Giovanni Mass

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Giovanni Messe as General (around 1940)
Giovanni Mass with Knight's Cross when visiting troops on the Eastern Front in 1942 or 1943

Giovanni Messe (born December 10, 1883 in Mesagne , † December 18, 1968 in Rome ) was an Italian officer, most recently Marshal of Italy . After the Second World War , Messe went into politics.

Life

Messe began his military career in 1901 as a volunteer. He took part as a sergeant in the Italo-Turkish War and the conquest of Libya in 1911, where he was appointed lieutenant and thus an officer at the end of the war . In 1915 he was promoted to captain and returned to Italy; from 1916 he took part in the First World War. Italy entered the war on the side of the Entente in May 1915 . Mass was again highly decorated; at the end of the war he was major and commander of an Arditi battalion .

After being used in Albania in 1923, Messe was appointed Lieutenant Colonel Field Adjutant to King Victor Emmanuel III. In 1927 he became colonel and for eight years commander of the 9th Bersaglieri - regiment . In 1935, as brigadier general, he briefly took over the leadership of the 3rd rapid brigade in Verona. As deputy commander of the Cosseria infantry division , he was involved in the final phase of the war in Ethiopia . In 1936 he received the command of the 3rd Rapid Division Principe Amedeo Duca d'Aosta in Verona and was promoted to major general at the same time . In April 1939, Messe became deputy commander of the Italian expeditionary corps for the occupation of Albania , then in 1940 the commanding general of an army corps for special use. With this he took part in the war against Greece and was finally appointed lieutenant general.

After the beginning of the German attack on the Soviet Union , from July 17, 1941, Messe commanded the Italian expeditionary corps fighting on the German side in Russia ( Corpo di spedizione italiano in Russia ) , which in July 1942 in XXXV. Army Corps was renamed and remained under his command until the end of 1942. On January 23, 1942, he received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross . Messe was considered one of the most capable Italian officers of the Second World War and he was the only non-German officer who ever received command of German units. During the fighting in Tunisia in February 1943 he distinguished himself as a general with his troops of the Italian 1st Army ( Field Marshal Erwin Rommel commanded Army Group Africa until March 9, 1943 ). Messe managed to slow down the Anglo-American advance considerably with resolute counter-attacks . On May 12, 1943, he was appointed Marshal by Mussolini . However, Messe could no longer prevent the defeat of the Axis powers in North Africa; he surrendered to the Allies on May 13th (the German troops in North Africa capitulated partly on May 9th and partly on May 12th).

Respected by the Allies, he did not become a prisoner of war, but after a trip to London joined the Kingdom of Italy, which was fighting on the Allied side, and shortly afterwards became the new Chief of the General Staff.

After the war he wrote the book La Guerra al Fronte Russo about his experiences in the Russian war. The German translation was published in 1948 as “The War in the East” (with 12 sketches) by Thomas Verlag, Zurich. In 1946 his book Come fini la guerra in Africa: la Prima Armata Italiana was published in Tunisia .

After the Second World War, Messe went into politics. He campaigned for the preservation of the monarchy, which was however abolished by the referendum of June 2 and 3, 1946. In 1953 Messe became senator for the monarchist party Partito Nazionale Monarchico (from 1954 Partito Monarchico Popolare ), then in 1961 a member of parliament . As a candidate for the Liberal Party , he was re-elected in the April 1963 election. Until 1968 he was mainly active in the Defense Committee.

Messe died in Rome on December 18, 1968 at the age of 85.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ^ Rizzoli Editore (Milan).