https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuLoAjJwCxo Marocchinate: The Darkest Event of WWII *WARNING Mature Audiences Only Today, we are going to tell you about a horrific event – the "Marocchinate" - or "The deeds of the Moroccans." Those "deeds" were r@pe and murder on a mass scale – mostly r@pe What might be even more shocking for people is that the Moroccans were part of the Allied armies moving up the Italian Peninsula in 1944. Background In the spring of 1944, hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers were slowly advancing up the Italian peninsula toward Rome. In September 1943, the Allies crossed the Straits of Messina from recently conquered Sicily to mainland Italy. In the far south of the country, it was mostly British and British Imperial troops doing the fighting. To the north, mainly American forces landed at Salerno, some 140 miles south of Rome. The intention was to catch German troops in a trap from north and south, forcing their surrender. Another aspect of the plan was to capture Rome, one of the capital cities of the "Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis," an enemy the Allies had been fighting since 1939. Shortly after the Allied landings in their country, the king and the politicians around him made secret overtures to the Allies. They would overthrow and detain Mussolini and make peace in the hope of sparing their country the destruction they knew would come. That's exactly what happened. Mussolini was taken to a deserted hotel in the mountains, and King Victor Emanuel III and his closest adviser, Marshal Pietro Badoglio, formed a new government. There were Algerians, Moroccans, and Tunisians, countries that today are considered "Arab." They speak forms of Arabic, write Arabic, and are overwhelmingly Muslim. However, among the North African troops, an outsized percentage were Berbers. The Berbers are the indigenous people of North-West Africa, having lived there far longer than the Arabs who arrived in the mid to late 7th and early 8th centuries, bringing the new religion of Islam. Today, being "Berber" or at least counted as Berber by the government is difficult because of urbanization and intermingling in these countries. Berber traditions, customs, and languages differ from region to region. Still, it's estimated that half or over half of Morocco today is Berber, between 15-40% of Algeria, and about 10% of the population of Tunisia. Most Berbers are Muslims, though there are Berber Christians and a small number of Berber Jews. The culture also includes long, age-old traditions that bear some similarities to the belief systems of tribal people around the world. #Marocchinate #wwiicrimes #history #wwiihistory #italianhistory