The Waffen-SS was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's paramilitary Schutzstaffel (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with volunteers and conscripts from both occupied and unoccupied lands. It was disbanded in May 1945.
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.
Fivizzano is a comune in the province of Massa and Carrara, Tuscany, central Italy.
The 16th Infantry Division of the German Army was formed in 1934. On 26 August 1939 the division was mobilized for the invasion of Poland (1939). It participated in the Battle of France in August 1940. The division was then split, resulting in two independent units: The 16th Panzer Division and the 16th Motorized Infantry Division. Then later, from 1944 onward, combined with other non 16th elements, was known as the 116th Panzer Division.
The 29th Infantry Division was a unit of the German army created in the fall of 1936. It was based on the old Reichswehr 15th Infantry Regiment and drew its initial recruits from Thuringia. It was upgraded to 29th Motorized Infantry Division in the fall of 1937. The division was also known as the Falke-Division.
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.
The governments of the German Empire and Nazi Germany ordered, organized, and condoned a substantial number of war crimes, first in the Herero and Namaqua genocide and then in the First and Second World Wars. The most notable of these is the Holocaust, in which millions of European Jewish, Polish, and Romani people were systematically abused, deported, and murdered. Millions of civilians and prisoners of war also died as a result of German abuses, mistreatment, and deliberate starvation policies in those two conflicts. Much of the evidence was deliberately destroyed by the perpetrators, such as in Sonderaktion 1005, in an attempt to conceal their crimes.
The Boves massacre was a World War II war crime that took place on 19 September 1943 in the comune of Boves, Italy. The event took place following the Italian surrender on 8 September 1943. Twenty-three Italian civilians were killed and several hundred houses were destroyed by artillery fire of the Waffen-SS under the command of Joachim Peiper. The massacre and destruction were reprisals for one German soldier having been killed and two German NCOs having been captured and held by Italian partisans in the vicinity of the town. After obtaining their release, Peiper ordered the destruction of the town, despite earlier promising not to do so.
The 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division "Reichsführer-SS" was a motorised infantry formation in the Waffen-SS of Nazi Germany during World War II.
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.
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.
114th Jäger Division was a light infantry division of the German Army in World War II. It was formed in April 1943, following the reorganization and redesignation of the 714th Infantry Division. The 714th Division had been formed in May 1941, and transferred to Yugoslavia to conduct anti-partisan and Internal security operations. It was involved in Operation Delphin which was an anti-partisan operation in Croatia that took place between 15 November and 1 December 1943. The objective of the mission was to destroy the Partisan elements on the Dalmatian islands off central Dalmatia.
The Padule di Fucecchio massacre was the murder of at least 174 Italian civilians, carried out by the 26th Panzer Division at Padule di Fucecchio, a large wetland north of Fucecchio, Tuscany, on 23 August 1944. After the war, the commander of the 26th Panzer Division was sentenced for war crimes, but the men who carried out the massacre were not convicted until 2011 and none served any jail time. The massacre has been described as "one of the worst Nazi atrocities in Italy".
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 San Terenzo Monti massacre, sometimes also referred to as the Bardine massacre or Bardine San Terenzo massacre, was a massacre carried out near Fivizzano, Tuscany, by the German 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division from 17 to 19 August 1944 in which 159 Italian civilians were killed.
The Lake Maggiore massacres was a set of World War II war crimes that took place near Lake Maggiore, Italy, in September and October 1943. Despite strict orders not to commit any violence against civilians in the aftermath of the Italian surrender on 8 September 1943, members of the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler murdered 56, predominantly Italian and Greek, Jews. Many of the bodies were sunk into the lake to prevent discovery but one washed ashore in neighbouring Switzerland, drawing international attention to the massacre and prompting an inconclusive divisional inquiry. It is commonly referred to as the first German massacre of Jews in Italy during World War II.
Mario Musolesi was an Italian soldier and Resistance leader during World War II.
