Pages 71–3:

In fact, sticking to the letter of the 14 May directive, the Prefects opted for a “carrot and stick” strategy. Massive round‐ups of suspected Fascist militants were carried out at the same time as the placards were posted. Starting in the afternoon on 10 June, policemen were hastily dispatched to arrest known suspect Italians.

This category encompassed any Italian working in or volunteering for [Rome‐]endorsed organizations such as Dante Alighieri and Italian schools, and emigrants working for the Italian state (namely in consulates and in the Embassy), with the significant exclusion of the few Italians with diplomatic or consular status, which immunized them from penalty.¹⁷⁹ Men were handcuffed, sometimes in front of their family, and taken away.

[…]

All those arrested in the Côte d’Azur were first held in the Beziers (Languedoc) bullfighting arena, staying there for one full week in appalling conditions. Prisoners were forced to sleep in the open in the stands, with little shelter against inclement weather. Food was scarce and of dubious quality, while hygienic standards were abysmal as there were only six washrooms for three thousand people.

Eventually all these prisoners were herded into different internment camps, among them Vernet (Ariege) and Saint‐Cyprien (Pyrénées‐Orientales).¹⁸⁰ Both camps antedated the round‐ups of Italians and had been run since their inception by the French army (Garde Mobile). The St‐Cyprien and the Vernet camps had been created in July and October 1939 respectively.¹⁸¹

Prior to the arrival of the [Regio Esercito], they had housed a heterogeneous population ranging from convicts with non‐political criminal records to German and Austrian citizens who had escaped the [Third Reich], foreign Communists, namely those who fought with the International Brigades, and Spanish militants fleeing after the end of the Spanish Civil War.¹⁸²

Thus, in an ironic twist of fate, Fascist militants ended up imprisoned with their hated compatriots, the fuoriusciti. It is unclear if their distrust of one another was set aside in light of their common misery. One thing is for certain: all endured incredible hardship. In Vernet, prisoners slept in crude shacks with no illumination. The lucky ones were given a little hay to build makeshift mattresses; the less fortunate slept on wooden planks.

The food was tasteless at best and spoiled in the worst cases. No cutlery or dishes were provided, so the prisoners had to eat with their hands from discarded tins unearthed from the garbage heaps. The men worked six hours daily at roadbuilding and camp maintenance chores without any kind of protective equipment. As one resident explained, “… as regards food, accommodation and hygiene, Vernet was even below the level of a [Fascist] concentration camp.”¹⁸³

Prisoners in Saint‐Cyprien, most of them Italians from the Southern France departments (Alpes‐Maritimes, Bouches‐du‐Rhone, Basses‐Alpes, Var), did not fare any better. The Saint‐Cyprien camp was twenty‐five kilometers from Perpignan on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. This condition exposed the prisoners to quite inclement and changeable weather. The combined effect of sand and wind not only reduced the prisoners’ clothes to tatters, but also encouraged skin diseases.¹⁸⁴

Prisoners slept in the damp sand, with a minimal layer of hay as insulation. Food rations, consisting of sticky rice, a few vegetables of dubious quality and a fetid soup, were minimal. Lice were so widespread they became the most frequent source of conversation among prisoners.¹⁸⁵

Nevertheless, what remained engraved in the collective memory of the Vernet and St‐Cyprien prisoners was first and foremost their arbitrary mistreatment by the French military jailers. Italians and prisoners of other nationalities alike were constantly humiliated with insults, slaps with leather crops and occasional beatings, sometimes resulting in hospitalization. Furthermore, the camp guards allegedly profited from a flourishing black market in the camp.

(Emphasis added.)

1924: A violent confrontation erupted between Nice French and Italian Leftist militants on the one hand and members of the local Fascio and pro‐Fascist Italian notables on the other over the commemoration of Nicola Bonservizi, the head of the Paris Fascio, whom somebody murdered a few days earlier.
1938: Berlin summoned Wilhelm Keitel to begin the discussion of turning Case Green into an actual operation against Czechoslovakia.
1940: The Fascists landed at Verdal and Kirknessvag, Norway, causing the British 146th Brigade near Trondheim to withdraw to Vist. Around Lake Mjøsa, the British 148th Brigade reinforced Norwegian positions, but on the same day Fascist forces broke through the line, causing the entire Norwegian–British force to withdraw north toward Lillehammer. Out at sea, Fascist submarine U‐26 sank British merchant vessel Cedarbank of convoy AP‐1 northwest of Ålesund, killing fifteen. Aside from all that, Rome launched Maggiore Baracca, and the Fascist ‘Grado’ naval infantry battalion landed at Split, Croatia.
1941: Starting after sundown and lasting until the next day, Axis bombers assaulted Plymouth, England, and Axis air and ground forces attacked Allied troops at Thermopylae, Greece; dive bombers sank Greek torpedo boat Thyella, two hospital ships, and several freighters. Georgios Tsolakoglou signed the surrender of the entire Greek Army to the Third Reich. Other than that, twenty‐four Axis bombers escorted by twenty‐one fighters attacked Tobruk, Libya, sinking two ships and damaging another two, and Comandante Cappellini engaged with some Allied vessels.
1942: The Axis slaughtered twenty French civilians at Saint‐Nazaire, France in retaliation of the March 28 raid by British commandos, and the Imperial Japanese 18th Division captured Kyidaunggan, Burma from Chinese troops. Axis aircraft sank British antisubmarine trawler HMT Jade at Grand Harbour, Malta, and the Eastern Axis dispatched a large number of warships in search for the carriers that launched the Doolittle Raiders. Incidentally, Axis aircraft based in Rabaul assaulted Port Moresby.
1943: Leonardo da Vinci sank Allied freighter John Drayton, en route from Bahrain to Cape Town, South Africa, with one torpedo hit (out of four fired) and gunfire in the Indian Ocean at 1815 hours.
1944: The Axis lost more rails and other transportation targets to Allied firepower, but the Axis did capture Crete West hill near Imphal, India.
1945: As Axis Feldmarschall Walter Model suicided, somebody dismissed Theodor Morell from his position as his Chancellor’s personal physician, and he departed the Führerbunker in Berlin in the evening. Ludwig Stumpfegger replaced him.