The extensive and articulated report by General Hans Leyers, Plenipotentiary for Armament and War Production for Italy of the Third Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production, represents a document of great value, which confirms some hypotheses and offers new elements on the characters of the German occupation from an economic point of view and on the complexity of the relations between the various structures and actors, from the Italian industrialists to the organs of the RSI, to the German military and to the offices in charge of economic exploitation. Between 1943 and 1945 the Plenipotentiary pursued in a pragmatic way, and aiming at developing the collaboration of Italian industrialists, a continuous adaptation to a rapidly worsening military situation, while the Italian economic world acted thinking about the scenery that would be outlined in the postwar period.
