The Rage Of The Reviled

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

What the Partenope people were feeling had been unclear to the contemptuous Nazi invader and the fear that they had intentionally spread in the city had resulted in hearts at boiling point and in the mood for rebellion. Facimmo 'a uèrra a chilli strunzi zellosi3 was now the feeling of many Neapolitans, under the impression that, San Genna' ajutànno4 ! they would free themselves and, at last, peace would become real, very real and no longer the stillborn illusion of a couple of months before:

On July 25, Italy had rejoiced at the fall of the regime during the night, seemingly definitive with Mussolini defenestrated by the Grand Council of Fascism and the king having him arrested, and with the new Badoglio government which was no longer fascist, even though not democratically elected; but above all it had been the mistaken idea that the conflict had ended that made the nation rejoice. In any case, there were soon laments throughout the entire nation which, in Naples, had presented picturesque overtones in the alleyways and the bassi5 , such as: Chillo capucchióne d'o nuvièllo Càpo 'e Guviérno, 'o maresciallo d'Italia Badoglio Pietro, 'o gran generalone! ha fatto di' a 'a ràdio, tòmo, tòmo: "The war continues": strunz' e mmèrda!6 Then there had been those who had pointed out: Nossignori, strunzi noi ati a penzà che 'nu maresciallone vulisse 'a pace! Ma va ' ffa 'n 'c...7

With the armistice of Cassibile signed between Italy and the Anglo-Americans on September 3 and which should have remained secret until the Italian armed forces had been reorganized to hold back the vindictive former ally, but had been made known on September 8 by vainglorious victorious generals, a worse evil than before had landed on Italy, through the Brenner Pass8 Many new, combative and vindictive Germanic divisions had joined the German units already present in Italy. "Why on earth," wondered the most prepared Italians, "hadn’t our rulers and military leaders been able to prepare an emergency plan in time? When surrender to the enemy had been likely for a long time? With the forces of the relentless former ally already here?"

After September 8, the only thing the king and his ministers had done was flee to the south, to Brindisi, taking advantage of the fact that the 1st English Airborne Division was about to take that city which, unlike the others, was almost free of German troops, and counting on the fact that the Anglo-Americans, having conquered Sicily, were invading the rest of the southern regions of the Peninsula9 . Breathless, the Sovereign, his Secretaries of State and General Mario Roatta, failed defender of Rome which had been abandoned to the disorderly and useless initiative of the department commanders, had left the capital to set up throne, government and high commands in Brindisi, under the protection of the former enemies, leaving the Italian troops on various foreign fronts and in Italy without orders, at the mercy of the mighty German army.

On September 8, Italy announced the armistice officially, made personally by Badoglio on the radio at 1900 hours and 37 minutes. Thanks to the reinforcements which had arrived rapidly, Germany had remained undisputed master from the Alps to the city of Naples, while the province of Salerno had become a combat zone for the Anglo-American landing on September 9.

The anger of the Neapolitans, already hot because of the war they had already been through, had become scorcing. They had had to endure too much in the three years and more after the regime’s traitorous and improvident entry into the conflict on June 10, 1940, behind Nazi Germany. Naples had been systematically bombed by the British and then also by the Americans, with as many as one hundred and five raids until the armistice, all of which had hit the mark turning buildings to rubble and leaving large numbers of people dead, injured and mutilated, and hordes of homeless families. Not a single district had been spared, also because the political and military leaders had been unable to prepare adequate anti-air defenses, which had been entrusted almost entirely, in an improvised way, to the warships at anchor in the port.

And then, the hunger! That grim and voiceless hunger that takes your legs from under you; and since the illusion of peace of July 25 has faded, more bombs hail down on the city, bringing absolute famine and diseases with more deaths from the lack of medicines. From September 9, Naples had suffered material damage from the Germans, including serious damage to the port, and had been subjected to roundups and executions not only of Italian soldiers on the loose but also civilians.

Even the fascists, albeit in a subordinate position, had taken possession of the city a couple of weeks after September 8, risen again from the political tombs to become the newly born Stato Nazionale Repubblicano10 – soon to become the Italian Social Republic – formed on the 23rd of that month by Hitler himself, headed by an unwilling but resigned Mussolini who on the 12th had been freed by German paratroopers from house arrest in his refuge-hotel of Campo Imperatore on the Gran Sasso, where the King had relegated him.

The traditional Teutonic harshness of wartime had become, if possible, even more barbaric, incited by isolated attacks from citizens with the support of sailors from the moored ships of the Regia Marina11 . It was a very early, sporadic and spontaneous resistance, not yet connected to the adversaries of Nazi fascism. The rebellion had started in Via Santa Brigida where, on the morning of the 9th, about thirty residents had attacked a Wehrmacht squad after one of those soldiers had shot at an unarmed twelve-year-old shop boy with his ordinance rifle, a Mauser Kar 98k, as if he was at the shooting range in an amusement park, while the boy was at the door of the shop getting some sun.

The person who had kick-started that group of humiliated Neapolitans was the young Deputy Commissioner that we have already met in passing, Dr. Vittorio D'Aiazzo, who was passing nearby on foot when the German soldier had aimed and fired at the boy. Very indignant, the young Public Security officer had shot from around a corner without taking aim into the Teutonic bunch with his ordinance Beretta M34, emptying the magazine and killing two soldiers. He had then vanished down a side alley, not so much for fear of the enemy but afraid of trouble, or worse, from his superiors.

As he disappeared, those of the thirty exacerbated civilians present who had knives in their pockets, which was almost all of them, had pulled them out. The crowd, which had now become white hot with anger at the sight of the enemy corpses and the image d'o sbenturàto guaglio' 12 who had been hit in the femoral artery and was dying fast, had thrown itself on the rest of the German squadron, screaming like savages. The soldier who had fired was the first to be slaughtered, emasculated by three outraged men, and a soldier had been punched on the nose by an assailant without a blade. Then someone behind him had attacked him with a large knife wounding him horizontally on the buttocks. Almost all the assailants had suffered bruising and lacerations to the arms and face, and one, worse, had lost his nose.

No German had managed to fire a single shot at the feral horde and, with the sergeant in the lead, the squad had fled quickly abandoning its arrogance on the cobblestones. The rifles and hand grenades of the slain and the rifles left on the ground by the most seriously wounded had been collected and hidden in the houses. Very soon they would serve to free the city. The three corpses had been taken to the slums and were dissected there. The shreds of flesh had been wrapped in rags and buried in various places in the area. It would be whispered later, true or false? that some nice piece of buttock though had ended up in undernourished bellies roasted. The street had been washed very energetically by the women of the fearless rebels, and never again would it be so clean.

At the same time in another area of Naples, completely independently, a group of improvised militants had attacked a handful of German sabateurs trying to occupy the headquarters of the telephone company, and had scared them off. The German platoon had avenged itself further on, capturing and shooting two carabinieri on patrol duty. Not long after, an entire German company of stormtroopers had arrived in front of the telephone building and had quickly overcome the insurgents who were guarding it.

Yet, contrary to the intentions of the Nazis, the anger of the humiliated Neapolitans had grown even stronger and the following day, at the foot of the hill of Pizzofalcone between Piazza del Plebiscito and the gardens below, there had been a real battle, ignited by some sailors with their '91 muskets and hand grenades, and stoked by numerous civilians armed with MP80 machine guns and model 24 grenades, stolen from the occupiers the previous day, and improvised Molotov cocktails. The rebels had prevented the passage of an entire column of German trucks and jeeps. Six people had died, three Italian sailors who had fought in the front line and as many German soldiers, with many wounded on both sides.

Heavy measures and serious reprisals by the Germans followed, ordered by the new commander of the city Colonel Walter Scholl who, on the 12th, had officially assumed absolute power. One of his proclamations had dictated that weapons were to be turned in, except for public security forces, a 9.00 pm curfew and a state of siege for the entire city, while not only had the soldiers and civilians taken prisoner been shot, but also several citizens deliberately rounded up.

After the 12th the Germans had gone completely wild, looting, destroying and burning. The university was the first to be set on fire, after shooting a defenseless Italian sailor in front of it, forcing the citizens present not only to assist at the execution, but to applaud it. Up until September 25, even though the city had no longer acted openly against the occupiers after the first few days, the German patrols had apprehended anyone not a policeman, who had been caught in the street in Italian uniform or, if in civilian dress, simply seemed suspicious.

Naples had kept quiet but was sizzling and preparing for the insurgence. In particular, soldiers who had deserted had been picked up one by one by members of the anti-nazifascist parties and hidden and trained in guerrilla warfare, many inside the underground rooms of the Sannazaro high school, the main headquarters of the newborn Neapolitan resistance.

On September 25, the same day on which Italy had been subjected to two very serious bombings on Bologna and Florence by the Americans, an ordinance had been issued in Naples which stipulated that all citizens of working age were obliged to perform tasks of hard labor for the Germans. It was the fuse for the insurgency that would take place a few days later, in perfect antithesis to the intimidating intentions of the Germans. The posters of the decree had already been affixed to the walls in the early morning of Sunday 26, the day before the one that would see the first flashes of the rebellion.

If the substantial order of recruitment had come from Colonel Scholl, the formal one had been signed for Italy by the prefect Domenico Soprano who in August, appointed by the Badoglio Government, had taken the place of the dismissed fascist prefect Vaccari. Soprano was a man of order, anti-communist and anti-socialist and opponent of conceivable violent actions by the population, even if he was not fascist but liberal: certainly not a demoliberal Gobetti-style, but an old-fashioned aristocrat. More because of his hatred towards the popular masses than because he was in awe of the Germans, he had signed the decree of conscription to work: playing for time had been his immediate goal to maintain calm.

A few days before that September 26, after there had been contacts between US Army intelligence and the leaders of the Neapolitan anti-fascist parties, precisely in view of a hoped-for uprising in Naples, the prefect Soprano had been approached by representatives of the newborn National Liberation Front – later the National Liberation Committee – which had recently been founded with headquarters in Rome. It was composed of the Action Party, the Liberal Party, the Christian Democratic Centre, Labor Democracy, the Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity and the Communist Party. They had put pressure on him to cooperate with the nascent opposition through the police forces he directed, offering him all possible support. The prefect, however, had preferred the path of prudence because, as always, he opposed social communism and feared any revolutionary movement; thus he had limited himself to converse politically, in secret, with the moderate liberal leaders Enrico De Nicola and Benedetto Croce: without exposing himself.

Both Domenico Soprano and Walter Scholl had miscalculated. Since only one hundred and fifty people had presented themselves to the Germans before the date indicated in the notice, during the afternoon of Sunday September 26 and the early hours of the evening the Germans had started brutally combing Naples and had rounded up 8000 helpless citizens, including elderly men and thirteen-year-old boys. The Germans had fanned the flame of the rebellion igniting the souls of family members and relatives of those rounded up, who were eager to release them. In the early morning of Monday, September 27, there had been the first clashes, started not only by Italian soldiers who had remained in hiding until then in the basement of the Sannazaro high school and in private homes, but also by a number of civilians, although the real popular uprising in Naples would explode the following day, as droves of armed Neapolitans of all social classes spread through the streets and squares, from ultra-commoners to intellectuals, as well as twelve-year-old boys and young women.