Italian Military Internees

Of the remaining approximately 810,000 (of which 58,000 were caught in France, 321,000 in Italy and 430,000 in the Balkans), more than 13,000 lost their lives during the transportation from the Greek islands to the mainland and 94,000, including almost all the Blackshirts of the MVSN, decided immediately to accept the offer to fight alongside the Germans.

This left a total of approximately 710,000[1] Italian soldiers deported into German prison camps with the status of IMI.

By the spring of 1944, some 103,000 had declared themselves ready to serve in Germany or the Italian Social Republic, as combatants or as auxiliary workers.

[4] There were cases of Italian prisoners being shot for taking food smuggled in by Polish civilians or even for eating grass, as in the Stalag 366/Z camp in Biała Podlaska in German-occupied Poland.

[5] German troops also committed massacres of Italian prisoners either shortly before or during their retreat westward from occupied Poland, as in Międzyrzec Podlaski, where 60 Italian prisoners of a local forced labour subcamp of the Stalag 366 camp were massacred on 23 July 1944,[5] and Kuźnica Żelichowska where six Italian generals (Giuseppe Andreoli, Emanuele Balbo Bertone, Ugo Ferrero, Carlo Spatocco, Alberto Trionfi, Alessandro Vaccaneo) were massacred on 28 January 1945 during a German-perpetrated death march.

[9] In 2023, previously unknown graves of 60 Italian prisoners of war who had been buried by the Germans in cramped crates without lids were discovered at a POW cemetery in Łambinowice, Poland.