Guido Buffarini Guidi

Guido Buffarini Guidi
Guido Buffarini Guidi
	Young Guido Buffarini
Minister of the Interior of the Italian Social Republic
	In office; 23 September 1943 – 21 February 1945
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Paolo Zerbino
Personal details
Born	17 August 1895; Pisa, Kingdom of Italy
Died	10 July 1945 (age 49); Milan, Kingdom of Italy
Party	National Fascist Party (1921–43) ; Republican Fascist Party (1943–45)
Height	1.55 m (5 ft 1 in)
Education	University of Pisa
Occupation	Politician
Military service
Allegiance	Kingdom of Italy
Branch/service	Royal Italian Army
Years of service	1914-23
Rank	Captain
Battles/wars	World War I

Guido Buffarini Guidi (17 August 1895 – 10 July 1945) was an Italian army officer and politician, and was executed for war atrocities during the Italian Civil War in 1945.

Early life and education

Buffarini Guidi was born in Pisa in 1895. When Italy entered World War I, he volunteered in an artillery regiment. He was promoted to rank of captain in 1917, and remained on active duty in the Italian Army until 1923 – in the meantime, he earned his bachelor's degree in law from the University of Pisa in March 1920.

World War II

After leaving the army, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, he became active in Fascist circles, and joined the National Fascist Party (PNF). A mayor of Pisa in April 1923, Buffarini Guidi headed the local Party hierarchy from 1924 (his notoriety being increased by his career as a lawyer). He rose to become honorary Consul of the MVSN Blackshirts - the voluntary militia after the March on Rome.

In May 1933, he was appointed to be Undersecretary Minister of Interior, and forged an alliance with Galeazzo Ciano - opposing the Party bureaucracy, creating several secret services, and attempting to lessen the effects of Antisemitic legislation passed by the regime. Nevertheless, (and unlike Ciano), on 25 July 1943, Buffarini Guidi voted in favor of Benito Mussolini during Dino Grandi's attempt to have the latter deposed and get Italy to sign a peace with the Allies. As a reward, after Nazi Germany intervened and rescued Mussolini in September, Guido Buffarini Guidi was appointed Minister of the Interior of the new Italian Social Republic (established by Nazis in Northern Italy). Seen as extremely avaricious, he was distrusted even by most of his cabinet colleagues.

On 30 November 1943, Guidi issued RSI Police Order No. 5, which required the Italian police to arrest all Jews except for those born of mixed marriages and deport them to concentration camps. Ten days after issuing the order he amended it to exclude the gravely ill and those over the age of 70.^[1] The order is regarded as a major turning point in the Italian Holocaust.

Arrest

Near the end of the Republic's life, in February 1945, Mussolini dismissed Buffarini Guidi from office. After a failed attempt to escape to Switzerland, he was arrested by the partisans on 26 April. Like any other Italian Fascist prosecuted for engaging in the Italian Civil War, he was tried under Italian law since the laws of war at the time had no provisions dealing with non-international armed conflict (NIAC).^[2] He was sentenced to death for atrocities committed in the Italian Civil War by an Extraordinary Court of Justice in Milan. He was executed by firing squad on 10 July, having tried (like French collaborator Pierre Laval) and survived a suicide attempt while in captivity.

While in prison, Guidi offered to reveal to the Allies compromising letters exchanged between Churchill and Mussolini during the war in exchange for his release; he was unsuccessful.

Appearances in film

In the 1973 film Massacre in Rome, Guido Guidi is portrayed by Italian actor Guidarino Guidi.

Notes

↑ Megargee, Geoffrey P., ed. (2012). Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945 - Volume III - Camps and Ghettos under European Regimes Aligned with Nazi Germany. in association with United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 392. ISBN 978-0-253-02373-5.
↑ Roy Palmer Domenico (1991). Italian Fascists on Trial, 1943-1948. University of North Carolina Press. pp. 35–36. ISBN 0-8078-2006-7. Italian-on-Italian crimes were not war crimes nor pursued as crimes against humanity under the Nuremberg statute and Allied Control Council Law No. 10. American and British authorities did not see Italian fascism as nearly as objectionable as German Nazism and also feared the Italian Communist Party. They did not request extradition of Italian nationals accused of such crimes and left the prosecution up to the Italian government.

External links

Italian Government at the Wayback Machine (archived October 29, 2009) at www.geocities.com
"BUFFARINI GUIDI, Guido". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (in Italian). Vol. 14: Branchi–Buffetti. Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. 1972. ISBN 978-88-12-00032-6.

[1] Megargee, Geoffrey P., ed. (2012). Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945 - Volume III - Camps and Ghettos under European Regimes Aligned with Nazi Germany. in association with United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 392. ISBN 978-0-253-02373-5.

[2] Roy Palmer Domenico (1991). Italian Fascists on Trial, 1943-1948. University of North Carolina Press. pp. 35–36. ISBN 0-8078-2006-7. Italian-on-Italian crimes were not war crimes nor pursued as crimes against humanity under the Nuremberg statute and Allied Control Council Law No. 10. American and British authorities did not see Italian fascism as nearly as objectionable as German Nazism and also feared the Italian Communist Party. They did not request extradition of Italian nationals accused of such crimes and left the prosecution up to the Italian government.

[1]

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