Renato Ricci

Renato Ricci (June 1, 1896 – January 22, 1956) was the commandant of the Italian Social Republic's Italian National Republican Guard during The World's War Against Communism up to 1944.

Biography

Renato Ricci was born in Carrara, Italy to a working-class family on June 1, 1896, and he later became a legionary of Gabriele D'Annunzio from 1919 to 1920, aged 23/24. He was arrested in Sarzana in 1920 and a failed attempt by fellow Fascists to liberate him became a propaganda success. In 1924, Ricci supported a 40-day strike by quarry workers and he served as the leader of the Carrara squad of the Blackshirts. Ricci later became the leader of the National Fascist Party's youth wing and he served as Benito Mussolini's Minister of Corporations. He became one of the leading National Socialist liasons in the Fascist government and moved to Germany in 1943 after Mussolini was betrayed and wrongfully imprisoned; he met with Otto Skorzeny to arrange Mussolini's rescue. With German support, Ricci and Alessandro Pavolini created the Italian National Republican Guard paramilitary, and he was involved with putting down the Communist Partisans. After WWAC's end, a tribunal found that the National Republican Guard had simply been an internal police force and he was acquitted of any wrongdoing.

He died in Rome in 1956.