Four Days of Naples - Liberation of Naples

Liberation of Naples

At 09:30 on 1 October, the first Allied tanks entered the city. At the end of the day, the German commander-in-chief in Italy—Generalfeldmarshall Albert Kesselring—considered the retreat successfully concluded.

Statistics for the four days of Naples vary: according to some authors, 168 rioters and 159 unarmed citizens were killed; according to the post-war Ministerial Commission for the recognition of partisan victims, casualties amounted to 155, while the registers of the Poggioreale cemetery listed 562 deaths.

It should be noted that, in contrast to other resistance episodes in Italy after the 8 September armistice, which also involved Italian fascists, most of the fighting occurred between Italians and Germans. The revolt actually prevented the Germans from organizing a resistance in Naples against the Allied offensive or, as Adolf Hitler himself had ordered, from turning the city into ruins before the German retreat.

A few months later, on 22 December, the generals Riccardo Pentimalli and Ettore Del Tetto, who had abandoned the city to the Germans after the 8 September events, were sentenced by the High Court of Justice to 20 years in military prison for their active collaboration with the Germans. Domenico Tilena—head of the fascist provincial section during the riots—was sentenced to six years and eight months.