cross‐posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/445095

(Mirror.)

Yet the one to praise [Fascist Italy’s] war crimes the most was Rudolf von Xylander, a retired Reichswehr colonel and military historian. Von Xylander, who was an early advocate of Italo‐German reconciliation after the First World War, published a book in 1937 on the Abyssinian conflict, which he called the ‘first modern war of annihilation on colonial soil’. Using this phrasing, von Xylander did not mean to accuse [Fascist Italy] of genocide. Rather, he saw it as a compliment.

The term ‘war of annihilation’ (Vernichtungskrieg) referred to the complete destruction of the enemy and its erasure as a socio‐political force. According to von Xylander, in this sense [Fascist] Italy’s war effort was exemplary, including its use of poison gas and forced deportations.

As an instructor von Xylander had an opportunity to propagate his knowledge of [Fascist] methods in Abyssinia; he taught not only at the Military Academy in Berlin, but also at the German Institute for Foreign Relations, where the future political élite of the [Third Reich] was being trained. There, von Xylander and other experts on Italy gave courses on ‘people and space within the Fascist Empire’.