Presence of German Military Units in Italy 1943–1945

edited by Carlo Gentile on behalf of the DHI Rom

The war of extermination, which the German Reich led between 1939 and 1945, has been intensely debated for years, yet a thorough study on the warfare by the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS in Italy remains a research desideratum. The exact number and distribution of German units are as unknown as the circumstances of the dead and wounded in action at the front or in the partisan war. Memoirs and reports in official war logs have frequently been proven as false through detailed examination. The present database offers a research and work tool both for professional historians and for institutional or private searches on communal matters. Carlo Gentile (Cologne) compiled the data between 2000 and 2004 on behalf of the German Historical Institute in Rome. The database comprises more than 16,000 entries, which have been gathered and elaborated from contemporary sources. Information has mainly been sourced from the holdings of the "Deutsche Dienststelle" (formerly "Wehrmachtauskunftsstelle") in Berlin as well as files from the federal military archive "Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv" in Freiburg. The database registers Italian locations (cities, towns, councils, counties, villages, settlements, street crossings) in which the presence of German troops between 1943 and 1945 has been proven.

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