[ansel12]

Why do the Italians escape the stench of Fascism and WWII, I think most Americans probably think they were on our side rather than run by Mussolini and on Hitler’s side.

[NorthMountain]

Why do the Italians escape the stench of Fascism and WWII

They weren't particularly enthusiastic about it, they weren't running concentration camps, many of them did their best to shield Jews or help them escape Europe ...

And when given the opportunity to say "fcck this" ... they dragged Mussolini through the streets, killed him, and hanged his corpse by the ankles from the canopy of an Esso station.

There was no such scene in Germany, or USSR, or China, or Cambodia ...

Romanians deserve credit for making their version of it.

Italian fascism deserves opprobrium as do all totalitarian ideologies, but Italians of the fascist era do not belong in the same category as hitlerist germans or stalinist russians or maoist chinese.

[dfwgator]

Why do the Italians escape the stench of Fascism and WWII, I think most Americans probably think they were on our side rather than run by Mussolini and on Hitler’s side.

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Or why the Austrians seems to get off the hook, when some of the most fanatical Nazis were from Austria.

[Cronos]

They do that because

1. they didn’t behave abominably towards the French or yugoslavs or Greeks

2. they were barely enthusiastic about an overseas empire

3. they switched half-way through (the same reason we don’t remember that the USSR entered the war as the Nutzi’s ally