Ardeatine Massacre - Historical Background

Historical Background

in July 1943, the Allies landed in Sicily, preparatory to invading the mainland; and Rome was bombed for the first time. On July 24, the Fascist Grand Council, which the dictator Benito Mussolini had dissolved, met and overwhelmingly voted no confidence in Mussolini. The following day, anxious to extricate his country from an unsustainable war, King Victor Emanuel III, the titular head of the Italian government and Commander in Chief of the armed forces under Mussolini, appointed Marshal Pietro Badoglio to head a new military government. He then ordered his gendarmerie, the Carabinieri, to arrest and imprison Mussolini. In August, Rome was bombed again, and on August 14 the Badoglio government began secret surrender negotiations with the Allies in Sicily, although still outwardly allied to Germany. In accordance with the Pope's wishes, the Italian government also unilaterally declared Rome an Open City, i.e., a demilitarized zone, a declaration the Allies would refuse to recognize and the Germans to respect. The Germans, anticipating an Italian defection, meanwhile began moving more and more troops into Italy (Operation Achse). Foreseeing a German invasion, a coalition of Anti-Fascist parties and Monarchists formed the Committee of National Liberation (CLN). On September 3 the Badoglio government signed an unconditional surrender, which U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower made public on the eve of the Fifth Army's amphibious landing at Salerno (September 8). At the same time Badoglio issued the Badoglio Proclamation directing Italian troops to end hostilities against the Allies but to oppose attacks "from any other quarter". The following day, the German army began moving in on Rome, and that night the King and Badoglio fled the city for Pescara and then Bari, leaving a leadership vacuum. The Italian army, although outnumbering the German soldiers three to one, was leaderless, poorly equipped, and in chaos. After a heroic but failed resistance at the Pyramid of Cestius by remaining loyalist soldiers, carabinieri (including a school of cadets), and civilians, the Germans occupied Rome. They announced the imposition of German military law with summary execution for violators. Three days later (on September 12), Nazi commandos tracked down and rescued Mussolini from his hidden prison in the Gran Sasso and set him up in the puppet regime of the so-called "Republic of Salò" in Northern Italy. In October they rounded up and deported the Jews of Rome for extermination at Auschwitz and also made numerous mass roundups of non-Jewish male civilians for forced labor. Meanwhile, General Mark Clark's Fifth Army in Salerno suffered severe setbacks; and General Eisenhower and other Allied leaders began concentrating their attention on the imminent invasion of France, temporarily neglecting Italy.

In December, the armed Partisan Resistance began to strike German forces in Central Rome. The Germans responded with raids carried out by mixed Gestapo and Italian Fascist police militias on Vatican institutions known to be harboring prominent CNL members and other Anti-Fascists. In January news of the surprise Allied landing behind enemy lines at Anzio (Operation Shingle), only 30 miles from Rome, created temporary euphoria among the Roman populace along with a dangerous relaxation of caution on the part of Resistance members that enabled the Nazis to arrest and torture many of its most important leaders. In the meantime, General Clark's attempt to link up the Fifth Army with the Anzio troops was unsuccessful, as the Anzio forces were held back by a line of German fortifications hastily constructed using forced civilian labor. The Allies brought in air power reinforcements and bombed the ancient Monastery of Monte Cassino, which it considered part of the German defense line, and on February 10 bombs hit a convent near Castel Gandolfo, the Papal villa in the Alban hills, killing 16 nuns. It was during this period, in reaction to ever-increasing forced-labor roundups of the male civilian population along with worsening shortages of food and supplies, that the Partisans planned the Via Rasella attack.