Ree, vittime: donne greche nei documenti dei tribunali militari italiani nella Grecia occupata (1941-1943)

During the Second World War the Italian army established military tribunals in occupied Greece. As these tribunals prosecuted not only Italian soldiers but also Greek civilians for offences against the Italian military authorities, women often figure in their records. This article examines some of the instances in which women were involved in the trials as perpetrators or victims. Based on these sources the article aims to answer two main questions. The first is to what extent occupation unleashed major shifts in gender relations, challenging given patriarchal structures and thus providing the ground for new forms of female social behaviour. The second is how the Italian military authorities dealt with these new forms of social behaviour. A purely manly organism, the Italian military tribunals premised their judgments upon a conception of «paternalist protection» towards women, a protection exercised only towards certain subjects. Those women who challenged the social taxonomies of the judges were systematically denied such a protection. Therefore the records reveal the «common sense», to use Ann Stoler’s category, of the occupation authorities.