was leaderless, poorly equipped, and in chaos. After a failed resistance in the working-class neighbourhood at the Porta San Paolo and the Pyramid of Cestius by remaining loyalist soldiers, carabinieri (including
13916-434: The German occupational authorities, Pankratius Pfeiffer, asking him to urge the Pope to intervene and limit reprisals on the grounds that they would inflame the Roman population and make the occupation (and negotiations for a separate peace with the Allies they all fervently wished for) even more difficult. According to Katz, the Secretariat of the Vatican believed that "the attack on Via Rasella had been undertaken to provoke
14112-414: The German orbit, did not recognize it. Unofficial relations were maintained with Argentina , Portugal , Spain , and, through commercial agent, Switzerland . Vatican City did not recognize the RSI. Around 25 April 1945, 19 months after its founding, the RSI all but collapsed . In Italy, the day is known as Liberation Day ( festa della liberazione ). On that day, a general partisan uprising, alongside
14308-536: The German-occupied area to establish a satellite regime. The Italian Social Republic was proclaimed on 23 September 1943. Although the RSI claimed sovereignty over all of Italy and its colonies, its de facto jurisdiction only extended to a vastly reduced portion of the country. The RSI received diplomatic recognition only from the Axis powers and their satellite states. Finland and Vichy France , although in
14504-471: The Germans after the armistice and so resistance to the German takeover was scattered and of little effect. King Victor Emmanuel made no effort to rally resistance to the Germans, instead fleeing with his retinue to the safety of the Allied lines. On 10 September 1943, after two days of battle between the Wehrmacht and the remnants of the Royal Italian Army , Rome fell to the Germans. The new Italian government had moved Mussolini from place to place while he
14700-468: The Germans firing in response; it is unknown. More would die over the next few days. All twelve Partisans, some of whom fired on the German column, succeeded in melting away into the crowd unscathed. The German police attaché and commander of the Security Police in Rome, SS Obersturmbannführer Herbert Kappler was on the scene soon afterwards to supervise the investigation. That evening he
14896-500: The Governatorato of Rome, reports the following details about yesterday's incident: the German victims numbered 26 soldiers; among the Italian civilians there were, unfortunately, three or four deaths; it is not easy to reconstruct what took place because everyone escaped; some apartments were sacked and the German police took complete control of the area, prohibiting any interference by other authorities; in any case, it seems that
15092-417: The Italian dialects has declined in the modern era , as Italy unified under Standard Italian and continues to do so aided by mass media from newspapers to radio to television, diglossia is still frequently encountered in Italy and triglossia is not uncommon in emigrant communities among older speakers. Both situations normally involve some degree of code-switching and code-mixing . Notes: Italian has
15288-489: The Italian language into a lingua franca used not only among clerks, nobility, and functionaries in the Italian courts but also by the bourgeoisie . Italian literature's first modern novel, I promessi sposi ( The Betrothed ) by Alessandro Manzoni , further defined the standard by "rinsing" his Milanese "in the waters of the Arno " ( Florence 's river), as he states in the preface to his 1840 edition. After unification,
15484-479: The Italian people since his rescue, in which he commended the loyalty of Hitler as an ally while condemning Victor Emmanuel for betraying Italian Fascism. He declared: "It is not the regime that has betrayed the monarchy, it is the monarchy that has betrayed the regime". He also formally repudiated his previous support of the monarchy, saying: "When a monarchy fails in its duties, it loses every reason for being…The state we want to establish will be national and social in
15680-592: The Italian population, his liberation made it possible for a new German-dependent Fascist Italian state to be created. Timeline Three days following his rescue in the Gran Sasso raid, Mussolini was taken to Germany for a meeting with Hitler in Rastenburg at his headquarters in East Prussia . While Mussolini was in poor health and wanted to retire, Hitler wanted him to return to Italy and start
15876-754: The Italian resistance movement and political enemies. On 15 August 1944, the GNR became part of the National Republican Army. The Ispettorato Militare del Lavoro ( ILM ), informally called the Organizzazione Paladino or Azione Graziani , was an organization of the Italian Social Republic during World War II composed of volunteer labourers "to collaborate with the German authorities in repairing roads and railways, and in general carry out other work of either
16072-656: The Kingdom of Italy surrendered and many Italian soldiers in the Aegean were tired of the war and had become opposed to Mussolini, Italian Fascist loyalists remained allied to Germany in the Greek campaign; German forces in Greece convinced 10,000 Italians in the Aegean to continue to support their war effort. In 1944, Mussolini urged Hitler to focus on destroying Britain rather than the Soviet Union, as Mussolini claimed that it
16268-556: The Mediterranean. The increasing political and cultural relevance of Florence during the periods of the rise of the Medici Bank , humanism , and the Renaissance made its dialect, or rather a refined version of it, a standard in the arts. The Renaissance era, known as il Rinascimento in Italian, was seen as a time of rebirth, which is the literal meaning of both renaissance (from French) and rinascimento (Italian). During this time, long-existing beliefs stemming from
16464-526: The Nazis rounded up and deported the Jews of Rome for extermination at Auschwitz and also made numerous mass roundups of non-Jewish male civilians for forced labour . Meanwhile, General Mark Clark 's Fifth Army in Salerno suffered severe setbacks, and General Eisenhower and other Allied leaders began concentrating their attention on the imminent invasion of France, temporarily neglecting Italy. In December,
16660-588: The Partisans were the equivalent of terrorists and were, moreover, responsible for avoidable suffering, thus offering some support for the official judgment of the Vatican at the time. Historian Patrick Gallo, however, in For Love and Country: The Italian Resistance (2003), posited that the Rome-based Resistance not only undermined German morale but also achieved important strategic objectives and
16856-603: The Pontiff intervened personally, as he had on so many earlier occasions, through his nephew Prince Carlo Pacelli or through the General Superior of the Salvatorian Fathers, Father Pancrazio Pfeiffer. Nor should one be surprised that such a supposed intervention had little chance of success; the order had come from Berlin and, moreover, what argument could a papal emissary use in favour of restraint? For
17052-621: The RSI held the NDH in contempt and refused to have diplomatic relations with the NDH or to recognize its territorial claims. After the Italian capitulation, the Italian Islands of the Aegean were occupied by the Germans (see Dodecanese campaign ). During the German occupation, the islands remained under the nominal sovereignty of the RSI but were de facto subject to the German military command. The Italian concession of Tientsin in China
17248-571: The RSI. The RSI's National Republican Navy ( Marina Nazionale Repubblicana or MNR) only reached a twentieth the size of the Italian Co-belligerent Navy that fought on the Allied side after the September 1943 armistice. The National Republican Navy consisted of nine motor torpedo boats (two large and seven small) and dozens of MTSM small motor torpedo boats and MTM explosive motorboats . The National Republican Navy also operated 15 CB -class midget submarines (ten in
17444-601: The Republic of China and the Empire of Manchuria . Finland and Vichy France , despite being in the Axis orbit, did not recognise the RSI. Even otherwise sympathetic States such as Spain or Portugal refused to establish formal diplomatic relations with the RSI. The Holy See did not recognise the RSI. During the existence of the Italian Social Republic, Mussolini, whose former government had banned trade unions and strikes, began to make increasingly populist appeals to
17640-591: The Roman populace along with a dangerous relaxation of caution on the part of Resistance members, that enabled the Nazis to arrest and torture many of its most important leaders. In the meantime, General Clark 's attempt to link up the Fifth Army with the Anzio troops was unsuccessful, as the Anzio forces were held back by a line of German fortifications hastily constructed using forced civilian labour. On 23 March 1944,
17836-472: The United States division's advance. However, the situation continued to deteriorate for the Axis forces on Gothic Line. By mid-April 1945, the final Allied offensive in Italy had led German defences to collapse. At the end of that month, the last remaining troops of RSI were bottled up along with two Wehrmacht divisions at Collecchio by 1st Brazilian Division being forced to surrender after some days of fighting. On 29 April, Graziani surrendered and
18032-515: The Via Rasella area on suspicion of involvement. Kappler's superior, SS Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der Polizei Wilhelm Harster , suggested making up the numbers from the 57 Jews also in Nazi custody. By noon on 24 March, Kappler had a list of 271 victims, each with his crime listed against his name, except for the Jews, who were simply listed as "Jew". By this time the death toll from the Via Rasella bombing had risen to 32. (One more would die while
18228-399: The Via Rasella attack as a legitimate act of war. Instead, they viewed it as a tragic act of terrorism by Communists, as did the Vatican, and as some of its defenders still do. According to Joseph Lichten , author of a monograph defending Pius XII written after the publication of Rolf Hochhuth 's play, The Deputy : In the absence of documentation, therefore, one is left to surmise that
18424-451: The Via Rasella bomb, were recipients of medals conferred by the post-war Italian government. Both Priebke and Kappler sought Vatican assistance after the war. Priebke escaped from a British prison camp in 1946 and fled, first to the Tyrol and then back to Rome, whence, using false papers supplied by the Vatican "ratline" , he emigrated to Argentina . He was unmasked on camera in 1994 during
18620-504: The West Germans having refused Italian requests to extradite him. The event was recreated in the 1962 film Dieci italiani per un tedesco (Via Rasella) ( Ten Italians for One German (Rasella Street) ) directed by Filippo Walter Ratti and starring Gino Cervi . Italian language Italian ( italiano , pronounced [itaˈljaːno] , or lingua italiana , pronounced [ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna] )
18816-429: The armed Partisan Resistance began to strike German forces in Rome. The Germans responded with raids carried out by mixed Gestapo and Italian Fascist police militias on Vatican institutions, known to be harbouring prominent CNL members and other Anti-Fascists. In January 1944, news of the surprise Allied landing behind enemy lines at Anzio ( Operation Shingle ), only 30 miles from Rome, created temporary euphoria among
19012-501: The attack on the SS troops. Addressed to the Papal Secretariat , it showed that the Vatican had indeed heard that the Germans were planning to punish Italian citizens tenfold for the SS deaths. However, the information was received only five hours before the massacre took place; the informant's statement was short and vague as to source; and it provided no information in regards to time, place, or logistics: L'ing. Ferraro, of
19208-767: The beginning of the German occupation of Italy in September 1943 until the surrender of Axis troops in Italy in May 1945 . The German occupation triggered widespread national resistance against it and the Italian Social Republic, leading to the Italian Civil War . The Italian Social Republic was the second and last incarnation of the Italian Fascist state, led by the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his reformed anti-monarchist Republican Fascist Party . The newly founded state declared Rome its capital but
19404-461: The boy Piero Zuccheretti, who had been killed in Via Rasella. Historian Robert Wolfe finds "persuasive" Katz's characterisation of the Pope's decision to condemn the Partisans for the Via Rasella attack, rather than the Nazis for the reprisals, as evidence of "a moral failure" resulting from one of the "great misreadings of history". In the 1990s, there was a revisionist campaign by Il Giornale ,
19600-578: The bulk of the 1st Italian volunteers Storm Brigade were sent to the Anzio beachhead , where they fought alongside their German allies, receiving favourable reports and taking heavy losses. In recognition of their performance, Heinrich Himmler declared the unit to be fully integrated into the Waffen SS . On 16 October 1943, the Rastenburg Protocol was signed with Nazi Germany and the RSI
19796-444: The case of Northern Italian languages, however, scholars are careful not to overstate the effects of outsiders on the natural indigenous developments of the languages. The economic might and relatively advanced development of Tuscany at the time ( Late Middle Ages ) gave its language weight, although Venetian remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life, and Ligurian (or Genoese) remained in use in maritime trade alongside
19992-417: The case was dismissed without a ruling on the matter at hand, "on the grounds of an amnesty dating back to 1970." Katz continued to publish various accusations against Pius XII until his death. In 1980, a relevant document ("the Governatorato document") was found in the Vatican archives and released by the Vatican. It was dated 24 March 1944, 10:15 a.m., and contained intelligence gathered only hours after
20188-463: The caves reads: WAYFARERS THIRSTY FOR LIBERTY – WE WERE ROUNDED UP AT RANDOM – IN THE STREET AND IN JAIL – AS A REPRISAL CAST IN EN MASSE – SLAUGHTERED AND WALLED WITHIN THESE PITS – ITALIANS, DO NOT CURSE – MOTHERS, BRIDES, DO NOT WEEP – CHILDREN, CARRY WITH PRIDE – THE MEMORY – OF THE HOLOCAUST OF YOUR FATHERS – IF OUR SLAUGHTER – WILL HAVE HAD A PURPOSE BEYOND REVENGE – IT IS TO ENSHRINE THE RIGHT OF HUMAN EXISTENCE – AGAINST THE CRIME OF MURDER Inside
20384-653: The colonial period. In the early 19th century, Eritrea was the country with the highest number of Italians abroad, and the Italian Eritreans grew from 4,000 during World War I to nearly 100,000 at the beginning of World War II. In Asmara there are two Italian schools, the Italian School of Asmara (Italian primary school with a Montessori department) and the Liceo Sperimentale "G. Marconi" (Italian international senior high school). Italian
20580-479: The commander of the German occupying forces in Italy. The RSI had no constitution or organized economy, and its financing was dependent entirely on funding from Berlin. German forces themselves had little respect for Mussolini's failed fascism, and considered the regime merely as a tool for maintaining order, such as repressing the Italian partisans . This work was also carried out by the infamous Pietro Koch and
20776-573: The country (some 0.42% of the total population). Their numbers dropped dramatically after World War II following the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus , which caused the emigration of between 230,000 and 350,000 Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians. Italian was the official language of the Republic of Ragusa from 1492 to 1807. It formerly had official status in Albania due to the annexation of
20972-463: The country to the Kingdom of Italy (1939–1943). Albania has a large population of non-native speakers, with over half of the population having some knowledge of the Italian language. The Albanian government has pushed to make Italian a compulsory second language in schools. The Italian language is well-known and studied in Albania, due to its historical ties and geographical proximity to Italy and to
21168-446: The country. A few hundred Italian settlers returned to Libya in the 2000s. Italian was the official language of Eritrea during Italian colonisation . Italian is today used in commerce, and it is still spoken especially among elders; besides that, Italian words are incorporated as loan words in the main language spoken in the country (Tigrinya). The capital city of Eritrea, Asmara , still has several Italian schools, established during
21364-579: The country. The official census, carried out in 2002, reported 2,258 ethnic Italians ( Istrian Italians ) in Slovenia (0.11% of the total population). Italian language in Croatia is an official minority language in the country, with many schools and public announcements published in both languages. The 2001 census in Croatia reported 19,636 ethnic Italians (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians ) in
21560-439: The creation of the Republican Fascist Party and, three days later, the resumption of the war alongside Germany and Japan. The Duce immediately announced the formation of a new republican cabinet, although they actually came from a list chosen and appointed by Hitler himself. The Italian Social Republic was proclaimed on 23 September, with Mussolini as both chief of state and prime minister. The RSI claimed Rome as its capital, but
21756-655: The defeat of the Italian Army in Russia and the Allied invasion of Sicily . The next day, King Victor Emmanuel III dismissed Mussolini from office, ordered him arrested, and appointed Marshal Pietro Badoglio as new prime minister. By this time, the monarchy, a number of Fascist government members, and the general Italian population had grown tired of the futile war effort which had driven Italy into subordination to and subjugation by Nazi Germany . The failed war effort left Mussolini humiliated at home and abroad as
21952-464: The design and fashion industries, in some sports such as football and especially in culinary terms. In Italy, almost all the other languages spoken as the vernacular —other than standard Italian and some languages spoken among immigrant communities—are often called " Italian dialects ", a label that can be very misleading if it is understood to mean "dialects of Italian". The Romance dialects of Italy are local evolutions of spoken Latin that pre-date
22148-534: The diffusion of Italian television in the country. Due to heavy Italian influence during the Italian colonial period , Italian is still understood by some in former colonies such as Libya. Although it was the primary language in Libya since colonial rule , Italian greatly declined under the rule of Muammar Gaddafi , who expelled the Italian Libyan population and made Arabic the sole official language of
22344-478: The educated gentlemen was to make the Grand Tour , visiting Italy to see its great historical monuments and works of art. It was expected that the visitor would learn at least some Italian, understood as language based on Florentine. In England, while the classical languages Latin and Greek were the first to be learned, Italian became the second most common modern language after French, a position it held until
22540-460: The efforts of Allied forces during their final offensive in Italy , managed to oust the Germans and the remaining RSI forces from Italy almost entirely. Mussolini was captured and killed by Italian partisans on 28 April as he and an entourage attempted to flee. The RSI Minister of Defense, Rodolfo Graziani , surrendered what was left of the Italian Social Republic on 1 May, one day after the German forces in Italy capitulated. On 24 July 1943, after
22736-462: The establishment of Italian, and as such are sister languages to the Tuscan that was the historical source of Italian. They can be quite different from Italian and from each other, with some belonging to different linguistic branches of Romance. The only exceptions to this are twelve groups considered " historical language minorities ", which are officially recognized as distinct minority languages by
22932-642: The establishment of the National Republican Guard ( Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana or GNR) and the Republican Police Corps ( Corpo di Polizia Repubblicana ) and the emergence of the Black Brigades ( brigate nere ). The GNR consisted of former OVRA , carabinieri, soldiers, Italian Africa Police , and others still loyal to the Fascist cause, while the Republican Police Corps was the successor agency of
23128-468: The exception of Tullio Cianetti, who received a life sentence , they were all executed on 11 January 1944 in the fort of San Procolo in Verona . The changing political and military situation re-opened questions regarding the status of Italian territories, particularly those with German-speaking majorities that were formerly under Austrian rule. Previously, Hitler had vigorously suppressed any campaigning for
23324-633: The execution of Italians who had been previously sentenced to death. He was assured by Kappler that sufficient prisoners were available. However, Kappler had only four prisoners sentenced to death in his Hausgefängnis (private prison) at SS headquarters in the German Embassy on 145 Via Tasso (now the Museum of the Liberation of Rome ); plus 17 serving long sentences; 167 deemed "worthy of death"; and two to four civilians who had been rounded up in
23520-491: The face of such deeds, every honest heart is left profoundly grieved in the name of humanity and Christian sentiment. Thirty-two victims on the one hand, and on the other, three-hundred-and-twenty persons sacrificed for the guilty parties who escaped arrest." Subsequently, the Nazi Occupation forces stepped up their hunt among Roman civilians for suspected Resistance supporters, whom it rounded up and tortured. In 1952,
23716-487: The fact that it was linguistically an intermediate between the northern and the southern Italian dialects. Thus the dialect of Florence became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy. Italian was progressively made an official language of most of the Italian states predating unification, slowly replacing Latin, even when ruled by foreign powers (such as Spain in the Kingdom of Naples , or Austria in
23912-455: The former governor-general of Italian Libya , was the RSI's Minister of Defense and commander-in-chief of the combined German-Italian Army Group Liguria . Mussolini, as Duce and head of state of RSI assumed supreme command over all military forces of the RSI. In February 1945, the 92nd Infantry Division again came up against RSI units. This time it was Bersaglieri of the 1st Italian "Italia" Infantry Division. The Italians successfully halted
24108-411: The former quarries themselves, there are two more plaques. One in the tunnel: WE WERE SLAUGHTERED IN THIS PLACE BECAUSE – WE FOUGHT AGAINST INTERNAL TYRANNY – FOR FREEDOM AND AGAINST THE FOREIGNER – FOR THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE HOMELAND – WE DREAMT A FREE, JUST – AND DEMOCRATIC ITALY. MAY OUR SACRIFICE AND OUR BLOOD – SOW THE SEED AND ACT AS WARNING FOR – GENERATIONS TO COME. And another in the 'cave' at
24304-476: The free website and application Duolingo has 4.94 million English speakers learning the Italian language. According to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs , every year there are more than 200,000 foreign students who study the Italian language; they are distributed among the 90 Institutes of Italian Culture that are located around the world, in the 179 Italian schools located abroad, or in
24500-591: The funeral in any Catholic church in Rome. But the Society of St Pius X , a Catholic splinter group often accused of having far-right and anti-Semitic leanings, offered to hold the ceremony in the city of Albano Laziale . During the funeral service, violent clashes broke out between fascist sympathisers and anti-fascist protesters. Don Florian Abrahamowicz , a priest expelled from the Society of St Pius X for his extreme right-wing views, told Italy's Radio 24 : "Priebke
24696-488: The hiding of the bodies, which were buried summarily instead of being returned to their families – the slaughter became a symbol of the various massacres carried out against civilians in Italy, from 8 September 1943 until the German surrender on 8 May 1945. In December 2007, Giorgio Bettio , a city councillor of Treviso, Italy and member of the Northern League party, suggested that "With immigrants, we should use
24892-403: The highest sense of the word; that is, it will be Fascist, thus returning to our origins". From the start, the Italian Social Republic was little more than a puppet state dependent entirely upon Germany and a rump state for the Fascists who are still loyal to Mussolini. Mussolini himself knew this; even as he stated in public that he was in full control of the RSI, he was well aware that he
25088-407: The image that Fascism was a progressive movement. The economic policy of the RSI was given the name " Socialization ", and Mussolini had even considered the idea of calling his new republic the "Italian 'Socialist' Republic". In practice, little resulted from the declared socialization of the economy. Unions did not exert real control of their management and took no part in state planning (as they had
25284-638: The impression of official annexation of South Tyrol. However, in practice the territory of South Tyrol within the boundaries defined by Germany as Operationszone Alpenvorland that included Trento , Bolzano and Belluno were de facto incorporated into Germany's Reichsgau Tirol-Vorarlberg and administered by its Gauleiter Franz Hofer . The region identified by Germany as Operationszone Adriatisches Küstenland that included Udine , Gorizia , Trieste , Pola and Fiume were de facto incorporated into Reichsgau Kärnten and administered by its Gauleiter Friedrich Rainer . On 10 September 1943,
25480-489: The island of Corsica (but not in the neighbouring Sardinia , which on the contrary underwent Italianization well into the late 18th century, under Savoyard sway: the island's linguistic composition, roofed by the prestige of Spanish among the Sardinians , would therein make for a rather slow process of assimilation to the Italian cultural sphere ). The rediscovery of Dante's De vulgari eloquentia , as well as
25676-577: The language has a 7-vowel sound system ('e' and 'o' have mid-low and mid-high sounds). Italian has contrast between short and long consonants and gemination (doubling) of consonants. During the Middle Ages , the established written language in Europe was Latin, although the great majority of people were illiterate, and only few were well versed in the language. In the Italian Peninsula , as in most of Europe, most would instead speak
25872-640: The language to that continent. According to some sources, Italian is the second most spoken language in Argentina after the official language of Spanish, although its number of speakers, mainly of the older generation, is decreasing. Italian bilingual speakers can be found scattered across the Southeast of Brazil as well as in the South. In Venezuela , Italian is the most spoken language after Spanish and Portuguese, with around 200,000 speakers. In Uruguay , people who speak Italian as their home language are 1.1% of
26068-498: The late 18th century when it tended to be replaced by German. John Milton , for instance, wrote some of his early poetry in Italian. Within the Catholic Church , Italian is known by a large part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and is used in substitution for Latin in some official documents. Italian loanwords continue to be used in most languages in matters of art and music (especially classical music including opera), in
26264-534: The late 19th to the mid-20th century, millions of Italians settled in Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Brazil and Venezuela, as well as in Canada and the United States, where they formed a physical and cultural presence. In some cases, colonies were established where variants of regional languages of Italy were used, and some continue to use this regional language. Examples are Rio Grande do Sul , Brazil, where Talian
26460-567: The law. On the other hand, Corsican (a language spoken on the French island of Corsica ) is closely related to medieval Tuscan , from which Standard Italian derives and evolved. The differences in the evolution of Latin in the different regions of Italy can be attributed to the natural changes that all languages in regular use are subject to, and to some extent to the presence of three other types of languages: substrata, superstrata, and adstrata . The most prevalent were substrata (the language of
26656-586: The massive Allied air offensive over Northern Italy. During 1944 and 1945, the ANR shot down 262 Allied aircraft for the loss in action of 158 of its own. Little of the Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy) joined the RSI. This was because the bulk of the Regia Marina was ordered to steam to Malta at the time of the September 1943 armistice, where it was out of the reach of the Germans and
26852-719: The most celebrated, was the aristocratic Colonel Giuseppe Montezemolo (age 44), who, after the flight of the King and Badoglio, had elected to stay and go underground in Rome, disguised in mufti as a professor or Ingegnere (engineer), to organize and lead the FMRC, representing the Badoglio Government, with which he had been in continual radio contact up until his arrest on 25 January 1944. Colonel Giuseppe Montezemolo's incredible courage under torture which included having his nails and teeth pulled out, became legendary. Another
27048-411: The moving curlicues of a Tree of Life. The curved lines morph into a tangle of limbs reaching out across each other at those awkwardly bent angles characteristic of corpses. Also at the entrance is a colossal concrete statue by Francesco Coccia of three male figures standing together as one. Hands tied behind their backs, the three ages of man are bound together by ideals and fate—the youngest Fosse victim
27244-412: The nation was unified in 1861. Italian is a Romance language , a descendant of Vulgar Latin (colloquial spoken Latin). Standard Italian is based on Tuscan , especially its Florentine dialect , and is, therefore, an Italo-Dalmatian language , a classification that includes most other central and southern Italian languages and the extinct Dalmatian . According to Ethnologue , lexical similarity
27440-529: The negotiations, acted immediately by ordering German troops to seize control of Northern and Central Italy. The Germans quickly occupied Italy, disarmed the Italian troops and took over all of the Italian Army's materials and equipment , meeting only limited resistance. The Germans also dissolved the Italian occupation zone in southeastern France and forced Italian troops stationed there to leave. The Italian armed forces were not given clear orders to resist
27636-549: The new Italian Supreme Court declared the Via Rasella attack to have been a legitimate act of war after an appeal by Kappler's lawyers of his conviction of guilt in the Ardeatine Massacre. This decision was reaffirmed in 1999, when the Italian Supreme Court declared the Partisans immune from prosecution after a Roman prosecutor had unsuccessfully attempted to bring a suit against them for the death of
27832-408: The number of printing presses in Italy grew rapidly and by the year 1500 reached a total of 56, the biggest number of printing presses in all of Europe. This enabled the production of more pieces of literature at a lower cost and Italian, as the dominant language, spread. Italian became the language used in the courts of every state in the Italian Peninsula , as well as the prestige variety used on
28028-419: The occupiers into an excessively repressive act and increase the people's hatred of the Germans. "This was what the Pope's liaison Padre Pancrazio had been told in the Vatican the night before [the reprisal]. It was also the opinion held by Dollman and Möllhausen. None of them seemed to believe that the Partisans meant to hurt the Germans as never before to extend the popularity of the Resistance" nor did they view
28224-630: The openness of vowels, the length of the consonants, and influence of the local language (for example, in informal situations andà , annà and nare replace the standard Italian andare in the area of Tuscany, Rome and Venice respectively for the infinitive "to go"). There is no definitive date when the various Italian variants of Latin—including varieties that contributed to modern Standard Italian—began to be distinct enough from Latin to be considered separate languages. One criterion for determining that two language variants are to be considered separate languages rather than variants of
28420-584: The original inhabitants), as the Italian dialects were most probably simply Latin as spoken by native cultural groups. Superstrata and adstrata were both less important. Foreign conquerors of Italy that dominated different regions at different times left behind little to no influence on the dialects. Foreign cultures with which Italy engaged in peaceful relations with, such as trade, had no significant influence either. Throughout Italy, regional varieties of Standard Italian, called Regional Italian , are spoken. Regional differences can be recognized by various factors:
28616-458: The other hand, almost everyone still speaks the Corsican idiom , which, due to its linguistic proximity to the Italian standard language, appears both linguistically as an Italian dialect and therefore as a carrier of Italian culture, despite the French government's decades-long efforts to cut Corsica off from the Italian motherland. Italian was the official language in Monaco until 1860, when it
28812-404: The past several months, the Pope had argued that German restraint would ease the tension in Rome. Suddenly, the entire papal strategy had been undermined by the spectacular and tragic liquidation of 33 German soldiers. In the aftermath of the massacre, Pope Pius XII debated whether to protest against the massacre but decided not to because, as one of his defenders reported, "all the convents, all
29008-437: The place of execution from becoming known. The bodies of the victims were placed in piles, typically about a metre in height, and then buried under tons of rock debris when German military engineers set explosives to seal the caves and hide the atrocity. They remained summarily buried and abandoned for over a year inside the caves. Families of the victims were notified with excruciating slowness by an individual letter, if at all,
29204-406: The population of Italy could speak Standard Italian. He reports that in 1951 that percentage had risen to 87%. The ability to speak Italian did not necessarily mean it was in everyday use, and most people (63.5%) still usually spoke their native dialects. In addition, other factors such as mass emigration, industrialization, and urbanization, and internal migrations after World War II , contributed to
29400-411: The power to do on paper after the socialization). The Italian industrial sector was excluded from the new reforms by the Germans and Italian industrialists were opposed to the changes in any case. The Italian labour force (large parts of which had remained leftist despite fascist rule) regarded socialization as a sham and responded with a massive strike on 1 March 1944. In Greece, while the government of
29596-611: The predictably imminent defection of Italy. While Badoglio continued to swear loyalty to Germany and the Axis powers, Italian government emissaries prepared to sign an armistice at Cassibile in Allied-occupied Sicily , which was finalized on 3 September. On 8 September, Badoglio announced Italy's armistice with the Allies (although termed an "armistice", its terms made it akin to an unconditional surrender ). German Führer Adolf Hitler and his staff, long aware of
29792-469: The proliferation of Standard Italian. The Italians who emigrated during the Italian diaspora beginning in 1861 were often of the uneducated lower class, and thus the emigration had the effect of increasing the percentage of literates, who often knew and understood the importance of Standard Italian, back home in Italy. A large percentage of those who had emigrated also eventually returned to Italy, often more educated than when they had left. Although use of
29988-528: The pronunciation of stressed "e", and of "s" between vowels in many words: e.g. va bene "all right" is pronounced [vabˈbɛːne] by a Roman (and by any standard Italian speaker), [vaˈbeːne] by a Milanese (and by any speaker whose native dialect lies to the north of the La Spezia–Rimini Line ); a casa "at home" is [akˈkaːsa] for Roman, [akˈkaːsa] or [akˈkaːza] for standard, [aˈkaːza] for Milanese and generally northern. In contrast to
30184-553: The public security complex formed by the Directorate of Public Security and the Public Security Agents Corps. The Black Brigade was formed by the new fascist party members both young and old. Both units fought alongside Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) counterparts against the Italian resistance movement in an extensive anti- partisan war. The Black Brigades committed many atrocities in their fight against
30380-415: The publication of Agnolo Monosini 's Latin tome Floris italicae linguae libri novem in 1604 followed by the first Italian dictionary in 1612. An important event that helped the diffusion of Italian was the conquest and occupation of Italy by Napoleon in the early 19th century (who was himself of Italian-Corsican descent). This conquest propelled the unification of Italy some decades after and pushed
30576-403: The publication of Robert Katz 's first book, Death in Rome (1967), in which he speculated that Pope Pius XII had advance knowledge of the Nazi orders and did little to forestall it. Katz wrote later that he had put together "circumstantial evidence... from six separate sources, though no single element was conclusive." This charge was vigorously disputed by the Pope's defenders. In 1974, Katz
30772-420: The referendum that allowed France to annex Savoy and Nice, and a group of his followers (among the Italian Savoyards ) took refuge in Italy in the following years. Corsica passed from the Republic of Genoa to France in 1769 after the Treaty of Versailles . Italian was the official language of Corsica until 1859. Giuseppe Garibaldi called for the inclusion of the " Corsican Italians " within Italy when Rome
30968-416: The religious houses of Rome were full of refugees, Communists, Jews, democrats and anti-Fascists, ex-generals, etc. Pius XII had even suspended the rules for the cloister. If Pius XII had made a public protest, there would have been searches in all these houses and catastrophe would have ensued". Instead, a special editorial entitled "The Deeds in Via Rasella" appeared in the "semi-official" Vatican newspaper,
31164-417: The reprisal was underway; the death toll eventually reaching 33.) To make up the numbers, Questore Pietro Caruso , chief of the Fascist police in Rome, offered some Italians from his Regina Coeli prison , among them Maurizio Giglio , who had been one of his own lieutenants, before being unmasked as a double agent working for the American OSS in charge of radio communications with the Fifth Army . Because of
31360-473: The return of lands such as South Tyrol in order to maintain good relations with his Italian ally. In the aftermath of Italy's abandonment of the Axis on 8 September 1943, Germany seized and de facto incorporated some Italian territories. However, Hitler refused to officially annex South Tyrol in spite of urging by local German officials and instead supported having the RSI hold official sovereignty over these territories and forbade all measures that would give
31556-421: The same system the SS used, punish 10 of them for every slight against one of our citizens", in reference to Italy's current debate over immigration policies. This comment was met with public condemnation, and Bettio later said, "I certainly made a mistake in citing the SS". He claimed the incident had been "sensationalized" by the media. The Vatican 's role in the massacre came under particular scrutiny following
31752-412: The soldiers could fire a bullet directly into the cerebellum , ensuring that no more than one bullet would be needed per prisoner. Many were forced to kneel down over the bodies of those who had been killed before them because the cave had become filled with dead bodies. During the killings, the existence of the five extra prisoners was discovered, and it was decided to kill them anyway, in order to prevent
31948-401: The teachings of the Roman Catholic Church began to be understood from new perspectives as humanists —individuals who placed emphasis on the human body and its full potential—began to shift focus from the church to human beings themselves. The continual advancements in technology play a crucial role in the diffusion of languages. After the invention of the printing press in the 15th century,
32144-417: The terror of the Roman Ghetto. The massacre was perpetrated without prior public notice in a little-frequented rural suburb of the city, inside the tunnels of the disused quarries of pozzolana , near the Via Ardeatina . By mistake, a total of 335 Italian prisoners were taken, five in excess of the 330 called for. On 24 March, led by SS officers Erich Priebke and Karl Hass , they were transported to
32340-420: The time limit that Hitler had imposed, Mälzer and Kappler agreed that the victims would have to be shot in the back of the head at close range rather than by conventional firing squad . The men of the regiment Bozen, the unit which was hit in the attack, were offered the chance to avenge their comrades, but they refused to do it in that way. 26 of the victims shot in the caves were Jews betrayed by Celeste Di Porto
32536-410: The title Divina , were read throughout the peninsula and his written dialect became the "canonical standard" that all educated Italians could understand. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language. In addition to the widespread exposure gained through literature, the Florentine dialect also gained prestige due to the political and cultural significance of Florence at the time and
32732-463: The titular head of the Italian state and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces under Mussolini, appointed Marshal Pietro Badoglio to head a new military government. He then ordered his gendarmerie , the Carabinieri , to arrest and imprison Mussolini. On 13 August 1943, Rome was bombed again, and the Badoglio government began secret surrender negotiations with the Allies in Sicily , although still outwardly allied to Nazi Germany. In accordance with
32928-421: The total population of the country. In Australia, Italian is the second most spoken foreign language after Chinese, with 1.4% of the population speaking it as their home language. The main Italian-language newspapers published outside Italy are the L'Osservatore Romano ( Vatican City ), the L'Informazione di San Marino ( San Marino ), the Corriere del Ticino and the laRegione Ticino ( Switzerland ),
33124-489: The very end where the massacre actually took place: HERE WE WERE SLAUGHTERED – VICTIMS OF A HORRENDOUS SACRIFICE – MAY OUR SACRIFICE GIVE RISE TO A BETTER HOMELAND – AND TO LASTING PEACE AMONG THE PEOPLES. FROM THE DEPTHS, I HAVE CRIED OUT TO YOU, O LORD. The last phrase, taken from Penitential Psalm 130, was most likely chosen for its parallel significance in Christianity and Judaism, simultaneously speaking for 260 Christians and 75 Jews killed and buried side by side. The text
33320-408: The war. With the removal of the monarchy, Mussolini claimed the full ideology of Fascism could be pursued; and to gain popular support he reversed over twenty years of Fascist policy of backing private property and relative economic independence by ordering the nationalization of all companies with over 100 employees. Mussolini even reached out to ex-communist Nicola Bombacci to help him in spreading
33516-452: The war. The RSI became so desperate for soldiers that it granted convicts freedom if they would join the army and imposed a sentence of death on anyone who opposed being conscripted. Autonomous military forces in the RSI also fought against the Allies including the notorious Decima Flottiglia MAS of Prince Junio Valerio Borghese . Borghese held no allegiance to Mussolini and even suggested that he would take him prisoner if he could. During
33712-457: The winter of 1944–1945, armed Italians were on both sides of the Gothic Line . On the Allied side were four Italian groups of volunteers from the old Italian army. These Italian volunteers were equipped and trained by the British. On the Axis side were four RSI divisions. Three of the RSI divisions, the 2nd Grenadier Division "Littorio" , the 3rd Italian "San Marco" Marine Division and the 4th Italian Monterosa Alpini Division were allocated to
33908-438: The working class. He claimed to regret many of the decisions made earlier in supporting the interests of big business and promised a new beginning if the Italian people would be willing to grant him a second chance. Mussolini claimed that he had never totally abandoned his left-wing influences, insisting that he had attempted to nationalize property in 1939–1940 but had been forced to delay such action for tactical reasons related to
34104-430: The working languages of the Council of Europe . It is the third-most-widely spoken native language in the European Union (13% of the EU population) and it is spoken as a second language by 13.4 million EU citizens (3%). Including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland, Albania and the United Kingdom ) and on other continents, the total number of speakers is approximately 85 million. Italian
34300-405: Was Il Lavoro Fascista , formerly the publication of Fascist trade unions; Mussolini was largely indifferent toward the new paper and generally wrote on the Corriere della Sera instead. The Duce explicitly refused to revive his former newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia , not willing to let it become a mouthpiece of the German occupation. On 14 February 1945, Mussolini authorized the formation of
34496-510: Was 15 years old. Political prisoners included members of the GAP, the PA, and the Monarchist Clandestine Military Front of the Resistance (FMRC), which included many policemen. Members of the Bandiera Rossa ("Red Flag") a dissident Communist Resistance group, constituted the largest group. One political prisoner, Padre Pietro Pappagallo , was one of the models for the character of Padre Pietro in Roberto Rossellini 's pioneering neo-realist film Rome, Open City , filmed in 1944. Another, perhaps
34692-411: Was 15, the oldest 70. Each face has a distinct expression portraying the range of emotions the men likely felt marching to their deaths in the quarry: despair, eyes half-closed in resignation, a resolute distant stare. Each face on the statue directs its gaze towards an important element of the memorial complex: the burial slab, the old quarries, and the forecourt. The memorial plaque outside the entry to
34888-513: Was Britain that had turned the conflict into a world war and that the British Empire must be destroyed in order for peace to come in Europe. Mussolini wanted to conduct a small offensive along the Gothic Line against the Allies with his new RSI Divisions; in December 1944, the Alpine Division "Monte Rosa" with some German battalions fought the Battle of Garfagnana with some success. As the situation became desperate, with Allied forces in control of most of Italy and from February 1945 resumed pushing
35084-517: Was General Simone Simoni , a war hero aged 64, who had endured torture with a blowtorch. The old soldier had replied to his captors, "My only regret is that I was not younger because there was so much more I could have done [for my country]". Neither man ever talked or in any way betrayed their network. Besides Simoni, four more generals were among the executed, all members of the Clandestine Military Front : Vito Artale , Dardano Fenulli , Roberto Lordi , and Sabato Martelli Castaldi . The design of
35280-422: Was a friend of mine, a Christian, a faithful soldier." Kappler, a Protestant until his late conversion in life, unsuccessfully sought asylum within the Vatican. Tried by the British and sentenced to life imprisonment in Gaeta , in 1977 he successfully escaped from a Roman military hospital where he had been undergoing treatment for cancer. He died unmolested the following year at his home in Soltau , West Germany,
35476-483: Was allowed to raise division-sized military formations. This protocol allowed Marshal Rodolfo Graziani to raise four RSI divisions totalling 52,000 men. In July 1944, the first of these divisions completed training and was sent to the front. Recruiting military forces was difficult for the RSI as most of the Italian Army had been interned by German forces in 1943, many military-aged Italians had been conscripted into forced labour in Germany and few wanted to participate in
35672-439: Was also introduced to Somalia through colonialism and was the sole official language of administration and education during the colonial period but fell out of use after government, educational and economic infrastructure were destroyed in the Somali Civil War . Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia. Although over 17 million Americans are of Italian descent , only
35868-419: Was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy , but King Victor Emmanuel II did not agree to it. Italian is generally understood in Corsica by the population resident therein who speak Corsican , which is an Italo-Romance idiom similar to Tuscan. Francization occurred in Nice case, and caused a near-disappearance of the Italian language as many of the Italian speakers in these areas migrated to Italy. In Corsica, on
36064-403: Was carried out by 12 partisans of the Communist-dominated resistance organisation Gruppo d'Azione Patriottica ("Patriotic Action Group") or GAP. An improvised explosive device was prepared consisting of 12 kilogrammes of TNT packed in a steel case. This was inserted into a bag containing an additional six kilograms of TNT and TNT-filled iron tubing. Although reported as having been thrown from
36260-418: Was ceded by the RSI to the Japanese puppet Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China . The RSI was recognized as the legitimate government of Italy by Germany , Imperial Japan , Bulgaria , Romania , Hungary and Thailand ; it was also recognised by puppet and client States of the Axis, such as the Independent State of Croatia , the Slovak Republic , the Reorganised National Government of
36456-429: Was hence not a useless provocation, as contended by critics, but an act of legitimate military significance in furthering the Allied victory. Reviewing Katz's book, The Battle for Rome , István Deák , on the other hand, cautions that although "armed resistance during World War II was romanticised because the Nazis were such an appalling enemy and because in that war the guerrillas' targets were still mainly soldiers", it
36652-426: Was in captivity in an attempt to foil any attempts at rescue. Despite this, the Germans eventually pinpointed Mussolini at the Hotel Campo Imperatore at Gran Sasso . On 12 September, Mussolini was freed by the Germans in Operation Eiche (directed by SS - Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny ) in the mountains of Abruzzo . After being freed, Mussolini was flown to Bavaria . Gathering what support he still had among
36848-412: Was little more than the Gauleiter of Lombardy . The SS kept Mussolini under what amounted to house arrest; it monitored his communications and controlled his travel. Mussolini later said that he would have preferred being sent to a concentration camp to the manner that the SS treated him. Real power rested with German General Plenipotentiary Rudolf Rahn and SS- Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff ,
37044-443: Was mirrored by a decline in the use of the dialects. An increase in literacy was one of the main driving factors (one can assume that only literates were capable of learning Standard Italian, whereas those who were illiterate had access only to their native dialect). The percentage of literates rose from 25% in 1861 to 60% in 1911, and then on to 78.1% in 1951. Tullio De Mauro , an Italian linguist, has asserted that in 1861 only 2.5% of
37240-428: Was politically insignificant and its membership is unknown. Mussolini himself privately told German ambassador Rudolf Rahn that he only authorised the formation of the RNRS in an attempt to sway some working-class voters away from the National Liberation Committee and that it was never meant to create any real political pluralism. While the RSI supported Nazi Germany, it allowed the Italian Fascist movement to build
37436-486: Was present at Caserta when a representative of German General Heinrich von Vietinghoff -Scheel signed the unconditional instrument of surrender for all Axis forces in Italy, but since the Allies had never recognised the RSI Graziani's signature was not required at Caserta. The surrender was to take effect on 2 May; Graziani ordered all RSI forces under his command to lay down their arms on 1 May. The National Republican Air Force ( Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana or ANR)
37632-406: Was replaced by the French. This was due to the annexation of the surrounding County of Nice to France following the Treaty of Turin (1860) . It formerly had official status in Montenegro (because of the Venetian Albania ), parts of Slovenia and Croatia (because of the Venetian Istria and Venetian Dalmatia ), parts of Greece (because of the Venetian rule in the Ionian Islands and by
37828-426: Was sued in the Roman courts by Pius's niece, Countess Elena Pacelli Rossignani. Katz was initially found guilty, but an appeals court overturned this initial ruling. The appeals court decision was in turn appealed by the prosecution. Further evidence ("the Governatorato document" - see below) was revealed; the court case was reconfigured; and Katz was found guilty of "intention to denigrate" Pius XII. Ultimately, however,
38024-409: Was summoned to the headquarters of the German Armed Forces Commandant in Rome, Luftwaffe Generalmajor Kurt Mälzer , who had decided that the killings called for reprisals . They agreed that the execution of ten Italians for each German policeman killed was a suitable ratio. Mälzer, who also proposed burning down part of Rome, passed this on to General Eberhard von Mackensen , the commander of
38220-478: Was the air force of Italian Social Republic and also the air unit of National Republican Army. It was organized into three fighter groups , one torpedo bomber group, one bomber group, and other transport and minor units. The ANR worked closely with the German Air Force ( Luftwaffe ) in Northern Italy. In 1944, after the withdrawal of all German fighter units for home air defense over Germany, ANR fighter groups were left alone and heavily outnumbered to face
38416-444: Was the brigadier general Piera Gatteschi Fondelli . The Government of the Italian Social Republic held office from 23 September 1943 until 25 April 1945, a total of 1 year, 274 days. Its head was Benito Mussolini. The Government wrote a constitution for the Italian Social Republic, but it was never discussed or approved. On 13 October 1943, the Government announced that a Constituent Assembly would be called to write
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