Hitler's Raid to Save Mussolini

by Greg Annussek

  On taking office, Badoglio instituted martial law in Rome and took other steps designed to intimidate possible subversives.* A 9:00 P.M. curfew kept people off the streets, and meetings involving more than three people were outlawed.84 Harsh prison terms were doled out for what many Italians viewed as minor offenses or even God-given rights.

  The complex web of deceit woven by the king and Badoglio seems to have left almost everyone guessing about the real nature of the new government, whether it be the Nazis, the Allies, or the Italian people. Within days of assuming power, Victor Emmanuel and his new Capo del Governo managed to alienate just about everyone who had a stake in Italy’s future.

  Wary as Badoglio was, it was not long before he got wind of Hitler’s plans to overthrow his government and rescue the Duce. But although he took these threats seriously—the Badoglio regime took almost every threat seriously—he did not dare risk an open break with the dreaded Nazis. Instead of confronting Hitler on this score, Badoglio chose to take preventive measures on the sly. For one thing, he decided to beef up the security of the new regime and so make it more difficult for Skorzeny’s commandos to arrest the Italians on Hitler’s blacklist. In the coming weeks he also took covert action to lead the Mussolini task force astray.

  His strategy in the latter regard was twofold. To stay one step ahead of the Germans, Badoglio repeatedly moved the Duce from one location to another. He also tried to throw the Nazis off the scent by surreptitiously feeding them a variety of false clues and rumors via the good offices of the Italian Military Intelligence Service— Servizio Informazione Militare (SIM)—one of the best organizations of its kind in the world.85 Although these red herrings could not be expected to derail the rescue mission entirely, it was hoped that they might slow it down long enough to buy the Italians more time in which to negotiate a surrender. No one, it seems, be it Hitler or Badoglio, had really believed that the precarious Axis alliance would stay intact for as long as it did.

  Sure enough, Skorzeny soon discovered that rumors concerning Mussolini were flying all over the capital. Some informers, for example, told the Germans that he was locked up in a mental hospital in Switzerland. Others said that he had killed himself or was seriously ill. The Germans usually had little choice but to waste precious time by following up these and other specious and contradictory leads, some of which were reportedly planted by Italian agents.86 “However,” Skorzeny recalled, “we did manage to establish that the Duce had called upon the King on the afternoon of July 25. From that moment on, no one had laid eyes on him.”87

  As General Student dramatically put it, “It was as if Mussolini had disappeared from the face of the earth.”88

  * * *

  *Though no one knew it at the time, Gerlach would later play a pivotal role in the Nazis’ last-ditch, all-or-nothing effort to rescue Mussolini.

  *Hitler’s obsession with secrecy during this period sometimes led to bizarre episodes. On August 2, for instance, Rintelen went to see Hitler at the Wolf ’s Lair with the intention of dissuading him from carrying out Operation Student. But before he had a chance to see the Fuehrer he was told by Wilhelm Keitel that Rintelen was forbidden from mentioning the subject. Hitler would have a fit, Keitel informed him, if he found out that Rintelen had been let in on the secret! See Plehwe, 100.

  *Every large unit of the German army—division, corps, army, and army group— had its own general staff. The third general staff officer, known as the “Ic,” handled local intelligence matters, assisted by a team of varying size. The job of the Ic was to gather up-to-the-minute information about the enemy: He monitored the positions of hostile forces, identified targets for reconnaissance, and so forth.

  *According to several reports, Skorzeny’s commandos spent much of that week driving all around Rome acquainting themselves with the layout of the city and casing the various houses and ministries being targeted for Operation Student.

  *The king and Badoglio were just as fearful of left-wing radicals as they were of the (right wing) Fascists. The former group, they believed, posed a grave threat to the very institution of monarchy, and Victor Emmanuel was obsessively concerned with preserving the authority of the Royal House.

  THE ODYSSEY OF BENITO MUSSOLINI

  And it was then, as I sat thinking in my room, that for the first time a doubt began to trouble my mind—was this protection or captivity?1

  —Mussolini, recalling his thoughts on the evening of July 25, 1943

  BENITO MUSSOLINI WAS ONLY DIMLY AWARE OF THE ELABORATE AND top-secret machinations set in motion by Hitler and the Badoglio regime in the days immediately following the Italian coup. He was, understandably enough, preoccupied with his own troubles.

  They began in earnest back on July 25, when the king of Italy gave the Duce the shock of his life by informing him that the Italian people were no longer in need of his services. Just after this meeting, at around 5:20 P.M., Mussolini staggered down the steps of the Villa Savoia in Rome and began walking towards his car, a black Alfa Romeo, which was parked some distance away on the other side of the drive. His head was probably still spinning from the news that the king had abolished the dictatorship with a wave of his tiny hand and tapped Marshal Badoglio to be the new Head of the Government.

  But whatever thoughts were racing through the Duce’s mind at this moment were interrupted by the sudden appearance of a figure in uniform. It was an officer of the carabinieri, a Captain Paolo Vigneri.2

  “His Majesty has charged me with the protection of your person,” Vigneri said to Mussolini, who registered the remark and then continued walking in the direction of his Alfa Romeo.3

  “No,” the captain said, “We must get in there.”4 As the Duce turned, he was surprised to see Vigneri pointing in the direction of a nearby ambulance.

  After some mild protest—he preferred to take his own car and dispense with the theatrics—Mussolini did as he was told. He hesitated for a moment when he spied several armed guards waiting for him in the belly of the vehicle. But then he obligingly stepped inside (taking a seat on a stretcher), and the ambulance sped off at high speed through the streets of Rome.5 “Strictly guarded by two plain clothes policemen armed with machine pistols,” the Duce recalled, “we drove a long and uncomfortable way with such bumps that the car all but overturned.”6

  While he was being jostled around in the back of the stuffy ambulance, it never occurred to him that he had been arrested. Despite the heavy security, or perhaps because of it, Mussolini was under the vague impression that such extreme measures were considered necessary for his own good. “I still thought that all this was being done, as the King had said, in order to protect my person.”7

  Half an hour later, at around 6:00 P.M., he found himself in the courtyard of the Podgora carabinieri barracks in Via Quintino Sella.8 Despite the rude awakening he had experienced at the Villa Savoia, the Duce was still clinging to the role of the stern dictator, old habits being difficult to break. When he stepped out of the vehicle, he thrust out his chin and placed his hands on his hips in a characteristic pose; indeed, he looked as if he had appeared on the scene to carry out a surprise inspection.9 He was shown to the officers’ mess, where he sat quietly biding his time for forty-five minutes or so.10 Then he was led back to the ambulance and whisked away to another barracks (this one for carabinieri cadets) in Via Legnano, arriving at 7:00 P.M.11

  He was promptly escorted to the second floor, installed in the office of the commandant, and placed under guard. As the hours passed and Mussolini took stock of his situation, he began to grow suspicious. “And it was then,” he recalled, “as I sat thinking in my room, that for the first time a doubt began to trouble my mind—was this protection or captivity?”12 He took note of a popular Fascist slogan written in large white letters on the wall of the barracks square: “Believe, Fight, and Obey.”13 It must have had a mocking ring to it.

  Later that evening, at around 1:00 A.M. on July 26, the Duce received a visitor in the person of General Ernesto F
erone, who arrived at the compound bearing a message for the ex-dictator. Mussolini fingered the green envelope, which had the words “War Office” inscribed on it, and pulled out a handwritten note.14 It was from Badoglio.

  “The undersigned Head of Government,” it read, “wishes to inform Your Excellency that what has been done in your regard has been done solely in your personal interest, detailed information having reached us from several quarters of a serious plot against your person. He much regrets this, and wishes to inform you that he is prepared to give orders for your safe accompanying, with all proper respect, to whatever place you may choose.”15

  Ah, now things were beginning to make more sense, the Duce must have thought to himself. Under the soothing influence of Badoglio’s letter, which seemed to promise him a larger degree of freedom, he immediately dictated a reply to his old nemesis. In his message he thanked Badoglio for his trouble and said that he would like to be taken to Rocca delle Caminate, his country house (which was more like a medieval fortress) in the Romagna region, not far from Forli.

  “I wish to assure Marshal Badoglio,” he said to Ferone, who was scribbling down his words verbatim, “if only in remembrance of the work we have done together in the past, that not only will I raise no difficulties of any sort but I will co-operate in every possible way.”16 He said that he approved of Badoglio’s declaration to continue the war at Germany’s side, and then wrapped up the note: “I express my earnest hope that success will crown the grave task which Marshal Badoglio is assuming by order and in the name of His Majesty the King, whose loyal servant I have been for twenty-one years and shall continue to be.”17

  It was a most conciliatory message. Mussolini did not voice outrage about the coup of July 25—not yet one day old—nor did he express concern about finding himself confined to a barracks. The letter was so passive, in fact, that Badoglio happily sent a copy of it to the Nazis in the days after the coup as evidence that the Duce had accepted his fate. This was the same letter that had left Goebbels scratching his head on July 27. “He would like to be taken to Rocca della Camminata to do nothing but rest,” a puzzled Goebbels noted in his diary, adding that if the letter was genuine “it would be an eloquent indication that the Duce no longer has any intention of interfering with developments.”18

  Mussolini later tried to explain away his defeatist attitude by claiming that Badoglio’s letter had misled him. “That letter, of a perfidy unique in history,” he wrote, “was designed to convince me that the King’s word concerning my personal safety would be respected and that the crisis would be dealt with within the framework of the Régime—i.e., of Fascism.”19

  As he sat idling away the hours at the cadet barracks, where he had little news of the outside world, the Duce apparently still held out hope that the Party he had created would survive the regime change. He found it hard to fathom that the old field marshal would seek to destroy Fascism, he later wrote with bitterness, “for Badoglio had too often explicitly and solemnly declared his allegiance to the Party . . . he had accepted too many honors and too much cash; anything was possible rather than that he should have prepared this betrayal and intrigued for it for months.”20

  On the evening of July 27, while Student and Skorzeny were meeting with Kesselring at Frascati, Mussolini learned that he was about to be transferred yet again, and he assumed that the destination was the Romagna. “I asked no questions,” he recalled, “convinced that the goal of this nocturnal journey was Rocca delle Caminate.”21 But during the drive he peered through a slit in the lowered blinds and realized that they were traveling in the wrong direction. When he questioned one of his escorts, he was informed that there had been a change in plans. As the Duce soon learned, they were on their way to Gaeta, a small port on the western coast of Italy, about eighty miles southeast of Rome.22

  Waiting for Mussolini at the Costanzo Ciano Wharf in Gaeta—it was named after the father of the Duce’s son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano—was Admiral Franco Maugeri, the forty-five-year-old Italian chief of Naval Intelligence.*23 A veteran of both world wars, the wiry, gray-haired Maugeri had been informed earlier in the day that he had been selected to perform “a little escort job.”24 He quickly guessed the true identity of his mysterious charge. The destination, he was told, was the small island of Ventotene, located opposite Naples a few dozen miles off the western coast of Italy. A corvette called the Persefone and its eighty-man crew were detailed for the assignment.

  Around 2:00 A.M. on July 28, Mussolini’s six-vehicle convoy pulled up to the Ciano Wharf, where Maugeri and several other officers were chain smoking and making small talk in the stifling heat as they awaited their infamous captive. The convoy was two hours late, and Maugeri was anxious. This was quickly forgotten, however, when he laid eyes on the dictator, whose almost unearthly appearance gave the sailor pause.

  “Mussolini’s face was green and sallow even in the dimmed-out light of the dock,” wrote Maugeri, who had jotted down the details of his adventure shortly after it occurred. “His huge, hypnotic, snakelike eyes shone out of the darkness startlingly. A three-day growth of beard masked his face.”25 The Duce was still wearing the same blue suit, now wrinkled, that he had donned during his audience with the king, a short-sleeved white shirt with a black tie, and a felt hat.

  “A far cry from the arrogant, bloodthirsty bully on the Balcony,” Maugeri thought to himself as he took the measure of the man.26 He hated Mussolini for what he had done to Italy, but could not help feeling a tinge of sympathy for the pathetic figure standing before him.

  Maugeri saluted the Duce respectfully before leading him below decks to the empty cabin of the Persefone’s commanding officer, Lieutenant-Commander Tazzari. The corvette got underway shortly afterward, sailing through the Tyrrhenian Sea and dropping anchor off Ventotene at around 5:15 A.M. Two of Mussolini’s escorts, General Saverio Polito and a Colonel Pelaghi, then went ashore to find appropriate accommodations for their prisoner. Amazingly, it seems that no one had reconnoitered the island in advance to determine whether Ventotene was an appropriate place to keep the Duce under wraps.

  While waiting for them to return, Maugeri decided to venture below and check up on Mussolini, with whom he had had no contact since the vessel departed Gaeta. Though he did not have explicit authority to fraternize with the Duce, his curiosity had gotten the better of him.

  When he entered the cabin, he discovered the guard sound asleep in a corner of the room. Mussolini, who was awake, lifted up his large eyes as the door opened. Maugeri greeted him and asked whether he wanted a cup of coffee, but the Duce said he would rather have some information. Did the admiral, he wondered, know the approximate size of Ventotene?

  Maugeri tried to recall the modest proportions of the island from memory. As he did so, he saw Mussolini break into a smile for the first time.

  “Ah!” said the Duce, his voice sounding gravelly and tired. “A small island.”27

  As Maugeri well knew, Mussolini was drawing a parallel between Ventotene and another, more famous island by the name of St. Helena. Napoleon Bonaparte had been exiled to this small tropical island in the South Atlantic after his legendary defeat at Waterloo and his second fall from power in 1815. It was no secret that Napoleon was one of the Duce’s idols.*

  Then another question.

  “This is a corvette, isn’t it?” Mussolini asked in a demanding tone.28

  “Yes,” Maugeri replied.29 It seemed like a silly question, he thought to himself, considering that the Duce had been chief of the navy for so many years. During his long reign as dictator, Mussolini had simultaneously occupied a mind-boggling number of other positions in the regime, including the top posts of the three military services.

  The two men proceeded to talk at length, mostly about the Italian navy and naval warfare in general, until Polito and Pelaghi returned. They told Maugeri that their scouting expedition had been a bust. The presence of a German garrison on the island, among other reasons, rendered Ventotene unsuitable for th
eir purposes. At Pelaghi’s suggestion, the Persefone continued on to Ponza, another small island located about twenty-five miles to the northwest.30 (The Pontine islands, which include Ponza and Ventotene, were the traditional home of Circe, the sorceress immortalized in Homer’s Odyssey).

  While Polito and Pelaghi went ashore again, Maugeri returned to the captain’s cabin. This time the Duce jumped to his feet.

  “Admiral, what is the meaning of these useless irritations?” Mussolini demanded, staring intensely into Maugeri’s eyes. It was obvious that he was highly agitated, but that he was also trying hard to keep his cool. “Why must I be persecuted in this way? Since last Sunday I’ve been completely cut off from everyone. I’ve had no news of my family. I’m without a penny. All the clothes I have are the ones I’m wearing. Why should I be treated this way—like a common criminal? According to the letter Badoglio wrote me, I wasn’t arrested, but only placed in protective custody to guard me against a plot against my life.”31

  The Duce then produced a crumpled sheet of paper—what was left of the Badoglio letter—and read it to Maugeri. The admiral was slightly amused by Mussolini’s naïveté. “It was a euphemism, of course,” Maugeri thought to himself, “and no one should have known that better than Mussolini. He had put enough men in similar ‘protective custody’ in his time.”32

  Mussolini continued to vent. He had ruled Italy for two decades, he reminded Maugeri, and had already lost one son in the war. He had been promised safe passage to Rocca delle Caminate, and now his captors seemed to be reneging on the deal.