(Mirror.)

Yet the one to praise Italian 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 the Italians 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 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 Italian 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’.