Giuseppe Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo

Giuseppe Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo (born May 26, 1901 in Rome ; † March 24, 1944 there ) was an Italian pioneer officer and resistance fighter.

Life

He came from an old Piedmontese aristocratic family (such as the former Ferrari boss Luca Cordero di Montezemolo ) who had produced numerous officers , diplomats and cardinals (most recently Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo ) for centuries . Giuseppe di Montezemolo volunteered in the Italian army at the age of 17 and took part in the First World War. He then studied civil engineering and taught as a captain at the military academy. After a general staff training course , he commanded a telecommunications battalion (at the time part of the pioneer troop ), with which he also took part in the Spanish Civil War . From 1940 he served in the General Staff ( Comando Supremo ). In June 1943 he commanded a pioneer association as a colonel , and a month later he became the office manager of the new Italian Prime Minister Pietro Badoglio . In the city of Rome occupied by German troops, he worked from September 1943 under the code name of engineer Giacomo Cateratto in a monarchist resistance group , for which he also maintained contact with the Badoglio government , the Allies and the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale . The German occupation authorities and the fascist government of the Italian Social Republic soon put a high bounty on Montezemolo, who they arrested after a few weeks in the house of his comrade-in-arms, Lieutenant Filippo De Grenet. Both men were tortured for a long time in the Roman branch of the SD in Via Torquato Tasso . However, they did not reveal any information about the resistance. Montezemolo's teeth were gradually torn out, then the fingernails and toenails. Montezemolo and De Grenet were shot by the SD during the massacre in the Ardeatine Caves on March 24, 1944, in retaliation after the attack by a Roman group of the Resistancea on the unit of a South Tyrolean SS police regiment . For every German police officer killed, the SD demanded ten prisoners from the director of the Rebibbia prison in Rome. Among the prisoners handed over to the SS were Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo and De Grenet. The two officers were posthumously awarded the highest Italian military order.