In your review of Philip Morgan’s The Fall of Mussolini (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), you mention that the author speculates as to whether there should have been an Italian version of the Nuremberg trials (“The Cruelest Years,” July 14, 2007). There is hardly any doubt about it, though. Italian irredentism with respect to Istria and Dalmatia is a case in point. Because the fascist atrocities in these regions remain unknown to most Italians, they still perceive them as their own. An Italian version of the cleansing trials would have barred such attitudes for all times, as witnessed by the near absence of irredentism in Germany. But it is good to remember that the Americans are to blame for the Italian blind spot. This was their misguided reward for the little bit of help they got in the last couple of years of World War II on the Italian peninsula. Any serious review of the cruelest years of Mussolini’s reign must thus focus on the American occupation following the war.