LEGIONNAIRES: Mussolini’s Italians in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1937)

The Civil War through a legionnaire’s lens

On 11 February 1937 Guglielmo Sandri, a lieutenant in the Littorio Division of the Corpo Truppe Volontarie (Italian Corps of Volunteer Troops) disembarked in Spain. These troops stayed in the country until May 1939, during which time they participated in almost all the military actions undertaken by the Italian Fascists in support of the military uprising.

His photographs make it possible to follow, as if on a map, the long route taken by the Italian troops in Spain from their disembarkation to the crushing defeat in Guadalajara, the War in the North with the capture of Burgos, San Sebastian and Santander, the Aragonese and Mediterranean campaigns, the decisive battle of the Ebro, the fall of Barcelona and, finally, the journey home with the victors’ disembarkation in Naples.

The pictures chosen for this exhibition from Guglielmo Sandri’s unpublished photographic archive bear witness to the collaboration of two Fascist regimes and to a military intervention that involved more troops than many people have been willing to acknowledge.

The photographs show us the Spanish Civil War through the lens of one of Mussolini’s legionnaires. They are a valuable and important documentary legacy that forms part of our collective memory.

Wilhelm Schrefler / Guglielmo Sandri (1905-1979)

Wilhelm Schrefler was born in 1905 in Merano/Meran, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is in the minority German area of Alto Adige/ Südtirol, which became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1919 after the defeat and dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of the First World War.

Orphaned as a child, he spent many years in financial difficulty having but sporadic employment. In his mid-30s he embarked upon a military career, ten years after having completed his military service as a reserve officer, and shortly after having Italianised his name to Guglielmo Sandri. He joined the Corpo Truppe Volontarie (CTV) (Italian Corps of Volunteer Troops) sent to Spain by Mussolini in support of the rebels and he remained in Spain as an officer in the Italian army from February 1937 until May 1939, a period in which he took thousands of photographs on his own initiative. He was seriously wounded during the Second World War and was passed into the reserve on medical grounds in 1949. After living for many years in Bologna, he returned to the village of Vipiteno/Sterzing in Alto Adige/Südtirol, where he died in 1979.

Leaflet