12. The Fascist secret police and Italian society
Mussolini early in his career formed the National Security Volunteer Militia, which became known as the Blackshirts, in order to ensure the complete authority of the state, which is to say of himself. During the early years of his dictatorship, there were several attempts to assassinate the Italian leader, and in 1927 Mussolini created the Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism. The new force was the Italian equivalent of what later became Hitler’s Gestapo, though it was never as large as the German secret police force. The Italian organization, known as the OVRA, was efficient at suppressing opposition to Mussolini, using similar techniques as the Germans, but on a smaller scale. A special court was established to try the cases of those charged with crimes against the state, and the same law which established the special court reinstated the death penalty for certain crimes.
Up to 6,000 Italian citizens were arrested by the OVRA and tried before the special court, though many chose to live in exile rather than face charges. OVRA relied on a network of informants, many of whom were developed through blackmail, including priests which it used as spies within the Vatican. After the Italian entry into the Second World War, OVRA was used to infiltrate resistance groups in the Balkan region, and attempts were made by its agents to likewise infiltrate the British Special Operations Executive. The Italian secret police force was used by Heinrich Himmler as the model for the civilian branch of the SS and the Gestapo in Germany, though the methods of torture used by the Italians were not. One of the torture methods of the Italians was to force its victims to drink liberal doses of castor oil, which led to diarrhea, dehydration, and eventually death.