John Simkins
Debunking myths about captivity
An English edition of historian Isabella Insolvibile’s powerful analysis of Italian prisoner of war camps in Italy is now available following its launch at Senate House, London, on 29 April 2026.
The publication of Allied Prisoners of War in Italy 1940-1943, a translation of the Italian original issued in 2023, was supported by the Monte San Martino Trust and its partner in Italy, the Milan-based Parri institute, for which Isabella, who specialises in the study of war, political violence and resistance, is a researcher. The book launch panel was headed up by Phil Cooke, chairman of MSMT, and Andrea di Michele, Parri’s scientific director. Also on the panel, in addition to Isabella herself, were Malcolm Gaskill, author of The Glass Mountain, Escape and Discovery in Wartime Italy, and Ruth Murphy, a Cambridge University researcher working on the history and memory of Allied PoWs.
The book is the fruit of 15 years of research by Isabella, who set out “to give the other side of the coin”, having already produced a book about Italian prisoners of war held in Great Britain. It is a comprehensive study in eight chapters of Italy’s 60 PoW camps and covers all aspects of captivity – an account that is both “academic and very readable”, in Phil Cooke’s phrase. It goes a long way towards debunking some myths and shifting the focus from the period following Italy’s surrender at the Armistice in September 1943 to the two years that preceded it.
History has hitherto been lenient in its judgment of captivity in Italy, which has been seen as subsidiary to captivity in Germany, where so many prisoners eventually ended up. But the widely-held view that, if one had to be a prisoner anywhere it might as well be in Italy, because it was a civilised nation, is not backed up by the evidence. Italy was unprepared for the influx of 70,000 Allied servicemen captured by itself and its German allies in North Africa, and this had severe consequences. Its PoW camps varied greatly; some were little more than tented holding areas. Conditions were frequently appalling, and the cold, disease and lack of food afflicted many prisoners.
Red Cross parcels often meant that the prisoners were better fed than their captors. “Italy was unable to care for its prisoners, it did not have enough supplies for its own people,” Isabella told the audience at the book launch.
As she writes in the introduction to the book: “The captors are generally revealed to be mediocre, often mean and sometimes cruel, uninterested in rigorously following international regulations, unprepared in materially providing for the needs of its detainees, capable of actions that could be considered war crimes. To summarise, those Italians represented a nation that was neither kind nor civilised, or at least no more so than others, and certainly less so than the British or Americans with regard to the treatment of prisoners in their hands.”
Another welcome rebalancing is a shift away from the over-emphasis on the months following the Armistice, which saw the escapes of a sizeable proportion of the prisoners. The stories of these escapes constitute the lion’s share of former prisoners’ memoirs, and the dramatic narratives have made for good copy and good cinema. A close study of captivity before the Armistice makes for a much more rounded picture.
An emphasis on the escapes made possible the narrative of the “good Italian”, as symbolised by the thousands of courageous Italians who gave refuge to Allied escapers following the Armistice. In contrast, an inspection of the preceding period throws light on the “bad Italian”, as represented by those among the captors who were negligent of their duty to their charges.
“This is a brave book,” said Malcolm Gaskill, “because it tackles entrenched myths and breaks silences. The reality of captivity is that the captives don’t like remembering it, nor do the captors because of the inadequacy of Italy’s behaviour.”
Allied Prisoners of War in Italy 1940-1943, by Isabella Insolvibile. Palgrave Macmillan, £92.18.
