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Police

"The OVRA, unoffically known as the Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism (Italian: Opera Vigilanza Repressione Antifascismo), was the secret police of the Kingdom of Italy during the reign of King Victor Emmanuel III. It was founded in 1927 under the regime of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. The OVRA was the Italian precursor of Nazi Germany's secret police. Mussolini's secret police were assigned to stop any anti-fascist activity or sentiment. Approximately 50,000 OVRA agents infiltrated most aspects of domestic life in Italy. The OVRA, headed by Arturo Bocchini, never appeared in any official document, so the official name of the organization still remains unclear."1

"Bocchini appointed inspector Francesco Nudi as head of the OVRA. Nudi was later replaced by Guido Leto. The OVRA compiled files on around 130,000 potential subversives with the aid of a network of approximately 100,000 informants, and by 1930 they were organising around 20,000 raids each week. It is believed that about 6,000 of the people arrested by the OVRA, mainly communists and members of the Giustizia e Libertà, were either tried by the Tribunale Speciale or sent into exile on remote Mediterranean islands. The conditions in these places were extremely poor, so many anti-fascists simply left Italy for their own safety.

"It is known that Heinrich Himmler met with Bocchini repeatedly and modeled the organization of Nazi Germany's secret police on that of the OVRA. A secret protocol was signed on 2 April 1936 by the heads of the two police organizations to further cooperation and collaboration. One of the chief duties of the OVRA was to operate and maintain the Casellario Politico Centrale [it] (CPC), a special archive where all personal information about known "subversives" was dutifully compiled to create a "personal profile" containing all data concerning the subject's education, culture, and habits, down to minute details about personal character and sexual orientation."

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OVRA