Emilio Grazioli

Emilio Grazioli (26 October 1899 – 15 June 1969) was an Italian Fascist politician and prefect, High Commissioner for the Province of Ljubljana from 1941 to 1943.

Biography

Early life and career

Grazioli fought in the Royal Italian Army during World War I, being awarded a War Cross for Military Valor. He joined the Fascist movement in 1921, when he created a local section in Aurisina, and the National Fascist Party in 1921, holding various posts within the Party and reaching the rank of centurion (Captain) of the Voluntary Militia for National Security. In 1939 he became Federal Secretary of the Fascist Party for Trieste and a member of the Chamber of Fasces and Corporations.

High Commissioner for the Province of Ljubljana

On April 6, 1941, the Axis invaded Yugoslavia, which quickly capitulated. Already in mid-April Grazioli was appointed Royal Civil Commissioner of the occupied territories of Slovenia, a position converted into that of High Commissioner of the Province of Ljubljana upon its establishment on May 3, 1941. Despite a special newsletter issued by General Vittorio Ambrosio subjected the civil authorities of the occupied territories to military authority, Grazioli still tried to carry out his functions independently. On August 12, 1941, Grazioli had the public register of the population established, and a few days later made it compulsory to report new births. According to the first data collected, the population was made up of 280-400,000 inhabitants. Grazioli also had a census of the Jewish population carried out.

Grazioli began establishing in the province of Ljubljana local sections of the Fascist organizations that already existed in Italy, such as the Gioventù Italiana del Littorio and the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro. His goal was to integrate the new province, which would still retain considerable autonomy, within the Kingdom of Italy, without alienating the sympathies of large anti-Communist sections of the population who saw in Italy a protection from the nascent Titoist movement and from harsher German occupation. All the former Slovenian officials that had been suspended following the invasion were reassigned to their posts; at Grazioli's request, the handling of public order was removed from the Army and a police station was set up in Ljubljana. Great attention was paid to the university environment, in which teachers were carefully selected and many were drawn from Lambert Ehrlich's nationalist movement "Sentinel in the Storm", but nevertheless the University of Ljubljana became a center for anti-Italian nationalist propaganda.

However, in the following months, acts of hostility by part of the Slovenian population began to take place more and more openly and Grazioli, following the killing of a German soldier, ordered a large round-up led by the Ljubljana police headquarters starting from 1 August. Several attacks on the railway line between Postojna and Ljubljana were also carried out. Meanwhile, military authorities, represented by General Mario Robotti, following the rise in partisan activity, began to complain about the particular "legal status" of the province, which prevented “energic” actions. On 11 September 1941 Grazioli, in an attempt to demonstrate to the military that he was able to maintain control over the province, issued a ban that imposed the death penalty for those who had taken part in attacks against the Italian military and ordered a massive round-up south of Ljubljana. The operation was however unsuccessful, and Robotti was thus able to exclude Grazioli from other military operations, relegating to the administration of the capital.

On 7 November the first official meeting took place between the civil authority represented by Grazioli and the military authority represented by Robotti, in which mutual conflicts of competence were discussed. It was decided that in any case round-ups would be the prerogative of the army; additionally, a military court was created in Ljubljana by the 2nd Army, and the Special Tribunal for the Defense of the State of Trieste extended its jurisdiction to Slovenia. In early December, demonstrations against Italian occupation took place, including a bomb attack in Ljubljana that caused no casualties but resulted in Italian soldiers and blackshirts opening fire and killing two Slovene civilians; Grazioli tried to minimize these events and emphasized the reaction of the garrison soldiers, who had let the situation “slip away” and opened fire on civilians. In the following days several Italian soldiers were killed in ambushes, followed by round-ups by the Italian authorities.

Following this, partisans attacks escalated, resulting in the killing of several collaborators; Italian troops reacted by setting some villages south of Ljubljana on fire and indiscriminately killing civilians. Grazioli, who tried in vain to stem the military escalation, considered such military actions a mistakes, likening them to those carried out by the Germans in northern Slovenia, which had pushed many Slovenians to side with the partisans. Starting from 23 March, despite the negative opinion of the police headquarters and the Carabinieri commands, Grazioli obtained that the law enforcement agencies employed by him replace the soldiers at the gates of the fence that surrounded Ljubljana. The blocks were then removed on December 30 of the same year.

After the summer of 1942, the situation in Ljubljana started to change, with rising hostility towards the Communist-inspired partisan movement by parts of the population, as the Catholic, Belagardist and nationalist movements advocated collaborationism with the Italians. Grazioli, in order to encourage a return to normality, on 17 September requested the army to evacuate all the school buildings occupied in the summer in Ljubljana and in other cities in order to restart the school year regularly. The situation in Ljubljana remained calm until 8 October, when the partisans killed police commissioner Kazimir Kuković and on 13 October the ex ban (prefect) of Yugoslav Slovenia, Marko Natlačen. Grazioli responded harshly to the killing of the latter, by shooting 32 political prisoners taken from prisons. Meanwhile, the death of Natlačen, the rising prospects of an Allied victory in the war and the dilution of the communist positions of the Slovenian People's Liberation Front led once again to a diminished sympathy of the Slovenes towards the Italians, especially in the most important cities.

With major military operations now concluded, on 16 January 1943 Grazioli sent a letter to Rome requesting to restore civilian authority in the province, and above all to limit the activity of the military tribunal, which had in fact replaced the ordinary tribunal. After long discussions, on May 17 Grazioli's requests were rejected by the Ministry of Justice, as were his continuous request to extend Italian legislation to the new annexed province.

After the Armistice of Cassibile he moved to northern Italy, where he joined the Italian Social Republic. On 1 October 1943 he was appointed once again as High Commissioner of Ljubljana by the RSI authorities, but the head of the German occupation administration, Friedrich Rainer, forbade this, reserving all power in Slovenia for himself.

Mussolini then made Grazioli head of the Province of Bergamo, later of Ravenna and finally of Turin, participating in the persecution of Jews, anti-Fascists, and draft dodgers. On 27 April 1945 he fled from Turin and on 5 May he surrendered to Allied troops; he was held in various POW Camps and then handed over to Italian authorities to be tried for collaboration with the Nazis. He was initially sentenced to a twelve-year prison term, but this was then reduced to just four months, and he was released in 1946.

He then retired to private life, being unsuccessfully requested for extradition by the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. He died in Milan in 1969.