Ardeatine massacre
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The massacre of Fosse Ardeatine (Italian: Eccidio delle Fosse Ardeatine) took place in Rome, Italy during World War II. On 23 March 1944, 33 German soldiers were killed when members of the Italian Resistance set off a bomb close to a column of German soldiers who were marching on via Rasella[1]. This attack was led by the Gruppi di Azione Patriottica.
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[edit] The massacre
Adolf Hitler is reported but never confirmed to have ordered that within 24 hours, fifty Italians were to be shot for each dead German. Commander Herbert Kappler in Rome concluded that ten Italians for each dead German would be sufficient and quickly compiled a list of 320 civilians who were to be killed. Kappler voluntarily added ten more names to the list when the 33rd German died after the Partisan attack. The total number of people murdered at the Fosse Ardeatine was 335, most Italians. The largest cohesive group among the murdered were the members of Bandiera Rossa, a non-Communist military Resistance group.
On 24 March, led by SS officers Erich Priebke and Karl Hass, the victims were transported to the Ardeatine caves in groups of five people. Since the killing squad was mostly compiled of officers that had never killed before, Kappler ordered several cases of cognac to the caves to calm the nerves of the officers. The officers were ordered to lead the doomed prisoners into the caves with their hands tied behind their back and then have them kneel down so that the soldiers could place the bullet perfectly into the cerebellum to ensure that no more than one bullet was wasted per prisoner. To save time, soldiers had the prisoners climb on top of those killed just minutes before so that several orderly piles of bodies were formed. Unfortunately, the cognac that was sent to calm nerves incited the opposite reaction as the day went on and the soldiers become sloppy, with more and more bullets going astray and prisoners enduring torturous last breaths of life as the soldiers tried to finish them off. During the killings, it was found that by a mistake five more people than were supposed to have been taken to the caves had been brought there, but they were killed in order to prevent news of the retaliation from spreading.
Popular perceptions of the Fosse Ardeatine are numerous, and often false. The foremost among these is the notion that the Partisans who attacked in via Rasella should have turned themselves in; this often stems from a popularly-held notion that the Nazis gave warning to the Roman public that a retaliation was imminent. The concept of 'ten Italians for one German' is also frequently applied to this argument, as if the Partisans could or should have realized that their attack would cost 330 Italians their lives. This is not true. The Fosse Ardeatine is the first time any such notion came into being, and in fact there were arguments among the Nazi leadership in Rome and between Hitler and his command over whether 50, 30, or 10 Italians should be killed for every German.
Although it would be expected- and indeed it is frequently claimed- that the victims of the Fosse Ardeatine were predominantly Jewish, this is not so; 75 of the 335 victims were Jewish. Although this was one set of criteria for the massacre, the first goal was to fill the number quota; many of the prisoners at via Tasso and Regina Coeli who happened to be available at the time were sent to their deaths by the Nazis at the Fosse Ardeatine. Some of these prisoners had simply been residents of via Rasella who were home at the time of the bombing; others had been arrested and tortured for Resistance- and anti-fascist-related activities. Not all of the Partisans who were killed were members of the same Resistance group. Members of the GAP, the PA, and Bandiera Rossa, in addition to the Clandestine Military Front were all on the list of those to be executed. Furthermore, the scale and even the occurrence at all of this retaliation was unprecedented. Since Nazi occupation of Rome in 1943, anti-Fascists and members of the Resistance had been practicing guerilla warfare against their occupiers and oppressors.
The cultural and political fallout from the Fosse Ardeatine, and more generally from the Fascist movement after WWII, continues today.
[edit] Popular culture
The event was dramatized in a 1973 feature film, Rappresaglia, directed by George Pan Cosmatos.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ The SS unit that was ambushed was SS Police Battalion "Bozen" from Northern Italy/Austria area.
[edit] Bibliography
- The Order Has Been Carried Out book by Alessandro Portelli.
