The OVRA, whose most probable name was Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism (), was the secret police of the Kingdom of Italy, founded in 1927 under the regime of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and during the reign of King Victor Emmanuel III. The OVRA was the Italian precursor of the German Gestapo. 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.
Origin
In the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Mussolini by the young Anteo Zamboni, in Bologna on 31 October 1926, a swath of repressive legislation was swiftly enacted by the Italian government. All political parties, associations and organizations opposed to the Fascist regime were dissolved, and everybody who was proven to have "committed or expressed intention to commit actions directed to violently subvert the social, economic or national order or undermine national security or to oppose or obstruct the actions of the Government" could be sent into exile in remote locations by the police.
On November 25, 1926, the new Legge di Difesa dello Stato (State Defense Law) instituted a Tribunale Speciale (Special Court) to try those who were accused of being "enemies of the State", and sentence them to harsh prison terms or even to death, as the death penalty had also been restored under the new law.
Priority was given to the reorganization of the National Police Force, known as Pubblica Sicurezza (PS), under career police officer Arturo Bocchini. The new Code of Laws concerning Public Security (Testo Unico delle Leggi di Pubblica Sicurezza, TULPS) enacted in 1926 and revised in 1931, specified a "Department of Political Police" as a special division of the force with the aim of controlling and preventing political dissent. Later, this division came to be known as OVRA, although its existence remained secret until December 1930 when the official press agency Agenzia Stefani released a statement quoting the OVRA as a "special section" of the police force.
Keeping the fascist regime in power
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 the Gestapo on that of the OVRA. A secret protocol was signed on April 2, 1936, by the heads of the two police organisations, to further cooperation and collaboration.
One of the chief duties of the OVRA was to operate and maintain the (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.
Spying on the Vatican
A major duty for the OVRA was spying on Pope Pius XI, as the Roman Catholic Church was an extremely powerful institution in Italian life that the Fascist regime never controlled, instead having a partnership with. It was a common practice of the OVRA to catch Roman Catholic priests in flagrante delicto and blackmail them into spying for the OVRA, which was therefore always very well informed about the affairs of the Holy See. The American historian David Kertzer described the OVRA's spy network within the Vatican as "robust", comprising four highly placed clerics and a number of lay Vatican employees. Mussolini was fascinated by reports of homosexual activity among senior Catholic clerics and always had them sent to his office for him to read.