Rodolfo Graziani (11 August 1882 – 11 January 1955) was Minister of Defense of the Italian Social Republic from 23 September 1943 to 25 April 1945 under Benito Mussolini, also serving as governor of Libya, viceroy of Ethiopia, and chief-of-staff of the Royal Italian Army.
Biography[]
Rodolfo Graziani in Libya, 1930.
Graziani played an important role in the consolidation and expansion of Italy's empire during the 1920s and 1930s, first in Libya and then in Ethiopia. He became infamous for harsh repressive measures, such as the use of concentration camps, that caused many civilian deaths, and for extreme measures taken against the native resistance, such as the hanging of Omar Mukhtar. Due to his brutal methods used in Libya, he was nicknamed Il macellaio del Fezzan ("the Butcher of Fezzan"). After stints as governor of Libya, viceroy of Ethiopia, and the Italian army's chief-of-staff, Graziani was made commander-in-chief in North Africa in 1940. He mismanaged the invasion of Egypt and was removed in early 1941, but re-emerged briefly as Mussolini's minister of defense in 1943. Tried for treason in 1945, he served five years.
Graziani was never prosecuted by the United Nations War Crimes Commission; he was included on its list of Italians eligible to be prosecuted for war crimes, but Allied opposition and indifference to the prosecution of Italian war criminals frustrated Ethiopian attempts to bring him to justice. In 1948, an Italian court sentenced him to 19 years' imprisonment for collaboration with the Nazis, but he was released after serving only four months.
In the early 1950s, Graziani had some involvement with the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), and he became the "Honorary President" of the party in 1953. He died, aged 72, of natural causes in Rome.