In the autumn of 1942, when Giovanni Di Giunta was recalled from his prison camp and his plan came to its ignominious end, Italy’s Fascist regime had nearly ten months left to run and Mussolini and Farinacci over two and a half years to live: like Mussolini, Farinacci was destined to be killed in 1945 after his capture by Italian partisans. It is impossible of course to know what would have occurred had one or the other been assassinated while Italy was still at Nazi Germany’s side. Perhaps Fascism would have fallen sooner. Perhaps, if Mussolini had been the victim, Farinacci would have replaced him. The backfiring of a failed assassination attempt might also be considered, given that the discovery of assassination plots in the twenties and thirties had allowed Fascism greatly to strengthen its grip on the country. All of this may be intriguing to think about: counter-factual history is a game of infinite permutations.
Equally it is impossible to know what Giovanni Di Giunta might have done and what could have resulted had his plan been left to run. It seems certain that mounting an assassination along the lines proposed would have faced enormous obstacles, ranging from the formidable problem of returning to Italy, to the difficulty of keeping his real identity secure, to the challenge of preparing an assassination attempt armed only with some forged paperwork and a few hidden diamonds. It is interesting, though, that SOE’s chosen killer had declared himself willing to die in the attempt. Hitler himself had once said that ‘not a soul could cope with an assassin who, for idealistic reasons, was prepared quite ruthlessly to hazard his own life in the execution of his object’.37 Whether Di Giunta had been sincere when saying he was prepared to kill and be killed is quite another matter.
The remote hill town of Troina, in the Sicilian province of Enna, sits above rolling slopes in the island’s eastern uplands. Its origins date back to Greek colonists more than 2,000 years ago. In the eleventh century Norman invaders made it their capital. It is Sicily’s highest town and, when Allied forces invaded in the summer of 1943, it proved an ideal rearguard position for the German 15th Panzergrenadier Division. After several days’ fierce fighting, Troina finally fell to American troops on 6 August. Robert Capa, the war photographer, accompanied one of the first patrols to pick their way into its narrow, twisting streets. A series of famous images in Life magazine recorded the fighting and the damage. Today, documents in Troina that survived that fate add a little more detail to the picture of Giovanni Di Giunta found in British records.
Ledgers and index cards in the town archives confirm his date and place of birth. Born in Troina on 26 November 1908, Giovanni Michelino Di Giunta, to give him his full name, was the second son of Alfonso Di Giunta and Teresina Marianna Bartolo. In all, he had three brothers, Francesco, Alfredo and Armando, and a sister, Giuseppina.38 In Troina the Di Giuntas are remembered as an established family of noble roots. At one time they had owned land and property. By the 1930s, it seems, that wealth was shrinking; but they remained among the four or five most prominent families in the town and still had a good-sized home on Via Napoli Bracconeri.
In 1929, so the town documents record, Giovanni Di Giunta was married to Maria Grazia Scorciapino. She had been born in Troina, too, though they were married in Turin.39 She was also sixteen years older than him. In those days, marriages in Sicilian hill-towns of couples with sizeable age differences were not uncommon. Often such newlyweds were related: the intermarrying of close relatives was an accepted method of keeping property and wealth within a family, although limited choice might mean that sprightly nieces and nephews could be paired with ageing uncles and aunts. It is unclear whether this was the case with Giovanni Di Giunta’s marriage. Nor do documents shed light on why Di Giunta and his bride were married in Turin. They do reveal a son, born in 1932. They show, too, that Di Giunta was registered again as living in the town in 1936.40
In 2012, one man who had known the family in the 1930s remembered the young Giovanni Di Giunta as ‘an adventurous type, very athletic, very keen on fitness’. He recalled Di Giunta competing among the town’s young men to see who could lift and carry around the wrought-iron benches in the square. He also remembered him as a man who was not noticeably anti-Fascist and who ‘liked to navigate by fantasy … He wasn’t somebody whose stories you necessarily believed.’41 Records and local memories in Troina reveal, too, that, after leaving Sicily and his family in the late 1930s, Di Giunta never came back. The town documents list his fate as ‘disperso in Africa’: ‘missing in Africa’.42
Notes
1 See, for example, the allegations of Luigi Carissimi-Priori, a former partisan and commander of the political bureau of the Como police, who claimed to have investigated Mussolini’s death in 1945, in R. Festorazzi, Mussolini–Churchill: le carte segrete (Rome: Datanews, 1998).
2 See, for example, F. Andriola, Mussolini–Churchill carteggio segreto (Casale Monferrato: Piemme, 1996), and L. Garibaldi, Mussolini: The Secrets of His Death (New York: Enigma Books, 2004).
3 Garibaldi, Mussolini, p. 64. For the latest theorising about Churchill’s holiday habits, see: R. Festorazzi, Mistero Churchill: Settembre 1945: che cosa cercava sul Lario lo statista inglese? Perché si celava dietro l’identità del colonnello Warden? (Pietro Macchione, 2013).
4 See, for example, Robert L. Miller’s introduction to Garibaldi, Mussolini, pp. ix–xviii.
5 This is based on a claim made by Bruno Giovanni Lonati, a former partisan commander, who, in 1994, declared that he had killed Mussolini and had done so at the request of a mysterious British agent called John who had personally executed Petacci. Bruno Giovanni Lonati, Quel 28 aprile. Mussolini e Claretta: la verità (Milan: Mursia, 1994). Peter Tompkins, a former OSS agent and veteran journalist, reasserted Lonati’s story in print and claimed to have identified ‘John’ as ‘Captain Malcolm Smith, alias Johnson, an officer of the British Field Security Service [sic]’. P. Tompkins, Dalle carte segrete del Duce: Momenti e protagonisti dell’Italia fascista nei National Archives di Washington (Milan: Marco Tropea, 2001), p. 354. Tompkins again repeated Lonati’s claims in a documentary broadcast on Italian state television in 2004 when the allegation of SOE involvement was apparently made explicit. See R. Owen, ‘Mussolini killed “on Churchill’s orders by British agents”’, The Times, 28 August 2004.
6 Sir Winston S. Churchill quoted in E. G. to Miss Smith, 7 July 1952, TNA PREM 11/686. The book to which Churchill was referring was the second volume of his history of the Second World War. See W. S. Churchill, The Second World War. Volume II: Their Finest Hour (London: Cassell, 1949), pp. 107–8.
7 See Garibaldi, Mussolini, pp. 35–41.
8 Frances Saunders, The Woman Who Shot Mussolini (London: Faber and Faber, 2010), pp. 309, 225.
9 ‘Copy of case book entries regarding the Hon. Violet A. Gibson’, TNA MH 79/262.
10 C. Hibbert, Benito Mussolini: A Biography (London: Longmans, 1962), p. 77.
11 ‘History of Emilio [sic] Recchioni, of 37 Old Compton Street, Soho’, 22 June 1917, TNA HO 144/18949; ‘Copy of Special Branch report dated June 15th 1915’, TNA HO 144/18949.
12 Minute on Special Branch report, 11 June 1929, TNA HO 144/18949.
13 Report by the Metropolitan Police, 24 April 1934, facsimile reproduced in P. Concetti and C. Muzzarelli Formentini, Max Salvadori: Una vita per la Libertà (Fermo: Andrea Livi Editore, 2008), p. 9.
14 See, for example, S. Pugliese, Carlo Rosselli: Socialist Heretic and Antifascist Exile (London: Harvard UP, 1999), pp. 187–8.
15 Salvadori, The Labour and the Wounds, p. 66.
16 Ibid.
17 Information provided by the SOE Adviser to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office.
18 SOE War Diary, May 1942, TNA HS 7/232.
19 Ibid.
20 Born in Edinburgh, the thirty-year-old Pearson was a six-foot-three Scot, an old boy of Winchester College and a Cambridge graduate, who, before the war, had spent seven years working for Stewarts & Lloyds, a steel manufacturer. SOE files dating from about this time describe him as one of London’s best y
oung senior officers, ‘really first class … but of course with very little knowledge outside our particular work’. ‘Major J. S. A. Pearson’, Lieutenant-Colonel J. Kennedy to War Office, 10 August 1942, TNA HS 9/1159. Colin Gubbins considered him ‘a good sound officer with a clear head & plenty of initiative’. Comment by Major General C. Gubbins on Special Confidential Report, 3 January 1943, TNA HS 9/1159.
21 SOE War Diary, May 1942, TNA HS 7/232.
22 ‘Five Fascists’, Time, 6 September 1943.
23 Bosworth, Mussolini’s Italy: Life under the Dictatorship (London: Allen Lane, 2005), pp. 129, 153.
24 ‘Black Farinacci’, Time, 4 February 1929.
25 SOE War Diary, May 1942, TNA HS 7/232.
26 H. Fornari, Mussolini’s Gadfly: Roberto Farinacci (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1971), pp. 178–9.
27 F. Taylor (ed.), The Goebbels Diaries 1939–41 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1982), p. 127. Interestingly, the Nazis came to consider Farinacci to be a suitably pro-Nazi replacement for the Duce. ‘The Fuehrer intends to use Farinacci for setting up an Italian counter-government,’ Goebbels, his old admirer, recorded in his diary after Mussolini was deposed and Fascism fell in July 1943. Only when Farinacci flew in to speak to them did they have second thoughts. ‘Farinacci has arrived,’ Goebbels’s diary continued. ‘[He] was received by Ribbentrop and then by the Fuehrer. He behaved very unwisely during these talks. The Fuehrer expected [that] he would express his profound regret at developments and at least stand unreservedly by the Duce. This, however, he did not do. His report to the Fuehrer consisted mainly in severe criticism of the Duce’s personality and conduct … [T]hat clumsy fool Farinacci … [I]t is evident that we cannot use this man on any grand scale … Farinacci is a completely broken man.’ L. Lochner (ed.), The Goebbels Diaries (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1948), pp. 324, 327–9.
28 SOE War Diary, May 1942, TNA HS 7/232.
29 ‘Descriptive Catalogue of Special Devices and Supplies’, TNA HS 7/28.
30 SOE War Diary, May 1942, TNA HS 7/232. Plenty of surviving documents refer to that surgery in the context of Di Giunta’s mission. Jimmy Pearson would describe Di Giunta as ‘the fellow who had the facial operation and was going to do a job of work in Italy’. Major J. Pearson to Major C. Roseberry, 5 August 1942 TNA HS 6/821. A few weeks later he referred to Di Giunta’s ‘job of work’ as ‘the scheme for the gentleman who had the facial operation’. Major J. Pearson to Major C. Roseberry, 16 September 1942, TNA HS 6/821.
31 SOE War Diary, June 1942, TNA HS 7/234.
32 Ibid.
33 Ronald Turnbull, SA 26754, Sound Archive, Imperial War Museum. Probably of African origin, the ones now given to Di Giunta had been flown from London to Cairo for use by officers there as they saw fit, though it appears that the stones were doled out rarely. ‘Cairo have not yet used one single diamond of those I have sent out,’ complained a Baker Street finance officer that autumn, ‘& I have some really good ones waiting for a proper home.’ Captain F. Snow to Major J. Pearson, 13 September 1942, inked annotation to Lord Glenconner to Major J. Pearson, 7 September 1942, TNA HS 3/122.
34 Entry, 18 February 1943, War Diary of No. 321 POW Camp, TNA WO 169/6768.
35 Major J. Pearson to Major C. Roseberry, 16 September 1942, TNA HS 6/821.
36 SOE War Diary, May 1942, TNA HS 7/232.
37 M. Seaman, Introduction to Operation Foxley: The British Plan to Kill Hitler (London: PRO, 1998), pp. 28–9.
38 Birth and family registers, Troina town archives.
39 Ibid.
40 ‘Register of deleted records’, Troina town archives.
41 Author’s interview in Troina, 7 November 2012.
42 ‘Register of deleted records’, Troina town archives.
8
‘An ideal subversive organisation’
In March 1941, Jack Beevor, manning the SOE office in neutral Lisbon, had been instructed by London to contact Thomas McEnelly, the United States consul in Palermo, Sicily’s capital, who was expected to be passing through on his way home. Beevor was to see if McEnelly might be persuaded to provide names and addresses of anti-Fascist Sicilians and information about Sicily’s coastline. There is no record in SOE’s files of Beevor having had any success. What is clear is that its interest in causing trouble on the island lasted. Also clear is that progress in that direction was painfully slow. Nine months later, ruminating on the possibility of fomenting dissent that might detach Sardinia and Sicily from Rome’s control, a senior officer at SOE headquarters in London remarked that for Sicily ‘we have not got even a Lussu, and our first object must be to find out if any person or organisation exists which could raise the necessary movement’.1
Writing in February 1942, Hugh Seton-Watson of SOE’s Cairo office agreed. Careful groundwork, he argued, was vital. Sending into Sicily Italian ex-prisoners with wireless sets but without contacts seemed ‘pointless’.2 Not everyone was so cautious, as MI6 demonstrated later that year when it put Emilio Zappalà and Antonio Gallo ashore. For SOE, the pair’s demise was a serious setback. MI6 had spoken of sharing the benefits once the agents were safely established; one hope had been that they might act as a suitable reception committee for further teams. As it was, their capture left SOE mourning the loss of its only trained and available Italian wireless operator and fearing it would take months to train another. Also the arrests did little to discourage the Italians and Germans from further strengthening Sicily’s defences.
Nevertheless, SOE maintained its interest in Sicily and remained optimistic about what the island might offer. It was clearly a potential stepping-stone to any future invasion of Italy, while the possibilities of its physical and human terrain seemed encouraging. ‘The whole of the island is mountainous or hilly, except for a few coastal plains and a hilly plateau in the North-West,’ reads an assessment drawn up by the Cairo office in late 1942. ‘Owing to its nature and small density of population the island could be suitable for guerrilla warfare.’ The Sicilian people, the report went on, had a history of ‘spasmodic struggles for independence’ and seemed little interested in Fascism:
The Sicilian is by instinct Sicilian before anything else, and he likes to blame Italy for all his troubles and miseries. They like to believe that their land is extremely rich but that they cannot exploit it because the North fears their competition. They also believe that the heavy taxes they have to pay are for the benefit of other Italian regions. These grudges are quite common in other countries too (South and North of France for instance) but they take on a stronger aspect of reality in this case owing to the nature of the Sicilian …
The average Sicilian [still] thinks of himself as an Italian. He would like his island to enjoy a privileged position in Italy and not to be dictated [to] by Rome but he does not think in terms of an independent Sicily …
[However, t]here is no doubt that within Italy itself … the Sicilians have been the less loyal section of the population … [E]ven within Europe [there are] very few examples of a particular region being so consistently troublesome within its state … [T]here is a strong possibility that if this tendency is carefully and tactfully exploited it may prove very useful to our purposes.
What SOE felt less able to identify was a means of exploiting that tendency. Obstacles ranged from Fascist propaganda, ‘which tries to make the Sicilians believe that we intend making of their island a British possession of the same type as Malta,’ to ‘the peculiarities of the language and customs, the physical characteristics of the race and the parochial life of the population [which] make it difficult for anyone but a Sicilian to settle on the island under an assumed identity.’ But one possible way ahead did exist, SOE thought. ‘The [Sicilian] Maffia [sic], if and when we contact them, and provided they are ready to collaborate, would be an ideal subversive organisation for the island.’3
This was the not the first time that the British had considered contacting the Mafia, or Cosa Nostra – literally, ‘Our Thing’ – as it prefers to
call itself. As early as February 1941, Military Intelligence officers in London had appealed to the Foreign Office for information about the ‘Maffia organisation in Sicily’ (‘Maffia’ was a common form of spelling at the time). The Foreign Office replied that it had no recent information but believed the organisation had been ‘practically stamped out … though elements of it may merely have been driven underground’.4 This was a reference to the supposed and much-publicised outcome of a campaign waged by Cesare Mori, the ‘Iron Prefect’ as Fascist propaganda liked to call him, to crush the Sicilian Mafia on Rome’s behalf in the late 1920s.
SOE’s turn to be interested in the Mafia began in November 1941. ‘We have some evidence as to [a] separatist tendency in Sicily started by former members of disbanded Mafia,’ read a telegram that reached London that month from its office in Cairo, adding: ‘Military events might quickly emphasise such tendencies.’5 In January 1942 and on Cairo’s behalf, Baker Street then asked its New York office to find out if the American Mafia still had contacts with Sicily and would be willing to work with SOE to ‘promote subversive activities’ there.6 This British interest predated by months the fabled efforts of the United States’ own authorities to harness the American Mafia to the Allied war effort.
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