Space and Violence in WWII Italian Captivity in Africa: Becoming a POW between Mount Kenya and the Equator Line

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the history of the Fascist soldiers in Italian East Africa who were captured by the British Army in 1940–1941 and kept in Kenya as POWs and co-operators of war. It investigates how they related to the mental and geographical spaces and places of Africa and war captivity. Using unpublished memoirs, it analyses how POWs survived by engaging in sports, intellectual activities, and the performing arts, thus turning the camp into a productive space where they escaped psychological annihilation. It discusses how POWs split into pro and anti-Mussolini supporters after the 1943 armistice and transformed the camp into a space of violence, with barracks used as courtrooms and torture chambers where they made their own justice. The article closes by arguing that freedom for these men did not come until 1946, when they were repatriated to a country that had removed them from its post-WWII national narrative.