In Genoa on April 28, Captain Vanoncini and the men of the Peedee mission moved to Hotel Verdi. The partisans had set up a prison in the basement of the hotel for high-ranking Fascists and Nazi officers. For some partisans it was time to settle old scores, an eye for an eye. Vanoncini saw a risk that his men could be drawn into acts of brutality and retribution. After all, the enemy had treated the American OGs as terrorists, had tortured and even murdered them whenever it had a chance. Medic Philip Francis said, “Van loved his men and could see what might happen. He called his men together and explained that we should not go into the basement of Hotel Verdi, or any other torture chamber. This was not the American way to seek revenge by torture. This proved to us all that Van was a great leader and a man of great love for all people, friend or foe. To my knowledge, Capt. Vanoncini’s request was kept by all members of mission Peedee.”24
In Milan on April 29, the partisans of the Alliotta division captured Colonel Felice Fiorentini, the cruel leader of the notorious Sicherheits Abteilung, or Security Office, of Voghera, composed of Italian Fascists working for the SS. The men of this unit helped the Germans in operations against the partisans and carried out reprisals against the civilians. They were responsible for the deaths of 130 Italians, only 10 percent of whom fell in combat. The rest died after arrest and included wounded or sick partisans of the Alliotta division that fell into the unit’s hands. The Sicherheits men called themselves “Brotherhood of the Well” because they would often dump the bodies of their victims in wells. They left other victims exposed for days in village squares or crossroads to terrorize the population.25 The partisans’ desire for revenge once they had Colonel Fiorentini in their hands was understandable. They took Fiorentini in front of Edoardo at the partisan headquarters in a school in Milan. One of the partisans, Paolo Murialdi, who had escorted Fiorentini, described the scene:
Tall, thin, pale, defeated. Edoardo and I fear a lynching or a blast of automatic gunfire from the agitated partisans who have gathered in the atrium and are clamoring to see him. Edoardo comes up with the idea of showing him to the partisans with the two of us standing next to him, elbow to elbow. Edoardo asks for silence and says that we have to teach him a lesson. We will have a special tribunal in Voghera judge him, but, in the meanwhile, let us sing him a partisan song. And it so happens. An emotional and even theatrical scene, but the partisans sing and do not shoot.26
Captain Taylor of the Roanoke mission wrote laconically about the fate of Fiorentini after the partisans took him to Voghera: “Killed while trying to escape,” he noted in his mission report for the OSS. The same phrase appears in the reports of several other OSS missions in Italy at the time and indicates that such events were not isolated cases. Italian historians today estimate the number of Fascists killed during the insurrection and in the days after at between ten thousand and twelve thousand, as opposed to three to four thousand killed during the war against the partisans. This phenomenon was not unique to Italy and occurred in all the countries that experienced societal divisions between collaborators and those who opposed the Nazis. For example, historians place the number of summary executions in France in August to October 1944 at between seventeen and eighteen thousand.27
What was unique to Italy is that the immediate aftermath of the liberation brought to the surface not only the short-term memories of the civil war that began on September 8, 1943, but also all the memories of violence, persecution, and murder inflicted on the Italians by the Fascist regime in the twenty years before the armistice. In the words of an Italian historian, Enrico Gorrieri, “There was a lot of anger accumulated in people’s hearts. It was impossible for it not to explode after April 25. Violence begets violence. The crimes that hit the Fascists after the liberation, even though they were in part acts of summary justice, are not justifiable, but nevertheless can be explained with what had happened earlier and with the inflamed climate of that time. The Fascists are not entitled to play the victims.”28
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In the last few days of April, after the American Fifth Army and British Eighth Army erupted from the Po River bridgeheads, the war in Italy entered its final stage. The goal was to roll up the disintegrating German units before they had a chance to retreat and regroup into the Alps. The Allied advance now looked more like a tactical march than a combat operation. The Fifth Army sliced through the plains to capture Verona on April 26, then it pushed further north to close the Brenner Pass, the main gateway for German forces trying to retreat into Austria.
To the west, Fifth Army’s First Armored Division penetrated the Po Valley to the Alpine foothills at Lake Garda then turned westward toward Brescia and Como to seal off all possible escape routes to Switzerland and Austria before entering the liberated Milan on April 30. To its left, the 34th Infantry Division drove west, taking the towns of Parma, Fidenza, and Piacenza in quick succession, and then turned left toward the French border. The 92nd Infantry Division, after arriving in Genoa on April 27, continued its sweep along the coastal highway toward the French Riviera. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team entered Torino on May 1.29
The British Eighth Army, supported by elements of the Fifth Army, pushed to the northeast to capture Padua and Venice and link up with the Yugoslav Liberation Army in Trieste and Goriza. One of the American units supporting the British Eight Army was the 85th Infantry Division. It thrust deep into the Dolomite Mountains toward Innsbruck to link up with American units that were pushing south from Austria. On May 2, advance units of the 85th Division arrived at the village of Calalzo di Cadore, twenty miles from the Austrian border, in the middle of a pitched battle between Italian partisans and German forces of the 73rd Army Corps. The Americans arranged a cease-fire, demanded, and received the unconditional surrender of the Germans. The senior German officer that surrendered the troops was General Anton Dostler who had been in command of the 73rd Army Corps since November 1944.30
The overwhelming success of the Allied offensive across Northern Italy caused the rapid disintegration of the Axis forces at the end of April. General Heinrich von Vietinghoff, commander in chief of all German forces in Italy, moved to end the fighting and avoid further bloodshed. German emissaries arrived at the Supreme Allied headquarters for the Mediterranean theater in Caserta on April 28 to arrange a cease-fire and the unconditional surrender of all the Axis forces south of the Alps. They signed an armistice agreement at 1400 hours the next day and agreed to a cease-fire along the entire Italian front to take effect at 1200 hours on May 2, 1945.31
There was a bit of drama on April 30 when Kesselring, commander in chief of all German forces in the West, heard about the agreement. He dismissed von Vietinghoff and his chief of staff for exceeding their authority in negotiating with the enemy and sent written instructions to all senior officers in Italy prohibiting negotiations without special orders. But the events were beyond the control of Kesselring or anyone else in the German High Command at that point. The German troops were utterly defeated and cut off from the homeland in northern Italy. Without weapons, fuel, ammunition, and provisions, any further resistance was futile. Hitler’s suicide in Berlin freed the senior generals from the vestiges of the personal oath of allegiance they had pledged the dictator. Now they felt they could keep to the agreement signed in Caserta and settle “in a very honorable manner.” Kesselring, faced with a fait accompli, relented and begrudgingly allowed the surrender to go forward.32 On the evening of May 2, the 15th Army Group headquarters and the German Army Group C headquarters transmitted the cease-fire orders throughout northern Italy. So shattered were the German command and control structure and communications networks that it took forty-eight hours for the orders to trickle down and for all the units to lay down their arms.
On May 4, 1945, General von Senger and a group of German staff officers arrived at General Mark Clark’s 15th Army Group headquarters in Florence. He reported to General Clark who was standing in his tent under the Stars and Stripes flag, with General Truscott, commander of the Ameri
can Fifth Army and General McCreery, commander of the British Eighth Army, at his sides. Von Senger gave Clark the military salute, and then delivered a formula that had been agreed-upon before the meeting, “I have been authorized by General von Vietinghoff, my superior commander, to receive your orders for the surrender of the Army Group C.” There was no mention of unconditional surrender, but there was no illusion that the surrender was anything but full capitulation in view of the complete inability of the German forces to continue to fight. Von Senger wrote:
I could not escape the impression that the Allied officers found this a painful scene. I had to respect them as opponents, whereas they could see in me only a representative of the Hitler regime. How could they know that this setting evoked in me little of the bitterness that they themselves felt? For me it marked the end of twelve years of spiritual servitude as well as a very personal turning point in life, whatever my eventual fate might be.33
* * *
After the OG missions and the partisan units they supported connected with regular Allied units, they spend a few more days in their operational areas before returning to the OG headquarters in Sienna. During this time, they turned their attention toward immediate reconstruction projects to reopen routes of communication. Already on April 27, Captain Vanoncini and the Peedee team had put six hundred Germans to work repairing the tarmac and bridges of Highway 45, between Genoa and Piacenza. They also played the role of liaison between the partisan commands, the Allied commanders, and the Allied Military Government officials who moved in to take over the civil administration of the territories. Efforts went toward the proper treatment of the prisoners of war held by the partisans and their transfer to concentration areas and prisoners of war cages that sprang up throughout Italy at the time.
Another sensitive area that required the OGs’ attention was preventing frictions among the partisan units affiliated with different political movements that began to position themselves for the governance of postwar Italy. The Communists were very strong in the partisan movement throughout Italy and the Allies greatly feared they would use the strength of arms to take over the country. A similar situation in Greece had sparked a bloody civil war in November 1944, a scenario that the Allies wanted to prevent happening in Italy at all costs. They saw disarming the partisan units as a key measure to enable the discussions about the future of Italy to go forward through peaceful and democratic means. The Allies organized disarmament parades throughout northern Italy in the first few days after the war ended. These parades began with speeches from partisan leaders and senior Allied commanders. Then the partisan units marched to the ovations of the Italian population displaying their colors. At a designated area at the end of the route, they deposited their weapons and marched off with their flags flying. The entire Peedee mission participated in the partisan parade in Genoa on May 2, and the Roanoke mission participated at a similar parade in Pavia on May 12.
One of the last acts of the missions in the field was supporting investigations already under way of war crimes committed by the Germans or the Fascists during the war. As early as April 27, Captain Vanoncini of the Peedee mission received two visitors from the OG headquarters in Sienna: Captain Nevio J. Manzani and Captain Albert G. Lanier were investigating the fate of the fifteen men of the Ginny team who had disappeared more than a year ago. Manzani and Lanier were particularly interested in identifying and interviewing Germans and Fascists who knew about those events. Vanoncini assigned men from the Peedee team to help them with the investigation and to track persons of interest in the prisoner of war cages in and around Genoa, where the 135th Fortress Brigade officers and men were being held.
CHAPTER 14
OSS Investigations into War Crimes
After the Ginny men failed to return from their mission of March 22–23, 1944, the OSS initially reported their status as “Captured by the Enemy” on a Battle Casualty Report dated April 26, 1944.1 Then, on May 9, 1944, they updated the status of all fifteen men to “Missing in Action.” They forwarded the information to the Military Personnel Casualty Branch in the Adjutant General’s Office of the War Department in Washington, DC. On January 23, 1945, the Casualty Branch began a review of the status of the men to determine whether they could issue a “finding of death” under the provisions of Section 5, Public Law 490. Findings of death were made twelve months after a soldier had been declared missing in action, if there were no indications that the person was still alive. The military bureaucracy used findings of death to terminate the deposits of pay and other allowances into the soldiers’ accounts and to issue payments of death gratuities to their next of kin.2
In response to a query from the Casualty Branch at the end of January 1945, Colonel Livermore and Captain Materazzi, respectively commanding and executive officers of the Italian OGs, compiled all the information they had at the time about the fate of the Ginny mission. After they lost contact with their men, they had arranged through OSS channels to send a message to an OSS agent, code name Youngstown, operating in Genoa, “Some American soldiers in uniform landed a few nights ago in close vicinity of Stazione di Framura. Please find out through intermediaries and most cautiously what happened to them and where they are now.” The agent answered on April 1, 1944, “Thirteen American soldiers plus two American officers made prisoners after a brief battle the night of 26–27 near Framura. They are now in La Spezia.”
Several broadcasts from German and Italian radios that OSS monitored at the time provided conflicting information. A broadcast in German from Vienna on March 27, 1944, reported, “On the eastern side of the gulf of Genoa, an American Commando Group consisting of two officers and thirteen men, which landed northwest of La Spezia, was wiped out in combat.” The Wehrmacht communiqué of the same day mentioned the operation and reported the men as “wiped out.” The next day, an Italian station broadcast proclaimed “Fascist Captures American Rangers: The head of the Spezia Province commended the Fascist Giovanni Bianco who together with other Fascists captured a group of Americans, including two officers who landed on the Ligurian coast.” A similar message was broadcast the next morning by another Italian station.
At the beginning of February 1945, an Italian civilian from Sarzana crossed the frontlines some forty miles south of La Spezia. He was taken prisoner and transferred to a prisoner of war camp. Captain Nevio J. Manzani of the Italian OGs, on assignment with the 92nd Division at the time, interrogated him on February 2 and obtained the following information: “In March 1944, eleven Americans landed above La Spezia in the area of Framura and were captured. They were subsequently executed by a unit of a German Marine Company commanded by a Captain De Suti. Said execution was believed to have taken place near Ferrara and the bodies were buried in the vicinity. The only witness is a person known as Don Greco, parish priest of the cathedral of Sarzana.”
This was the first information the OSS had received about the men in the Ginny mission that had specific names of people and locations. Most of it sounded plausible. Sarzana was a town on the other side of the Magra River from La Spezia, where the Germans could have taken the Ginny team if they had captured them at Framura. So it made sense that a civilian from Sarzana and the local priest had heard about them. One thing that left everyone puzzled was that the execution place was Ferrara, a city 155 miles northeast of Sarzana and La Spezia. Why would the Germans have taken the men on the other side of the Apennines to execute them? Manzani reported that he would investigate the information and would try to contact the priest for more precise details. But at the beginning of February 1945, the Allies were still stuck in front of the Gothic Line and Sarzana was in firm German control. Following up on the details of the story would have to wait until the military situation changed.
* * *
In April 26, 1945, as soon as the frontline moved north of La Spezia, the OSS sent Captain Manzani and Captain Albert G. Lanier to La Spezia to find out what had happened to the Ginny team. Within days, they learned that Italian Fascist and German sold
iers of the 135th Fortress Brigade had captured, interrogated, and executed their men in the morning of March 26, 1944, near the positions of the De Lutti battery at Punta Bianca. Witnesses told them that the Germans had dumped the bodies in a common unmarked grave near the munition depot “La Ferrara” by the sea. Manzani and Lanier traveled to Genoa as soon as it was liberated and with the assistance of Captain Vanoncini and men from the Peedee mission began looking for German soldiers who had information about the case.
They came upon Lieutenant Rudolph Bolze who had assisted in the execution of the Americans and had overseen their burial. Manzani and Lanier interrogated Bolze between May 10 and 13, 1945, at the 92nd Division prisoners-of-war cage in Genoa. At the end of the third day, Bolze asked for time to write the story in longhand in his own words. On May 15, Manzani and Lanier had a final interview with Bolze at the Genoa POW cage in which they reviewed the written version of his story. They asked Bolze to raise his right hand and be sworn, but Bolze refused on the grounds that he was not accustomed to swearing. Then the Americans asked him, “Will you give your word of honor as a German officer that you did not see the execution of these men described in your story?” Bolze showed very obvious and extreme confusion and did not answer for some time. He fumbled around with excuses like “a long time ago—I cannot really remember—much has happened—very unpleasant, etc.”
Finally, he stated, “I have never seen anybody executed.” After this, he signed the statement containing his story. He also drew a map of the site near Punta Bianca where the Germans had buried the fifteen Americans.
With this information, Manzani and Lanier returned to La Spezia and Bonassola to continue their investigation and interview witnesses. They took the deposition of the young fisherman, Franco Lagaxo, and his mother who had met and sheltered the OGs before their capture. In the archives of the Fascist office, they found a laudatory report from the prefect of Bonassola, Commissario Guglielmini, describing the contribution of his local Fascists in the capture of the fifteen Americans. Manzani and Lanier found several villagers who had seen the fifteen Americans in Bonasola when the Germans and the Fascists had brought them after the capture. “The soldiers walked with the hands up and locked behind their heads. They were pale and there was anguish in their faces,” one remembered. Another one remembered taking Lieutenant Russo to the village doctor for a slight wound in his face. “Why did you not go up into the mountains?” he managed to ask him. Russo told him that they had been captured before they were able to escape.
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