The aim of this essay is to retrace Giuseppe Gueli’s life and career: a police offi cer (member of the P.S., the Italian public safety), who had formed during the last years of the liberal period, and who went through Italian Fascism and its development into a totalitarian regime. Beginning his career alongside Cesare Mori, Gueli fi lled in fact relevant positions within the Italian police as it had been organized by Arturo Bocchini: at fi rst in Alto Adige (South Tyrol) to set up the awkward system of the border police, in the Thirties Gueli moved to Sicily where he led a second repression campaign against the mafi a and fi nally, during the Forties, he became chief of the Special Inspectorate of Public Safety for the Venezia Giulia, established to fi ght against the anti-fascist forces, especially against the Slovene and Croatian partisans. Held responsible for all kinds of violence, the Inspectorate became part of the Triestine SS after September 1943, and Gueli underwent a trial in which he was condemned for collaborationism.
