Gioacchino Solinas

Gioacchino Solinas (1 September 1892 in Bonorva – 22 April 1987 in Sassari) was an Italian general during World War II. He is best known for his leadership of the Grenadiers of Sardinia during the defense of Rome after the Armistice of Cassibile; he later joined the Italian Social Republic.

Biography

He was born in Bonorva, province of Sassari, on 1 September 1892, and entered the Royal Academy of Infantry and Cavalry of Modena on 8 November 1910, graduating with the rank of infantry second lieutenant. On 19 May 1912 he was assigned to the 2nd Bersaglieri Regiment; during the First World War, with the rank of captain, he distinguished himself at the command of the 8th Company of the 10th Bersaglieri Regiment. Having been wounded in the jaw, after recovering he was transferred to the service of the 2nd Marching Machine Gun Regiment.

At the end of the war he was transferred to the Royal Corps of Colonial Troops of Cyrenaica, participating in the pacification of the colony, during which he was awarded a Silver Medal of Military Valor and a War Cross for Military Valor. At the end of the operations, having been promoted to major, he was transferred to the military garrison of Zara as battalion commander, serving under Giovanni Messe, who praised his qualities. He was later promoted to colonel and transferred to Italian East Africa, where in 1939 he became commander of the 16th Colonial Brigade stationed in Gondar. He further distinguished himself during counter-guerrilla operations in Ethiopia, for which he was awarded a second Silver Medal for military valor.

In spite of this, after the establishment of the Italian Social Republic he was contacted by Marshal of Italy Rodolfo Graziani, Minister of National Defense of the RSI, who offered him the position of military commander of Lombardy (205th Regional Military Command), which he accepted in November 1943. This was a merely administrative assignment, as Solinas was not given command of combat troops. Nonetheless, the government of the Italian Social Republic accused him of collaboration with the National Liberation Committee for having removed "officers animated by Fascist faith" from service in the National Republican Army, and he was eventually dismissed in 1944 at the explicit request of Benito Mussolini.

After the end of the war Solinas was arrested by the partisans of the "Matteotti" Brigades, and on 11 July 1945 he was sentenced by the Extraordinary Court of Assize of Milan to twenty years in prison for collaborationism, for having joined the RSI and accepted the regional command of Lombardy. He defended himself by arguing that in the ten months in which he had held the post he had exonerated from service 30,000 soldiers, permitted the repatriation of 6,500 soldiers interned in Switzerland and covered 3,500 desertions, declaring that "no arrest has ever been ordered by me, no extraordinary court has been summoned, no roundup of partisans has been ordered", in addition to point out that he had been dismissed by the Salò government. He appealed the sentence and in 1946 he was absolved by the Court of Cassation of Rome. He then retired to private life, publishing in 1967 a memoir book about the defense of Rome, and dying in Sassari on April 22, 1987.