13 De Leo, captured a few weeks later by the Allies, revealed in his subsequent interrogation that he believed Mallaby’s story. Rodolfo Graziani, however, took an interest in the matter again the following May after the war was over and asked De Leo himself for a detailed report. The note of reply from the latter (dated 5 May 1945) came into British hands and attests that Mallaby, as usual, had cleverly dropped into his interrogations truthful elements about his life and military career, as well as others that were quite fanciful. For example, in relation to his mission in the summer of 1943, he did not reveal how and why he arrived in Brindisi, but stated: ‘In June of ’43 I was transferred as an interpreter to Allied Headquarters in Algiers, where I remained until the beginning of September 1943. In the meantime I had been promoted to second lieutenant. On 12 September 1943, I was assigned to the Allied Command at Brindisi.’ TNA: HS 6/870.
14 During their occupation, the Germans had, among other things, amassed machinery, requisitioned from factories in northern Italy, in various secure places (Parri 1973 cit., p. 26).
15 According to the minutes of his interrogation dated 18 February 1945, as well as inaccurate details of his entry into Italy and other imaginative information, Mallaby reported to De Leo that Field Marshal Alexander himself – whose organization he had joined the previous September – had entrusted him with the secret mission.
Mallaby stated that he reached Lugano by train from Bern on 13 February, and went to the offices of the British Vice Consul, to be presented to a person known as ‘Avvocato’ (‘Lawyer’), who in turn introduced him to the three people who were to accompany him to Italy (a priest who had to take them to Milan to introduce him to Cardinal Schuster; a radio operator named Ricci, an expert in the use of British cyphers, needed for contacting Alexander; and a guide of unknown name and nationality who was to have accompanied them in RSI territory).
16 According to Mallaby’s son Vaky, at a certain point the Germans, in an effort to test his truthfulness, passed from the ‘carrot’ to the ‘stick’, revealing preparations for his execution in the shooting range in Via Carmelitani Scalzi.
17 TNA: HS 6/870. Allen Dulles, head of the OSS, called Mallaby’s extemporaneous idea an ‘astute stratagem’ (Bradley F. Smith and Elena Aga Rossi, Operation Sunrise: La resa tedesca in Italia 2 maggio ’45, Mondadori: Milan, 2005, p. 89); Peter Tompkins, in L’altra resistenza (Rizzoli: Milan, 1995, p. 396), reports that the opportunity provided by Mallaby to Wolff was the latter’s second attempt to open a channel of communication with the Allies; Frederick Deakin, on the other hand, states that Wolff had informed the German ambassador to the RSI, Rudolf Rahn, that he ‘wanted to make use of the British captain to see if he could be considered as a liaison officer’ (Frederick W. Deakin, Storia della repubblica di Salò, Vol. 2, Einaudi: Turin, 1963, p. 1033).
18 A report dated 28 March 1945 concerning dead or missing officers whilst on missions classified Mallaby in the second of the two categories, with effective date of 15 February 1945. On 8 May, it was officially communicated that he was no longer missing; on 1 April his pay scale had been reduced from special operations to standard military service, demonstrating that due to the outcome of his second mission, Mallaby had been retired from active service in SOE (TNA: HS 6/872).
19 See Alan Dulles, The Secret Surrender, The Lyons Press: Guildford, 1966, passim, for his account of Sunrise.
20 Wolff proved this by handing over a detailed map of the places where he had hidden – allegedly to protect them – important Italian works of art and the famous coin collection of Vittorio Emanuele III.
21 A credible summary of US intelligence assessments of this matter is contained in the memoirs of Max Corvo, head of the OSS in Italy during the war (Corvo 1990, pp. 244–45).
22 On 10 March 1945, Field Marshal Kesselring was transferred to command the Army in the West (OB West), and General Heinrich von Vietinghoff was appointed as the supreme German commander in Italy, at the head of Army Group C.
23 Wolff had held a secret conversation on 8 March 1944 with Pope Pius XII at the Vatican, which undoubtedly influenced his later actions. For some new aspects on this event, see Manaresi 2009.
24 Smith and Aga Rossi 2005, passim; Dulles 1966, passim.
25 ACS: ACC microfilm, Public Safety, item: Cecil D. Mallaby, reel 166 C.
26 TNA: HS 6/873–874.
27 Smith and Aga Rossi 2005, p. 89.
28 TNA: HS 6/873.
29 Stafford 2011, pp. 91–92.
30 TNA: HS 6/873.
31 Woods 1999, pp. 15–16; Bailey’s conclusions, 2014, p. 337, also match this.
32 TNA: HS 6/873.
33 Ibid.
34 Jochen von Lang, Der Adjutant: Karl Wolff, der Mann zwischen Hitler und Himmler, Herbig: Stuttgart, 1985. For Wolff’s opinions about Mallaby, see: Foreign Office; Italian Documents, 032154; FO 371/46786.
35 Pino Adriano, L’intrigo di Berna, Mondadori: Milan, 2010, pp. 217–18. The author ignores or omits Mallaby’s fundamental contribution to the events. Attilio Tamaro, Due Anni di Storia 1943–1945, Tosi: Rome, 1950, pp. 520–21. In Memoria di sacerdoti ‘ribelli per amore’, written by Don Giovanni Barbareschi himself in 1986 (pp. 44–47), he states that after being arrested in Lecco, he was transferred to the SS headquarters at Villa Carminati di Cernobbio. Here he met Karl Wolff, an SS general and Eugen Dollmann; then with a stratagem the Germans freed him from the Brigate Nere and sent him to Switzerland with a message about the negotiations under way with the Allies, about which the Fascist authorities were and had to remain completely in the dark.
36 First among these is the one by Cardinal Schuster. On this point see also Smith and Aga Rossi 2005, p. 283, mentioning industrialist Carlo Bianchi (previously involved with Fascism), who even claimed financial support for Operation Sunrise.Thus, Wolff would have replicated with Barbareschi what was implemented with Mallaby.
37 TNA: HS 6/873. E. Kuby, Il tradimento tedesco, Rizzoli: Milan, 1987, passim. Kuby’s conclusions appear to be shared by Friedrich-Karl von Plehwe, Il patto d’acciaio, Longanesi: Milan, 1970, passim.
38 TNA: HS 6/873.
39 Smith and Aga Rossi 2005, p. 239.
40 Kuby 1987, pp. 403–04.
41 Smith and Aga Rossi 2005, pp. 240–41. Among the prosecution evidence collected against Wolff was his specific and willing involvement in the Holocaust, and experiments into the behaviour of the human body at low temperatures, and at extreme pressure, allegedly aimed at the development of safety and survival systems for aviators.
42 Giuseppe Parlato, Fascisti senza Mussolini, Il Mulino: Bologna, 2006, p. 88.
43 Sergio Nesi, Junio Valerio Borghese: Un principe un comandante un Italiano, Lo Scarabeo: Bologna, 2004, p. 505.
44 Rodolfo Graziani, Ho difeso la patria, Garzanti: Milan, 1947, pp. 488–89.
45 Cesare Rossi, Trentatré vicende mussoliniane, Ceschina: Milan, 1958, pp. 535–37.
Eugen Dollmann, one of the leading protagonists in Operation Sunrise, claimed to have been tasked with organizing the meeting between Mallaby and also Barbareschi with Wolff by Temistocle Testa, an important RSI official. The latter was impatient with Graziani’s unwillingness to deal with issues that were not strictly military, and was convinced of the usefulness of the ‘Tucker card’ (E. Dollman, Roma nazista, Longanesi & C: Milan, 1951, p. 427). Apart from the inaccuracy concerning the presence of Barbareschi, the testimony is plausible, and other accounts confirm that Testa, together with his right-arm man Giuseppe Cancarini Ghisetti, actually did this.
46 TNA: HS 6/869. This secret message reveals the identity of ‘Anselmo’: Everardo Galassini, an Italian soldier, a.k.a Carlo Ricci, Enzo Ricci, and Anselmo Montari, an SOE and No. 1 Special Force collaborator. According to Mallaby’s statements and British reports, Galassini’s behaviour was not particularly positive, especially during his interrogation.
47 Vincenzo Alberto Mellini Ponce de León, Guerra diplomatica a Salò (ottobre 1943–aprile 1945), Cappelli: Bologna, 1950, p. 107
.
CHAPTER 6: AFTERMATH
1 After its broadcast, Mallaby was contacted by the German newspaper Frankfurter Illustrierte with a view to serializing his story; nothing came of it, however.
2 In March 1965, Duilio Susmel, during one of the periodic revelations concerning the famous, secret ‘suitcase papers’ that Mussolini had with him at the time of his shooting, stated that some of them concerned the arrest and release ‘of Captain Tucker, special envoy to General Alexander and British Prime Minister Churchill, tasked with making contact with Mussolini in order to shorten the duration of the war’. Susmel states that initially Mussolini did not believe Tucker-Mallaby, ‘about whose arrest and whose statements he was immediately informed, so that he ordered him to be handed over to the Germans. But he changed his mind four days before his execution, when he tried to contact Churchill himself.’ The resonance of this was significant, given that it was taken up by the Florence newspaper La Nazione and even led to an official denial from Field Marshal Harold Alexander (reported in the papers with the headline: ‘Alexander denies Captain Tucker’s Claim’ – as if it were Mallaby, and not Susmel, who had presented a misleading version of the facts).
Alexander affirmed the truth, by denying. Evidently, Dick Mallaby’s ruse still produced effects 20 years later, like a war relic. Mallaby kept the newspaper clippings, hoping to one day reveal the truth.
3 Among those who attended Dick Mallaby’s funeral was the commander of NATO LANDSOUTH in Verona, James Lee Dozier. He would be kidnapped by an Italian communist terrorist group a few months later, and then freed thanks to a commando action that would have been typical of SOE.
4 Mallaby, before joining NATO, had attempted to publish something about his experiences of war. His personal papers reveal a letter dated 3 August 1950 from a literary agent, containing a first encouraging evaluation of the proposed manuscript. Among its stylistic recommendations was the advice to write it in the first person, while among the suggested titles was ‘From the vineyard to the battlefield’. The project probably hit a dead end due to the disclosure veto surrounding all things SOE.
5 Boutigny left a heartfelt testimony regarding Mallaby and his achievements in a piece of autobiographical writing that remains, unfortunately, unpublished, gathered by Mauro Taddei (who kindly allowed me to consult a transcript).
6 The proceedings of the conference are reported in N. 1 Special Force nella Resistenza italiana, Editrice Clueb: Bologna, 1990; the tributes of Hewitt and Boutigny appear on pp. 291–300 and pp. 313–24, respectively, while notes on Mallaby’s first mission are contained in the contributions of Douglas Dodds-Parker (p. 20) and of Christopher Woods (p. 46).
7 See the interview with the Deputy Mayor of Asciano Fabrizio Nucci, available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-X0t7HRW8Q.
8 ‘Real life James Bond who parachuted behind WWII enemy lines to be honoured by Italy’, available at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/22/real-life-james-bond-who-parachuted-behind-ww2-enemy-lines-to-be/; ‘Italy honours the suave Briton who fooled Nazis’, at https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/italy-honours-the-suave-briton-who-fooled-nazis-dzh9ngpkz.
Plates
Dick Mallaby with his father, Cecil. (Mallaby family)
The telegram delivered to Cecil Mallaby in 1921 that announced his Italian inheritance. (Mallaby family)
The Monkey plan used for Dick Mallaby’s secret and historical communications in August–September 1943. (Mallaby family)
Dick Mallaby’s mugshot. (Mallaby family)
A portrait of Marshal Pietro Badoglio. (Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images)
The unconditional surrender of Italy to the Allied Forces was signed in the headquarters tent at Cassible, Italy, on 3 September 1943. (Photo by Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)
The list of the Italian Supreme Command staff moved from Rome on 9 September 1943, including a ‘Sgt Maj. Guazzini’, who, the second footnote explains, is an ‘English officer of the I. S. (Lt. Mallaby)’. (Professor Gregory Alegi Archive)
Dick Mallaby after his first mission. (Mallaby family)
The unpleasant message to Cecil Mallaby from local teacher Maria Rispoli, beginning ‘God strike the English’, Asciano, 1944. (Mallaby family)
Dick Mallaby with some Italian soldiers in Monopoli in 1944. (Mallaby family)
Dick Mallaby in Poggio Pinci, c. 1944–45. (Mallaby family)
Dick Mallaby in Italy in the final years of the war. (Mallaby family)
Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, with whom Mallaby ended up negotiating during his second SOE mission in February 1945. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)
Dick Mallaby and Christine Northcote-Marks, seen here after the war on their wedding day, 30 March 1946. (Mallaby family)
Dick Mallaby with his first three babies: Caroline Mary, Elisabeth Spray and Christopher John. (Mallaby family)
One of the last photographs of Dick Mallaby. (Mallaby family)
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An Englishman Abroad Page 25