War crimes

The closet of shame and removal of impunity for war crimes Nazi-Fascists, 1943-2001



Acquasparta  is a secluded street, yet in a very central: between Parione and Tor di Nona, a few steps from Piazza Navona. A good stretch is bounded by Cesi Palace, which is home to the Military Prosecutor General's Office at the Supreme Court of Cassation. The building is partially hidden by three giant poplars but the tendency to conceal grows exponentially if you enter the building itself. There for fifty years, in a wooden cabinet ministerial model, with the doors lean against a wall and the entrance to the closet protected by an iron gate locked, were collected and hidden 695 files containing allegations of war crimes committed in Italy in the period 1943-45 by German soldiers.

This is unfortunately true story told with the rigor of the researcher as a scholar of fascism, Mimmo Franzinelli, which examined the material after the mid-nineties the cupboard was bare and local prosecutors were able to use and act on documents gathered there. The mechanism of the removal and concealment was articulated, the realpolitik involved nationally and internationally and has, as the historian finds, first names, last names and political affiliations, just as war criminals reported.



The memory of the massacres

The six hundred days of employment in Italy operated by the German army, which had in its service members in the Republic of Salò, were experienced by populations in the center and north of the peninsula as a nightmare of violence and terror.

Resistant to the repression of organized guerrilla bands and in the nuclei of gappisti, a crackdown by special divisions of the Wehrmacht which stood out among the paratroopers of the 'Goering' and Republicans departments of the Decima Mas, the Black Brigades, the National Republican Guard and the Legion Tagliamento, were added even heinous crimes and massacres against civilians. The massacres began with the retreating Germans to the north, one of the first to Caiazzo in the province of Caserta hits for the list of the 23 victims (the brothers Perrone: Elena four years, Margherita 6, 9 Antoinette, Joseph 12; Albanian brothers: Angelina 12, Anthony 14, Helen 16, and the brothers Carmela D'Agostino 6 years old, Ursula 8, Anthony 10, Xavier 12). Massacres of children. And there were a few.

In a long and sad list the author recalls the massacres in alphabetical order. Here's the bloodier: Arezzo June 17 '44 224 victims and then July 16 shooting of another 200 people. A Badicroce (Ar) June 25 '44 with 80 Italians were shot and bludgeoned to death. Still nell'aretino in Castelnuovo Sabbioni July 4th '44 72 burned with flamethrowers and three days after 200 shot, also there many children. In Castelnuovo Val di Cecina (Pi) June 14 '44 83 people killed by the fascists led by German officers. A Chiesina (Fi) August 23 '44 314 shot or killed with bayonets. A Cicalaia (Pt) in the summer of '44, the population was locked up in a church with the doors locked and were detonated mines: 60 deaths. In Civitella della Chiana (Ar) June 29 '44 200 victims. A Fragheto (Ps) in August '44 80 shot. In Genoa in July '44 70 political prisoners forced to dig their own graves and then shot by the Republican National Guard. A Fondotoce (Lake Maggiore) in August '44 20 Jews drowned in the lake and shot 41 from the National Republican Guard. A Marzabotto (Bo) in September '44 955 killed (216 children under twelve years old, 316 women), with the villages of the district of Monte Sole victims went up in 1830. Modena August '44 A 120 shot. A Monsummano (Pt) July 23 '44 300 killed. In Rome, March 24 '44 execution of 335 people with a gunshot wound to the neck in the Cave Ardeatine, as a reprisal for the partisan attack of the previous day via Rosella. In S. Anna di Camaiore (Lu) in August '44 mangled the 560 inhabitants of the entire population; Stia (Ar) in April '44 103 victims. In Trieste, between 15 and 29 April '44 51 hostages killed, then 100 and even 60, all killed in retaliation for the killing of German soldiers, the 77 hostages were hanged from trees in an urban street. A Vallucciole (Ar) 230 civilians murdered in the summer of '44.

The odious practice of reprisals practiced with the ratio of one to ten (ten executions for every German soldier killed) also reproduced by us that climate butcher that the Nazis had already experienced in Ukraine and Yugoslavia, where the equation stragista saliva even against one percent.

This conduct, which was contrary to all military code, in addition to showing total disregard for human life and the fate of the enemy, placed in a position of inferiority even ally, as a fascist when it avenged its value is halved compared to the German soldier in the proportion of five to one, five executions for each enemy killed fascist.

One of the methods for "spectacle" of the implementation was the gallows, as they remember this day in Bassano, whose tree-lined avenue thirty-one young people were murdered and left to dangle long exposure according to the grim ritual of death which so appealed to the SS and saloini.



Mussolini knew

During the entire span of the twenty months of CSR Mussolini was informed by a large amount of reports of its officers on the most important military events, including the barbaric Nazi reprisals and his men (the author reproduces some despatches). Beyond formal letters of protest to the ambassador of the Reich in Italy, Rudolf Rahn, and stigmatization towards the work of private police in the service of the Nazis, Mussolini did not do much. And if in a note to Rahn said it "can not long bear indirect responsibility for the massacre of women and children" in fact he was never able, not only to prevent, but even to be heard by his loyal and bloodthirsty mob, who claimed the squads of twenty years. Neither had any power to an ally who regarded him as head of a puppet government, incapable of any initiative without its political and military protection.

Already in the autumn of '44 the Allies liberated territories in central Italy gathered evidence still lives on the terrible massacres perpetrated by nazifascismi: you still crying and burying the dead were not spared children, pregnant women, octogenarians; villages and charred bodies, people slaughtered in the street, or unburied corpses dumped in mass graves were a chilling scene of death.

And if in those places in the weeks and months following the end of the war graves and memorials sprang up spontaneously, the season of the complaints of crimes did not last long. By dispossessing the Parri government took place in the autumn of '45 the so-called 'North Wind', supported by the forces that had contributed most to the Resistance, was caged. The government passed the Democrat De Gasperi who kept it for eight legislatures until '53. The Italian Communist Party, leader of Garibaldi with its 50,000 fighters of the Liberation struggle, he found the solution to support broad amnesty issued by the Keeper of Togliatti June 22, 1946. With it in a short time more than 40,000 fascists of CSR returned to freedom and the idea of ​​'cleansing' much courted definitely waned. Indeed shortly after the partisans were having to defend itself from investigations by the prosecution that accused them of crimes against the fascists.



Some sentences and the removal of state

Death sentences, though in some cases hit hierarchs as Pavolini, Farinacci, Buffarini Guidi and bloodthirsty as Peter Koch, leader of the gang of torturers Villa Fossati and pension Jaccarino, in others they were condoned. It happened to General Gnr Biagioni, Federal Commissioner in the area dell'Apuania, where partisans and civilians were persecuted and massacred. So for a Caruso (Quaestor of Rome compiler of the lists of prisoners delivered to Kappler for the slaughter of Ardeatine) who ended up shot, however, in September '44 with the war still going on, there were those who like Basile, head of the province of Genoa coadiuvava that the Germans in the crackdown on the territory, he avoided the death penalty.

Not to mention the favors received by the butcher of Ethiopia Rodolfo Graziani and Julio Valerio Borghese, the commander of the Decima Mas devoted to capture, torture and hanging of patriots. After the war both men were aided by British and U.S. intelligence services to save his life. Borghese will be used by the services themselves first as a spy and as a potential coup.

Many Nazi war criminals benefited from favorable treatment. The processes set in motion by the military judiciary British Embassy in Italy and celebrated especially in '46 and '47 saw commute the sentences of capital to prison because he was Italian legislation abolishing the death penalty. The General von Mackensen (former commander of the 14th Army) and Kurt Maltzer (former commander of Rome) were sentenced to life imprisonment. And if Maltzer died in prison, his colleague returned to freedom in 1954. Whilst Churchill and General Alexander expressed a favorable opinion for the commutation of the sentence to the Nazis another hierarch, Wehrl in '52 was released from prison for health reasons.

General Max Simon, commander of the infamous 16th Panzer Grenadier Reichsführer (battalions composed of young 17-18years and also multi-ethnic unity of Alsace, Italian, Croatian, Belgian, Dutch in the summer of '44 had sprinkled the blood Tosco Emilian) found itself after the initial sentencing to death sentenced to life imprisonment. So 21 years in prison and ended up free in 1954.

And there were also those who mocked top officials of the Italian State with daring escapes covered by our Ministry of Defense and the Carabinieri: Colonel Kappler, one of those responsible for the massacre of Ardeatine. That while serving a life sentence disappeared Celio Military Hospital in Rome, August 15 '77, carried in a suitcase dall'anziana wife (sic).

The major Reder, who is also the 16th Panzer Grenadier Reichsführer, after he received a life sentence by the Court of Bari in 80 day release. In 85 the Prime Minister Bettino Craxi gave him his release. Back in Austria, the former SS officer called the instance of forgiveness forwarded twenty years before a move of his Italian lawyer: he had nothing to regret.



From sentences to amnesty and reintegration

It is needless to mention that beyond the process symbol of Nuremberg, which on 1 October '46 he made his death sentence by Goering, Von Ribentropp and a dozen other Nazi war criminals, the courts set up in the area of employment pronunziarono not many exemplary punishment. The death sentences of the Americans were 100 and 500 prison sentences. In the zone controlled by the French, there were just as many death sentences to prison and 1,500, while the British capital punishment decreed 230 and 500 imprisonments.

But at the beginning of the fifties, which opened for the clash between the block of the Atlantic Pact and the Soviet Union, the U.S. government assigned to the Military Modification Board chaired by General Handy reviewing many judgments of military courts, so that only a small percentage of convictions was applied. The reductions in pain and imperfections in convicted war criminals went to the fifties. Among other mass murderers in '56 Peiper was released from prison, the scourge of Boves.

In the period mentioned in resurrecting a revanchist Nazi Germany with relief societies for members of the SS strong six affiliated groups. Were created 526 local branches of the Wehrmacht, Kesselring There he devoted himself to natural death which occurred in 1960. '52 In the ex-combatants even organized pilgrimages to the sites of major battles.

In this climate Friedrich Engel, SS colonel and chief dell'Aussenkomando, the Nazi security service in Liguria, was the protagonist of an amazing story. As the person responsible for the massacre of Benedicta (147 partisans captured during the raid of April '44 and shot) plus the slaughter of the Passo del Turchino, where in May '44 were taken and shot 59 political prisoners, was imprisoned by the Americans near Frankfurt . But already in 1947, escaped and hid himself under a false name and the '54 in his country felt so safe that came out of the closet with their personal details. In '71 he came to testify in favor of Bosshammer, deportatore of Jews from Genoa, without which no German court asked the account of the past.

What is of further insult to the thousands of Italian victims of Nazi atrocities (in those twenty months were massacred between 12,000 and 15,000 people) was the use of German criminals inteligences in the U.S. and UK. It was in full 'cold war' and they were adepts of the Third Reich became an excellent credit card function in anti-communist.

The most dramatic was the case of Eugen Dollmann did in '46 to escape from a prison camp allied to Rome and used for espionage Use. While Theodor Saevecke - collaborator of Eichmann in the genocide of the Jews, that the anti-fascist Milan knew worked well because the Hotel Regina also torturing them with dogs - after the war he worked with the American services. He was also a government advisor in the FRG, director of schools, police and deputy chief of the Security Police in Bonn until '71.

The SS major Karl Hass, implicated in the massacre of Ardeatine Just after the war entertained relations with Western intelligence services and was able to live undisturbed in Italy without having to answer the serious incident of the massacre. He worked for the U.S. espionage for Germany and then from '48 to Italian. Even fascists of the Decima Mas as Borghese received offers of cooperation by the Office of Strategic Service function anticommunist.



Who hid

Italian politicians who organized and covered the concealment of the documents on Nazi crimes have names and faces. At first the pair of the Republican Party-Sforza Pacciardi, that between '47 and '53 were respectively Minister of Foreign Affairs and Defence, followed by the two departments and the Martin Liberal Democrat Taviani. The latter theorized raw realpolitik with the need to rearm Germany Atlantic Alliance's anti-Soviet. The design started from the top with the directives issued by the United States in more than a De Gasperi government. The acquiescence of the rulers centrist Christian Democrats and their allies did not change in subsequent years with the Government Signs (1955-57).

On the part of the government was given to the attorneys general military initially Corsairs and Mirabella and for a long period Henry Santacroce, dropping in total oblivion to the documentation on the massacres in Italy accumulated from '44 onwards. Especially Santacroce kept watch on the cabinet of the Prosecutor with a long obsequiously zeal age of sixteen from 1958 to '74, the year before his death. And the cover-up was so systematic that the five military prosecutors who succeeded him were totally ignorant of the presence of those complaints.

Initial investigation by Italian magistrates have launched only in the mid nineties with the majority of war criminals disappeared supervening old age.



Source : http://www.ecomancina.com/straginascoste.htm