Four days from Naples

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Naples, September 28, 1943

The Four Days of Naples (Italian: Quattro giornate di Napoli ) denotes the period from September 27 to 30, 1943, during which the people of Naples liberated themselves from occupation by German troops in an uprising during the Second World War .

Only one day later, on October 1st, did the first Allied troops march into Naples.

history

background

Between 1940 and 1943, Naples was repeatedly targeted by Allied air raids, which caused severe damage to the city and killed around 20,000 residents. Over 3,000 civilians died in the air raid on August 4, 1943. After the announcement of the armistice in Cassibile on September 8, 1943, chaos soon reigned in the city, as Italian military units disbanded and civil authorities only left their services in the face of the German military commandos taking power performed to a limited extent.

The landing of the Allies at Salerno, less than a hundred kilometers away, a day after the armistice was announced on September 9, caused additional unrest . The German General Staff was aware that they would soon have to withdraw from southern Italy and prepared corresponding ARLZ measures , which were based on the scorched earth principle and also affected the urban area of ​​Naples.

After school and student protests against the war had already started in early September, such actions intensified in the days after the armistice; however, they were now directed against the German occupying power. On September 10, the first bloody clashes between Italian soldiers, supported by some civilians, and German troops took place in the Piazza del Plebiscito and in the adjacent gardens of the Palazzo Reale . One day later, General Hermann Balck, commander of the XIV Panzer Corps responsible for the Naples area , issued the order to put down all armed resistance "brutally and without consideration for the civilian population". This order can be seen as a precedent for the radicalization of further German warfare in southern Italy.

As a result, the violence escalated. After the death of two German soldiers in the port of Naples, the district near the port was under fire from three heavy German anti-aircraft batteries. On September 12, in retaliation for four killed German soldiers, the national library in the Palazzo Reale was set on fire, shot at a gathering of people and several ships sunk in the Gulf of Naples . The new German city ​​commander , Colonel Walter Scholl, announced the state of siege and imposed curfews . The civilian population was obliged to surrender their weapons within 24 hours; for every German soldier killed, the execution of 100 Italian civilians was announced. On September 12, civilians were rounded up at various locations in and around Naples to watch the execution of Italian soldiers and police officers who had opposed the occupation forces in various ways. These measures only superficially calmed the situation in Naples. Of around 30,000 men between the ages of 18 and 33 who were to be committed to forced labor in four parts of the city in Northern Italy and Germany, 150 reported. Raids and executions followed. On September 23, City Commander Scholl ordered the evacuation of all the houses along the coast of Naples. At a distance of 300 meters from the sea, this affected around 240,000 citizens who had to leave their homes in a few hours. In this way, a military security area was supposed to be formed along the port, which indicated its destruction.

The riot

Scenes of the Four Days of Naples

The insurrection was triggered by a raid ordered for September 27th, which was carried out by troops of the 79th Panzer Grenadier Regiment belonging to the 16th Panzer Division . Several thousand residents were arrested during the operation, the information varies depending on the source between 2000, according to German deployment reports, and 8000 people according to the ANPI , who were supposed to be abducted as forced laborers. Some 400 to 500 armed civilians who resisted the measure embroiled German troops in fighting that quickly spread to other areas of the city and lasted all day. The first fighting broke out in the Vomero district when a German vehicle was stopped by insurgents at gunpoint and the driver was shot. An armory in Castel Sant'Elmo and the area around the Museo di Capodimonte were particularly hotly contested . Towards the end of the day, the rebels captured additional weapons in some barracks.

For the German occupation troops in Naples, the situation became critical on September 27th. Not only were they involved in numerous battles, but they were soon enclosed by the insurgents and some of the units were dispersed. The XIV. Panzer Corps had to bring in another battalion of the 79th Panzer Grenadier Regiment for reinforcement. The latter had the task of breaking open the enclosure and establishing connections with the German units, which only partially succeeded with significant losses. A connection with the city commandant Scholl could only be established towards evening. According to the German occupation troops, a “cleanup” of the city had become inevitable.

On September 28, the number of insurgents increased. There were violent shootings in the Materdei district, at Porta Capuana , around Castel Nuovo at the port, near Monteoliveto and other places. The insurgents were directed not only against the German occupation forces, but also against Italian fascists who had taken part in the raids. In the Vomero district, German units concentrated prisoners on the sports field Campo Sportivo del Littorio , today Stadio Arturo Collana , who were released the following day after negotiations.

The growing uprisings remained uncoordinated on the following September 29th; The first management structures of the Resistancea were only being set up elsewhere. On the Piazza Giuseppe Mazzini German units attacked battle tanks at what cost 12 insurgents life. Heavy fighting also broke out in the working-class district of Ponticelli, where German soldiers indiscriminately killed civilians. The area around the Capodichino airfield was also the scene of fighting . Negotiations between Colonel Walter Scholl and the Italian Lieutenant Enzo Stimolo began at the German headquarters in Corso Vittorio Emanuele , which had been attacked several times: there was a fundamental agreement on the release of the Italian prisoners and, in return, the free withdrawal of the German troops.

While the German troops began to withdraw from Naples on September 30th, the teacher Antonio Tarsia declared himself to be the leader of the rebels in Curia and took over command in Naples. The fighting in the city continued: from the heights of Capodimonte, German troops bombarded the area between Port'Alba and Piazza Mazzini all day , and the fighting continued around Porta Capuana . Retreating German troops continued to indiscriminately kill civilians and set buildings on fire, including the Villa Montesano in San Paolo Bel Sito with the most valuable holdings of the Naples State Archives, where irreplaceable historical documents were burned.

Evaluation and consequences

The withdrawal of German troops also took place because of the Allied troops approaching Naples from Nocera Inferiore . On the morning of October 1, 1943, the first Allied units reached the largely destroyed inner city of Naples. How many people lost their lives during the four days in Naples could not be conclusively determined, on the Italian side it was probably between 500 and 600. However, these figures do not show how many insurgents died in the fighting or how high the number of them Civilian population who died as a result of reprisals by the German occupation forces. Neither is the very likely significantly lower number of fallen German soldiers and those of the Italian fascists known.

It is not entirely clear which German units were all involved in the massacres of the civilian population during the four days of Naples. In addition to units of the 16th Panzer Division, units from the Parachute Panzer Division 1 Hermann Göring , the 3rd and 15th Panzer Grenadier Divisions and troops subordinate to the city commander Scholl were also involved in the actions in Naples .

After the withdrawal of the German occupation troops, the fighting for the city was not over. An air attack by the German air force that had already been ordered was canceled at the last moment, but the city was taken under artillery fire by the Germans. In addition, German pioneers had mined numerous buildings and fitted them with time fuses when they withdrew. Most of these mines could be tracked down and made harmless, but one hidden in the main post office exploded a week after the liberation, killing another 30 and injuring 80 others.

The uprising in Naples was supported by large parts of the population, even if the Germans spoke disparagingly of an uprising supported by the "rabble". In the four days of Naples not only politically active anti-fascists, but also intellectuals from the upper class, soldiers and officers of the Italian army as well as workers from the working-class neighborhoods of the city and farmers from the surrounding area took part. It was not a politically motivated or organized uprising, but a spontaneous reaction to the raids and forced deportations as well as to the dismantling and destruction of the industrial and port facilities. Even if the Allies found a largely destroyed infrastructure when they entered the city on October 1st, most of the planned deportations could be prevented.

The four days of Naples had several effects on the following events in Italy. Fanned by the success of the insurgents, there were resistance actions in the first days of October in several places in the area north of Naples, which was still occupied by the German troops, who moved a new line of defense on the Volturno River . The retreating German troops reacted to the resistance with extreme severity. The brutality with which civilians, including women and children, were cracked down on, was certainly a reaction to the violent attacks in Naples that the Germans had not expected. The testimony of prisoner-of-war German soldiers shows that the morale of the Italians, which had previously been classified as poor, had to be reassessed after September 30th. At the same time, they feared bad things for the future.

Immediately after the events in Naples, a spiral of violence was triggered that developed a momentum of its own, against which even the Southwest High Command took action in vain. The order issued by Field Marshal Kesselring on October 8, 1943 to the troops not to carry out any executions without the prior authorization of Mayor Southwest remained largely unheard. In the provinces of Caserta and Naples alone , around 1,500 people were killed by German units by November 1943.

“When trying to explain what happened in Italy after September 8, 1943, Naples is an important indicator. For the first time in the history of the Second World War, German armed forces expelled from an occupied city by fighting citizens found out what resolute civil resistance was able to achieve. "

- Gerhard Schreiber: German war crimes in Italy. Perpetrator, victim, law enforcement. (Page 137)

Commemoration

Plaque commemorating the Four Days of Naples in the Vomero district

The city of Naples was awarded the gold medal of bravery for the uprising after the war . Posthumously , this highest military award in Italy was given to four underage insurgents: the eleven-year-old Gennaro Capuozzo, the thirteen-year-old Filippo Illuminato, and the two seventeen-year-olds Pasquale Formisano and Mario Menichini. Silver and bronze medals of bravery and some war merit crosses were also given to insurgents.

The 28th of September is a national day of remembrance in Italy today, on which a special flagging rule applies nationwide . The four days of Naples form one of the most important starting points for the armed resistance of the Resistancea , which ended on April 25, 1945 in northern Italy and which is commemorated with the day of the liberation of Italy .

In Naples, a square, a road tunnel, a subway station and a school were named after the Four Days of Naples. Several memorial plaques remember fights and victims. On the Riviera di Chiaia a monument is dedicated to the numerous underage insurgents.

Movie

literature

Web links

Commons : Four days of Naples  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Carlo Gentile: I crimini di guerra tedeschi in Italia 1943–1945. P. 43
  2. ↑ Carlo Gentile: I crimini di guerra tedeschi in Italia 1943-1945. P. 99
  3. ↑ a b Le quattro giornate. In: napoli.anpi.it. Retrieved September 17, 2019 (Italian).
  4. ^ A b Carlo Gentile: I crimini di guerra tedeschi in Italia 1943–1945. Pp. 99-100
  5. ^ A b Carlo Gentile: I crimini di guerra tedeschi in Italia 1943–1945. P. 101
  6. ^ A b Carlo Gentile: I crimini di guerra tedeschi in Italia 1943–1945. Pp. 101-102
  7. ↑ Carlo Gentile: I crimini di guerra tedeschi in Italia 1943-1945. Pp. 102-103
  8. ↑ Carlo Gentile: I crimini di guerra tedeschi in Italia 1943-1945. P. 107
  9. ↑ Entry on quirinale.it
  10. ↑ Entry by Gennaro Capuozzo on quirinale.it
  11. ^ Entry Filippo Illuminato on quirinale.it
  12. ↑ Entry Pasquale Formisano on quirinale.it
  13. ↑ Entry Mario Menichini on quirinale.it