The Marzabotto massacre, or more correctly, the massacre of Monte Sole, was a World War II war crime consisting of the mass murder of at least 770 civilians by Nazi troops, which took place in the territory around the small village of Marzabotto, in the mountainous area south of Bologna. It was the largest massacre of civilians committed by the Waffen SS in western Europe during the war. It is also the deadliest mass shooting in the history of Italy.
Walter Reder was an Austrian SS commander and war criminal during World War II. He served with the SS Division Totenkopf and the SS Division Reichsführer-SS. He and the unit under his command committed the Vinca massacre and Marzabotto massacre in Italy in 1944. After the war, Reder was convicted of war crimes in Italy.
Gaetano Martino was an Italian politician, physician, and university teacher.
The Distomo massacre was a Nazi war crime which was perpetrated by members of the Waffen-SS in the village of Distomo, Greece, in 1944, during the German occupation of Greece during World War II.
Stazzema is a comune (municipality) in the Province of Lucca in the Italian region Tuscany, located about 80 kilometres northwest of Florence and about 25 km (16 mi) northwest of Lucca.
The 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division "Reichsführer-SS" was a motorised infantry formation in the Waffen-SS of Nazi Germany during World War II.
Gerhard Sommer was a German SS-Untersturmführer in the 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division Reichsführer-SS who was involved in the massacre of 560 civilians on 12 August 1944 in the Italian village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema. He appeared on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of most wanted Nazi war criminals.
Miracle at St. Anna is a 2008 American–Italian epic war film directed by Spike Lee and written by James McBride, based on McBride's 2003 novel of the same name. The film stars Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, Omar Benson Miller, Pierfrancesco Favino and Valentina Cervi, with John Turturro, Joseph Gordon Levitt, John Leguizamo, D.B. Sweeney and Kerry Washington in supporting roles. Set primarily in Italy during the Italian Civil War in World War II, the film tells the story of four Buffalo Soldiers of the 92nd Infantry Division who seek refuge in a small Tuscan village, where they form a bond with the residents. The story is presented as a flashback, as one survivor, Hector Negron (Alonso), reflects upon his experiences in a frame story set in 1980s New York. Several real-life events that occurred during the war, such as the Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre, are re-enacted, placing Miracle at St. Anna within the genre of historical fiction.
The Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre was a German war crime, which was committed in the hill village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema in Tuscany, Italy, in the course of an operation against the Italian resistance movement during the Italian Campaign of World War II. On 12 August 1944, the Waffen-SS, with the help of the Brigate Nere, murdered about 560 local villagers and refugees, including more than a hundred children, and burned their bodies. These crimes have been defined as voluntary and organized acts of terrorism by the Military Tribunal of La Spezia and the highest Italian court of appeal.
Enrico Pieri was an Italian man who, as a child, survived a German massacre of Italian villagers during World War II, the Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre. The child is depicted in Spike Lee's film Miracle at St. Anna and Pieri was present at the project's announcement in July 2007.
Max Simon was a German SS commander and war criminal during World War II. Simon was one of the first members of the SS in the early 1930s. He rose through the ranks of the SS, and became a corps commander during World War II. After the war, Simon was convicted for his role in the Marzabotto massacre and the Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre.
The Palazzo Cesi-Gaddi war crimes archive or armoire of shame is a wooden cabinet discovered in 1994 inside a large storage room in Palazzo Cesi-Gaddi, Rome which, at the time, housed the chancellery of the military attorney's office. The cabinet contained an archive of 695 files documenting war crimes perpetrated on Italian soil under fascist rule and during Nazi occupation after the 8 September 1943 armistice between Italy and Allied armed forces. The actions described in the records spanned several years and took place in various areas of the country, from the southern city of Acerra to the northern province of Trieste and as far east as the Balkans; it remains unclear, to this day, how the archive remained concealed for so long, and who gave the order to hide the files in the immediate post-war period.
Vasco Ferretti is an Italian novelist, historian, professor and journalist from Buggiano, Tuscany. He has written books in the fiction genres of historical novels and the Romance novel. His most important books are Kesselring (2009), Vip & Stars (1983), Dante Alighieri e la battaglia di Montecatini (2015), Le stragi naziste sotto la linea gotica 1944: Sant'Anna di Stazzema, Padule di Fucecchio, Marzabotto (2004).
Gerhard Schreiber was a German military historian who specialised in the German–Italian relations during the Nazi era. He was a widely published author on the history of World War II and Nazi Germany. Schreiber was a long-term researcher at the Military History Research Office (MGFA) and contributor to two volumes of the seminal series Germany and the Second World War from the MGFA.
Two of the three Axis powers of World War II—Nazi Germany and their Fascist Italian allies—committed war crimes in the Kingdom of Italy.
The Sochy massacre occurred on 1 June 1943 in the village of Sochy, Lublin Voivodeship in Zamość County, Lublin Voivodeship during the German occupation of Poland when approximately 181–200 of its inhabitants, including women and children, were massacred by the German Ordnungspolizei and SS in retaliation for the village's support for the Polish resistance movement.
The Massacre of Kos was a war crime perpetrated in early October 1943 by the Wehrmacht against Italian army POWs on the Dodecanese island of Kos, then under Italian occupation. About a hundred Italian officers were shot on the commands of General Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller, after being considered traitors for resisting the German invasion of the island.
Ossuary and monument to the victims of the massacre
Village church
Italy 
Tuscany 
