Ardeatine Massacre - Partisan Attack in Via Rasella

Partisan Attack in Via Rasella

On 23 March 1944, a column of the German 11th Company, 3rd Battalion, Bozen Military Police was attacked by an ambush of Partisans while marching and singing on a prescribed route that led through the Piazza di Spagna into the narrow street of Via Rasella. Organized by the Nazis to intimidate and suppress the Resistance, the battalion had been raised in October 1943 from ethnic German-speakers of the northern Italian province of South Tyrol, a territory that Hitler had long coveted and had opportunely annexed to the German Reich after the September "betrayal" by the Italian government. Many of its citizens had since opted for German citizenship. The soldiers of the battalion were veterans of the Italian Army who saw action on the Russian Front and had chosen service in the SS rather than face another tour in the East with the Wehrmacht.

The attack was carried out by 16 Partisans of the Communist-dominated Gruppo d'Azione Patriottica ("Patriotic Action Group") or GAP. An improvised explosive device was prepared consisting of 12 kilograms of TNT packed in a steel case. This was inserted into a bag containing an additional six kilograms of TNT and TNT filled iron tubing. Although reported as having been thrown from a building, the bomb had actually been hidden in a rubbish cart, pushed into position by a Partisan disguised as a street cleaner, while others acted as lookouts. The fuse was lit when the police were forty seconds from the bomb. The blast caused the immediate deaths of 28 policemen and at least two civilian bystanders, one of whom, Piero Zuccheretti, was an eleven-year old boy. More would die over the next few days. All sixteen Partisans — some of whom fired on the German soldiers — succeeded in melting away into the crowd unscathed.