The Massacre of the Acqui Division (Italian: il massacro della divisione Acqui; Greek: Η Σφαγή της Μεραρχίας Άκουι, Hi Sfagi tis Merarchias Akoui), also known as the Cephalonia Massacre (Italian: Eccidio di Cefalonia, German: Massaker auf Kefalonia), was the mass execution of the men of the Italian 33rd Acqui Infantry Division by the Germans on the island of Kefalonia, Greece, in September 1943, following the Italian armistice during the Second World War.[1][2][3] About 5000 soldiers were massacred and others drowned or were otherwise murdered. The massacre provided the historical background to the novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which later became a Hollywood film.[4][5][6] It was one of the largest prisoner of war massacres of the war, along with the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Poles,[7][8] and one of the largest-scale German atrocities to be committed by Wehrmacht troops (specifically, the 1. Gebirgs-Division).[9]
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Since the fall of Greece in April-May 1941, the country had been divided in occupation zones, with the Italians getting the bulk of the mainland and most islands. The Acqui Division had been the Italian garrison of Kefalonia since May 1943,[10] and consisted of 11,500 soldiers and 525 officers. It was composed of two infantry regiments (the 17th and the 317th), the 33rd artillery regiment, the 27th Blackshirt Legion, the 19th Blackshirt Battalion and support units. Furthermore, its 18th Regiment was detached to garrison duties in Corfu. Acqui also had naval coastal batteries, torpedo boats and two aircraft.[10] Since 18 June 1943, it was commanded by the 52-year-old General Antonio Gandin, a decorated veteran of the Russian Front where he earned the German Iron Cross.[7]
On the other hand the Germans decided to reinforce their presence throughout the Balkans, following Allied successes and the possibility that Italy might seek an accommodation with the Allies. On 5–6 July Lt Colonel Johannes Barge arrived with 2,000 men of the 966th Fortress Grenadier Regiment, including Fortress-Battalions 810 and 909 and a battery of self-propelled guns and nine tanks.[10]
After Italy's armistice with the Allies in September 1943, General Gandin found himself in a dilemma: one option was surrendering to the Germans - who were already prepared for the eventuality and had begun disarming Italian garrisons elsewhere - or trying to resist.[11] Initially, Gandin requested instructions from his superiors and began negotiations with Barge.[12]
On 8 September 1943, the day the armistice was made public, General Carlo Vecchiarelli, commander of the 170,000-strong Italian army occupying Greece, telegrammed Gandin his order, essentially a copy of General Ambrosio's promemoria 2 from Headquarters. Vecchiarelli's order instructed that if the Germans did not attack the Italians, the Italians should not attack the Germans. Ambrosio's order stated that the Italians should not "make common cause" with the Greek partisans or even the Allies, should they arrive in Kefalonia.[13]
In the case of a German attack, Vecchiarelli's order was not very specific because it was based on Badoglio's directive which stated that the Italians should respond with "maximum decision" to any threat from any side.[10] The order implied that the Italians should attack back but did not explicitly state so. At 22:30 hours of the same day Gandin received an order directly from General Ambrosio to send most of his naval and merchant vessels to Brindisi immediately, as demanded by the terms of the armistice. Gandin complied, thus losing a possible means of escape.[13]
To make matters even more complicated Badoglio had agreed, after the overthrow of Mussolini, to the unification of the two armies under German command, in order to appease the Germans. Therefore, technically, both Vecchiarelli and Gandin were under German command, even though Italy had implemented an armistice agreement with the Allies.[13] That gave the Germans the justification to treat any Italians disobeying their orders as mutineers or franc-tireurs.[10]
At 9:00 hours on 9 September, Barge met with Gandin and misled him by stating that he had received no orders from the German command. The two men liked each other and they had things in common as Gandin was pro-German and liked Goethe. Indeed, Gandin's pro-German attitude was the reason he had been sent by General Ambrosio to command the Acqui Division: fearing he might side with the Germans against the evolving plot to depose Mussolini, Ambrosio wanted Gandin out of Italy. Both men ended their meeting on good terms, agreeing to wait for orders and also that the situation should be resolved peacefully.[13]
On 11 September, the Italian High Command sent two explicit instructions to Gandin, to the effect that "German troops have to be viewed as hostile" and that "disarmament attempts by German forces must be resisted with weapons". That same day Barge handed Gandin an ultimatum, demanding a decision given the following three options:[13]
- Continue fighting on the German side
- Fight against the Germans
- Hand over arms peacefully
Gandin brought Barge's ultimatum to his senior officers and the seven chaplains of the Acqui for discussion. Six of the chaplains and all of his senior officers advised him to comply with the German demands while one of the chaplains suggested immediate surrender. However Gandin could not agree to join the Germans because that would be against the King's orders as relayed by Badoglio. He also did not want to fight them because, as he said, "they had fought with us and for us, side by side". On the other hand surrendering the weapons would violate the spirit of the armistice.[13] Despite the orders from the Italian GHQ, Gandin chose to continue negotiating with Barge.[12][13]
Gandin finally agreed to withdraw his soldiers from their strategic location on Mount Kardakata, the island's "nerve centre",[13] in return for a German promise not to bring reinforcements from the Greek mainland and on 12 September, he informed Barge that he was prepared to surrender the Acqui's weapons,[12][13] as Lt Colonel Barge reported to his superiors in the XXII Mountain Corps.
However, Gandin was under pressure not to come to an agreement with the Germans from his junior officers who were threatening mutiny.[13] The Acqui's detached regiment on Corfu, not commanded by Gandin, also informed him at around midnight 12–13 September, by radio communication, that they had rejected an agreement with the Germans. Gandin also heard from credible sources that soldiers who had surrendered were being deported and not repatriated.[13]
On 13 September, a German convoy of five ships approached the island's capital, Argostoli.[13] Italian artillery officers, on their own initiative, ordered the remaining batteries to open fire, sinking two German landing craft and killing five Germans.[10][13]
Under these circumstances, that same night, Gandin presented his troops with a poll, essentially containing the three options presented to him by Barge:[13][14]
- Join the Germans
- Surrender and be repatriated
- Resist the German forces
The response from the Italian troops was in favour of the third option by a large majority but there is no available information as to the exact size of the majority,[13] and therefore on 14 September Gandin reneged on the agreement, refusing to surrender anything but the division's heavy artillery and telling the Germans to leave the island, demanding a reply by 9:00 the next day.[12][13] He also discarded his Iron Cross ribbon, one of his most prized possessions.[13]
As the negotiations stalled, the Germans prepared to resolve the issue by force, and presented the Italians with an ultimatum which expired at 14:00 hours on 15 September.[15] On the morning of 15 September, the German Luftwaffe began bombarding the Italian positions with Stuka dive-bombers.[7] On the ground, the Italians initially enjoyed superiority, and took about 400 Germans prisoner.[10] On 17 September however, the Germans landed the "Battle Group Hirschfeld", composed of the III./98 and the 54th Gebirgsjäger Battalions of the German Army's elite 1st Gebirgs (Mountain) Division, together with I./724 Battalion of the 104th Jäger Division, under the command of Major Harald von Hirschfeld.[7] The 98th Gebirgsjäger Regiment, in particular, had been involved in several atrocities against civilians in Epirus in the months preceding the Acqui massacre.[16]
At the same time the Germans started dropping propaganda leaflets calling upon the Italians to surrender. The leaflets stated:
"Camerati Italiani, ufficiali e soldati, why fight against the Germans? You have been betrayed by your leaders!... LAY DOWN YOUR ARMS!! THE ROAD HOME TO YOUR PATRIA WILL BE OPENED UP FOR YOU BY YOUR GERMAN CAMERATI".[13]
Gandin repeatedly requested help from the Ministry of War in Brindisi but did not get a reply.[13] He even went so far as sending a Red Cross emissary to the Ministry but the mission broke down off the coast of Puglia and when it arrived three days later at the Italian High Command in Brindisi, it was already too late.[13] In addition 300 planes loyal to Badoglio were located at Lecce, near the southernmost point of Italy and well within range of Kefalonia, and were ready to intervene. But the Allies would not let them go because they feared they could have defected to the German side. Furthermore two Italian torpedo boats, already on their way to Kefalonia, were ordered back to port by the Allies for the same reasons.[13]
Despite help from the local population, including the island's small ELAS partisan detachments,[17] the Germans enjoyed complete air superiority and their troops had extensive combat experience, in contrast with the conscripts of Acqui who were no match for the Germans.[13] In addition, Gandin had withdrawn the Acqui from the elevated position on mount Kardakata and that gave the Germans an additional strategic advantage.[13] After several days of combat, at 11:00 hours on 22 September, following Gandin's orders, the last Italians surrendered, having run out of ammunition and lost 1,315 dead.[11][13] According to German sources the losses were 300 Germans and 1,200 Italians.[13]
The massacre started on 21 September, and lasted for one week.[18] After the Italian surrender, Hitler had issued an order allowing the Germans to summarily execute any Italian officer who resisted "for treason", and on 18 September, the German High Command issued an order stating that "because of the perfidious and treacherous behaviour [of the Italians] on Kefalonia, no prisoners are to be taken."[5][13][19] The Gebirgsjäger soldiers began executing their Italian prisoners in groups of four to ten.[7] The Germans first killed the surrendering Italians, where they stood, using machine-guns. When a group of Bavarian soldiers objected to this practice they were threatened with summary execution themselves.[10] After this stage was over, the Germans marched the remaining soldiers to the San Teodoro town hall and had the prisoners executed by eight member detachments.[10]
General Gandin and 137 of his senior officers were summarily court-martialled on 24 September and executed, their bodies discarded at sea.[19] Before the execution a sergeant informed each officer that he was being executed for treason, which, given Badoglio's decision to permit unification of the German and Italian armies in Greece under German command, was technically true.[13] General Gandin was shot first but just before his execution he threw his Iron Cross into the dirt.[10]
Romualdo Formato, one of Acqui's seven chaplains and one of the few survivors, wrote that during the massacre, the Italian officers started to cry, pray and sing. Many were shouting the names of their mothers, wives and children.[11] According to Formato's account, three officers hugged and stated that they were comrades while alive and now in death they would go together to paradise, while others were digging through the grass as if trying to escape. In one place, Formato recalled, "the Germans went around loudly offering medical help to those wounded. When about 20 men crawled forward, a machine-gun salvo finished them off."[19] Officers gave Formato their personal belongings to take with him and give to their families back in Italy. The Germans, however, confiscated the items and Formato could no longer account for the exact number of the officers killed.[13]
The executions of the Italian officers were continuing when a German officer came and reprieved Italians who could prove they were from Trieste and Trento since these two regions had been annexed by Hitler as German provinces after 8 September. Seeing an opportunity father Formato, crying, begged the officer to stop the killings and save the few officers remaining. The German officer responded and told Formato that he would consult with his commanding officer. During the German officer's absence Formato started praying and reciting Ave Maria. When the officer returned, after half an hour, he informed Formato that the killings of the officers would stop. The number of Italian surviving officers, including Formato, totalled 37. After the reprieve the Germans congratulated the remaining Italians and offered them cigarettes.[13] The situation remained unstable, however, because, following the reprieve, the Germans forced twenty Italian sailors to load the bodies of the dead officers on rafts and take them out to sea. The Germans then blew up the rafts with the Italian sailors on them.[10][13][20]
Alfred Richter, an Austrian, and one of the participants in the massacre recounted how a soldier who sung arias for the Germans in the local taverns was forced to sing while his comrades were being executed.[13] The singing soldier's fate remains unknown.[13] Richter added that he and his regiment comrades felt "a delirium of omnipotence" during the events. Most of the soldiers of the German regiment were Austrians.[13] According to Richter the Italian soldiers were killed after surrendering to the soldiers of the 98th Regiment. He described that the fallen Italians were then thrown into heaps of bodies all shot in the head. Soldiers of the 98th Regiment started removing the boots from the bodies of the fallen Italians for their own use. Richter also mentioned that groups of Italians were taken in quarries and walled gardens near the village of Frangata and executed by machine gun fire. The killing lasted for two hours during which time the sound of the machine guns and machine pistols and the screams of the victims could be heard inside the homes of the village.[21]
The bodies of the ca. 5,000 men who were executed were disposed of in a variety of ways. Bodies were cremated in massive wood pyres, which made the air of the island thick with the smell of burning flesh,[13] or moved to ships where they were buried at sea.[6][6][11][13][22] Others, according to Amos Pampaloni, one of the survivors, were executed in full sight of the Greek population in Argostoli harbour on 23 September 1943 and their bodies were left to rot where they fell, while in smaller streets corpses were decomposing and the stench was insufferable to the point that he could not remain there long enough to take a picture of the carnage.[23] Bodies were also thrown with rocks tied around them into the sea.[13] In addition the Germans had refused to allow the Acqui soldiers to bury their dead.[13] A chaplain undertook to find bodies discovering bones scattered all over.[13]
The few soldiers that were saved were assisted by the locals and the ELAS organisation.[18] One of the survivors was taken heavily wounded to a Kefalonite lady's home by a taxi driver and survived the war to live in Lake Como.[11] An additional three thousand of the survivors in German custody drowned, when the ships Sinfra and Ardena, transporting them to POW camps, sank after striking a mine in the Adriatic.[6][24] These losses and similar ones from the Italian Dodecanese garrisons were also the result of German policy, as Hitler had instructed the local German commanders to forgo "all safety precautions" during the transport of prisoners, "regardless of losses".[24]
The events in Kefalonia were repeated, to a lesser extent, elsewhere. In Corfu, the 8,000-strong Italian garrison comprised elements of three divisions, including the Acqui's 18th Regiment. On 24 September, the Germans landed a force on the island (characteristically codenamed "Operation Treason"), and by the next day they were able to induce the Italians to capitulation.[25] All 280 Italian officers on the island were executed during the next two days on the orders of General Lanz, in accordance with Hitler's directives.[25] The bodies were loaded onto a ship and disposed of in the sea.[25] Similar executions of officers also occurred in the aftermath of the Battle of Kos, when the Italian commander and 90 of his officers were shot.[26]
In October 1943, after Mussolini had been freed and established his new Fascist Republic in Northern Italy, the Germans gave the remaining Italian prisoners three choices:
- Continue fighting on the German side
- Forced labour on the island
- Concentration camps in Germany
Most Italians opted for the second choice.[13]
In January 1944, a chaplain’s account reached Benito Mussolini after Aurelio Garobbio, a Swiss Fascist from the Italian-speaking Canton of Ticino informed him about the events. Mussolini became incensed that the Germans would do such a thing, although he considered the Acqui division's officers, more so than its soldiers, as traitors. Nevertheless in one of his exchanges with Garobbio, after Garobbio complained that the Germans showed no mercy, he said: "But our men defended themselves, you know. They hit several German landing craft sinking them. They fought how Italians know how to fight"[sic].[13]
Major Harald von Hirschfeld was never tried for his role in the massacre: in December 1944, he became the Wehrmacht's youngest general officer, and was finally killed while fighting at the Dukla Pass in Poland in 1945.[7] Only Hirschfeld’s superior commander, General Hubert Lanz, was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment at the so-called "Southeast Case" of the Nuremberg Trials for the Kefalonia massacre, as well as the participation of his men in other atrocities in Greece like the massacre of Kommeno on 16 August 1943.[9] He was released in 1951[7] and died in 1982. Lt Colonel Barge was not on the island when the massacre was taking place. He was subsequently decorated with the Knight's Cross for his service in Crete. He died in 2000.[12]
The reason for Lanz’s light sentence was that the court at Nuremberg was deceived by false evidence and did not believe that the massacre took place, despite a book about the massacre by padre Formato published in 1946, a year before the trial.[13][28] Because there was doubt as to who issued what order, Lanz was only charged with the deaths of Gandin and the officers.[13] Lanz also lied to the court by stating that he refused to obey Hitler’s orders to shoot the prisoners because he was revolted by them. He claimed that the report to Army Group E, claiming that 5,000 soldiers were shot, was a ruse employed to deceive the army command in order to hide the fact that he had disobeyed the Führer’s orders. He added that fewer than a dozen officers were shot and the rest of the Acqui Division was transported to Piraeus through Patras.[28]
In his testimony, Lanz was assisted by affidavits from other highly respectable Germans who led exemplary post-war lives, such as General von Butlar from Hitler's personal staff who was involved in the Ardeatine massacre. These Germans were with Lanz in September 1943 and swore that the massacre had never taken place. In addition, for reasons unknown, the Italian side never presented any evidence for the massacre at the Nuremberg trials. It is speculated that the Italians, reeling from armistice terms highly unfavourable for their country, refused to cooperate with the trial process. Given the circumstances the court accepted Lanz's position that he prevented the massacre and that the event never happened. Consequently Lanz received a lighter sentence than General Rendulic.
Lanz’s defence emphasised the fact that the prosecution did not present any Italian evidence for the massacre and claimed that Gandin was under no orders to fight from the War Office in Brindisi. Therefore, according to the logic of the defence, he was a mutineer or a franc-tireur who had no right to be treated as a POW according to the Geneva conventions.[28]
The Germans also justified their behaviour by claiming that the Italians were negotiating the surrender of the island to the British.[18] The German claim was not entirely unfounded: in the Greek mainland, an entire division went over to the Greek guerrillas, and in the Dodecanese, the Italians had joined forces with the British, resulting in a two-month German campaign to evict them.
An attempt to revisit the case by the Dortmund state prosecutor Johannes Obluda in 1964 came to naught, as the political climate in Germany at the time was in favour of "putting the war behind".[19]
In 2002 Dortmund prosecutor Ultrich Maaos reopened a case against the people responsible for the massacre.[7][18] In his office, along with a map of the world, Maaos displayed a map of Kefalonia with the dates and locations of the executions as well as the names of the victims.[18] No indictments or arrests have occurred from Maaos' investigation at present.[22]
Ten ex-members of the 1st Gebirgs Division have been investigated and may be charged, out of 300 still alive. Currently, the youngest member of the Gebirgs regiment is in his 80s.[7]
In the 1950s, the remains of about 3,000 soldiers, including 189 officers, were exhumed and transported back to Italy for burial in the Italian War Cemetery in Bari. The remains of General Gandin were never identified.[7]
The subject of the massacre was largely ignored in Italy by the press and the educational system until 1980, when the Italian President Sandro Pertini, a former partisan, unveiled the memorial in Kefalonia. Despite the recognition of the event by Pertini, it was not until March 2001 that another Italian President, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, visited the memorial again, and even then he was most likely influenced by the publicity generated by the impending release of the Hollywood film Captain Corelli's Mandolin.[13] During the ceremony Ciampi, referring to the men of the Acqui Division, declared that their "conscious decision was the first act of resistance by an Italy freed from fascism" and that "they preferred to fight and die for their fatherland".[21] The massacre of the Acqui Division is emerging as a subject of ongoing research,[29] and is regarded as a leading example of the Italian Resistance during World War II.[30]
The Presidents of Greece and Italy periodically commemorate the event during ceremonies taking place in Kefalonia at the monument of the Acqui Division.[31][32] An academic conference about the massacre was held on 2–3 March 2007 in Parma, Italy.[33]
Cefalonia's Greco-Italian society also maintains an exhibition called "The Mediterraneo Exhibition" , next to the Catholic church in Argostoli, where pictures, newspaper articles and documents showcasing the story of the massacre are displayed.[34]