Italy. Only a year has passed since the end of the war, but the purge has already become a farce: of the 394,000 public employees investigated for collaboration, only 1,580 are fired, and most of them will soon return to their jobs. Of the 50,000 imprisoned fascists, only a tiny minority will serve several years in prison, and in the summer of 1946, all sentences under five years are expunged and the inmates are released. Italian courts issue proportionately fewer death sentences than any other Western country: 92 for a population of 45 million. Twenty times fewer than in France. And no Italian will ever be brought to trial for crimes committed outside Italy.
