I wander through the belly of the Sanctuary of Pietralba, just steps away from Bolzano. We are almost on the border between Alto Adige and Trentino. The room of ex-votos has walls covered with paintings and small pictures: saints, madonnas, but also scenes of accidents, falls, images of the sick with bandaged arms or tucked into a bed, clippings from crime reports, and more. And then crutches, glasses, motorcycle helmets. If you will, a Sancta Sanctorum of misfortunes. I don’t know why, but I’m drawn to a small black-framed picture that bears a little list of names and birthdates. It seems to somehow elude the logic of the other ex-votos. Usually, heaven is thanked for a received grace, for escaping danger. This little picture, instead, lists a strange roster of thirty-two people. An “ex-voto” in reverse. Thirty-two people died in Rome, in Via Rasella, on March 23, 1944.
“Via Rasella, of course,” – now I remember! – “the bomb that then unleashed the horrible reprisal of the Ardeatine Caves. I’ve heard of it.” At that moment, all I know about the event is that the partisans killed some German SS. But then, why here, in Pietralba, this little picture? To find out, I get to work, reading and questioning those who know more than me. Illuminating and indispensable in this regard is Lorenzo Baratter’s book, “From Alpenvorland to Via Rasella” (Publilux, 2003). Later, I even go to Rome, to that fatal street, and with mouth agape in front of the walls still chipped after so many years, I breathe a heavy atmosphere, full of ghosts and the faint echo of inhuman screams. I write to the then-Governor Luis Durnwalder, asking him to do something to undermine this damnatio memoriae that is condemning those South Tyrolean boys to eternal oblivion. Years later, I try again with Arno Kompatscher. I don’t receive any response from him either. However, I don’t give up and continue with the research and try to reconstruct the facts.
After the armistice of September 8, 1943, Italy unexpectedly ‘dumps’ Germany. But for the Germans, the armistice is only an open secret, or rather ‘Das pfeifen die Spatzen schon vom Dach,’ as they say. So, just two days later, the Alpenvorland is established, and Trentino and Alto Adige are fully subjected to Nazi power. Among other things, there arises the need to establish police forces for maintaining public order. For this purpose, the Trentino Security Corps, its counterpart in Alto Adige, the S.o.d., and the Italian Police Regiments—at least on paper—are formed, fighting for the Germans.
Some enlist because they believe it will help them avoid being sent to the front, others because they are sincere supporters of Nazism, and still others simply because they are forced to acknowledge their voluntariness. In fact, the recall postcard is addressed ‘An den Kriegsdienstplichtigen,’ something like ‘To the person obligated to military service.’ In 1979, the newspaper ‘Alto Adige’ publishes an insert titled ‘Those of Via Rasella,’ a collection of four lengthy articles that break a 35-year wall of silence. Among others, Josef Prader, a veteran of the III Battalion of ‘Bozen,’ tells the reporter Umberto Gandini: ‘They made us sign cards on which it was written that we were volunteers. I said that if they wanted, they could also enlist me, but not as a volunteer. They replied that they would define me as they pleased, and that if I caused too much trouble, I would end up in Russia. That’s how we were volunteers…’.
As Lorenzo Baratter writes in “The Dolomites of the Third Reich” (Mursia, 2005), many soldiers had already served in the Italian army long before. Emblematic is the case of Peter Putzer from Varna. He was a mountain gunner on the Tonale, twenty years before. During training in Gries, his daughter dies. The command denies him leave to attend the funeral.
But for some, the circumstances are even more terrible. Lois Rauter is a farmer from the Puster Valley. He and his wife have two sons, Valentin and Heinrich, who are mentally disabled. Like thousands of South Tyroleans, he is called to decide whether to remain an Italian citizen or opt for Germany. He is persuaded to choose the latter. What he doesn’t know is that his two poor boys will thus be directed to the infamous Aktion T4, the Nazi euthanasia program which, under medical responsibility, provided for the killing of people with incurable genetic diseases and those with mental handicaps in Germany. Lives that, according to them, were unworthy of being lived. Lois Rauter will receive the news of the death of his two sons shortly before being enlisted. He will lose an arm in Via Rasella..
The eleventh company of the Bolzano Police Regiment consists of 156 men. Almost all are farmers, artisans, shepherds, or millers from the valleys of South Tyrol; they are between 30 and 40 years old and are commanded by Second Lieutenant Walter Wolgasth, a solid Prussian, a real scoundrel according to his soldiers, who nickname him “Vollgas”, meaning “Full throttle”, because he enjoys pushing them to the limit. The battalion, on the other hand, is led by the Bohemian Johann “Hans” Dobek (also known as Hellmuth Dobbrick). Command positions are naturally off-limits to South Tyroleans: for them, only the rank of Unterwachtmeister, the lowest in the order police hierarchy after that of recruit, remains.
Dobek and Vollgas do not hold their soldiers in high regard; the kindest term they reserve for the troops is “Holzkoepfe”, wooden heads. They probably haven’t reconciled with being assigned to that battalion, to those stooped backs accustomed to climbing the trails of the Val Venosta and the Dolomite passes, to those mountain people naturally peaceful and not inclined to martial militarism. This is why the training is particularly tough. In Bolzano and then in Colle Isarco. And to endure not only discipline and physical fatigue but also the psychological humiliation carried out by the commands. Racism, in short. “Traitors”, “pigs”, “bastards” at every turn. These recruits are not forgiven for being so un-German, for not even, in the case of the Ladin speakers, speaking German very well.
They, the recruits, resent it. After all, as far as they can tell, all this is much like a second military service, done in a different uniform, for a different nation, complete with an oath pronounced on January 28th. A few days later, the Battalion is transferred to Rome, with surveillance duties.
For those who hoped to remain in South Tyrol, it is certainly not good news. Also because Rome, in those days, at least in theory, should be an “Open City”, immune to any kind of combat, but in fact, it is the scene of a showdown between the Nazis and the partisan bands. The declaration of August 14, 1943, will never actually be recognized by the Allies.
Among the population, it is rumored that any aggression against German soldiers by civilians will be punished with ten Italian victims for every German victim. It’s not a new thing. The decimation was already carried out by the ancient Romans. But in 1944, already three times – on January 31st, February 2nd, and March 7th, at Forte Bravetta – following the killing of German soldiers, a total of 31 Italians were executed. A reminder that, as we will see, will have no deterrent effect on the planners of the subsequent attack on March 23rd.
The future communist deputy Giorgio Amendola leads the Patriotic Action Groups in the capital, the GAP, and walking through Piazza di Spagna, he has already crossed paths several times with these soldiers, somewhat hunched, so un-German, singing like the mentally challenged on the streets of Rome. Yes, he has seen them, as he heads to Alcide De Gasperi’s hiding place, in the building of Propaganda Fide. An idea comes to Amendola: to attack that Company: a target too easy to pass up. So he orders the GAP to devise a plan as needed. There are about a dozen GAPPists involved in the organization, including Carlo Salinari, Franco Calamandrei, Rosario Bentivegna, and Carla Capponi.
Meanwhile, the grueling trench warfare between the Allied troops, who landed at Anzio two months earlier, and the German forces under Field Marshal Albert Kesselring is at its peak. No one is advancing further. Rome is like a contested jewel that dazzles with cruel beauty these soldiers of the eleventh company: mountaineers who know little of tactics and strategy. For them, it has already been traumatic enough to transition from the meadows of Val Badia to the city of the Caesars. However, in those days, they manage to notice something too. The guards are doubled, the streets of Rome, unlike other days, are practically empty. That the moment of the city’s liberation is drawing closer is another poorly kept secret.
Yet, without consulting the Military Junta of the Resistance and without the knowledge of the other parties of the National Liberation Committee (primarily the socialists), the GAP initiates what Norberto Bobbio will later define, in 1984, as “the biggest mistake of the Resistance”. Why a mistake? First of all, because it will lead to the terrible massacre of the Fosse Ardeatine. But that’s not the only reason. Both Robert Katz in the fundamental “Death in Rome: The Massacre of the Fosse Ardeatine” (Editori Riuniti, Rome 1996) and Lutz Klinkhammer in “Nazi Massacres in Italy: War Against Civilians 1943-1944” (Donzelli, Rome 1997) make it clear. The attack will thereafter mark a resurgence in the German repressive system, a change in attitude towards the most defenseless populations. Think of Marzabotto, Sant’Anna di Stazzema, and the other terrible episodes. No one wants to rewrite history, but is it not reasonable to suppose that without this attack thousands of human lives could have been spared? What’s the point of killing enemy soldiers with surveillance duties in a city about to be peacefully liberated when the extent of a probable reprisal could have been anticipated? Why such an action when the day before, on March 22, the director of “Il Messaggero”, Bruno Spampanato, writes that the German command would soon withdraw its troops from Rome?! Another unanswered question.
There are days that dawn already swollen with premonitions, full of signs; so much so that already in the morning you convince yourself that you have understood what will happen until evening. The Polizeiregiment Bozen is quartered in the attics of the Viminale. From there, every morning, the eleventh company marches to the Foro Mussolini, to carry out exercises. Hans Dobek, following in his car, is not satisfied with exposing the “wooden heads” to partisan attacks. He demands that they make themselves heard, that they sing like puffed-up cockerels, that they show enthusiasm for serving the Reich. Like true SS.
The day in question is March 23, 1944. It marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Fasci di Combattimento, precursors of fascism. A demonstration is scheduled in the city. The future President of the Republic, Sandro Pertini, military responsible for the PSIUP, is chomping at the bit: he would like to coordinate a unified military action with the GAP. It is planned to attack the fascist procession in two different points by the GAP and a team from the socialist Brigate Matteotti. The Nazis are aware of these intentions, so they move the fascist commemoration to a building in Via Veneto for security reasons. Nevertheless, the battalion of Alto Adige soldiers continues to be exposed, passing noisily through the streets of the center and, only that day, with loaded rifles. Do they not give the impression of being some sort of bait? For what?
The same partisans must have noticed this strange air of demobilization. So much so that the marches of those from Bozen have become less frequent… On the 18th and 19th, the platoon is nowhere to be seen. Doubts begin to circulate among Calamandrei’s group and the others. On the 20th, they reappear. Then, they plan to act the next day. But there’s a snag. On the 21st, the explosive isn’t ready. And on the 22nd, Dobek’s men disappear again. The partisans fear that nothing will come of it. After all, Rome is about to be evacuated. The Americans are at the city gates. But then.
On March 23, the eleventh company approaches Via Rasella. It’s strange, but even that dog Dobek doesn’t seem the same this afternoon. He’s agitated, constantly driving up and down in his car. And he shouts: “Ein Lied! Ein Leid, Schweine!” And they obey, and off they go with that hateful little song. “Hupf, mein Mädel,” Jump, my girl… It’s ridiculous to sing such cheerful tunes with grenades strapped to their belts, with the danger of attacks, in a world gone mad.
The task of detonating the device is assigned to Rosario Bentivegna, disguised as a street sweeper. Not far from him, Carla Capponi, with a raincoat to throw over him after the explosion (the two will marry six months later). The partisans have to wait about two hours longer than the usual time for the company to pass through Via Rasella; on Thursday, March 23, 1944, the soldiers of the “Bozen” left late after the shooting exercise at the Tor di Quinto shooting range, and only at 3:45 PM did the column emerge from Largo Tritone and turn towards Via Rasella. The platoons are four, one behind the other. Strangely, all the non-commissioned officers, including Wolgatsh and the others, have been called to report at the head of the procession. It’s two hours late, which could lead to the cancellation of the operation. Shops are about to reopen, and the streets are bustling with passersby. Some children have even joined the queue behind the platoon, imitating the soldiers’ march. And then Bentivegna has almost finished the tobacco in his pipe, ready to ignite the fuse. So much so that, at three thirty, Pasquale Balsamo passes by and says to him: “Look, if they haven’t come by four, grab your cart and let’s go.”
A quarter of an hour later, the bomb explodes just as the second platoon has passed. Twelve kilograms of dynamite packed into a cast-iron container, with six kilograms of explosive and loose iron pieces added. The shockwave is devastating. Doors and windows are blown off, a bus is thrown against the gate of Palazzo Barberini. After the explosion, the partisans also throw four hand grenades.
At the moment of the detonation, Alcide De Gasperi is in the company of Giorgio Amendola. The explosion shakes the windows, so Amendola says to the man from Trentino, “Did you hear that bang?!” De Gasperi responds, “Well, you Communists, you think up one thing and do a hundred.” A strange, almost amused dialogue. A few hundred meters away, in Via Rasella, there is nothing amusing at all. On the ground lie between 22 and 26 men, some of them horribly mutilated. Others will die in the hours following. Many of the survivors will bear the scars of that explosion for the rest of their lives. There are also civilian casualties, what we would call “collateral damage” today. Among them is twelve-year-old Piero Zuccheretti. That day, Piero is on his way to work in an optical shop, and from Piazza Barberini, he is drawn to that raucous song. His poor body will be completely torn apart by the explosion. His feet will never be found. The rest of the company scatters. Understandably, there is great confusion, screams, blood, panic, fear. Also because there is no enemy against whom to open fire.
The surviving police officers from Alto Adige then direct their attention upwards, to the windows of the buildings on Via Rasella. The bomb must have come from there. There is no other explanation. An old man who appears at the window is shot dead by a soldier. Dobek is distraught, running among the dismembered bodies and the wounded, shouting like a madman, “Run, you pigs, run!” On the scene immediately are Police Chief Pietro Caruso, General Kurt Mälzer, military commander of Rome, diplomat Eugen Dollmann, and traveling together in a car, Consul Eitel Friedrich Moellhausen and Minister of the Interior of the RSI Guido Buffarini Guidi, later joined by SS commander Herbert Kappler.
Mälzer is furious (and, according to Moelhausen’s memoirs, completely drunk), ordering explosives to be brought and all the buildings in the block between Via Rasella and Via delle Quattro Fontane to be blown up. Adolf Hitler, on the phone from Munich, orders fifty civilians to be killed for every fallen soldier. Kappler takes control of the situation. The apocalyptic intentions of the two are “reduced” to the infamous “ten to one”. Meanwhile, men from the “Barbarigo” Battalion of the Xª Flottiglia MAS arrive, along with survivors from Bozen, rounding up the local population and then transferring them to the basements of the Viminale. Remember? “Ten Italian victims for every German victim.” Of the people rounded up in the area of the attack, about 300 individuals, only ten will be among the 335 victims of the Fosse Ardeatine.
In contrast to Commander Mälzer, Lieutenant Wolgasth maintains an olympic, albeit inhumane, calmness. He politely assists the wounded onto ambulances. At the hospital, he wants to ensure the condition of all the patients, even giving them a gift, a present from a true Nazi superstar: a photo of himself with a dedication.
It seems over, but it’s not. In the evening, Dobek bursts into the dormitories of the Viminale like a fury. He wants those same “swines” to avenge the comrades killed by what he calls “terrorists.” He shouts, gestures wildly, stamps his feet like a horse. No one speaks up. There’s too much pain in that attic. Pain for the dead comrades and, more than ever, homesickness. The soldiers seem to refuse to carry out the order. Franz, Peter, Toni, and the others are Catholics. Should they really do it? They, who when they were in Bolzano and were found in churches, were forced to return to the barracks on their knees?
None of them will take part in the massacre. Yet a memorial submitted to the Paris Peace Conference in February 1946 explicitly states otherwise. But that’s not all. There’s talk of those from the III Bozen being responsible for the roundups on October 18, 1943, when a thousand Roman Jews were sent to the extermination camps. A gross mistake. The men of that battalion did not arrive in Rome until the following February. An error that, although acknowledged by historians, has never been officially denied.
In the post-war years, there will be endless controversies and trials over this incident. Inevitable aftermath. Starting from March 25, 1944, when the funerals are held at the German military cemetery in Pomezia. The soldiers fallen in Via Rasella find burial in a meadow far from home. Thirty survivors desert and return home to Alto Adige. They are reported and assigned to punitive companies, sent to the Eastern Front from which they will never return. Then absolute silence.
In 1951, on the proposal of Alcide De Gasperi, President Luigi Einaudi awarded Rosario Bentivegna the Silver Medal for Military Valor. In the 1960s, militant anti-fascism rewrote certain details of our national history. Mussolini enjoyed no consensus, the foibe are an invention, and those in Via Rasella were not merely urban guards but ferocious, soulless SS.
However, in 1979, Umberto Gandini broke the spell with his famous investigation, which revealed new elements. The substantial detachment of the men attacked in Via Rasella from the SS, their forced enlistment, their Catholic devotion, and distance from the Nazi soldier model, as well as the details of their non-participation in the massacre of the Fosse Ardeatine. Regarding the fate of the fallen, Gandini commented: “Once it is acknowledged that no man deserves to die, and therefore accepting the horrible logic that regulates the events of war only for momentary dialectical necessity, it can be said that on that day in March, in Via Rasella, the least German soldiers of all those who were raging through Europe in those years died; and the German soldiers who least of all ‘deserved’ that end, because they had done absolutely nothing wrong, they hadn’t even been put in a position to do harm.”
Many civil lawsuits have been filed against Bentivegna and the others in recent decades. All were dismissed. With the ruling of April 16, 1998, the examining magistrate of Rome ordered the dismissal of the criminal proceedings against Rosario Bentivegna, Carla Capponi, and Pasquale Balsamo, initiated following a complaint filed by some relatives of the civilian victims of the attack. The Judge excluded the qualification of the act as a legitimate act of war, finding all the objective and subjective elements of the crime of massacre, yet also noting the extinction of the offense following the amnesty provided by the decree of April 5, 1944, for all offenses committed “for reasons of war.”
Subsequently, the Court of Cassation continued (2007-2009) to regularly accept appeals and damage claims advanced by the daughter of Bentivegna and Capponi, reiterating that the one in Via Rasella was a “legitimate act of war against the occupying enemy.” Lev Tolstoy wrote that pity is one of the most precious faculties of the human soul. Yet to this day, twenty-six of the thirty-three fallen of that eleventh company are still buried in Pomezia. No one, neither relatives nor local political authorities, has yet, after almost 80 years, requested to have them returned to their land of origin: Alto Adige – Südtirol.
I conclude with two quotes. The first is from historian Francesco Filippi, who in 2015 wrote: “After more than seventy years, where do I put the dead of the Ardeatine? Right there, in the middle: on one side those who planted a bomb in Via Rasella (…). On the other, those who shortly thereafter shot people in the back while tied ‘carrying out orders.'” The second quote is again from Norberto Bobbio: “Will it be permissible at least to say, – he writes – without fear of being accused of being fascists or friends of fascists, that those soldiers killed in that ambush were subjectively innocent?” For almost 80 years, a response has been awaited in vain.
The 33 fallen soldiers from Alto Adige in Via Rasella.
1 Karl Andergassen 5-1-1914 30 Kaltern / Caldaro
2 Franz Bergmeister 6-9-1906 37 Kastelruth / Castelrotto
3 Josef Dissertori 5-6-1913 30 Eppan / Appiano
4 Georg Eichner 21-4-1902 41 Sarnthein / Sarentino
5 Jakob Erlacher 12-7-1901 42 Enneberg / Marebbe
6 Friedrich Fischnaller 19-11-1902 41 ND
7 Johann Fischnaller 17-11-1904 39 Mühlbach / Rio di Pusteria
8 Eduard Frötscher 19-12-1912 31 Latzfons / Lazfons
9 Vinzenz Haller ND ND Ratschings / Racines
10 Leonhard Kaspareth 28-1-1915 29 Kaltern / Caldaro
11 Johann Kaufmann 19-10-1913 30 Welschnofen / N. Levante
12 Anton Matscher 12-6-1912 31 Brixen / Bressanone
13 Anton Mittelberger 15-11-1907 36 Gries (frazione di Bolzano)
14 Michael Moser 29-9-1904 39 Kitzbühel (Austria)
15 Franz Niederstätter 1-6-1917 26 Aldein / Aldino
16 Eugen Oberlechner 30-4-1908 35 Mühlwald / Selva dei Molini
17 Mathias Oberrauch 15-8-1910 33 Bolzano
18 Paulinus Palla 31-12-1915 28 Buchenstein / Livinallongo
19 Augustin Pescosta 9-5-1912 31 Kolfuschg / Colfosco
20 Daniel Profanter 22-5-1915 28 Andrian / Andriano
21 Josef Raich 14-12-1906 37 St. Martin / San Martino
22 Anton Rauch 5-8-1910 33 Völs / Fiè allo Sciliar
23 Engelbert Rungger 21-12-1907 36 Welschellen / Rina
24 Johann Schweigl 13-8-1908 35 St. Leonhard / San Leonardo
25 Johann Seyer 3-6-1904 39 Gais
26 Ignatz Spiess 4-7-1911 32 Schweinsteg / Sant’Orsola
27 Eduard Spögler 11-7-1908 35 Sarnthein / Sarentino
28 Ignatz Stecher 11-5-1911 32 Schluderns / Sluderno
29 Albert Stedile 26-6-1915 28 Bolzano
30 Josef Steger 10-8-1908 35 ND
31 Hermann Tschigg 23-4-1911 32 St. Pauls / San Paolo
32 Fidelius Turneretscher 19-1-1914 30 Untermoi / Antermoia
33 Josef Wartbichler 13-11-1907 36 ND
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