163 Bedeutender Interims Marschallstab Rodolfo Grazianis als Marschall von Italien
The shaft decorated with tortoiseshell with silver-gilt terminals. The knob in silver, with hand-chased Roman eagles in the strictly stylized form characteristic of the Italian Fascist period. Above this a three-dimensionally formed globe in gilt silver. Below the knob a dedication ring crafted in gold with the initials “RG” (Rodolfo Graziani) framed by a laurel wreath and the date “A XVI EF” (1938).
Length: 100 cm
Artistically extremely high-quality interim marshal's baton in finest jeweler's quality.
Rodolfo Graziani, Margrave of Neghelli (* August 11, 1882 in Filettino, Province of Frosinone; † January 11, 1955 in Rome) was an Italian general and politician during the Italian Fascist period, holder of the title “Marshal of Italy” since 1936.
Graziani became known primarily for his campaigns in Africa before and during World War II and for his collaboration with the Third Reich as Minister of Defense of the Fascist Italian Social Republic of Salò (R.S.I.).
During the 1920s and 1930s, Graziani played a key role in the Italian wars of expansion on the African continent, first during the Second Italo-Libyan War and then in the Abyssinian War. In the interwar period and the early phase of World War II, he held various commands and governor posts in Italian East Africa and later Italian Libya.
After the outbreak of World War II, Graziani led the unsuccessful Italian invasion of Egypt in 1940/41.
From September 1943 until the end of April 1945, he was Minister of Defense of the Fascist Italian Social Republic of Salò and Commander-in-Chief of the Republican Italian Armed Forces continuing to fight on the German side.
Rodolfo Graziani was supposed to become a priest at his father's wish, but ultimately the son decided on an officer's career. Since the path through the Military Academy of Modena remained closed to him, he initially served as a temporary officer, among others with the 1st Regiment of the Granatieri di Sardegna in Rome. From 1908 he served as a colonial officer in Eritrea and learned Arabic and Tigrinya there, which would serve him well for his later career in Africa. In 1911 he was in mortal danger for an extended period after a venomous snake bite. In 1912 he participated as an infantry officer in the Italo-Turkish War, during which Libya with its two regions Cyrenaica and Tripolitania was occupied by Italy and annexed as the colony of Italian Libya. From 1915 on, he participated again as an infantry officer in World War I. He distinguished himself on the Isonzo and later the Piave Front and was subsequently promoted several times. In 1918 he was promoted at age 36 to the youngest colonel in the Italian Army. Having come to Libya in October 1921 as the youngest colonel in the Italian Army, Graziani received the principal credit for the conquest of Tripolitania and in 1929/30 also for the occupation of Fezzan. As a counterinsurgency specialist, he modernized the methods of desert warfare and relied not only on rapidly advancing units with armored vehicles supported from the air, but also on unbridled brutality. Notorious for his fascist adherence to principle, Graziani made a name for himself as an “Arab butcher” and repeatedly ordered mass executions. After being appointed Vice Governor of Cyrenaica by Mussolini in the spring of 1930, Graziani set about the “pacification” of this Libyan region according to his time-tested pattern.
From 1935 to 1936 Graziani participated in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and commanded the forces that attacked Abyssinia from Italian Somaliland.
After the conquest of Harar, Mussolini appointed him Marshal of Italy and Marchese di Neghelli; in 1937 he was appointed Viceroy of Ethiopia.
In November 1939, after the beginning of World War II, Mussolini appointed Graziani Chief of the Army General Staff and (after Air Marshal Italo Balbo's sudden death in mid-1940) also Governor-General in Libya and thus Commander-in-Chief of Italian troops in North Africa. Under Graziani's leadership, of the ten barely motorized divisions of the Italian 10th Army, four infantry divisions together with a lightly armored combat group attacked Egypt and advanced to Sidi el Barrani, where they stopped due to supply problems and water shortage. For political reasons, Mussolini forbade until 1941 the transfer of the motorized and armored Italian divisions from the Po Valley to North Africa, where they would have been the only useful forces in this region. Graziani's long experience in suppressing uprisings and conducting colonial wars substantially influenced his operational leadership, whereby he did not fully recognize that he had to conduct a European war in the African desert according to completely new criteria. The counterattack of British armored units against Graziani's unmotivated foot soldiers (→ Operation Compass) quickly led to the collapse of the 10th Army and to the dispatch of the German Afrika Korps under Erwin Rommel. The few motorized and armored Italian units were finally transferred to North Africa as well. Graziani returned to Italy in February 1941, where he was also relieved of his post as Chief of the Army General Staff. He received no command until Mussolini's arrest in July 1943.
Mussolini assigned him in his fascist rump republic in northern Italy the leadership of the Ministry of Defense and supreme command of his troops. This fanned the resistance of the Resistenza; Italian society was deeply divided. From his headquarters he commanded the Italian units fighting on the German side until the Allies had occupied large parts of northern Italy and resistance was hardly possible any longer. Despite the hopeless situation, he did not consider capitulation until the very end, but had those unwilling to fight executed.
On April 29, 1945, one day after Mussolini was shot by partisans, Graziani surrendered in Milan to U.S. troops. On the same day he signed as Marshal of Italy, together with SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS Karl Wolff as “Plenipotentiary General of the German Wehrmacht in Italy,” the Armistice of Caserta, whereby the capitulation of all German and Republican Italian Armed Forces in the north of the country became effective in the night of May 2 to 3, 1945.
In the early 1950s, Graziani joined the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) and attempted to help the fascist idea achieve a renaissance. After party disputes he withdrew into private life and died in early 1955 in Rome. On August 11, 2012, a mausoleum in honor of Graziani was inaugurated in Affile in the Lazio region in the Parco di Radimonte, erected with subsidies from the region and the municipality, in the presence of neo-fascist citizens and Mayor Ercole Viri.
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