Massacre in the Ardeatine Caves

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Entrance to the cave system (2005)
Entrance to the Fosse Ardeatine Memorial (2016), in the foreground the statue "I Martiri", in the background the mausoleum
Detailed view of the monumental concrete slab of the Fosse Ardeatine mausoleum (2017)

During the massacre in the Ardeatine Caves on March 24, 1944, 335 Italian civilians, including 75 Jewish hostages, were shot in the two connected cave passages in the south of Rome on Via Ardeatina in the Ardeatino district . The order was given by the officers in charge of the Wehrmacht , Field Marshal Albert Kesselring , Colonel General Eberhard von Mackensen and Lieutenant General Kurt Mälzer (City Commanders of Rome), in retaliation for the death of 33  South Tyrolean members of the Bolzano police regiment who had been killed the day before by one of the Resistancea carried out a bomb attack in Via Rasella. The massacre was organized and carried out by the commander of the security police and the SD in Rome, Herbert Kappler .

The attack on Via Rasella

On March 23, 1944 at around 3 p.m. at the intersection of Via Rasella and Via del Boccaccio, a bomb hidden in a garbage truck and a prepared mortar shell exploded . 33 members of the 11th Company of III. Battalions of the Bolzano police regiment were killed and 67 wounded. In addition, two Italian citizens died. The men of the “Bozen” regiment, one of four South Tyrolean police regiments, were armed with rifles and some with hand grenades and carried at least one machine gun with them, which was also used after the attack. That day the unit marched with their rifles fully loaded. The German officers may have expected difficulties because of the date. It was the 25th anniversary of the founding of the "Fasci di combattimento", the fascist fighting leagues known as " Black Shirts ".

A Roman group of the Resistancea had always registered the same route taken by the military unit to their guard duty at the Viminal , the attack planned for a long time and well prepared. She belonged to the Communist Party . The attack had been approved by the military committee of the National Liberation Committee ( Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale , CLN).

Preparation of the so-called expiatory measure

Arrest of civilians in front of the Palazzo Barberini (March 1944)
View down Via Rasella towards Palazzo Barberini (2018)
View from Via Rasella into Via del Boccaccio with the bullet holes still visible in the facade (2018)

On the day of the assassination, Colonel-General Eberhard von Mackensen, Commander-in-Chief of the 14th Army , Lieutenant General Kurt Mälzer, City Commander of Rome, and SS Obersturmbannführer Herbert Kappler discussed suitable reprisals . Kappler suggested shooting ten Italians for every German killed. He offered to find the victims for this in the prisons of the SS security service . Albert Kesselring agreed. That evening Hitler's approval of the proposal came from Rome; Colonel-General Alfred Jodl determined that the execution should be carried out by the next evening and that the security service, i.e. Kappler, be responsible.

Kappler had overestimated the number of death row inmates in the security service prisons, although those not yet sentenced to death were also included. As a result, he got into difficulties in carrying out the execution. The shooting of 320 people was ordered. When one of those injured in the attack died, it was about 330. The fascist police chief of Rome helped him out with inmates of Italian prisons and penal camps, but that was still not enough. The missing and five more requisitioned Kapplers among the Jews who had escaped deportations .

Kappler chose the Fosse Ardeatine as the location for the execution, some sandstone caves in the south of Rome near the Via Appia Antica .

shooting

The prisoners were taken to the Ardeatine Caves on trucks with their hands tied behind their backs with ropes. There, they were led in groups of five men in the caves had to kneel down there and got on command of hauptsturmführer Carl-Theodor Schütz a shot in the neck . SS-Hauptsturmführer Erich Priebke crossed their names off the list. The executions lasted from around 2 p.m. to around 7 p.m. When the piles of corpses got too high, the new victims had to lie on top of those who had already been killed. 80 to 90 SS men carried out the executions. The prisoners waiting outside the caves under guard could hear the gunfire. Kappler took part in the shootings. It was not checked whether the victims were dead. After the bloody act was over, the caves were blown up, some may have died in the process.

The victims

326 of the 335 victims have now been identified. Of the nine that were not identified, however, some names and groups of victims are known. Since more prisoners were driven to the scene than were on the death lists, 335 men were shot instead of 330. Most of them know their profession. The majority were political prisoners and intellectuals, numerous brothers, fathers and sons. Among them were 77 workers, 57 employees or civil servants, 54 people in commercial professions, 38 officers, including five generals, 17 street vendors, twelve farmers, twelve lawyers, nine students, eight artists, six architects or engineers, five professors or Teachers, five industrialists, five soldiers, four butchers, three doctors, a banker and a priest. The youngest dead was 15 years old, the oldest 74. 75 of them were considered Jews, including Heinz Erich Tuchmann, who had fled from Germany .

The persecution of the perpetrators

  • Colonel-General Alfred Jodl was sentenced to death in the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals . The sentence was carried out on October 16, 1946.
  • Field Marshal Albert Kesselring was convicted of shooting hostages in 1947 and was released in 1952.
  • Colonel-General Eberhard von Mackensen was sentenced to death in 1947 for the massacre. The sentence was reduced to 17 years imprisonment. He was released in 1952.
  • Lieutenant General Kurt Mälzer was sentenced to death in 1947 for the massacre. The sentence was toned down to imprisonment. He died in custody in 1952.
  • SS-Gruppenführer Wilhelm Harster , commander of the security police and the SD (BdS) in Italy since November 9, 1943, was convicted in the Netherlands and served six of twelve years' sentence there. No charges were brought because of the massacre.
  • SS-Obersturmbannführer Herbert Kappler was found guilty of all 335 killings by the “ Military Tribunal for the Rome District ” on July 20, 1948. In another case (against Albert Kesselring in Venice), however, a judge dropped the remark that "five men among the 335 were murdered" even if a reprisal rate of ten hostages was accepted for a killed soldier. This remark was later reinterpreted by Nazi defense lawyers into an actual international acceptance of such a repression quota, whereby they withheld the fact that Kappler had been sentenced not for five but for all 335 killings. On August 15, 1977, Kappler, who at that time was already seriously ill with cancer, was able to flee to Germany from a Roman military hospital with the help of his wife; he died six months later in Soltau .
  • SS-Hauptsturmführer Carl-Theodor Schütz was classified as a fellow traveler in 1950 by a ruling chamber and in 1952 was taken over into the " Organization Gehlen " (later the Federal Intelligence Service , BND). Personnel appraisal by Head of Office Reinhard Gehlen , 1957: "Characteristic, mature, sensitive ... personality ... always a role model". When the BND later wanted to part with all too Nazi-charged employees, Schütz was dismissed in 1964; He fought a severance payment of 70,000 DM in court and died in Cologne in 1985.
  • SS-Sturmbannführer Karl Hass lived under an assumed name in Italy. In 1998, a military court in Rome sentenced Hass to life imprisonment, which was commuted to house arrest. He died in 2004.
  • SS-Hauptsturmführer Erich Priebke fled to Argentina and lived there undisturbed for fifty years. He was extradited in 1996 and sentenced to life imprisonment as a war criminal in Italy in 1998, which was commuted to house arrest for reasons of age. He died in 2013.

Monument and mausoleum in the Fosse Ardeatine

GDR postage stamp (1974)
Statue "I Martiri" by Francesco Coccia at the entrance of the Fosse Ardeatine
Mausoleum of the Fosse Ardeatine

The first call for an architecture competition after the war in Rome was for the Fosse Ardeatine. The caves destroyed by the blasting should be uncovered and a memorial site should be built. The result of the competition held in 1945 is the current state: The grottoes have been excavated, the bodies recovered and identified as far as possible and buried in the mausoleum on the edge of the caves. The mausoleum or Sacrario (sanctuary) was designed by the architects Nello Aprile, Cino Calcaprina, Aldo Cardelli, Mario Fiorentino and Giuseppe Perugini. A monumental slab of concrete and stone - 25 meters wide, 50 meters long and around 3.5 meters high - rests on six slender concrete consoles that create a narrow strip of light running all around. The sarcophagi of the 335 victims are placed underneath in parallel double rows. The semi-darkness inside the Sacrario is reminiscent of the lighting in the caves. A square was laid out in front of the entrance to the Fosse and a bronze plaque with an inscription honoring the dead and warning posterity was placed at the entrance to the caves, as well as a statue I Martiri symbolizing the sacrifice of the dead , which was erected in 1950 by Francesco Coccia (1902– 1981) was designed. This facility, usually referred to as a mausoleo , was opened on March 24, 1949. The bronze entrance gate to the memorial and two other bronze gates in the cave system were added in 1951. All three are by the painter and sculptor Mirko Basaldella (1910–1969), who was born in Udine .

Above the actual memorial, on the left of the entrance, a museum of the Italian resistance has been set up in the small pine grove. The assassination and the execution of the hostages were interpreted as a symbol for the German occupation of Italy in general.

Artistic appraisals and further preoccupation with the events

The story of the massacre in the Ardeatine Caves was first filmed in 1962 by Filippo Walter Ratti as " Ten Italians for a German " ( Dieci italiani per un tedesco (Via Rasella) ) with Gino Cervi , Andrea Checchi and Sergio Fantoni . It shows the preparations for the massacre up to its implementation from the side of several selected victims as well as the side of the perpetrators, illuminates motivation and dealing with the inevitable. However, the names were changed for the film. The subject was again filmed in 1973 by the Italian director George P. Cosmatos in an Italian-French co-production, with Richard Burton in the lead role, under the title "Rappresaglia". The film was released in German under the title " Massacre in Rome - The Kappler Case " as well as under the belittling title "Tödlicher Errtum". In the end credits of the film, all the names of the people who were shot by the SS in the Ardeatine Caves in 1944, as well as their age and occupation are given. The viewer also learns what happened to the people responsible for the shooting after the end of the war. In the end credits of the film it is also pointed out that the Hague Land Warfare Regulations did not explicitly prohibit the shooting of hostages, reprisals and retaliatory measures during war. In 1983 there was another film adaptation of the events for a US-American-British-Italian television film under the title " In the tropics of the cross ". The film by Jerry London with Gregory Peck , Christopher Plummer , John Gielgud and Raf Vallone deals in particular with the role of the church and only deals with the massacre in passing.

When a resident of Via Rasella was asked why there was no memorial plaque there to commemorate the attack and the massacre, the answer was that the Comune had rejected it, but that instead it had been ordered that the renovation of the houses left traces of the devastation through the bomb would have to be preserved. They can also be clearly seen on some facades.

Pope Benedict XVI visited the site of the massacre shortly after the 67th anniversary on March 27, 2011, laid down a basket of red roses and prayed.

literature

  • Lorenzo Baratter: Dall'Alpenvorland a via Rasella. Storia dei reggimenti di polizia Sudtirolesi (1943–1945) . Publilux, Trento 2003.
  • Lorenzo Baratter: Le Dolomiti del Terzo Empire . Mursia, Milano 2005, ISBN 88-425-3463-3 (Testimonianze fra cronaca e storia).
  • Stefan Klemp: "Not determined". Police Battalions and the Post War Justice. A manual . 2nd edition, Klartext Verlag, Essen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8375-0663-1 , p. 53 ff.
  • Alessandro Portelli: L'ordine è già stato eseguito. Roma, le Fosse Ardeatine, la memoria. Donzelli, Roma 1999, ISBN 88-7989-616-4 (Saggi. Storia e scienze sociali).
  • Steffen Prauser: Murder in Rome? The attack in Via Rasella and the German retaliation in the Fosse Ardeatine in March 1944 . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 50, 2002, 2, ISSN  0042-5702 , pp. 269–302, online (PDF; 8 MB).
  • Joachim Staron: Fosse Ardeatine and Marzabotto. German war crimes and resistancea. History and national myth-making in Germany and Italy (1944–1999) . Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. 2002, ISBN 3-506-77522-7 (Schöningh collection on past and present) (also: Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 2001).
  • Gerald Steinacher : Roma, March 1944. Il Police Regiment Bozen e l'attentato di Via Rasella . In: Carlo Romeo , Piero Agostini (eds.): Trentino e Alto Adige . Province del Reich, Trento 2002, pp. 283-288.
  • Case No. 43rd Trial of General von Mackensen and General Maelzer. British Military Court, Rome. 18th – 30th November, 1945. Case No. 44th Trial of Albert Kesselring. British Military Court at Venice. 17th February – 6th May, 1947 . In: Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals. Selected and prepared by The United Nations War Crimes Commission . Volume VIII. London, HMSO 1948 (English), online (PDF; 5.3 MB).
  • Malte Herwig (to Carl-Th. Schütz): The indispensable . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , October 28, 2012, p. 13.

Fiction

  • Robert Katz : Rome 1943-1944. Occupiers, liberators and the Pope. Translation of Silja Recknagel. Magnus, Essen 2006, ISBN 978-3-88400-438-8 - Also deals with the massacre in the Ardeatine Caves and the attitude of Pope Pius XII . in this matter.

Web links

Commons : Massacre in the Ardeatine Caves  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Steffen Prauser: Murder in Rome? The attack in Via Rasella and the German retaliation in the Fosse Ardeatine in March 1944. Quarterly Issues for Contemporary History 2/2002, p. 289.
  2. ↑ Lorenzo Baratter: Francesco lo Sardo: Quelli del Bozen ( Review ( Memento from August 4, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ))
  3. ^ Corriere della Sera, March 23, 2012
  4. ^ Gerhard Schreiber: The Italian military internees in the German sphere of influence, 1943–1945. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-486-55391-7 , p. 125 f.
  5. ↑ Liliana Picciotto Fargion: Italy . in: dimension of genocide . Ed .: Wolfgang Benz, Oldenbourg 1991, ISBN 3-486-54631-7 , p. 225.
  6. ↑ Lord Mayor of the State Capital Magdeburg, campaign “Against Forgetting” together with Stolpersteine : We remember Heinz Erich Tuchmann
  7. ^ Gerhard Schreiber: The Italian military internees in the German sphere of influence, 1943–1945. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-486-55391-7 , pp. 120-125.
  8. ↑ Rafael Binkowski: Freedom for a Nazi Criminal? in: Stuttgarter Zeitung of November 15, 2019, p. 28.
  9. ↑ Georg Bönisch: His name is Priebke, in: DER SPIEGEL, issue 39, 1995
  10. ↑ Ten Italians for a German in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  11. ↑ massacre in Rome - The case Kappler in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  12. ↑ The Scarlet and the Black in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  13. ↑ Vatican Information Service, No. 20110223 (120) of February 24, 2011


Coordinates: 41 ° 51 ′ 25.9 ″  N , 12 ° 30 ′ 36.6 ″  E