Herbert Kappler - Chief of Police in Rome

Chief of Police in Rome

Kappler's first action as head of German security forces in Rome was to help plan the rescue of Benito Mussolini by the SS special forces, a feat which was accomplished by Otto Skorzeny. Kappler was next entrusted with Jewish roundups for transportation to Auschwitz; in his first action, 1,007 Italian Jews were deported with only 16 surviving, and Kappler would later arrange the deportation of a further ten thousand Roman Jews, nearly all of whom would eventually perish in Nazi gas chambers.

By early 1944, Kappler was the highest representative of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office) in Rome and answered directly to both the military governorship, under Luftwaffe Major General Kurt Mälzer, as well as the SS chain of command under the Supreme SS and Police Leader of Italy, SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff. Kappler's main activities during this period involved suppressing resistance groups, rounding up "enemies of the state", and enforcing anti-Jewish measures, conducting Jewish ghetto raids, and deportations to extermination camps.

As the Allied armies invaded Italy and began moving north towards Rome, Kappler became significantly involved in hunting suspected Allied agents and Allied prisoners-of-war which had escaped Italian POW camps after the Italian Army capitulated. In these measures, Kappler came into direct conflict with the Vatican, which was highly suspected of harboring Allied fugitives and escaped prisoners, even though the Vatican under Pope Pius XII was technically neutral. A particular adversary of Kappler's in this respect was Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, whose activities helping Jewish fugitives and Allied prisoners escape Rome led to Kappler having him targeted for assassination. Paradoxically, after the war Kappler and O'Flaherty would become friends of sorts.

One of the most notorious actions Kappler undertook while in Rome was the organization of the Ardeatine massacre where over three hundred Italian civilians were killed on March 24, 1944 in collective punishment for an attack by resistance fighters against an SS formation in Rome.