Hitler's Raid to Save Mussolini

by Greg Annussek

  “The destroyer is said to be stationed at Gaeta. The Fuehrer wishes to have [Doenitz] informed at once asking him to re-examine the distribution of the Italian destroyers. Preventive measures must be taken at once; he suggests the use of submarines.” Fifteen minutes later, Hitler sent Doenitz a more specific proposal. “The Admiral at the Fuehrer’s Headquarters telephones that the Fuehrer has no objection to a blockade of V. harbor by submarines.”24

  This suggestion posed a problem for Doenitz. The Germany navy could certainly try to blockade the harbor at Ventotene if Hitler so desired, but such a clumsy measure was sure to be noticed by the Italians. Doenitz sent Hitler a reply at 4:30 P.M.: “An inconspicuous blockade of the harbor, even by submarine, is impossible since it would have to stand right off the harbor entrance. Likewise, he knows of no inconspicuous means with which to render the destroyer at its present anchorage harmless. [Doenitz] therefore advises against a blockade, not because of its impossibility, but in order to prevent our intentions from being recognized prematurely. If the Italians become aware of our plans, they will certainly remove the ‘valuable object’ secretly, e.g., by motorboat, to a different place.”25

  Doenitz also pointed out the obvious by reminding Hitler that attempts to prevent the transfer of Mussolini would be likely to cause an open break with the Italians. “The only possible military solution exists in forestalling the Italians, but such a step will have serious consequences. It is not within the province of [Doenitz] to make decisions in such matters.”26 It was, in fact, a political matter, and only Hitler had the authority to decide.

  Doenitz waited for Hitler’s response. It finally arrived at 6:30 P.M. “Answer from the Admiral at the Fuehrer’s Headquarters: ‘The Fuehrer will reconsider the matter.’”27

  As it turned out, Himmler was close to the mark.

  On the afternoon of August 6, the same day that Hitler and Doenitz were debating the possibility of blockading the harbor at Ventotene, Admiral Maugeri received word that he would be supervising yet another transfer of the Duce. “We’ve got to stow Mussolini away somewhere that’s safer than Ponza,” he was informed by Admiral Raffaele De Courten, the portly new Minister of Marine, “somewhere where the Germans can’t lay hands on him.”28 The Italians had selected the island of La Maddalena, located off the northeastern tip of the much larger island of Sardinia. A carabinieri officer had flown to La Maddalena that very morning to lay the groundwork.

  Badoglio later claimed that Ponza had become untenable as a hideout for the Duce because of the rumors running rampant in Rome. “He was transferred to the Island of Ponza,” Badoglio remembered, running through the sequence of events, “but after a few days we had to remove him to La Maddalena because everyone in Rome knew where he was and talked openly of his whereabouts, so it was to be expected that the Germans would rescue him by a coup de main.”29

  On the evening of August 7, Maugeri drove back to Gaeta on the west coast of Italy and boarded the F.R. 22, a twenty-year-old destroyer that in a former life had gone by the more colorful name of the Panthère (when she belonged to the French).* The ship dropped anchor off Ponza at 11:30 P.M., and Mussolini was brought aboard shortly afterward along with his armed escort, which had increased to about eighty carabinieri and policemen. As the Panthère carved its way through the Tyrrhenian Sea—La Maddalena was located a little less than two hundred miles northwest of Ponza—Maugeri once again found himself face to face with the Duce.

  He thought the dictator looked a little better. His eyes even had a trace of their “old sparkle.”30 He could not say the same about Mussolini’s wrinkled blue suit, which he was still wearing. The lonely despot seemed hungry for conversation (or for an audience), and held forth for hours on a wide variety of topics.

  When Maugeri revealed that the Italians were worried about the prospect of a German rescue operation, the Duce said that the very idea was anathema to him. “That’s the biggest humiliation they [the Nazis] could ever inflict upon me,” said Mussolini, who assumed that the next logical step would be a new Fascist government-in-exile. “To think that I would ever go to Germany and set up a government there with the support of the Germans! Ah, no! Never! Never that!”31

  At one point, Maugeri expressed his surprise that the Fascist regime had collapsed so quickly and completely, “that it should have been possible to overthrow it in a few hours without anyone lifting a finger or making the slightest effort to defend it, without anyone dying on the barricades with Mussolini’s name on his lips, waving the Fascist banner.”32 The Duce, who knew that Maugeri was speaking the truth, was quick to provide an explanation.

  “It’s just another example of the Italians’ fundamental lack of character,” said Mussolini. “Nonetheless, the things Fascism accomplished have been worthwhile; many things can never be destroyed, much less denied or disowned. . . . As time passes, Fascism will be missed more and more. But it will never really die.” As the Duce spoke of the enduring power of Fascism, Maugeri noted how his expression intensified and his face became “the famous Roman mask with outthrust jaw and hard, glittering eyes that had scowled down from the Balcony.”33

  The failures of the Fascist regime, its founder explained, were ultimately the fault of the Italian people themselves. They simply did not measure up. “Italians are too individualistic,” he complained to Maugeri, “too cynical. They’re not serious enough. . . . It’s different with the Germans; they submit readily to Nazism and any kind of discipline. That sort of thing comes naturally to them. . . . They don’t even begin to understand what individualism means. That’s why Hitler has had an easier time than I. Germans are born Nazis; Italians had to be made into Fascists.”34

  Mussolini’s newest prison was an attractive Moorish-Italian-style villa overlooking the sea and located just outside of the town of Maddalena, on the southern coast of the island of the same name. Constructed in the mid-1800s by a British expatriate named James Webber, the small two-story Mediterranean mansion was nestled snugly among low-lying hills and surrounded by a small forest of pine trees. About a hundred men, a mixed force comprised of carabinieri and policemen, guarded the compound twenty-four hours a day once their prisoner arrived.

  “The house destined for my use,” the Duce recalled, “was situated outside the town, on a height surrounded by a park thickly studded with pine trees. The villa had been built by an Englishman called Webber who, strangely enough, of all the places in the world where he could have settled, chose just the most stark and lonely island of all those to the north of Sardinia. The Secret Service? Possibly.”*35

  It was even more stark and lonely by the time Mussolini arrived. Most of the civilians living on the island—which was also home to an Italian naval base—had been evacuated after a heavy Allied bombing raid.36 The population was now composed mainly of sailors and fishermen.37

  “The scorching days went monotonously by without the slightest news of the world outside,” recalled Mussolini, who passed much of the time standing on the terrace of the villa and staring across the harbor at the mountains of Sardinia or taking short walks among the pine trees with one of his guards.38 He also continued to write down his thoughts in a sort of journal that he had kept since his fall from power: a disjointed smattering of observations and pseudo-philosophical ruminations. He called his journal the Pontine and Sardinian Musings.39 A few excerpts:

  As far as gratitude is concerned, animals are superior to human beings perhaps because they have instincts and not reason.40

  This morning the sun is striving to pierce a grey bank of cloud which is coming up from the east. The sea is like lead.41

  [T]he masses are always ready to cast down the Gods of yesterday, even though they rue it to-morrow. But for me there is no return. My blood, the infallible voice of the blood, tells me that my star has set for ever.42

  In all my life I have never had any “friends,” and I have often asked myself whether this is an advantage or a handicap? Now I am sure that it is a good thing, for now
there is no one called upon to suffer with me.43

  The Duce also received a special delivery from the mainland. “The only surprise was a gift from the Führer,” Mussolini remembered, “a splendid complete edition of Nietzsche’s works in twentyfour volumes with a signed dedication. A real marvel of German book-production.”44 Nietzsche, who among other things was the originator of such Fascist mottos as “Live dangerously,” was a favorite of both Axis dictators.45 The belated birthday present arrived in an enormous case and was accompanied by a letter from Kesselring. 46 Part of it read, “The Führer will consider himself happy if this great work of German literature gives you a little pleasure, Duce, and if you will consider it as an expression of the Führer’s personal attachment to you.”47

  This was the same gift that Mackensen, the German ambassador to Rome, had attempted to deliver personally on July 29, Mussolini’s sixtieth birthday, during his meeting with the king of Italy.48 Not wishing to provoke the Nazis, the Italian authorities had agreed to deliver it on Hitler’s behalf. “He incessantly inquired about this present,” Badoglio recalled wearily, “until he had received a personal acknowledgement from Mussolini.”49

  During his stay at La Maddalena, the Duce asked General Saverio Polito, his senior jailer of the moment, why his request to go to Rocca delle Caminate had been ignored.50 Polito explained that his country house in the Romagna had been considered too risky from a security standpoint. The prefect of Forli, one of the officials who would have been responsible for the Duce’s safety at his country estate, had informed Badoglio that he was not certain he could prevent the dictator from being seized by angry mobs.*51

  When Mussolini scoffed at this explanation, Polito attempted to give him a reality check by describing the depth of anti-Fascist feeling among the people. “The demonstrations of hatred against you are innumerable,” Polito said. “I have myself seen a bust of you in a lavatory in Ancona.”52

  * * *

  *Just for good measure, the Italians also took a scattershot approach by dispatching two additional emissaries in early August. One of these, Alberto Berio, headed for Tangier in North Africa to establish contact with British. The other, the millionaire industrialist Alberto Pirelli, hastened to Switzerland to see whether that neutral country would agree to facilitate talks between Italy and the Allies.

  *“Nibelungen loyalty” is a reference to German mythology.

  *For the sake of simplicity, certain German naval records have been ascribed to the person of Doenitz. In some instances, Doenitz really did take down the notes in question.

  *The Panthère had a turbulent history. She had been scuttled by the French at Toulon in November 1942 to prevent her capture by the Nazis. She was then raised by the Italians in March 1943, towed to Italy, and renamed F.R. 22. Her luck finally ran out on September 9, 1943, at La Spezia, when she was scuttled again to prevent her seizure by the Germans. On this occasion, it was the Italians who sank her.

  *The island’s inhabitants apparently took a different view of the villa’s namesake. At the turn of the century, the Municipal Council of Maddalena decided to name a street after Webber (he had died in 1877). In the council’s minutes, Webber is described as “a man who valued his own honesty, son of the celebrated General Webber, like Byron’s Harold he loved solitude, loved this island, in his beautiful dwelling he established a library of which any town could be proud.”

  *This explanation apparently contained an element of truth. However, the fact that the Nazis were desperately searching for Mussolini was another important reason for rejecting the Duce’s request.

  THE RAID ON SANTO STEFANO

  An early execution of the operation “Eiche” [Oak] appears necessary. The general conviction is that Mussolini is on [Santo] Stefano.1

  —German navy records, August 9, 1943

  EVEN AS THEY ENGAGED IN A BIZARRE GAME OF HIDE AND SEEK WITH Mussolini in the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Nazis and the Italians did their best to keep up appearances on the diplomatic front. On August 6, the Rome-Berlin alliance held its first Axis conference since the Italian coup. Though Hitler and Badoglio did not take part, the day-long meeting in Tarvisio, in northern Italy, gave both sides an important opportunity to probe each other’s agenda. Needless to say, the atmosphere was frosty.

  One sign of this was the intimidating “grand entrance” made by the German delegation—including Joachim von Ribbentrop and Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of OKW—which rumbled into town aboard a heavily armored train so ostentatiously adorned with machine guns, antiaircraft weapons, and armed SS men that some may have thought the Nazis were preparing to do battle. The Italians at Tarvisio were represented by Raffaele Guariglia, Badoglio’s foreign minister, and General Vittorio Ambrosio, who was Keitel’s opposite number.*

  According to several eyewitnesses, German paranoia was running high. “We must leave all our secret papers and cipher keys on German soil,” Ribbentrop had announced before leaving for Tarvisio, according to his interpreter, Paul Schmidt. “It’s by no means impossible that these brigands intend, on British and American instructions, to kidnap us on Italian territory.”2

  “A few SS men sat by us in the train with loaded tommy-guns,” Schmidt remembered, “and when we arrived at Tarvisio they immediately threw a protective cordon round Ribbentrop’s saloon coach in which the negotiations were carried on.”3 General Walter Warlimont, who was at Tarvisio, noted Hitler’s decree: “[U]nder no circumstances were we to eat or drink anything which had not previously been tasted by our hosts.”4 Indeed, for most of the summer, Hitler was preoccupied by the fear that the Italians would attempt to poison his top envoys.

  Ribbentrop, declaring at the outset that his purpose was “to discuss the situation resulting from the change which has taken place in Italy and which has had political and psychological repercussions,” did nothing to ease the tension once the conference started.5 He then asked Guariglia for a “clarification” of recent events.6 This was a polite and restrained way of demanding an explanation from the Italians for the disappearance of Mussolini and the dissolution of the Fascist Party.

  But Guariglia did not stray from the official script, which maintained that the regime change of July 25 was merely a domestic matter and had no bearing on Axis relations. “It would not have been wise,” added the crafty Neapolitan, alluding to the demise of the Fascist Party, “to entrust the government of Italy to those very men who overthrew the Duce.”7

  Here again was the same myth—all the more plausible because it contained an element of truth—that was fed to the Germans several days earlier during the meeting between Mackensen and the king of Italy: namely, that Mussolini had fallen from power as the result of a betrayal by his own subordinates in the Fascist Grand Council. Such men as this, Guariglia suggested slyly, were not worthy to wield power.

  At one point, Ribbentrop, who had been instructed by Hitler to gauge Badoglio’s real intentions, asked point-blank whether the Italians had begun peace talks with the Allies.8 Guariglia, who was actively working toward this end, told Ribbentrop with a straight face that they had not. The Germans did not pursue the matter.

  As it happened, Ribbentrop was not the only one seeking clarification. Ambrosio, who was chief of Comando Supremo (the Italian High Command), began probing Keitel for the reason so many German troops were suddenly descending upon his country.

  “Ambrosio demanded to know why an endless stream of German reinforcements was pouring southwards across the Brenner,” recalled SS man Eugen Dollmann, who acted as an interpreter for the two soldiers, “and his German opposite number countered by asking why the Italians were withdrawing their men from Greece and the Balkans. Mutual distrust grew and voices rose in volume. Before long, Keitel and Ambrosio were bellowing orders at each other on an imaginary parade-ground, and I half expected to hear the fatal words ‘Duce’, ‘treason’ and ‘loyalty to the Axis’ burst in the air like shrapnel shells at any moment.”9

  The irony of Ambrosio’s position was rich, but gri
m. When they pleaded for German arms and assistance in the days after the invasion of Sicily, the Italians were disappointed by Hitler’s thrift. But now that they had secretly decided to sue for peace, and it being crucial to keep German troops off Italian soil, they were being overwhelmed by Hitler’s newfound generosity. Though they were helpless to stem the tide of German reinforcements, the Italians did manage to broach another potentially touchy subject at Tarvisio.

  The issue at hand was the return of Italian troops fighting in foreign lands.10 As mentioned earlier, the Italians had numerous divisions stationed on other fronts. In light of Italy’s decision to switch sides in the war, it made sense to recall these soldiers to the homeland—where they might very well be needed in fighting their soon-to-be enemy, the Nazis. The Italians, of course, could not explain their request in these terms; instead, they justified the return of their troops as necessary for the defense of Italy. After hearing their case, Keitel said that he would refer the matter to Hitler for consideration.11

  All in all the conference was a bust.12 The only thing the two sides had in common, it seems, was that each had become “positively intoxicated by its own lies and treachery” by the time the meeting had ended.13 But Ribbentrop had not yet finished with his intrigues. As if to heighten the air of unreality surrounding the proceedings at Tarvisio, the German foreign minister dropped a bombshell on his Italian audience by suggesting an Axis summit between Hitler and the king of Italy—to take place in Germany!

  “The rulers of the two countries were to meet on German soil,” Dollmann recalled sarcastically, “like lambs grazing peacefully in green pastures, to eliminate all suspicions and misunderstandings once and for all.”14 The implication was that Hitler had accepted the demise of the Fascist system and was now ready to accept the Badoglio regime as the legitimate administration of Italy.