Italian war crimes are a well documented aspect of the history of Italy during the 20th century, but because the British government with the beginning of cold war saw in Pietro Badoglio a guarantee of an anti-communist post-war Italy it did not extradict him after the war. The repression of the collective memory of the crimes committed during Fascist period by Italy led eventually to historical revisionism, especially in relation to foibe.

During the first half of the 20th century, Italy was involved in several colonial wars, notably against the then only independent African states, Ethiopia (the Abyssinian war), and in World War II, up to September 1943 as one of the Axis Powers and later assisting to some extent the Allies, except for the Italian Social Republic of Salò that continued the allegiance to the Axis Powers, i.e. Germany. The military campaigns, except the actions of the Italian partisans, were led by the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

It was thanks to the complicity of the British Colonial authorities that Italian war criminals did not face Nuremberg-style prosecution for their crimes. The British may have been unhappy about the stifling of their Colonial plans to link their East African Colonial Empire by Emperor Haile Selassie's refusal to allow his country to be part of it. The Italians for their part went from being criminals who had lost any of their rights to making claims on the territories they bombed and poisoned. In the strangest vagaries of war, the Ethiopians had to argue with the British standing as observers as to why they "deserved" to get the territories seized from them returned to them. The Italians fielded their former soldiers in influence peddling campaigns in protests demanding the return of their Italian "liberators".

War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict (also known as international humanitarian law) giving rise to individual criminal responsibility. Examples of such conduct include "murder, the ill-treatment or deportation of civilian residents of an occupied territory to slave labor camps", "the murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war", the killing of prisoners, "the wanton destruction of cities, towns and villages, and any devastation not justified by military, or civilian necessity".

Similar concepts, such as perfidy, have existed for many centuries as customs between civilized countries, but these customs were first codified as international law in the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. The modern concept of a war crime was further developed under the auspices of the Nuremberg Trials based on the definition in the London Charter that was published on August 8, 1945. (Also see Nuremberg Principles.) Along with war crimes the charter also defined crimes against peace and crimes against humanity, which are often committed during wars and in concert with war crimes.

The Italian Wars, often referred to as the Great Italian Wars or the Great Wars of Italy and sometimes as the Habsburg–Valois Wars or the Renaissance Wars, were a series of conflicts from 1494 to 1559 that involved, at various times, most of the city-states of Italy, the Papal States, most of the major states of Western Europe (France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, England, and Scotland) as well as the Ottoman Empire. Originally arising from dynastic disputes over the Duchy of Milan and the Kingdom of Naples, the wars rapidly became a general struggle for power and territory among their various participants, and were marked with an increasing number of alliances, counter-alliances, and betrayals.

Following the Wars in Lombardy between Venice and Milan, which ended in 1454, Northern Italy had been largely at peace during the reigns of Cosimo de' Medici and Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence, with the notable exception of the War of Ferrara in 1482-1484.

Spain had promised not to interfere with France's adventures in Italy in return for Roussillon and Cerdagne, which were ceded to Spain under the Treaty of Barcelona of 1492.

Silvana Arbia (born 19 November 1952 in Senise, Italy) is the current Registrar of the International Criminal Court. As such, she is the principal administrative officer of the Court. After gaining experience as a judge and prosecutor in Italy, Arbia made her international début as a Senior Trial Attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Arbia obtained her master's degree in law at the University of Padua in Italy in 1976 and, while working, continued her training in order to specialise in European law (at the Academy of European Law in Florence) and international law (at The Hague Academy of International Law). She undertook additional training at the René Cassin International Institute of Human Rights in 1989 and at the Canadian Human Rights Foundation in 1995.

While practising law in Venice, Arbia passed a public competitive examination to become a judge and prosecutor in Italy, positions which she held until 1999. Amongst other functions, she sat on the first criminal chamber of the Appeals Court.

Guido Westerwelle (German pronunciation: [ˈɡiːdo ˈvɛstɐˌvɛlə]; born December 27, 1961) is a German liberal politician, who, since 28 October 2009, has been serving as the Foreign Minister in the second cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel, and who was Vice Chancellor of Germany from 2009 to 2011. He is the first openly gay person to hold either of those positions. He has been the chairman of the Free Democratic Party of Germany (FDP) since May 2001, but stepped down in 2011. A lawyer by profession, he has been a member of the Bundestag since 1996.

Guido Westerwelle was born in Bad Honnef in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. He graduated from Ernst Moritz Arndt Gymnasium in 1980 after academic struggles resulted in his departure from previous institutions where he was considered an average student at best, but substandard otherwise. He studied law at the University of Bonn from 1980 to 1987. Following the First and Second State Law Examinations in 1987 and 1991 respectively, he began practicing as an attorney in Bonn in 1991. In 1994, he earned a doctoral degree in law from FernUniversität Hagen.