War in Val d'Orcia

by Iris Origo

  DECEMBER 15TH

  Two other fugitives turn up—an old Jew from Siena and his son. Both of them, clad in the most unsuitable of town clothes and thin shoes, are shivering with cold and terror. The father, the owner of an antique shop, produces from an inner pocket, drawing me aside, a little carved ivory Renaissance figure which he wishes to exchange for food and warm clothing. We supply the latter, and suggest that he should keep the figure for future needs. He and his son wish to walk through the German lines to Naples—and to all our dissuasions (since it is clear that the old man, who suffers from heart-disease, will die upon the way) they only reply—‘We have no choice. We must.’ After a rest and some food they start up the hill in the snow, the old man groaning a little as he leans on his son’s shoulder.

  DECEMBER 22ND

  Kind friends send messages to warn me of a law by which all English and American women are to be interned in concentration camps, and advise me to look for a hiding-place. But where? and if I were away, Antonio would almost certainly be taken in my stead. It seems more sensible just to go on with daily life, which at the moment consists chiefly of tying up Christmas parcels for our refugee children and for the hospital. There are two trees to decorate, too, and layettes to finish for new-born babies in the Montepulciano hospital—where many expectant mothers have been evacuated from Grosseto or Livorno.

  DECEMBER 23RD

  Half of one’s Roman acquaintances are in hiding (some in the country, some in convents, some in segregated rooms of friends’ houses) and those who are still at liberty today are not certain whether they will be tomorrow. One afternoon in Rome, for instance, a bomb burst in front of the Hotel Flora—whereupon S.S. men sprang up out of the ground, and everyone who happened to be walking down the Via Veneto (over two hundred people, including the Spanish Ambassador) were promptly arrested. Sniping of Germans and of Fascist officials continues—and no buses, trams or even bicycles are allowed after dusk—so that at five p.m. the whole life of the town comes to an end. But all night the streets resound with the reports of machine-guns and hand-grenades.

  The food situation in the city is becoming more and more serious. Unlimited meat, vegetables, etc., can still be bought at preposterous ‘black market’ prices, but are practically unprocurable by the poor, and every day the discontent increases. Unfortunately faith in the Allies’ promises is also gradually decreasing—and the only Party which is daily growing stronger is the Communist. Of Mussolini no one now speaks and it is said that he himself, on being asked to make a speech on the wireless on October 28th, replied: ‘What can a dead man say to a nation of corpses?’

  CHRISTMAS DAY

  The Pope’s Christmas Eve homily had a despairing ring, as if he himself knew all too well that his appeal for peace to men of goodwill would fall upon ears deaf to any interpretation of right and justice but their own. Almost desperate, too, was his appeal for better international understanding, based on a universal human solidarity. But indeed of this there has been (certainly here, and I believe almost everywhere) a reawakening. In church this morning as I looked round I saw, among the usual Christmas congregation from the farms and the fattoria, the large group of refugee children from Genoa and Turin, rosy-cheeked and plump and excited; the Calabrian and Sicilian soldiers who are working in the farms; the Egyptian boy from the G.I.L.E.; all those who have found refuge here—and coming out I felt, in the familiar exchange of Christmas greetings, a bond of deep understanding born of common trouble, anxieties and hopes such as I never have felt before. And in the attitude of the farmers to all the homeless passers-by (whether Italian soldiers or British prisoners, whether Gentile or Jew) there is a spontaneous, unfailing charity and hospitality. Even now that the risks have increased—since the police are supposed to be rounding up the boys of the 1925 class—there is no farm which would refuse them shelter; and today I noticed that each one of the soldiers who are living here was wearing at least one warm garment given off their backs by their hosts.

  Yesterday we took a small Christmas tree to the Montepulciano hospital for the sick children; today we had a tree and a party for Benedetta and the refugee children here. The older girls danced and recited, they all sang Stille Nacht and Tu scendi dalle stelle—and Antonio made a magnificent Father Christmas with a flowing white beard, fur coat and cossack cap. For an hour or so it seemed like any other Christmas. But then the telephone rang: the Chianciano policeman issued a warning that Adino must report himself tomorrow morning, or the police would come to arrest his father, Gigi. Adino promptly disappears.

  Turning on the radio in the evening, we hear of the bombing of Pistoia and Pisa.

  DECEMBER 27TH

  Wait all day for the police to fetch Gigi—who, in preparation for prison, had changed into his best shirt. But no one came. A few hours later we hear that the order to arrest parents in place of their sons has (for this province, at any rate) been revoked.

  DECEMBER 28TH

  Coming downstairs this morning, I am greeted by the now familiar information: ‘There are some Germans in the fattoria courtyard—and an English prisoner in the garden.’ I hastily put the latter into the little room by the garden door where I do the flowers, and (while Antonio is dealing with the Germans) listen to his story. He was originally, he says, in a camp near Trento, and has already twice been recaptured: the first time by the Germans, from whom he escaped near Trento; the second time by the Fascist militia who put him in the barracks at Arezzo—from which he escaped during an air-raid. He then found refuge with a family near Sinalunga—but yesterday someone gave him away, the police turned up, and the friend who was with him was arrested, while he himself only got away by the skin of his teeth. ‘They were father and mother to me,’ he said of the family which had sheltered him, and his chief anxiety was lest they should now be in danger. It was difficult to know what to advise him, since many men who have tried it have told us that it is now impossible to get through the German lines, and that in the mountains south of Rome many prisoners have been rounded up. But he was determined to attempt it and, after consulting a map, he wearily set out.

  DECEMBER 31ST

  Return from two days in Florence. On the surface it is quieter than a few weeks ago. The Fascist S.S. are less active, and their leader, whose singularly inappropriate name is Carità, has been removed. During his rule, however, the number of arrests, followed by torture, was sufficiently large. Among his victims was a little hairdresser (of pro-Allied sympathies) whose shop was frequented by some ladies who had helped British prisoners, or merely chattered about them. He was tortured to supply a list of their names, but remained silent—and was finally taken to the prison of Le Murate in such a condition that the Governor refused to take him in, and sent him off to the hospital instead.

  The rounding-up of the Jews appears now to be completed—though no doubt many unfortunate women and children are still hidden. The Archbishop of Florence, Cardinal della Costa, has taken a courageous stand. When some of his nuns were arrested, in consequence of having given shelter to some Jewish women in their convent, the Cardinal, putting on his full panoply, went straight to the German Command. ‘I have come to you,’ he said, ‘because I believe you, as soldiers, to be people who recognise authority and hierarchy—and who do not make subordinates responsible for merely carrying out orders. The order to give shelter to those unfortunate Jewish women was given by me: therefore I request you to free the nuns, who have merely carried out orders, and to arrest me in their stead.’ The German immediately gave orders for the nuns to be freed, but permitted himself to state his surprise that a man like the Cardinal should take under his protection such people as the Jews, the scum of Europe, responsible for all the evils of the present day. The Cardinal did not enter upon the controversy. ‘I look upon them,’ he said, ‘merely as persecuted human beings; as such it is my Christian duty to help and defend them. One day,’ he gave himself the pleasure of adding, ‘perhaps not far off you will be persecuted: and then I shall defend y
ou!’

  1. In theory, the evacuation of these children was planned by the Fascist organisations in each province. In practice, we waited for three months for the Genoa Fascio to send us the children for whom we had applied—and then, as none came, I asked the Principessa di Piemonte to request her Red Cross inspectresses in Turin and Genoa to select twelve especially needy cases—whereupon the children arrived in a fortnight.

  2. In the course of the first summer, all the mothers in turn managed to come—and after seeing how well and happy their children were, begged me to take yet one other brother or sister—so that the children’s numbers gradually rose to twenty-three. In June 1944, when the front passed on beyond us, all these children became completely cut off from their parents—and for eight months remained without any news of them.

  3. According to Monelli (Roma 1943) it was Mussolini’s intention, on this occasion, to issue a solemn statement of the rights of the smaller nations of Europe—a sort of Axis Atlantic Charter. This idea had been suggested by Bastianini, the Foreign Minister, but Ribbentrop would have none of it. As for Hitler—at the end of one of the two leaders’ interviews, lasting two and a half hours, Mussolini said: ‘Today Hitler has had a monologue—tomorrow I will speak.’ But that tomorrow never came.

  4. These tents may, of course, have been mistaken for military ones.

  5. This petition, of course, was conveyed to the King in the greatest secrecy. For some days a copy of it was hidden behind a picture in the house where I was staying.

  6. April 1945. Having now received a copy of Harold Nicolson’s Friday Mornings, I find that on June 4th, 1943, he devoted an article to the examination of Mr. Stokes’s remarks. ‘I admit,’ he wrote, ‘that Bomber Command are better judges than is Mr. Stokes of what is, or is not, strategic lunacy. But it is an important fact that the only two places in the world where such points of conscience can be raised with fearless indiscretion are the British Houses of Parliament and the American Congress. It is in fact the truth that there are many people in this country who are distressed by this fierce bombing of crowded cities and who have every right, under a free constitution, to make their opinions heard. And even those who, like myself, have come to a compromise with the paradox, “In order to conquer evil, one must commit evil,” find it difficult in this matter to steer a steady course between hypocrisy on the one hand and sentimentality on the other.’ Harold Nicolson, Friday Mornings, p. 168.

  7. He subsequently commanded the Partisan forces in northern Italy.

  8. This same Monsignore, during the German domination in the winter 1943–44, played a heroic part in helping to hide and protect fugitives from the Germans and Fascists—hiding partisans, Jews and Army officers (regardless of all the rules of the cloister) in his convalescent home for nuns in the Sabine hills, and providing yet others with false papers with the Vatican stamp. Even the catacombs of Priscilla served once again as a hiding-place—from the German soldier now, as centuries ago from the Roman.

  9. They do not, however, print the statement in the second half of the message, that ‘the Germans have betrayed and abandoned their Italian ally both in Russia and on every battlefield in Africa’—and it is said that this omission has been ordered by Mussolini.

  10. Subsequent accounts of this interview give a different version. According to Badoglio, Mussolini (accompanied by his Chief of Staff, General Ambrosio, by the Foreign Minister Bastianini, and the Ambassador to Germany, Alfieri) had gone to meet Hitler with the intention of informing him of the true condition of affairs in Italy and of convincing him that Italy must now get out of the war. Whether or not this was Mussolini’s intention, it is certain that Ambrosio had plainly informed the Duce of the military situation, and that both he and Bastianini expected Mussolini at last to attempt to extricate his country from this impasse. But when the meeting took place, only one person spoke—Hitler—and when the Italian delegates returned home, a flat little communiqué merely announced that ‘questions of military character have been discussed’. Nothing more. (Monelli, Roma 1943.)

  11. Of all the Duce’s followers, only one man—Senator Morgagni, the head of the ‘Agenzia Stefani’—was faithful to him at the end. Five minutes after the broadcast giving the news of Mussolini’s resignation, he shot himself, leaving on his desk a note saying: ‘The Duce has resigned. My life is over. Long live Mussolini.’ (Monelli, Roma 1943.)

  12. In October, Bergamini and other Liberal editors were arrested by the new Fascist Party.

  13. See A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary 1939–1940, published by Pushkin Press, 2017.

  14. There now appears to be little doubt that he was shot, by Kesselring’s orders.

  15. Between July 25th and August 6th—when General Ambrosio complained to Von Keitel of the number of German troops entering the country—six German divisions crossed the Brenner. ‘You told me at Feltre,’ said Ambrosio, ‘that you could not spare me a single division—and yet now …’

  16. This proved to have been bad advice, alas!—since the difficulty of avoiding the Germans became increasingly great later on.

  17. At the time of writing these comments, many facts were unknown to me—as to most other bewildered people in this country. We did not know, for instance, of the long-drawn-out negotiations which preceded the signing of the armistice—of General Castellano’s two journeys to Lisbon in August, followed by that of General Zanussi (accompanied, as a pledge of good faith, by General Carton de Wiart) and of his subsequent two journeys to Sicily—journeys executed in the greatest secrecy, under the constant menace of discovery by German spies. We did not know of the Allied refusal (whether owing to fear of the information leaking out or to a more fundamental distrust) to inform the Italians of either the precise date or place of their intended landing—nor of the Italian Government’s assumption (on insufficient grounds) that the landing—and simultaneous announcement of the armistice—would not be until September 15th, so that Eisenhower’s announcement on the 8th came to them as a thunderbolt. We did not know that—owing to erroneous information from Italian GHQ—the organised plan of a descent of Allied paratroops in the neighbourhood of Rome, to protect the city, was given up at the last moment. Nor did we know to what an extent the Germans—naturally suspicious of betrayal from the first day of the coup d’état—were continually pressing the Italians as to their intentions—(‘Can you give me your word of honour,’ said Ribbentrop to Guariglia already on August 6th, ‘that you are not negotiating for an armistice?’)—so that all orders had to be given, all preparations executed, with a degree of secrecy which completely paralysed them. (This was carried so far that Badoglio preferred to risk losing all the Italian troops in the Balkans—half a million men—rather than to send instructions which might leak out.) Nevertheless, when all this has been said, a deplorable impression remains—of panic among those who left (so suddenly that secret compromising papers were forgotten), of utter confusion among those who remained behind. Thus the divisions round Rome, at the critical moment, were found to be short of both petrol and ammunition—and many O.C.s in other parts of the country, in France, Albania, the Aegean, etc., never received any orders at all—other than those implied in Badoglio’s declaration—and were left (often in the midst of overwhelming German forces, whom they had considered their allies until the preceding hour) to deal with the situation as best they might. There were single, sporadic episodes of firmness and valour—but the whole story remains one of tragic mismanagement and irresponsibility.

  18. ‘If only they hurry up!’

  19. These expectations were not entirely unfounded—since General Castellano’s first suggestion to the Allies was that the Allied landing should be near Grosseto.

  20. They do, later on, and hand over to the Germans a prisoner whom they succeed in capturing in his sleep, in one of our farms.

  21. ‘ “Come on,” said the sergeant—and then no one was left!’

  22. We learned, however, later, that this was the first incide
nt that caused us to be regarded with suspicion.

  23. I have received letters from some of them and I learned that eighteen of them got home safely. But nothing, alas, from Sergeant Knight.

  24. ‘Just rubs along.’

  25. This episode became the second black mark against us.

  26. This was, at that time, pure invention. Indeed, to my knowledge, none of the partisans in our district ever received food supplies by parachute, though, in the last weeks of the German occupation, some arms and dynamite were thus supplied to them.

  27. Many of these, at a later stage, were caught and imprisoned. Some of the bravest—including several women—were shot immediately. Others were tortured in the prisons of Via Tasso and finally executed in the massacre of the Fosse Ardeatine.

  28. A little later this little town was almost entirely destroyed by Allied bombs. When I went to visit it, on a Red Cross inspection tour in the spring of 1945, it was still in ruins and over nine hundred families were homeless, scattered in the surrounding farms.

  1944