Short Explanation to the figure of the Italian:
"Decima Flottiglia MAS" means "
Decima Flottiglia Motoscafi Armati Siluranti" (10th Flottilla of fast Motor Torpedoboats) of the Italiajn Navy...:
And the so-called "Black Prince" was the multi-award winning naval officer Junio Valerio Principe Borghese, first submarine commander and then a commander of a MAS flottilla ...:
The name is a very ambiguous allusion to his black navy uniform but also to the fact that he played a role in the fascist movement of Mussolini, whose color was also black.
He joined the so-called "Republic of Salo", Mussolini founded after his fall as an Italian dictator under the protectorate of Hitler in northern Italy.
The 10th MAS flotilla, in whose uniform the figure shows him, was a unit of this "Republic of Salo" and consisted entirely of volunteers who felt it a disgrace to have betrayed Mussolini and the former German allies.
For the unit Borghese developed its own regulations, which are unique in military history:
There was equality between officers and troops (cloth of the same jacket for all, joint meals), promotions earned only in the field, death penalty for the soldiers guilty of theft, plunder, desertion or cowardice in the face of the enemy were.
So far did not even the Bolsheviks go!
Even after the war, the "Black Prince" remained true to the "movement".
In 1970 he was a co-initiator of a right-wing coup d'etat, but failed and went down in history under the name "Golpe Borghese".
So the nickname "black prince" can even go back to the uniform of the Italian Fascist party, which was also black ...:
Cheers
