On 8 August 1944, unknown elements carried out an attack with two explosive devices against a German lorry (registration number WM 111092) parked in viale Abruzzi in Milan. In that attack, no German soldier was killed (the driver Heinz Kuhn, who slept in the cockpit, suffered only minor injuries) but it caused the death of six Milanese citizens and the wounding of eleven others.[1] Despite the absence of military victims and a claim, the episode was still used as a pretext for the shooting of the 15 partisans.[2] The episode, with very different and anomalous characteristics compared to the other partisan attacks, it is suspected, as was also done by the court in the trial held in 1998, was artfully organized by the Germans themselves to justify the subsequent reprisals.[3][4][5]
Shooting
At dawn on 10 August 1944, in Milan, fifteen partisans were taken from the San Vittore prison and taken to Piazzale Loreto, where they were shot by a firing squad made up of fascist militias of the Oberdan group of the «Ettore Muti» legion led by Captain Pasquale Cardella[6] who was acting under the orders of the German command, in particular of the SS captain Theo Saevecke, later known as the executioner of Piazzale Loreto, then commander of the security service (SD) of Milan and its province (AK Mailand).
In the communiqué of the Nazi security command,[7] it is stated that the massacre was carried out for a set of "acts of sabotage" among which the attack on Viale Abruzzi is barely recognizable.
The GAP commander, Giovanni Pesce, always denied that the attack could have been carried out by any partisan unit. Certain anomalous elements have caused some to define the attack as controversial: corporal major Kuhn had parked the vehicle a short distance from a garage in via Natale Battaglia and from the Titanus hotel, both requisitioned by the Wehrmacht and available to Nazi military personnel. Kesselring 's ban, invoked by the communiqué and by the high Nazi hierarchies,[8] provided for the shooting of ten Italians for every German only in the case of Nazi victims. But in the Viale Abruzzi attack, no German soldier was killed: the dead and seriously injured were all Italians.
It is therefore legitimate to assume, as the Military Tribunal of Turin did in the Saevecke trial, that the massacre in Piazzale Loreto was a deliberate act of terrorism which had the strategic aim of crushing popular sympathy for the Resistance in order to avoid any form of collaboration and to guarantee the maximum freedom of movement for the Nazi troops towards the Brenner pass. Theo Saevecke, whose command was at the Albergo Regina & Metropoli in via Silvio Pellico, headquarters of the SS, of the security services (SD) and of the Political Police (the Gestapo ) and a well-known place of torture, demanded and nevertheless obtained, the summary shooting of fifteen anti-fascists, and he compiled the list himself, as testified by Elena Morgante,[9] employed in the SS office, who was ordered to type it.
Corpses piled up in the square. The sign defined them "murderers"Soldier guarding the exposed corpses
After the shooting - which took place at 06:10 - for the purpose of intimidation, the broken corpses were left exposed under the sun of the hot summer day, covered with flies, until about 20 o'clock. A cartel classified the partisans shot as "murderers". The bodies, guarded by Muti soldiers who also prevented relatives from paying homage to the dead, were publicly vilified and outraged in all ways by the fascists and auxiliaries of the RSI; Moreover, to intimidate the population and remove any support for the Resistance, the fascist militia forced, weapons in hand, the citizens in transit, on foot, by bicycle or on the tram, to attend the «show».
Upon hearing the news, the partisan Don Giovanni Barbareschi went to the archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster, begging him to go and impart his blessing to the bodies, but the cardinal asked him to go himself, although still a deacon. He reassembled the piled up corpses as best he could and looked in his pockets for messages that they might have written, in order to deliver them to the families. He managed to perform this work of mercy before a fascist militia chased him away.[10] Three days later he was ordained a priest.[11] Barbareschi then recounted that after having prayed on his knees in front of the bodies, he turned around and saw that all the crowd present had knelt with him.[12] When the following year the corpses of Benito Mussolini, Claretta Petacci and 18 fascist hierarchs were exposed in the same place, Don Barbareschi returned to bless the bodies.[13]
The poet Franco Loi, witness of the tragedy and then living in nearby via Casoretto, affirmed:
There were many corpses on the sidewalks, against the fence, some theater posters, the "Gazetta del Sorriso", signs, bandits! Captured bandits with weapons in hand! Around, people change, the hot sun. When I came to see them it was like a vertigo: shoes, hands, arms, dirty stockings; (...) in my eyes as a child it was an unheard of thing: men lying on sidewalks like garbage and other men, young people dressed in black, who seemed to be on guard with guns!
—Franco Loi, from R. Cicala, Interlinea, Novara, 1995. ISBN 88-86121-56-3., Con la violenza e la pietà. Poesia e resistenza
The execution and the vilification of the corpses deeply impressed public opinion, so much so that the Prefect of Milan and head of the Province[14] Piero Parini in his «Pro memoria urgente per il duce» notes «[...] the method of shooting it had been extremely irregular and contrary to the rules.The wretches had not even had the assistance of the priest, which is not denied even to the most abject murderer.[...] To my remonstrances, the Nazi commanders all responded in the same way: the execution had been an application of Marshal Kesselring's ban [...] The impression in the city remains very strong and hostility towards the Germans has greatly increased.There have also been partial strikes in some factories and there are rumors that one is being prepared tomorrow.[...] I won't hide from you that I feel deeply uncomfortable in my office, since the German way of proceeding is such as to make the task of any authority too difficult and causes a growing aversion on the part of the population towards the Republic».
Following the memorandum, Mussolini communicated to the German ambassador to the RSI, Rudolf Rahn, that the methods used by the German military "were contrary to the feelings of the Italians and offended their natural mildness";[15] in fact, however, without making a concrete commitment to restore justice. Less than a year later, at dawn on April 29, 1945, in the same square, the corpses of Mussolini, his lover Claretta Petacci and 15 other fascists,[16] were exposed in front of the crowd that had flocked to the news of the Duce's death.
Perpetrators
Theodor Saevecke
Theo Saevecke, for the Milanese Resistance: the executioner of Piazzale Loreto, was tried by the Military Tribunal of Turin and was sentenced to life imprisonment on 9 June 1999; however, despite the request of the Italian military judiciary, he was never extradited nor did he ever undergo any trial at home. He died in his bed, aged 93, in 2004. Like other Nazi war criminals, he was drafted into the US secret service after the war (code name Cabanio)[17] and later held the important position of deputy head of the security services of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1963 West Germany had requested information on Saevecke's criminal activity in Milan during the Nazi occupation, to which the Italian authorities replied, after having consulted the file hidden in the closet of shame, with a report from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs addressed to counterpart German Ministry.
Aligi Sassu painted the Martiri di Piazzale Loreto (original title La guerra civile[18]), under the impression of the brutal assassination. The painting of 1944 (oil on canvas 150 x 200cm) was exhibited for the first time at the 1952 Venice exhibition, the Biennale del realismo, where the art historian Giulio Carlo Argan noticed it and had it acquired by the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome, which still exhibits it. Martiri di Piazzale Loreto proposes a custom of Sassu's poetics, that is the dialectic between the rendering of contemporary reality and the actualization of the myth.
The same artist, a partisan engaged together with De Grada, Grosso and Guttuso, in his autobiography "Un grido di colore" (Todaro editore, Lugano, 1998) recalls: "I painted I Martiri di Piazzale Loreto in August 1944, just after seeing the mockery that the rogue republic made of the bodies of our brothers. Yet there was in me, in the fire and anxiety that agitated me, in trying to express what I had seen, a great peace and not hatred, but an immense sadness for the fratricidal struggle. From those bleeding and inert bodies a warning arose: peace, peace".
Monument in Piazzale Loreto
The first memorial stone erected exactly on the site of the massacre
At the end of the war, a memorial stone was erected on the site of the massacre and in memory of the martyrs who fell there. This memorial stone was replaced by a monument erected in August 1960, the work of the sculptor Giannino Castiglioni (1884-1971), located on the corner between the square and viale Andrea Doria. On the front, the monument bears a bas-relief representing a martyr subjected to execution on the iconography of San Sebastiano, on the back it bears the words "ALTA/L'ILLUMINATA FRONTE/CADDERO NEL NOME/DELLA LIBERTÀ" followed by the list of 15 fallen, the date of the massacre, 10 August 1944 and the symbols of the Italian Republic and the Municipality of Milan.
Clara "Claretta" Petacci was a mistress of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. She was killed by Italian partisans during Mussolini's execution.
The Italian resistance movement was the Italian resistance groups who fought the occupying forces of Nazi Germany and the fascist collaborationists of the Italian Social Republic during the Second World War in Italy from 1943 to 1945. As a diverse anti-fascist movement and organisation, the Resistenza opposed Nazi Germany, as well as Nazi Germany's Italian puppet state regime, the Italian Social Republic, which the Germans created following the Nazi German invasion and military occupation of Italy by the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS from 8 September 1943 until 25 April 1945.
The Auxiliary Corps of the Black Shirts' Action Squads, most widely known as the Black Brigades, was one of the Fascist paramilitary groups, organized and run by the Republican Fascist Party operating in the Italian Social Republic, during the final years of World War II, and after the signing of the Italian Armistice in 1943. They were officially led by Alessandro Pavolini, former Minister of Culture of the fascist era during the last years of the Kingdom of Italy.
Indro Alessandro Raffaello Schizogene Montanelli was an Italian journalist, historian, and writer. He was one of the fifty World Press Freedom Heroes according to the International Press Institute. A volunteer for the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and an admirer of Benito Mussolini's dictatorship, Montanelli had a change of heart in 1943, and joined the liberal resistance group Giustizia e Libertà but was discovered and arrested along with his wife by Nazi authorities in 1944. Sentenced to death, he was able to flee to Switzerland the day before his scheduled execution by firing squad thanks to a secret service double agent.
The Italian Civil War was a civil war in the Kingdom of Italy fought during the Italian campaign of World War II between Italian fascists and Italian partisans and, to a lesser extent, the Italian Co-belligerent Army.
Walter Audisio was an Italian partisan and communist politician, also known by his nom-de-guerreColonel Valerio. A member of the Italian resistance movement during World War II, Audisio was involved in the death of Benito Mussolini, and personally executed the dictator and his mistress Clara Petacci according to the generally accepted account of the event.
Piazzale Loreto is a major city square in Milan, Italy.
Via Cristoforo Colombo is a street in Rome (Italy) that links the historic centre to Ostia. Along most of its route, the street has three lanes for each direction of movement. With its 27 kilometres (17 mi) length it is the longest Italian road among those included within the borders of a single municipality and, in several stretches, the largest in Italy.
Benito Mussolini, the deposed Italian fascist dictator, was summarily executed by an Italian partisan in the village of Giulino di Mezzegra in northern Italy on 28 April 1945, in the final days of World War II in Europe. The generally accepted version of events is that Mussolini was shot by Walter Audisio, a communist partisan. However, since the end of the war, the circumstances of Mussolini's death, and the identity of his executioner, have been subjects of continuing dispute and controversy in Italy.
The Memoriale della Shoah is a Holocaust memorial at the Milano Centrale railway station commemorating the Jewish prisoners deported from there during the Holocaust in Italy. Jewish prisoners from the San Vittore Prison, Milan, were taken from there to a secret underground platform, Platform 21, to be loaded on freight cars and taken on Holocaust trains to extermination camps, either directly or via other transit camps. Twenty trains and up to 1,200 Jewish prisoners left Milan in this fashion to be murdered, predominantly at Auschwitz.
Antonio Scurati is an Italian writer and academic. A professor of comparative literature and creative writing at the IULM University of Milan, mass media scholar, and editorialist for the Corriere della Sera, Scurati has won the main Italian literary prizes. In 2019, he was awarded the prestigious Strega Prize for his novel M: Son of the Century (2018), which is part of a planned tetralogy dedicated to Benito Mussolini and Italian fascism. It was at the top of the charts for two consecutive years, was translated into over forty countries, and is set for a television series produced by Sky Original in 2024.
Marcello Cesare Augusto Petacci was an Italian surgeon and businessman, the brother of actress Maria Petacci and of dictator Benito Mussolini's lover Clara Petacci.
Luigi Gatti was an Italian Fascist politician and civil servant, who served as prefect of Treviso and Milan during the Italian Social Republic as well as the last private secretary of Benito Mussolini.
Francesco Maria Barracu was an Italian Fascist politician and soldier who was the Undersecretary to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Social Republic from 1943 to his execution in 1945.
Paolo Porta was an Italian Fascist politician and soldier.
Ernesto Daquanno was an Italian journalist during the Fascist regime, the last director of Agenzia Stefani, Italy’s main press agency.
Francesco Colombo was an Italian Fascist soldier and policeman, founder and leader of the Legione Autonoma Mobile "Ettore Muti", an anti-partisan unit of the Italian Social Republic infamous for its atrocities.
Fascist martyrs or Martyrs of the Fascist Revolution or Martyrs of Fascism were called during Fascism those who fell for the Fascist cause beginning with the founding of the Fasci Italiani di combattimento in 1919.
The Fragheto massacre was the massacre of 30 Italian civilians and 15 partisans in Fragheto, a frazione of Casteldelci in central-northern Italy, on 7 April 1944, during World War II, by soldiers of the German 356th Infantry Division. After partisans belonging to the Eighth Garibaldi Brigade ambushed troops approaching the hamlet, fourteen soldiers of the Sturmbattaillon OB Sudwest conducted house-to-house searches and summarily killed civilians. Representing 40% of the hamlet's population, many of the victims were elderly people, women, or children. A further seven partisans and one civilian were shot the next day at Ponte Carrattoni, at the confluence of the Senatello and Marecchia.
References
↑ Nel verbale della Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana, reperibile nell'Archivio di Stato di Milano, Fondo Gnr, busta 64, c. 36, f. VII, sf. 8., si legge: «Oggetto: Attentato terroristico. Milano, li 8/8/1944. Ore 8,15 di oggi in viale Abruzzi all'altezza dello stabile segnato col N° 77 scoppiavano due ordigni applicati ad opera d'ignoti all'autocarro germanico con rimorchio targa W.M. 111092 li sostante dalle ore 3 di stamane e affidato all'autiere caporal Maggiore Kuhn Heinz, che dormiva nella cabina di guida. Decedute 6 persone e precisamente: 1- Zanini Edoardo di Pietro anni 31 - domiciliato a Milano- via Rusco N° 8 2- Giudici Giuseppe fu Carlo anni 60 - domic. a Milano v. Nicola De Puglie 3- Zanicotti Giuseppe fu Angelo anni 28 - dom. Milano via Gran Sasso 2 4- Brioschi Primo - domiciliato a Mezzago, v. del Pozzo 7 5- Moro Gianfranco fu Leonida anni 19 dom. Como, v. Chiesa d'Abbate 4 6- La sesta è una donna età apparente anni 35 priva di documenti. Ferite 11 persone e precisamente: 1- Milanesi Riccardo di Amedeo anni 17 via Baldarino 30 - Ric. Osped. di Niguarda 2- Castoldi Luigi di Carlo anni 29 - Monza, via Lecco 69 3- Brambilla Ettore di Riccardo anni 48, v. Gran Sasso 5 idem 4- Terrana Giorgio fu Sante anni 26, corso Buenos Aires 92 idem 5- De Ponti Ferruccio fu Luigi anni 28, v. Accademia 53 idem Feriti medicati e ritornati ai loro domicili 6- Passera Umberto fu Giuseppe, anni 51 - v. Friuli 65 - Milano 7- Passera Guido fu Giuseppe, anni 46 - v. Friuli 65 - Milano 8- Abbia Arnaldo fu Francesco, anni 29, corso Buenos Aires 25 - Milano 9- Cattaneo Luigi fu Giovanni, anni 14, viale Monza 9 - Milano 10- Robbiati Achille fu Carlo, anni 48 - viale Abruzzi 84 - Milano 11- Capol. [sic] Magg. Kuhn Heinz, ferito leggermente alla guancia destra.»
↑ Report 78th SIB del 21/5/1946 (doc. n° 913) nelle carte del processo Saevecke, ora nell'archivio del Tribunale Militare di Verona e Silvio Bertoldi, Piazzale Loreto, citato, pag. 233.
↑ Documento senza data (ma databile 11 agosto 1944) nelle carte del processo Saevecke, ora nell'archivio del Tribunale Militare di Verona. Il comandante della sicurezza che firma il comunicato era appunto il capitano delle SS Theodor Saevecke.
↑ «Pro memoria urgente per il duce» del prefetto e capo della provincia Piero Parini. Archivio di Stato di Milano, Fondo CVL, Busta 40, fascicolo V, sottofascicolo 5.
↑ Cfr. deposizione di Elena Morgante resa il 4 aprile 1946 (doc. 100-108) nelle carte del processo Saevecke, ora nell'archivio del Tribunale Militare di Verona.
↑ Cfr film "Partiti per Bergamo", by Marco Pozzi & Sergio Fiorini, Associazione "Le radici della Pace - I Quindici", 2010.
↑ Mimmo Franzinelli, Le stragi nascoste. L'armadio della vergogna: impunità e rimozione dei crimini di guerra nazifascisti 1943-2001, Mondadori, Milano, 2003. ISBN 978-88-04-51974-4. p. 67.
↑ ^Cf. article by Guido Salvini, at that time GIP at the Court of Milan, in Diario della settimana, 21/01/2006, "The other closet of shame. There is not only that of Rome, which "filed" the Nazi war crimes. Now there is also another: that of the CIA. That enlisted many former SS". Archive of the association "Le radici della Pace - I Quindici".
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