ANPI calls for 2024 Italian Army Calendar to be withdrawn

(ANSA) - ROME, JAN 18 - Italian Partisans Association ANPI on Thursday called for the 2024 Army Calendar to be withdrawn from circulation on grounds it puts the Fascist regime in power in Italy before the 1943 Armistice on the same level as the post-war antifascist and democratic Republic.
    "We take note that there is a pro-fascist minority that wants to rewrite the history of Italy," ANPI President Gianfranco Pagliarulo told ANSA of the calendar titled "For Italy always...
    before and after September 8, 1943".
    On this day US General Dwight Eisenhower announced the surrender of Italy to the Allies and General Pietro Badoglio and the Italian royal family fled to southern Italy to set up an anti-Fascist government as Germany reacted with Operation Axis and the Allies with Operation Avalanche.
    Mussolini had fallen from power and his fascist government collapsed the previous July.
    "It is unacceptable," continued Pagliarulo, adding that the calendar "conceals a double political operation".
    "On the one hand, it wants to show an institutional continuity when in fact there was a radical break between the fascist regime and the anti-Fascist Republic," he explained.
    "Of course no one is forgetting the soldiers, on the contrary.
    No one is forgetting that they were also sent into disarray on September 8 when the King went to Brindisi. However, soldiers are one thing and the institution of the Army is another," said the ANPI chief.
    "We must not forget the war criminal generals who were never tried, or, if tried, were never convicted, or, if convicted, never went to jail.
    "On the other hand, an equation is being draw between the new Italian army and the army of Salò," added Pagliarulo, referring to the army of the Italian Social Republic led by Mussolini in northern Italy from 1943 to 1945 that fought on the side of Nazi Germany in the final years of the war. (ANSA).