Donovan's Devils

by Albert Lulushi

  While the 92nd Infantry Division was fighting its way north along the Ligurian coast, the rest of the US Fifth Army and the British Eighth Army punched through the German defenses along the entire length of the Gothic Line. Bologna fell on April 21, and by the 23rd the Allied units were rolling down the northeastern slopes of the Apennines into the flatlands of the River Po Valley. Both the Fifth and Eighth Armies were now able to take advantage of the flat terrain and excellent road network in the Po Valley. Using mobile and armored units, they launched a fast-paced offensive to reach the Po River and the Alpine foothills ahead of the Axis forces, encircle, and destroy surviving enemy troops before they escaped through the Alps.15

  The Allied planners left the entire northwestern Apennines area to the partisans of the Sixth Zone to liberate. On orders from the Fifteenth Army Group transmitted through the Peedee and Roanoke Missions, the partisans moved to block the main communication routes between La Spezia, Genoa, Alessandria, and Piacenza, forcing the Germans to concentrate their forces in garrisons in the major cities. On April 23, Italian partisans entered La Spezia. Elements of the 92nd arrived in the city the next day on their way toward Genoa.16

  * * *

  The big prize was the city of Genoa, and the Sixth Zone command assumed the responsibility of coordinating the military preparations in the mountains with the actions inside the city undertaken by Genoa’s Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (CLN), or National Liberation Committee. Captain Vanoncini had held several planning meetings with the Sixth Zone command to discuss how to take the city and prevent the Germans from destroying it and the important port facilities there. In April 1945, the German and Fascist forces in and around Genoa amounted to the strength of an entire division. Strong detachments of the German navy reinforced by mobile artillery units defended the port. The 135th Fortress Brigade had set up heavy artillery batteries on the heights of Mount Moro that loomed over the city. The Germans had placed demolition charges throughout Genoa and the entire port area, including the main bridges and tunnels leading into the city, the water and power plants, and all the main industrial objects in the city. Ships, piers, and cranes in the port had been mined to render it unusable.17

  The breakthrough of the 15th Army Group along the entire Gothic Line became the catalyst for the events that led to the liberation of Genoa. In the evening of April 23, after the Fascist authorities had abandoned the city, the German commander, General Günther Meinhold, sent word through the church authorities that the German troops would abandon the city and the region in four days. They would not destroy the city as long as they had freedom of movement to complete their evacuation. The CLN leaders met overnight to discuss the offer and decided to launch the pre-agreed operational plan to take the city.

  Between four and five o’clock in the morning of April 24, the first shots rang in Genoa. By 1000 hours, the insurgents controlled the city hall, the post office, police headquarters, and the prison. By nightfall, action squads had paralyzed all train transportation in Liguria and toward Piedmont, effectively cutting off the main routes of retreat for the German forces. Civilians armed with weapons they had captured from fleeing Fascists or German soldiers set up ambushes to prevent German columns from leaving the city. Fighting raged in the city center, at the port, and in different suburbs where Germans units held strong positions. There was a serious risk that the Germans would overcome their initial surprise, begin to coordinate their actions, and suffocate the insurgents in a bloodbath. Disconcerting news came of German regiments approaching from La Spezia. The atmosphere became ominous when an emissary from General Meinhold arrived with an ultimatum: the Germans would open fire on Genoa with the heavy guns from Mount Moro and mobile artillery from the port unless they were allowed to retreat in an orderly fashion.

  The CLN leaders found themselves in a precarious situation. The Americans were at least sixty miles away and the partisans of the Sixth Zone had yet to arrive from the mountains to offer assistance. Nevertheless, the city leaders held fast. They responded to the ultimatum by threatening to kill over one thousand German prisoners already in their hands and to execute all those taken thereafter as war criminals. The cardinal of Genoa also intervened and after long conversations with the German consul, convinced him to intercede with the German command to avoid the bombardment of the city.

  The fighting resumed the next morning, April 25, with action groups expanding their control over the city block by block. The radio station fell into the hands of the insurgents and began broadcasting on behalf of the CLN. A big breakthrough came when General Meinhold himself traveled in an ambulance from his headquarters outside the city to the see of Genoa’s cardinal and requested to meet directly with the leaders of the CLN. The negotiations lasted from 1500 to 2000 hours on April 25 and concluded with an agreement to surrender all the German armed forces under General Meinhold to the volunteers of the Military Command of Liguria in return for their treatment as prisoners of war under international laws and their transfer to the Allied command in Italy. The agreement went into effect on April 26, at 0900 hours. It was the only case during World War II when regular military units surrendered to volunteer forces.

  Not all the Germans abided by the terms of the surrender. The German navy commander holding the port sent two officers to say that they had sentenced Meinhold to death on orders from Hitler and they were ready to begin bombing the city with the heavy guns on Mount Moro if the insurgents continued their attacks. By this time, hundreds of partisans were streaming into the city, including seven hundred of the Pinan Cichero division, and most of the Peedee team that had traveled with them. With these reinforcements, they made a decisive assault on the port forcing the German troops there to surrender.

  Next, they focused on implementing the anti-scorch plan that Vanoncini and the Sixth Zone command had worked on for the past two months. They searched for and disabled the demolition charges in the city and in the port, keeping the infrastructure intact. On the way to Genoa, the Peedee team had met the Second Battalion of the 442nd Regiment twenty miles outside the city. They informed them on the situation in the area, letting them know that the road was clear all the way to Genoa. Advance units of the 92nd Division were at the outskirts of Genoa by nightfall, marveling at seeing a functioning city with running lights, which was in sharp contrast with the destruction the Germans usually left on their wake. On the morning of April 27, the 473rd Regimental Combat Team entered Genoa, riding through town on still operating streetcars. General Edward Almond, commanding officer of the 92nd Division, arrived in the afternoon and met with the leaders of the CLN to congratulate them on the great feat they had just accomplished.

  By this time all the German units in and around Genoa had laid down their arms, with the exception of units of the 135th Fortress Brigade manning the harbor defense guns high up on Mount Moro. Colonel Kurt Almers, the brigade commander, had two 381-mm, three 152-mm, and four 90-mm guns looking down on the city and threatened to fire them if Allied soldiers approached the German positions. On the moonless, rainy night of April 27–28, in complete darkness, soldiers of Company A, 679th Tank Destroyer Battalion, moved twelve guns up steep streets barely wide enough for a halftrack. When halftracks failed to make the final turn, they carried the guns by hand into position. By daylight, they laid their guns for direct fire four hundred yards from the enemy concrete emplacement openings. The Germans could not lower their gun tubes to fire on the 679th’s guns. At 1430 hours on April 28, with the American guns trained on his positions and surrounded by all sides, Almers surrendered. It was the last episode of the battle for Genoa.18 Men from the Peedee team, acting as intermediaries between the 92nd and the Italian partisans participated in the disarming of Germans. They distributed the material taken from the five battalions of the 135th Fortress Brigade to the partisans in Genoa proper. They turned over to the 92nd division 150 fortress guns captured on Mount Moro and at the port.

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  While the Peedee team moved to Genoa with
the Pinan Cichero division, the OGs of the Roanoke mission remained in the area southwest of Piacenza with the Americano’s Alliotta division. Lieutenant Taylor received orders from the 15th Army Group that the partisans in his area were to take the city of Voghera, halfway between Alessandria and Piacenza and a gateway to the Po River only five miles to its north. In the evening of April 25, Taylor arrived in the outskirts of Voghera, where the Germans had set up an outpost. Only a handful of partisans were at that location. A detachment of fifty former Wehrmacht soldiers from Czechoslovakia who had deserted and joined the Italian partisans was supposed to support the Americans in the attack, but they had not arrived yet. Taylor and one of his OGs, Technical Sergeant Fred Orbach, removed their weapons and approached the German lines under a white flag. They were taken to the command post to negotiate terms with the officers in charge. The Germans said they would not fire as long as they were not fired upon. They promised to give up Voghera without a fight, provided they were allowed to use the roads at night so that they might cross the Po River and join other Germans forces there. Taylor told the Germans that all the roads were blocked. The American army was only a few hours away. He was in command of one thousand fully equipped parachutists, and had the support of three thousand partisans, also fully equipped. Taylor told the Germans that they had one of two choices: surrender unconditionally or fight and be killed. The talks continued until 2230 hours. The Germans refused to surrender, so Taylor told them he would attack at midnight.

  He retreated, pondering his situation and wondering whether the Germans would call his bluff. At 2330 hours, two German officers appeared. They said they had changed their mind, wanted to surrender, and agreed unconditionally to Taylor’s terms. At 0130, the Germans marched out of Voghera with all their equipment and arms. There were 340 men in total, twenty-one of them officers, including one colonel. It took until 0500 to disarm them of weapons and equipment that filled eight trucks and twenty-four wagons. There was some excitement around 0200 hours when the glow of cigarettes and flares of matches attracted the attention of an American B-17 Flying Fortress that dropped three bombs in a field two hundred yards away, without causing any casualties.

  On April 26 at 0700, Taylor and his men entered Voghera. In the afternoon, reports from partisan intelligence showed that there were several hundred Germans about twelve miles north of Voghera. Taylor sent them word that the Allied armies had already bypassed them and he had four thousand men under his command. The Germans, a total of two hundred officers and men, surrendered immediately and unconditionally. The partisans disarmed them and distributed the weapons and ammunition among themselves. As the evening came, Taylor set up outposts around Voghera, and everyone settled in for the night.

  The next morning at 0730, an excited partisan reported to Taylor that nearly one thousand Germans were marching on Voghera and were already within the city limits. Taylor immediately called the men of the Roanoke team into formation and set out to meet the Germans. Many partisans were at the main square, all talking chaotically and not sure what to do. Taylor sent Sergeant Orbach with two hundred partisans to the city limits, where they set up three lines of defense and placed machine guns and Brens in positions. They learned that the Germans were about three miles away, preparing to attack after an all-night march. After he had set up the city’s defenses, Orbach, with a white flag on a stick, rode a bicycle to the German positions to negotiate their surrender. A little later, Taylor arrived and joined the discussion. Eventually, the Germans agreed to surrender. “Not because they were afraid,” wrote Taylor later, “not because of lack of weapons or ammo, but because they were well informed on the course of the war and knew that it would not last long.”

  This was the last contact the Roanoke mission had with German forces. During their action on Voghera, they captured eight hundred men, thirty-six officers, sixteen motor vehicles, and forty wagons with equipment and ammunition. In the next few days, they continued to hold the town with a token force of partisans awaiting the arrival of regular Allied troops. Their actions allowed the bulk of the Alliotta division, under the command of Italo Pietra, or Edoardo, to leave Voghera on April 27 for Milan, to reinforce the position of the Italian patriots there who had taken over the city and confined the Germans in their garrisons. Alliotta was the first partisan unit to enter Milan in the afternoon of April 27, 1945.

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  Already on April 25, CLNAI, the National Liberation Committee for Upper Italy based in Milan, had issued a decree calling for the general uprising against the Germans and the Fascists. Under the decree, the CLNAI assumed all the powers, civilian and military, in the cities and regions across Northern Italy. The decree established war tribunals, ordered the dissolution of all Fascist armed units, and promised to treat as prisoners of war all German military personnel who put down their arms. A second decree issued the same day set the terms for the administration of justice against Italian Fascists and collaborators. It declared: “The members of the Fascist government and the Fascist hierarchs, guilty of contributing to the suppression of the constitutional guarantees, destroying the popular freedoms, creating the Fascist regime, compromising and betraying the fortunes of the country, and leading it to the current catastrophe, are punished to death or, in less severe cases, to imprisonment for life.”19

  In the evening of April 27, word arrived at the headquarters of the CLNAI that a group of partisans had arrested Mussolini near Dongo, on the shores of Lake Como, sixty miles to the north. He had been traveling with other Fascist hierarchs in a German convoy headed toward Switzerland. He had tried to disguise himself by putting on the coat of a German soldier, but an alert partisan, Urbano Lazzaro, had recognized him. The leaders of the CLNAI had decided long time ago that Mussolini must not fall into the hands of the Allies for fear that they would show leniency or drag his case for months in judicial proceedings. The decrees they had issued on April 25 implied the death sentence for the Fascist dictator and the hierarchs. The CLNAI leaders wished to carry out a quick execution of such a sentence, “without process, without theatrics, without historical phrases,” in the words of Luigi Longo, one of communist leaders of CLNAI at the time.20

  The CLNAI gave Edoardo, as the first partisan commander to enter Milan, the task of traveling to Dongo to carry out the provisions of those decrees. In the absence of a written order from the CLNAI headquarters, Edoardo limited his involvement to assigning a group of partisans from the Alliotta division to assist in the operation. Walter Audisio, known by the battle name Colonel Valerio, took charge of the group of partisans and traveled to Dongo overnight.21 In the morning of April 28, the partisans separated Mussolini and his lover, Claretta Petacci, from the rest of the Fascist officials and took them to Giulino di Mezzegra, a hamlet outside Dongo. Colonel Valerio and two partisans placed Mussolini and Petacci against the wall at the entrance of Villa Belmonte. Colonel Valerio described what happened next:

  I began to read the text of the death sentence to the war criminal Benito Mussolini: “By order of the General Command of the Corps of Freedom Volunteers, I am charged to render justice to the Italian people.” I believe Mussolini did not even understand these words: his gaze was fixed on the gun pointed at him…. I discharged five shots on his body. Petacci, out of her wits, dazed, and confused, began to move; she was hit and fell to the ground forthwith. Mussolini was still breathing and I gave him a last shot in the heart with my pistol. It was 1630 of April 28, 1945.22

  A little later, a partisan firing squad executed fifteen Fascist leaders in the main square in Dongo. They loaded the bodies, including those of Mussolini and Petacci, in the back of a truck and took them overnight to Milan. In the early hours of April 29, 1945, they dumped the bodies in Piazzale Loreto, a square in Milan where in August 1944 Nazis and Fascists had executed fifteen political prisoners in reprisal for a partisan hit. The bodies remained for hours exposed to the fury, violence, and cruelty of the crowd. Then, the crowd hanged them from their heels and left them dangling f
rom the girders of a gas station in what is probably the most iconic image in modern Italian history, the brutal epilogue of the Fascist regime.

  Ferruccio Parri, leader of Partito d’Azione and one of the leaders of the CLNAI described the spectacle as “an exhibition worthy of a Mexican slaughterhouse.” Sandro Pertini, the Socialist Party leader who had declared he would gladly kill Mussolini with his own hands, wrote, “The insurgency has been dishonored.” Indro Montanelli, one of the most distinguished Italian journalists, wrote, “The spectacle, which left me with a vague sense of shame, is a lesson on what happens when someone intoxicates the crowd with a passion and instills in me a profound hatred against all those who seek to intoxicate it.”23

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  The atmosphere of retribution, acts of vengeance, and summary executions, especially against the Fascist security forces and those who had collaborated with the Germans, was pervasive in the initial days after the liberation and continued unabated until the Allied forces arrived in force and established the structures of the Allied Military Government. It presented difficult moral and ethical choices to the few Americans, most of them members of the OSS, who had supported the Italian resistance and found themselves in the eye of the storm.