Italy’s Sorrow: A Year of War 1944–45

They had been together ever since: through the remainder of the North African campaign, through Sicily, and in Italy since Leese had taken over as Eighth Army commander. And in that time Ion had met more generals and politicians – not to mention kings – than he could ever have imagined, and had become privy to the kind of intelligence that was often extremely sensitive – including information he should not have heard, such as when, during the Sicily campaign, Admiral Mountbatten had visited Leese’s HQ and Ion had attended the ensuing dinner. In the course of conversation, Leese had asked Mountbatten about what was going on in England and had then been told in great detail about a floating ‘Mulberry’ harbour they were planning to take across the Channel when the Allies invaded northern France. ‘Afterwards,’ says Ion, ‘General Oliver said to me, Mountbatten should never have talked about that. It was an appalling security breach.’

Not that Ion would ever have dreamed of betraying the trust placed in him. Nor would he have ever wished to let his chief down, for not only did he greatly admire ‘General Oliver’ as a commander, but also liked him enormously as a man. Although Leese was prone to brief outbursts of temper and irritability, for the most part he was good-humoured and informal, and took great care of his men. His Tactical HQ was always a lively and entertaining place to be. A cricket-obsessed Old Etonian, Leese was also known for his mild eccentricities of behaviour. His appearance, for example, was often most unbecoming for an army general; unlike the sartorial Alexander, he tended to wear baggy corduroy breeches and big sweaters, the effect of which was to exaggerate his large frame; like Clark, he was a tall man, some six foot three. Most of the staff at his HQ had nicknames – Ion’s was ‘Tante’, which Leese pronounced ‘Taunt’– while Leese had also introduced another in-joke, namely ‘Eighth Army French’, which helped lighten the atmosphere. This had developed during the planning of Operation DIADEM, when General Anders had asked for more guns. Leese spoke no Polish except ‘Oscryzakrit’, meaning ‘hairpin bend’ and ‘Poska ney darlecco’, meaning ‘Poles not far away’, while Anders had only a small command of English, so they tended to converse in French. Leese, however, was not quite as fluent as Anders and on this occasion he had replied to the Polish commander that there was ‘non beaucoup de chambre’ when trying to explain that there was not enough room for the guns Anders was demanding on the mountain. At this, Anders had fallen about laughing. Since then, Leese had continued to sprinkle in further howlers whenever he spoke with Anders. As Leese realised, it helped them to understand one another better.

On the evening of 12 May, however, Leese needed all his charm to calm the Polish commander after their disappointing opening attack at Monte Cassino. Accompanying him was Ion Calvocoressi. ‘The Poles were very gloomy,’ he noted in his diary. Leese had done as much soothing and reassuring as possible, but the Poles would now have to hold fire for a few days, regroup and then, on his signal, try again.

General Leese could not, of course, let on to his commanders his own feelings of anxiety. In Eighth Army’s sector, the news on the morning of 13 May was only slightly more encouraging. By great endeavour, another Bailey bridge – ‘Amazon’ – had been built across the Garigliano. The three bridges now open were not enough, but it did mean that bridgeheads were being slowly but surely established on the far side of the river. Progress, albeit slow, was being made.

No less anxious was the Fifth Army commander, General Mark Clark, who, having spent the first half of the morning reading reports and studying maps, then set off to tour his units along the front. Visiting the command post of the 85th ‘Custer’ Division, he learned that in the first thirty-six hours of battle the new boys had suffered 956 reported casualties – a heavy toll for one division. In the afternoon, he hurried over to see General Juin at the French Expeditionary Corps headquarters. There, however, the news was much better. Following on from their success the day before, the French had now captured the key position of Monte Maio, the southern bastion of the Gustav Line. Using pack mules and travelling over ground previously considered impassable, they had managed to make the first major breach of the German defences.

Few battles ever go exactly according to plan, no matter how meticulous the preparation. No one amongst the highly experienced Allied staff, for example, had considered the effect of a cocktail of river mists, smoke canisters, and a thousand guns in the Liri Valley; after all, nothing like it had ever been attempted before in such a location. Equally, no one had guessed that the first to break through the Gustav Line would be the French. But such was the capricious nature of battle, as General Alexander and his Chief of Staff, John Harding, were all too well aware. The key, however, was to have that ‘balance’ which Alex believed was so important, which enabled them to make the most of sudden and unexpected developments and to limit the effects of any potential setbacks. And balance meant having the right number of troops and materiel in the right areas – both at the front and in reserve. Furthermore, communication between commanders and units had to be good, ensuring that any change of orders could be acted upon quickly and precisely.

And so, on the evening of 13 May, Clark was in a position to act swiftly and decisively. Having realised the Germans opposite the French divisions in the Aurunci Mountains were in complete disarray, he recognised that it was imperative that the Americans to the south keep up, rather than allowing the French to penetrate too deeply and narrowly on their own. If they could bring about a major thrust forward between the mountains and the coast, then the whole German right-hand front would collapse. With this in mind, he ordered the two new divisions of the US II Corps – despite the heavy casualties they had taken so far – to speed up their own attacks that very night ‘regardless of previous schedules or plans’. This way, Clark noted, they could make the most of the Germans ‘being off-balance’.50 (#litres_trial_promo)

And off-balance they certainly were. In many ways it was a miracle the Germans were able to defend so much of the line at all. Communication between units was terrible. Not only had AOK 10’s HQ been bombed out, Allied bombers had also hit the headquarters of the 1st Fallschirmjäger, 44th Infantry, and 15th Panzer Grenadier Divisions and in so doing, seriously interrupted their ability to communicate with one another. And although AOK 10 eventually managed to set up a new HQ with 14th Panzer Corps, it still had not established an advanced headquarters close to the front.

All this meant that information from the front was patchy to say the least. As Kesselring was forced to admit, they were floundering in the dark, unable properly to evaluate the scale of the Allied attack and lacking the kind of ‘data on which to make a far-reaching decision’ on how best to respond.51 (#litres_trial_promo)

Inevitably, the absence of too many senior commanders was hardly helping. Neither General Feuerstein, the commander of the 51st Mountain Corps, nor General Hartmann, von Senger’s stand-in at 14th Panzer Corps, had much experience of command in a major battle. Nor were they especially familiar with the terrain. To make matters worse, Kesselring had, for once, made some crucial tactical errors. The lack of sound intelligence caused him problems on two scores. First, he had an unclear picture of the troops opposing him. For example, only one French division had been correctly identified and he had no idea the massed French Expeditionary Corps was lined up below the Aurunci Mountains, a mistaken appreciation that would cost him dear. Second, he had been forced to cater for every eventuality, leaving a number of troops north of Rome in case of a seaborne landing, as well as around the Anzio bridgehead. Although his build-up of troops and ammunition had gone better than the Allies would have liked, he was still under-strength in almost all his units, while the fighting performance of his divisions varied massively.

To counteract this problem, he began splitting up his reserve divisions, and placing them in ‘penny-packets’ all along the line. One of his best was the veteran 15th Panzer Division, which had been split into battalions rather than kept as a whole. Similarly, Major Georg Zellner’s 3rd Battalion ‘Hoch-und-Deutschmeister’ Reichs Grenadier Regiment was part of 44th Infantry Division, but while he and a few other units were in the mountains north of Cassino, the rest of the division was sprinkled in the Liri Valley.

The problem with this approach was that it reduced the fighting capacity of the division; a smaller unit, such as a battalion, was obviously easier to overwhelm than an entire division. This was the kind of mistake the British used to make in North Africa before Alexander and Montgomery arrived and put a stop to it. Furthermore, it meant unit commanders were constantly faced with differing chains of command and different superiors. In battle, there is much to be said for familiarity and trust.

Struggling their way into this mayhem was the Werfer Regiment 71. They had been part of General Baade’s Army Group Reserve, but had now been hastily attached to the 90th Panzer Grenadier Division, which in turn had also been split up and posted to 51st Mountain Corps. The division’s progress to the front was piecemeal and too slow, although Werfer Regiment 71 were among the first to hurry south; Oberleutnant Hans Golda’s 8th Battery were nearing the front by the evening of the 12th. Artillery shells screamed overhead as he reached the staff post and was given his orders. With the light going, he and his unit set off again, to a bunker along the Gustav Line between Pignataro and Pontecorvo, and halfway from the ruins of Cassino town to the River Liri. ‘We were driving into a witches’ cauldron,’ noted Hans. ‘The night was pitch dark. Only the flash of the artillery broke through the darkness. The crashing, roaring and screaming was first of all in front of us and then all around us.’52 (#litres_trial_promo) Nervously, they inched their way forward, the drivers dodging shell holes, the men lying flat on the ammunition and trying to make themselves as small as possible. Hans prayed they wouldn’t receive a direct hit.

Eventually they reached their new position. Hans was pleased to see that the Organisation Todt had built the bunkers reasonably well. Ammunition was stored and the werfers assembled and readied for firing. Soon after, a report arrived that enemy tanks were uncomfortably close: Hans’s battery was now firing into the shallow bridgehead made by 8th Indian Division. Ahead was the wreck of the village of Sant’ Angelo, which had been completely pulverised. ‘I set up an OP [observation post],’ noted Hans, ‘got it manned and detailed the anti-tank troop to man it.’53 (#litres_trial_promo) With luck, these men would be able to provide a brief delaying action should the enemy completely break through.

* * *

To the south, US II Corps were now renewing their assault on the troublesome 400-foot-high and well-defended Spigno Ridge. It was another costly effort, although this time Lieutenant Bob Wiggans and his Company D were not part of the main assault on Hill 131. Rather, that honour went to Company I of the 338th Infantry. At the end of their attack, just sixteen men were left standing. Nonetheless, despite further setbacks and a certain amount of confusion by two new divisions fighting at night, the Americans stuck at their bloody task and in the early hours the Germans began to pull back. By morning on the 14th, most of the Spigno Saturnia Ridge, including Hill 131, was in US hands. By the following afternoon, Santa Maria Infante – another village utterly obliterated – was taken too.

On the Americans’ right, the French were also continuing their extraordinary advance. On the 14th, they broke into the Ausente Valley and captured Ausonia, a key town, before pushing on towards Esperia. And as they retreated, the German 71st Division was becoming more and more separated from the 94th Division opposing the Americans. For once the Italian landscape was working to the Allies’ advantage, for dividing the retreating Germans was the wedge of an almost trackless ridge of the Aurunci Mountains.

On the night of the 14th, Bob Wiggans led his platoon over Hill 131, picking his way through the American and German dead who lay thick across the ground. He’d not slept a wink since the battle had begun and yet now his men’s spirits were soaring. They felt they were at last on the road to Rome. So, too, did Mark Clark, even though he felt the two rookie divisions had been fortunate. ‘My fears,’ he noted in his diary, ‘that the enemy might react to our lack of aggressive attitude toward Spigno did not materialise.’54 (#litres_trial_promo) In fact, much to Kesselring’s chagrin, the 94th Division opposite the Americans had disobeyed a direct order, and had placed their reserve troops along the coast rather than in the mountains ready to plug the gaps. Perhaps in the confusion the order never reached them – at any rate, once German losses began to mount, and it became clear there were no large-scale reinforcements available, General Hartmann, von Senger’s deputy, ordered his men to fall back. Clark expected a lot from everyone under his command, not least American troops new to battle, but the fact remained that the Americans had bludgeoned the German 94th Division to 40 per cent of its fighting strength on and around the Spigno Ridge. With the French leading the way, the breakthrough had been achieved. With the Gustav Line now broken in the US II Corps sector as well, the entire southern half of the Allied push was surging forward.

In the Liri Valley, however, XIII Corps were still struggling to make any serious headway. The stumbling block was the River Garigliano. Only by nightfall on the 14th was the full quota of nine pre-planned Bailey bridges completed, but even these represented major bottlenecks through which men and materiel had to pass. And where there are bottlenecks there are greater targets for the enemy. While it had been 8th Indian and 4th Division that had been given the job of leading the assault across the Gari, 78th and 6th Armoured had been kept in reserve. On the 15th, Leese and his XIII Corps commander, Lieutenant-General Sidney Kirkman, decided the time had come to send 78th Division into the breach, combined with the Poles’ second assault on Monte Cassino. Unfortunately, traffic congestion, along with German mines and concentrated shelling, ensured that 78th Division was unable to cross the river in time – and so the attack was postponed until the morning, as was that of the Poles.

This breather for the Germans was greatly welcomed, not least by Oberleutnant Hans Golda and his men, although he himself was in trouble with Dink, one of his gunners. During a moment of comparative peace, Hans had spotted a rabbit hopping about not far from their position. Taking a rifle, he drew a bead and shot it dead, then proudly showed his men their next meal. Dink, however, was appalled. ‘He explained to me that I had killed one of his rabbits that he had been fattening up with a lot of effort,’ noted Hans, ‘and that it had been completely tame.’ Needless to say, Hans was the subject of much ridicule, although as he admitted, ‘We polished off the object despite all the laughter that went on.’

The mirth did not last long. That evening, 15 May, their position was once again under fire. What Hans termed ‘bunker breakers’ were whistling over. He and his men could only cower in the corners, staring at the roof. After every explosion the entire bunker shook. Soon there was a loud crash followed by a scream. ‘One of our young lads had been hit,’ wrote Hans, ‘an open wound between the shoulders.’55 (#litres_trial_promo)

Also cowering in their bunker a few miles to the north, in a narrow valley between the mountains, were Major Georg Zellner and his battalion staff of the 3rd Battalion of the H und D Regiment. Opposite them were the New Zealanders of X Corps, and although this stretch of the line was not part of the main thrust of the attack, the Kiwis were still keeping up the pressure. ‘Planes and crashing of bombs,’ noted Georg. ‘We can’t get out of our bunker.’

Every time a shell whistled through the air towards them, Georg wondered whether it was their turn to get a direct hit. His nerves were stretched and he was feeling as miserable as he had done four days before on his birthday. The early sounds of summer – the nightingales singing, insects buzzing – had gone. ‘Death is creeping over everything,’ he scrawled in his diary. ‘Tonight they carried the dead down to the valley. It looked ghostly and we stood in front of our bunker watching the sad procession with heavy hearts.’56 (#litres_trial_promo) Nearby a badly wounded soldier was screaming horribly. Georg could barely stand it. And to make matters worse, he had still not received any post from home.

Meanwhile on the Allied side of the line, it was Lieutenant Ted Wyke-Smith and his team of sappers’ turn to construct their first Bailey bridge – in anticipation of 78th Division’s attack the following morning. Ted had been expecting to move soon after the battle had started, so having felt somewhat pent-up in anticipation, was relieved finally to get going. The place they needed to bridge was the River Piopetta, a tributary of the Garigliano, near the hamlet of Piumarola, just north of Pignataro. Getting there was no easy matter, however. Leading in his jeep, Ted had behind him several lorries full of bridging gear, but rather than heading over ‘Amazon’ – the nearest of the newly built bridges – they were sent on a fairly lengthy route and ended up crossing over ‘Oxford’ right down by the Liri Appendix. Eventually, however, despite the detour and despite the fact that it was night-time and dark, they reached the right spot. As they began unloading, shells screamed overhead, and small arms fire chattered nearby. On the far side of the river – which was only twenty yards or so wide – infantry had been clearing the far banks of enemy troops and laying down smoke screens to protect Ted and his men.

Bailey bridges were a new and ingenious invention, designed by Donald Bailey, an engineer at the British War Office, and had only been used since the previous autumn. Prefabricated, they were transported in steel panels that could be carried by six men and easily fixed together. The panels, each 10-foot long, made up the walls – or sides – of the bridge. Stood on rollers, the two small panels were then linked together with 19-foot transoms – or girders – strung between them. ‘When you’ve got three or four panels built,’ explains Ted, ‘you’ve got to bring it to a point of balance. It’s then a case of hands on, and everyone pushes it forwards until the front begins to tip over the edge of the river bank. Then you put two more panels on the back and more transoms between them and everyone pushes again.’ This process was repeated until the bridge spanned the river. Wooden planking was then placed across the structure and the bridge was ready: a 12-foot-wide roadbed strong enough to carry tanks, trucks and anything else in the Allied armoury.

It was a simple construction but there were all sorts of factors to consider. ‘A bridge could weigh anything from 20 to 40 tons,’ says Ted, ‘and then you might have a 30-ton tank going over it. That’s a lot of pressure on the bank.’ It was up to men like him to decide exactly where the banks were strongest and thus where the bridge should be sited. It was a decision they could not afford to get wrong, even when, as at the River Piopetta, they were often coming under repeated enemy fire. Even so, by morning, the bridge was open to traffic. ‘It was,’ admits Ted, ‘very exciting, frankly.’

With this and other crossings now made, 78th Division finally launched their attack, supported by an armoured brigade of 6th Armoured Division. The idea was to push through the bridgeheads made by 4th Division, then wheel round northwards and cut the Via Casilina – or Route 6 as the Allies called it. This, they hoped, would isolate Cassino and would give the Poles the opportunity to renew their assault on Monte Cassino itself. Meanwhile, the 1st Canadian Division, which had, like 78th Division, been held back for the second wave of the assault, also joined the battle, passing through the 8th Indian Division further to the south. Slowly but surely, the Allies were now pushing the Germans back in the Liri Valley as well.

Facing this new onslaught was Fahnenjunker Jupp Klein and his company of Fallschirmjäger Pioneers. They were one of a number of random units from the 51st Mountain Corps flung almost willy-nilly into the line to plug the gaps in the Liri Valley – gaps that were supposed to have been filled by 90th Panzer Grenadier Division. Much of the 90th, however, had still not reached the front, having been harried all the way from Rome by relentless Allied air attack.

Although they were engineers, it was in the infantry role that Jupp’s company of Fallschirmjäger were now to be used. In fact, they had been given a very specific task: to accompany a section of self-propelled guns and protect them once they dug in. Mid-morning on the 16th, Jupp led his men, along with the section of self-propelled guns, across the Via Casilina and south towards Pignataro. The renewed Allied assault had already begun, with their artillery pounding the German positions. Finding a suitable position, Jupp led his men forward and found an isolated farm on a slight, shallow hill that was still held by a few infantry and which had been reinforced and converted into a kind of redoubt. The windows had been filled in to become nothing more than loopholes, the lower walls had been strengthened and the cellars converted into a passable bunker. Zig-zagging away from either side of the house were trenches. ‘The whole thing,’ says Jupp, ‘impressed us as a kind of fortress.’

Even so, how much they would be able to achieve against a concerted enemy attack was uncertain. Jupp’s company consisted of thirty-eight men, less than a quarter of its full strength, and all that was left after three months at Cassino. ‘It was just a platoon really,’ says Jupp. ‘We hadn’t had any reinforcements for a long time.’ Nor had they been expecting to defend their outpost against an enemy tank attack, but as Jupp discovered to his horror that same afternoon, the gunners had been warned to prepare themselves against such an assault. Sure enough, as Jupp crept forward to recce the British positions, he could see on the hill opposite, just over half a mile away, a whole tank brigade boldly pointing towards them. Without further ado, he hurried back to the gunners and asked them to send an urgent message to the headquarters of the 1st Fallschirmjäger Division warning them that his company had no anti-tank weapons whatsoever and would be defenceless if and when the British tanks attacked.

Fortunately for him and his men, the British tanks did not attack either that afternoon or evening. It was just the respite they needed, for before nightfall an anti-tank crew with three Ofenrohre* (#ulink_444fe391-689a-5726-a6f8-dfdb8a439df7) – bazookas – arrived and reported to Jupp. During the night, a further infantry battalion of reinforcements also joined them. These were men who had been posted from Yugoslavia, where they had been fighting partisans, and who had little battlefield experience. The battalion major immediately proved this by insisting on placing a troop of machine-gunners in a shed to the front of the farmhouse, facing the enemy. ‘But the attacking tanks will cut them down at once,’ Jupp warned him, ‘and they’ll have no chance of pulling back.’ The major insisted, however. ‘We could only feel sorry for the poor machine-gunners,’ says Jupp, ‘for we knew they were dead men.’

While Jupp Klein and his men were bracing themselves for the Allied attack, General Leese had decided the time had come for the Poles to renew their assault on Monte Cassino. And with the Fallschirmjäger reserves being swallowed up in the Liri Valley there were none spare for Monte Cassino. This time, Leese hoped, the valiant Poles would have the victory he believed they so richly deserved. More to the point, with this new all-out attack, he hoped to smash the accursed Gustav Line, the scene of five months’ bloody fighting, once and for all.

* (#ulink_7849e0e0-72da-5ff6-8d96-f4f982d1f25b) An Ofenrohre was a bazooka-like anti-tank weapon, not to be confused with the better-known Panzerfäuste.

NINE (#ud2e39e9e-24c5-56d1-a9a2-3cd5a91f0e3f)

New Order (#ud2e39e9e-24c5-56d1-a9a2-3cd5a91f0e3f)

In his villa at Gargnano overlooking Lake Garda, Benito Mussolini still governed the new Fascist Republic this May, 1944 – on paper, at any rate. He was well aware, however, that he was effectively Hitler’s prisoner, and that despite the resurrection of the Fascist Party under the leadership of its Party Secretary, Alessandro Pavolini, Italy was now, to all intents and purposes, ruled and governed by the Germans.

Mussolini was sixty. He had always been a bull of man: square-jawed, barrel-chested, and with piercing eyes; yet he was thinner now, his face lacking the lustre that had always radiated from him. Italy’s and his own decline had, unsurprisingly, affected him both physically and psychologically.

Following his ‘rescue’ by German SS and Fallschirmjäger troops from Gran Sasso the previous September, his ambition had been at its lowest ebb and he had said as much to Hitler, telling him he did not believe in the possible resurrection of fascism and that he wanted merely to retire quietly. The Führer, however, had swept aside such concerns. ‘Northern Italy will be forced to envy the fate of Poland,’ Hitler had warned him, ‘if you do not accept to give renewed vigour to the alliance between Germany and Italy, by becoming head of the state and of the new government.’57 (#litres_trial_promo) The following day, Mussolini had reluctantly agreed to do as Hitler asked, although he had been fully aware of what that meant. ‘The Germans will find a way to administer Italy according to their habits,’ he had said, ‘and the only outcome will be the loss of that little respect that Italy still has as a nation.’58 (#litres_trial_promo) In this instance, he had hit the nail on the head.

There were those in Germany who had believed Hitler had made a mistake in giving the Italians any form of self-rule at all: Kesselring, for one, had felt it would be better for Italy to be treated as an occupied country, and that an Italian government, in whatever form, would be a hindrance to the freedom of action of his troops in the country. Dr Rudolf Rahn, the newly appointed German ambassador, had also agreed with Kesselring. He had recognised that there was little enthusiasm within Italy for a return to fascism, especially after it had dissolved so spectacularly as a political movement after 25 July. Hitler, however, had not wanted to waste valuable German resources carrying out civil administration when there were a number of Italian Fascists willing and ready to carry out his wishes for him. Yet he had been unimpressed with the Fascists who had fled to Germany the previous summer, and quite apart from his fondness for his old friend, had known that Mussolini was the only possible candidate to head up a Neo-Fascist government.

Most of those who now rallied round the Duce were either diehard fanatics or men for whom it had been too dangerous to remain in Italy following Mussolini’s overthrow. Alessandro Pavolini, a charismatic forty-year-old Florentine poet and former editor of the newspaper La Stampa, was something of an intellectual but also an increasingly fanatical Fascist. His drive and determination to see fascism back in Italy had made him the obvious candidate for secretary of the Neo-Fascist Party, the PRF, or Partito Repubblicano Fascista. There were a handful of others from the Fascist hierarchy of the pre-war heydays. Roberto Farinacci, for one: a former party secretary in the 1920s, and the most outspoken of those who had urged Italy to fight alongside Germany to the bitter end. Another was Renato Ricci, founder of the Fascist squadristi, or hit squads, and later head of the Fascist Youth Organisations and Minister of Corporations until fired in February 1943. And there was Guido Buffarini-Guidi, another Fascist of the old school, albeit one who had been previously discredited for a number of frauds.

From this core, a Neo-Fascist government had emerged. Such had been the shortage of able candidates, Pavolini had persuaded Ambassador Rahn to accompany him to Rome back in September to try and recruit others to rally to the cause. As Rahn had suspected, it had proved something of a fool’s errand: most former Fascists had wanted nothing to do with it. This had not overly worried the Germans, who had never had any intention of allowing the new government any real power. However, Rahn had felt there was a need for a competent Minister of War to rally support for the continuation of the war, and in desperation had turned to Marshal Rodolfo Graziani. This sixty-one-year-old marshal had been a successful commander in Ethiopia in the 1930s but after being defeated in North Africa at the hands of the British in 1941, he had resigned and returned to Italy. More soldier than politician, he nonetheless carried both the gravitas and the fame Rahn believed was needed.

Mussolini was back, but although physically his health had greatly improved within a few weeks of his return, he found it hard to rekindle the strutting arrogance of old when Germany was piling one humiliation upon him after another. There had, for example, been no return to Rome. Hitler had refused to allow the seat of government to be centred there; it was, as Kesselring had announced, now an ‘Open City’, and thus supposedly politically neutralised. A good excuse, but one that had scarcely hidden the real reason: that Hitler did not want the Neo-Fascist government getting above itself, which was far more likely had it been based in Italy’s largest and most historic city. Milan had also been rejected for the same reason.

Rather, the new seat of government was now based around the tiny town of Salò, on the western banks of Lake Garda in the foothills of the Alps. Government offices were to be established in towns all along the lake. With fuel scarce and only narrow roads connecting them, effective government had been deliberately made harder. Moreover, by setting up in Salò, a small and insignificant place of little note, the prestige of the new government was undermined from the outset.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, the new government’s sphere of control had also become increasingly depleted. Quite apart from land already lost to the Allies, the Brenner Pass and the Ljubljana Gap – the two main access routes from Greater Germany into Italy – had been annexed into the Reich, in what was yet another stinging blow to Mussolini’s power and prestige. The first now became an area known as the Alpine Approaches, incorporating the Tyrol – the Dolomites and towns of Bolzano, Belluno and Trento. The second was the Adriatic Coastland, which consisted of an area that spread through north-east Italy – including Trieste, Fiume, and Istria – and into Croatia. As in other areas of the Greater Reich, two Gauleiters – military governors – were appointed, Franz Hofer for the Alpine Approaches, and Dr Friedrich Rainer for the Adriatic Coastland. Both were confirmed Nazis, and ruled as such. The Italian legal system there was abolished and all Italians in those areas came directly under German military law. It was not lost on Mussolini that the annexed areas were more or less those that had been taken from Austria at the end of the First World War.

There were still further disappointments for the man Hitler had once looked up to as a role model. One of the Duce’s first jobs had been to order Renato Ricci to re-form the Fascist militia, which now became the Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana, or GNR, and which would work alongside the Carabinieri, the military-based police force, as a means of enforcing fascism once more. Yet although political militias were a useful means of imposing a regime’s will, Mussolini knew that for him to regain any kind of reputation, he needed an army, a New Army, with which Italy could once more rise from the ashes.

It was, of course, never to be. The first blow came following Marshal Graziani’s visit to Germany in early October 1943, where it had quickly become clear that there was considerable distrust amongst many of the German High Command of Mussolini and Graziani’s plans. ‘The only Italian Army that will not be treacherous,’ Feldmarschall Keitel had noted, ‘is one that does not exist.’59 (#litres_trial_promo) And anyway, they had already decided that able-bodied Italian men would be more useful as labourers, while those Italians who did want to fight willingly were encouraged to join the German armed forces instead – and did so: by May 1944, there were more than 200,000 Italian soldiers serving directly under the Germans. Even leading Fascists were against the New Army; both Pavolini and Ricci had been against it, as they distrusted Graziani and feared he might then use such a force against them.

Hitler, however, had agreed to the raising of a mere four Italian divisions, which he believed would be useful, not as front-line troops, but as guardians along the coast and behind the lines. He had also eventually agreed to release 12,000 former officers and NCOs from camps in Germany, but the rest of Mussolini’s New Army had to come from entirely new recruits and from those who had returned home but had not been interned by the Germans. Dampened but undeterred, he issued a conscription order for all those born in the years 1923, 1924 and 1925 and started a major propaganda effort to draw in volunteers. By the beginning of 1944, some 50,000 young men had responded to Mussolini’s call to arms – but a mere four divisions was small fry indeed compared to the fifty-six divisions eradicated by the Germans following the armistice.

The reality was that Mussolini had fallen a long, long way – from more than twenty years of absolute power to almost no power at all. Everything he tried to do was blocked or watered down, not only by the Germans but also by the Neo-Fascists. Most of the leaders of the new Fascist Party had been previously sacked by the Duce – Pavolini included – and although they openly professed their unswerving loyalty towards him, it had become apparent, over the eight months of the RSI’s – Repubblica Sociale Italiana’s – existence, that Mussolini and the Neo-Fascists were singing from different ideological hymn sheets, and not just over the formation and handling of the New Army.

The previous November, while the Germans and Allies were still fighting south of the Gustav Line, Pavolini had called the Neo-Fascists together to Verona, where a new ‘manifesto’ had been thrashed out. Mussolini had chosen to remain absent, yet despite his marked nonappearance the Neo-Fascists had, during a highly charged gathering, agreed in principle to holding elections, restoring the power of the judiciary, allowing freedom of the press, and a number of other measures. None of these things had since happened, however. Rather, it was following the Congress at Verona that Pavolini, in particular, had insisted on revenge for those Fascists who had ‘betrayed’ Italy and Mussolini the previous July. Most of the nineteen members of the Fascist Grand Council who had voted against Mussolini had since gone to ground, but six had been arrested and flung into jail, including Count Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law and former Foreign Minister, who had been extradited, at Pavolini’s behest, from Germany. Rather than restoring the rights of the judiciary, an ‘Extraordinary Special Tribunal’ had been set up, overseeing a sham trial in which the six were accused on trumped-up charges of treason. They were, of course, found guilty, and rather than being given any chance to appeal, all but one – and Ciano included – were hurriedly executed by a cack-handed firing squad who made a complete mess of their task early the following morning. The executions had been carried out swiftly so as to limit the Duce’s opportunity to intervene.

Mussolini could – and should – have stopped the executions at the very least, but he had been warned that it would damage his standing with Hitler if he interfered. He at first dithered and then let it happen, just as he had allowed the Neo-Fascists to arrest other former Fascists, four generals, and several admirals. The admirals had also been executed without mercy.