Christian Jennings - Anatomy of a Massacre: How the SS Got Away with War Crimes in Italy

This book is dedicated to the inspirational, inimitable Sylvia Scheul, who believed in it from the start and has done everything to support it. One afternoon in SantAnna di Stazzema, she looked down from the mountains and olive groves towards the cobalt blue of the Tyrrhenian Sea. She knew, with characteristic wisdom, what this book had to be about. More humanity than history, she said. I hope Ive done the story justice.

Jacket illustrations

Front: The Pardini family (Museo Storico di SantAnna di Stazzema); back: The SantAnna di Stazzema memorial stone (Authors collection).

First published 2021

The History Press

97 St Georges Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

Christian Jennings, 2021

The right of Christian Jennings to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9704 1

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

As always, a lot of thanks must go to my exceptional literary agent in London, Andrew Lownie. Many thanks too to Mark Beynon and Simon Wright at The History Press, who immediately saw the importance of this story, and then published it with clear-minded verve, style and commitment. Along the way, my brothers and sisters have ridden shotgun, especially Luke, Anthony, James and Flora. In Turin, thanks to my friends Giulia Avataneo, Katiuscia Sacco, Otilia Cheslerean and Amor Ben. Thanks as well to the efficient and very helpful staff of the museums, archives and libraries in Italy, especially those at the museum at SantAnna di Stazzema.

Central and Northern Italy.

Florence, Bologna and the Tuscan coast.

SantAnna di Stazzema and Versilia.

Marzabotto and the Monte Sole plateau.

On Saturday, 25 April 2020, three men stood in front of a war memorial at a mountain village in central Tuscany. Heads bowed, hands clasped, one of them placed a large green wreath of laurel leaves on the stone in front of them. The men came here every year on 25 April, which in Italy is the day that commemorates the liberation of their country from the Germans, the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, and the establishment of the new Italian republic. Across the country on this day, old partisans donned red and green neck scarves, their colours of political allegiance from the days of the Second World War. They stood in front of statues, memorials and commemoration sites across the length and breadth of the country, remembering. In the Tuscan mountain village of SantAnna di Stazzema, the three men were offering their respects to hundreds of civilians who died there in August 1944, massacred by German troops in a savage reprisal operation. In a normal year, the village and its surroundings would have been thronged with government officials, the mayors of neighbouring towns and villages, politicians from Rome, parties of school children, some old partisans who fought in the war, their children and grandchildren. For SantAnna di Stazzema, which sits on an isolated hillside in central Tuscany, is the site of the best-known of all the mass killings carried out by the Germans and their Fascist allies between 1943 and 1945. Simply put, on 25 April, it should have been crowded. But it was deserted. And the reason it was deserted was the reason why the three men laying the wreath were wearing face masks.

Italy, its former partisans and its people, refused to be bowed, however. Covid-19 would not cancel the spirit of 25 April and the celebrations of Liberation Day, pledged the National Association of Former Partisans on its website. Never had there been a commemoration day with such a rich menu of virtual events to attend, it proclaimed proudly. Virtual remembrance was the order of the day. Where former partisans, relatives of fallen soldiers, government officials and onlookers did gather in person, then the draconian rulings of social distancing would be in force, in keeping with the worldwide situation of emergency. The president of the Italian National Partisans Association said that although the respective authorities would, of course, be laying wreaths and depositing flowers at statues and monuments, most Italians would celebrate in a different way, confined as they were to their homes by lockdown.