Florence

by Christopher Hibbert

  Once again the anti-Fascists were forced underground; Fascists emerged from hiding; and the Tuscan Committee of National Liberation was instituted to conduct an underground war.

  The Germans established their headquarters in the Piazza San Marco; but immediately made it clear to the Italian Fascists that they would be permitted to run their own affairs in the city. Florentines were afterwards to remember with gratitude the restraint exercised by the German Consul, Gerhard Wolff, who did his best to resist the depredations of his less humane countrymen, going out of his way to help Italians who had fallen foul of the authorities, blocking Hermann Goering's attempt to acquire several valuable pictures from the Uffizi, and, according to a diary kept by Bernhard Berenson's companion, Nicky Mariano, advising Berenson, a Jew as well as an anti-Fascist American, to leave I Tatti and go into hiding. Indeed, Florentines in general had more to fear from their own people than from the German army. It was, for example, the Florentine 92nd Legion of the Fascist Militia which was responsible for the institution of an office of political investigation, the director of which was Major Mario Carità, whose hundred or so minions were reputed to torture suspects in their headquarters in the Via Benedetto Varchi and later at No. 67 Via Bologna, a large house whose sinister reputation earned it the name of the Villa Triste. Other feared Fascist organizations were the Muti battalion of dedicated blackshirts, some of them criminals from the prisons of the city, and the notorious Decima Mas, an autonomous body of marines commanded by the Roman Prince Valerio Borghese.

  While relying upon corps such as these to repress anti-Fascist elements, the authorities endeavoured to maintain the illusion of a city untroubled by strife. To be sure, a committed Fascist was brought in as editor of La Nazione; but when the Italian Academy was transferred from Rome to Florence, its president, the Hegelian philosopher Giovanni Gentile, a shining star of the Fascist intellectual firmament, saw to it that contributors to the Academy's publications were not necessarily Fascist supporters. Theatres and the opera were kept open; no fewer than twenty-eight cinemas showed mostly Italian films; art galleries were crowded; the concert season opened as usual; restaurants offered an abundance of food for those who could afford black-market prices; and while there was little meat for the poor, vegetables were in good supply in the markets.

  The illusion of a city at peace was also maintained by the infrequency of air raids, a mercy which the Florentines attributed to the Anglo-Saxons' predilection for their ancient city. A raid did take place on 9 September, aimed at destroying the city's rail communications; and, since the railway lines passed close to the city centre, as much damage was done to surrounding buildings as to the Allies' intended target and there were a number of civilian casualties. And in a later raid part of the Teatro Comunale1 was destroyed. But in the few other raids damage was slight and casualties very few.

  Meanwhile the Resistance, largely organized by the Communist Gruppi di Azione Patriottica and the less experienced and generally younger members of the Action Party, kept up their fight against Germans and Fascists alike. They carried out sabotage and terrorist attacks; distributed clandestine newspapers such as the Action Party's La Libertà; stole weapons; clashed with the blackshirt militia in the woodlands of Pratolino and Monte Morello; set up commissions to help Jews and Allied prisoners on the run. They attacked the offices of Fascist trade unions and strove to foster strikes; they bombed places of entertainment frequented by German soldiers; and transmitted information about enemy troop movements and positions to the Allied army. They shot an Italian colonel who was active in the recruitment of men for the Fascist army, and this resulted in the execution of five hostages by the Fascist authorities; later, they killed Giovanni Gentile as he was driving home from the Italian Academy's offices in Palazzo Serristori, an assassination which was widely regretted, since Gentile openly disapproved of Major Carità's savage behaviour and was known also to have helped colleagues in difficulties with the regime.

  As the Allied army advanced north, the activities of the partisans around Florence – now increasingly supported by the Liberal and Socialist Parties and by the Christian Democrats – increased in intensity, while the Fascist authorities maintained a pretence of defiant normality. Exhibitions were still held in the city's galleries; cinemas and theatres continued their shows; lectures on Dante were given at the Palazzo dell'Arte della Lana; and at the Teatro Verdi the opera was in full swing with The Barber of Seville.

  By the middle of July, however, as the Allied advance relentlessly continued, the cigarette ration had to be severely restricted; gas and electricity were cut off for long periods, and warnings were given of an imminent restriction of the water supply. On 23 July about fifteen members of the Resistance were shot in the Cascine after one of their number had divulged their names under torture at the hands of Major Carità's vicious henchmen.

  By then most of the leading Fascists had fled north, including Major Carità himself, Alessandro Pavolini, and the head of the province of Flor-ence, who disappeared with four million lire of public funds. On their departure the Tuscan Committee of National Liberation issued a manifesto proclaiming itself the sole political authority in Florence.

  On 29 July the German high command issued their own order to ‘the inhabitants of the area along the Arno within the confines of the streets listed below…’ These people, some 150,000 in number, including patients in the hospital of San Giovanni di Dio, were to leave their premises by noon the next day. It would ‘not be necessary to move furniture’. ‘People who are temporarily obliged to leave their houses and who cannot find accommodation at friends' houses [outside the area to be evacuated] should go to the areas of Campo di Marte and the Cure.’

  Taking no notice of the assurance that it would not be necessary to move furniture, families in the designated areas moved out of their houses immediately, pushing as much as they could manage on wheelbarrows and handcarts, leaving piles of their possessions in areas supposed to be safe and going back to their homes to collect more, even after darkness had fallen over a city from which all electricity had now been cut off.

  ‘The Allied forces are advancing on Florence,’ warned thousands of leaflets dropped by American planes. ‘The city's liberation is at hand. Citizens of Florence, you must unite to preserve your city and to defeat our common enemies… Prevent the enemy from detonating mines which they may have placed under the bridges…’ Similar pleas were issued by the Committee of National Liberation. There was nothing the Florentines could do, however, to save their bridges. The whole area was cordoned off. German paratroops manned a series of guard posts; a decree issued by the German command forbade the people to leave their houses for any purpose; they were to close all windows and see that they remained closed night and day; they were advised to seek shelter in their cellars or, failing that, in churches or ‘in altri grandi edifici’; German patrols had orders to fire on anyone seen in the streets or at windows. The Swiss Consul, Karl Steinhauslin, asked the German command to spare the statues on the Ponte Santa Trinita. He was told that the statues were too heavy to move with the equipment and men at their disposal. But at least Steinhauslin could comfort himself with the thought that the greatest treasures of the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace would be spared the effects of the imminent explosions.

  On the afternoon of the day on which the Germans ordered the evacuation of houses along Florence's river bank, Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, the war correspondent for the BBC, and Eric Linklater, the novelist, then serving in the War Office's directorate of public relations, arrived at Castello Montegufoni to find it occupied by a battalion of the Mahratta Light Infantry of the 8th Indian Division. Although the German forward positions were scarcely more than a mile to the north, it was a quiet afternoon broken only by the intermittent shelling of the Allied and enemy batteries.

  Having driven through Siena – where until recently the presence of Moroccan goums of the French army had kept the inhabitants behind locked doors and shuttered windows – Monte
gufoni's two visitors made their way into the castle, where they found numerous paintings stacked against the walls.

  ‘By this time we had gathered a few spectators,’ Linklater recorded.

  Some refugees had been sleeping in the castello… and now, cheerfully perceiving our excitement, they were making sounds of lively approval, and a couple of men began noisily to open the shutters… Vaughan Thomas shouted, ‘Uccello!’

  I, in the same instant cried, ‘Giotto!’ For a moment we stood there, quite still, held in the double grip of amazement and delight… We went nearer, and the refugees came round us and proudly exclaimed, ‘E vero, è vero! Uccello! Giotto! Molto bello, molto antico!’… Then I heard a sudden clamour of voices, a yell of shrill delight, and Vaughan Thomas shouting ‘Botticelli!’ as if he were a fox-hunter view-hallooing on a hill. I ran to see what they had found, and came to a halt before the Primavera.

  At this dramatic moment a small man with gleaming spectacles wearing a grey tweed knickerbocker suit made his appearance and was proudly introduced by the Italians: ‘Il Professore, il Professore.’ He turned out to be a curator from the Uffizi who had been placed in charge of the treasures at Montegufoni and at nearby villas at Montagnana and Poppiano. He told the British visitors that the pictures had been removed from their galleries in Florence on the orders of the Fascists after the city's railway station had been bombed in March 1944; and, as the fighting approached nearer Florence, they had been taken out of the city altogether. The Germans had been generous in lending transport; but the Allies, the curator said, had not so far been as sympathetic as their enemies.

  So Linklater and Vaughan-Thomas went to see the English commanding officer of the Mahrattas who, although roused from sleep after an exhausting advance, was ‘very patient’. He admitted that he knew little about art, wistfully adding that if his wife were there ‘she would be more impressed’. She took a great interest in pictures, he said. He put on his shoes and came down to look at the Primavera.

  He stood silent for some time and, still without comment, walked slowly past the other pictures, into the adjoining rooms and back again, as though he were making his rounds of a Sunday morning after church parade… To the north we could hear the sounds of war, and so much concern for a few yards of paint may have seemed excessive to him whose care was men… But he was evidently pleased with what he saw, and now permitted himself, with a decent restraint, to be infected by our enthusiasm. He would do everything in his power to keep the pictures safe, he promised.

  So almost the whole of the great collection was preserved, both at Montegufoni and at the other places where works of art had been stored. At Poppiano some Allied soldiers had broken into the villa, stolen the housekeeper's blankets and her frying-pan, slashed two canvases and smashed a bust of Dante; and at Montegufoni a circular Ghirlandaio, which had been used as a table top, was stained with wine and coffee and scored by table knives. But the rest of the pictures, largely undamaged, were to be returned to Florence when the fighting was over.

  At about four o'clock in the morning of 4 August, a few hours after the demolition of the Ponte alle Grazie, a tremendous roar heralded the destruction of the Ponte Santa Trinita, whose statues were sent hurtling into the river. Florence's other bridges were also blown up, with the exception of the Ponte Vecchio, the approaches to which were blocked by piles of debris from the mining of buildings, including numerous looted shops, in Via Por Santa Maria, Via Guicciardini and along the lungarni. The shops on the bridge itself were mined and booby-trapped.

  As the reverberations of the last thunderous explosion died away, Ugo Procacci of the Soprintendenza of Fine Arts, who had been sheltering with his family in the Pitti Palace, climbed to the top storey:

  In the early light I looked from a window overlooking the Piazza. There was no one about, but in a moment from behind the wing of the palace came two partisans. I opened the window and called out, ‘Where are the Germans?’

  ‘There are none here any more. They are all across the Arno.’

  ‘And the bridges?’

  ‘All blown up, except Ponte Vecchio.’

  ‘Viva l'Italia!’ cried one of the partisans.

  ‘Viva l'Italia!’ I called back, but Italy no longer had the Ponte Santa Trinita…

  Buildings on the approaches to the Ponte Vecchio destroyed by German mines in 1944.

  It was not possible to leave the palace by the front entrances; all the doors had been barred. I ran therefore into the Boboli Gardens, up, up, all the way to the Kaffeehaus. I climbed the stairs in haste. ‘Don't look out!’ cried a woman. ‘The Germans are firing!’ I looked out all the same and in the still feeble light of the early morning I saw the massacre of my Florence. The ruins of Oltrarno were there at a few paces. That marvellous panorama which for generations had been admired by the whole world showed a tremendous gash in a tragic foreground along the Arno around Ponte Vecchio, and the dust and smoke were still rising from the rubble…

  I had hardly returned to the palace when suddenly came the rumour, ‘The Allies are here!’ The crowd rushed forward – the grand staircase of the palace was blocked with people. While I was trying to get through, suddenly on the landing of the staircase appeared an English soldier and an English officer. They were embraced on every side by the crowd.

  Eric Linklater was one of the first of the Allies to reach the city:

  We went into that part of Florence which lies south of the Arno. The South African Armoured Division, the New Zealanders, the 24th Guards Brigade, and the 4th Infantry Division had made a race for the city, and the South Africans, I think, had won by a head.

  The Florentines of the South Bank, poor people for the most part, gave us a warmer welcome than the Romans. Tears streaked their faces while they cheered, and for an hour or two their affection had almost the peril of a cannibal's. At one moment my companion of the day – Vaughan-Thomas was no longer with me – was mercilessly embraced by a bristle-bearded labourer while I, with my left arm clutched to an unseen but young and palpitating bosom, was being heartily kissed by a pair of the plainest old trouts in Tuscany. But then the crowd broke and scattered as snipers opened fire from a window or a roof, and our partisans replied.

  Linklater went through the Boboli Gardens to the Pitti Palace, which was full of refugees and countless children, ‘a crawling mass of unfortunate humanity,’ as another observer, Frederick Hartt, put it, looking like ‘the most crowded slum in Naples’. Linklater met a curator of the gallery who took him through the press of ‘amicable and voluble’ people to a concrete shelter where, in large crates and packing-cases, were numerous pieces of statuary, much of it dismembered, and Ghiberti's bronze doors from the Baptistery.

  The smoke of ruined buildings was still rising by the banks of the Arno and the rattle of machine-gun fire could still be heard echoing along the lungarni. ‘The Germans and the Fascists still held the northern part of the city and no one knew what its fate would be… Florence was divided again as if between more savage Guelphs and Ghibellines… In the late afternoon rain drove the people indoors, and all the flowers they had thrown lay wetly trampled on empty streets.’

  Another British officer, the Hon. Hubert Howard, serving with the Psychological Warfare Branch at Allied Force Headquarters, was also in the Oltrarno that afternoon. He, too, was overwhelmed by the crowds of people who poured out into the streets, cheering and waving and throwing flowers at the tanks and jeeps.

  Making his way towards the Piazza Santo Spirito, Howard came across one of the leading partisan commanders, Aligi Barducci, a former customs officer, whose nom de guerre was Potente. Commander of the Garibaldi Arno Division, Barducci was killed soon afterwards when a mortar bomb exploded in the piazza as he was making plans for an attack upon the positions of the German parachutists and Fascist snipers who had been left behind on this side of the Arno as a rearguard when the rest of the army withdrew across the river.

  The partisans had hoped the Allies would join them in these
operations; but the British commander, General Alexander, determined to spare Florence the damage done to other cities such as Pisa, where heavy fighting had taken place, had given orders for the withdrawal of the advancing troops from the Oltrarno and for an advance on either side of the city towards a point to the north of it where the two arms of the northward thrust could meet.

  When the men of Barducci's division decided to go through the city without Allied support to the help of another group of partisans surrounded by the Germans to the north of Florence on Monte Morello, Howard and some other officers decided to go across the river with them and make their way to the Palazzo della Signoria, the tower of which had been occupied by members of the Committee of National Liberation passing themselves off as Fascists. ‘A sinister silence dwelled over the city,’ Howard recorded.

  We walked silently keeping careful watch on the narrow, deserted, shadowy streets of the medieval city, moving by way of the Via Perione to Piazza Santa Trinita and from there along the Via delle Terme to Por Santa Maria. The great doors of the palaces were barred and the shutters were closed over the windows. Nevertheless as we moved on I noticed that the lower parts of these shutters were slightly open and I felt hundreds of eyes fixed upon us with intense concentration. What impression must have been made by this small group of Englishmen who entered Florence without a military escort and almost unarmed? Then there reached our ears a strange and wonderful sound which we shall surely never hear again. Behind the shutters we were made aware of the gentle, muffled applause of hundreds of hands and the sound of voices whispering welcome.