Aufsatz Richard Raiber Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring, Via Rasella, and the »Ginny Mission« This essay demonstrates how a clever and mentally agile defendant, with the help of equally intelligent confederates, successfully propagated a fiction at his trial shortly after the end of the Second World War that has remained arcane and un- challenged for more than fifty years. Contemporaneous documents strongly sug- gest that Generalfeldmarschall Albert Konrad Kesselring1 skillfully assumed culpa- bility for an alleged war crime in which he had not actually been involved. It was a diversionary ploy. While he probably expected to be punished for this, he hoped his admission would eliminate the possibility that the Allied investigators might discover he had actually participated in another, unrelated crime, the penalty for which would likely be much more severe. The dissemblance he manufactured was accepted because it was plausible, verisimilar, and because he was considered an honorable man. It has been assimilated by subsequent generations as well, so that it is now enshrined as historical truth. On 23 March 1944, in mid-afternoon, communist partisans detonated a home- made bomb in the Via Rasella, a 225-meter-long street which ran southwest- and northeastward one block north of the Quirinale, in the center of Rome. Their tar- get was 2. Kompanie des III. Bataillons Polizeiregiment Bozen, which was marching eastward to the Macao Barracks in the Castro Pretorio complex.2 Thirty-three po- 1 According to some sources, including documents in National Archives and Records Ad- ministration (NARA) Record Group (RG) 242, the field marshal's name is sometimes spelled with the »ß« (ess/tset), i.e., »Keßelring.« However, I am convinced that he pre- ferred »Kesselring,« and that is how it will be written in this essay. According to his au- tobiography, Soldat bis zum letzten Tag (Bonn 1953), p. 11, the family name was original- ly »Chezelrinch.« 2 Polizeiregiment Bozen was raised from among overage, non-combatant inhabitants of South Tirol, in November 1943. Thus, it is possible some of its members were of Italian extraction. Sworn into active service on 29 January 1944, it was sent to Rome on 14 Feb- ruary. There it was tactically at the disposition of Der Kommandant von Rom, who em- ployed it to maintain order and guard German property in the »Open City« of Rome. Like all police units in occupied Italy, it was subordinate for administrative and disci- plinary purposes to SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS Karl Wolff, Höchster SS- und Polizeiführer Italien. It became SS-Polizeiregiment Bozen by decree on 14 Apr 1944. H.-J. Neufeld t, j. Huck, and G. Tessin, Zur Geschichte der Ordnungspolizei 1936-1945, Schrif- ten des Bundesarchivs 3 (Koblenz 1957), pp. 76-78; Dr. Gerhard Schreiber to Dr. R. Raiber, 4 Jul 97. Thus, »Bozen« was not an SS formation on 23 March 1944 as described in some contemporaneous documents and almost invariably in the popular literature. E.g., see Gen.St.d.H., OKH, Operationsabteilung/II, Meldungen Ob. Südwest, an OKH/Gen.St.d.H./ Op.Abt., vom 16.-31.3.44, Fernschreiben, Tagesmeldung Oom23.3.44,25/3 0225, Roem Eins A, Nr. 3161/44 g.Kdos. Alte Signatur: 34 079; in NARA RG 242, Microcopy T78, Roll 321 Frame 6 275 962 (T78/321/6 275 962); Robert Katz, Death in Rome (New York 1967), p. 22. Elizabeth Wiskemann, The Rome-Berlin Axis (Oxford 1949), p. 333, cited by Katz, Death in Rome, p. 22 fn.*, has written that »the Bozen SS was to earn a reputation of being >notoriously cruel·,« which does not seem to be supported by documentation. Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 56 (1997), S. 69-106 © Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, Potsdam 70 MGM 56 (1997) Richard Raiber licemen and several Italian pedestrians were killed or died of their wounds, and more were injured in the blast.3 When Adolf Hitler was told of the incident, he became furious and ordered the execution of Italian hostages in reprisal. During the night of 23/24 March 1944 the selection of victims began, and through the afternoon and evening of 24 March 335 Italians were transported in small groups to the Ar- deatine Caves on the southern outskirts of Rome and shot. The killings were car- ried out by Außenkommando Rom des Befehlshabers der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD in Italien, the local Sipo and SD field office, commanded by SS-Obersturmbannführer Her- bert Kappler.4 Kappler's orders had come from his military superior, Generalleutnant (Lw) Kurt Mälzer, Der Deutsche Kommandant von Rom. The latter had received them from Ar- mee-Oberkommando (AOK) 14, to which his command was subordinate. In summer 1948 Kappler was brought to trial before an Italian Military Tribunal. He had per- sonally directed the executions and admitted to having himself shot some of the vic- tims: he was sentenced to life imprisonment.5 General Mälzer and Generaloberst Eberhard von Mackensen, Oberbefehlshaber der 14. Armee, were tried in Rome by the British in November 1946. Both were found guilty of transmitting Hitler's execu- tion order to Kappler and were sentenced to death. Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kes- selring, Oberbefehlshaber Südwest /Heeresgruppe C (O.B. Südwest [Obkdo. H.Gr. CD had been the highest military authority in Italy. Appearing as a witness for the defense at the Mackensen /Mälzer trial, he freely admitted responsibility for passing the reprisal order to AOK 14 but said he had been only the messenger for the Führer- 3 The number of Italian pedestrians who died in the explosion in the Via Rasella was gross- ly inflated, presumably by the Italian Fascist government for propaganda purposes, and has been similarly exaggerated by postwar writers. Significantly, the names of these vic- tims were never published. General Umberto Prestis, who commanded the Italian Police in Rome in March 1944, asserted in 1956 that only two Italian citizens were among the victims. Dr. Gerhard Schreiber to Dr. R. Raiber, 4 Jul 97. 4 The principal document I have used for these details is the English-language transcript of Kesselring's trial together with attached exhibits, appendixes, and other papers filed with the copy of the transcript, all of which are deposited in the U.S. National Archives. There is no German-language copy filed with these records. The transcript appears to be complete, less the proceedings held on 10 Feb 47 (Day One) and 17 Feb 47 (Day Two) which are inexplicably missing. It includes all exhibits admitted in evidence, less De- fense Exhibit No. 72 (a map of the Rome area), No. 75 (two maps of San Martino), a pic- ture from a Venice newspaper, dated 5 Apr 47, purporting to show a »standing court«, No. 102 (sketch showing »court channels,« and No. 105 (map of »Fuccechio« [sic] Mars- hes). On the front cover is typed »To: The Judge Advocate, H.Q., Mediterranean Thea- tre of Operations, A.P.O. 512, United States Army.« Hereafter this document and all pa- pers filed with it will be cited as »Kesselring Trans.« It is deposited in RG 338, Records of North African Theater of Operations U.S. Army, Records of the Spezial Staff, Adju- tant General, Headquarters, General Correspondence (»Decimal«) File 000.5, boxes 816, 817, 818, and 1329. 5 But he was destined to serve only thirty years of this sentence. In September 1972, suf- fering from gastrointestinal cancer, he had been transferred from his prison cell in the fortress at Gaeta, between Rome and Naples, to a military hospital in Rome. Early on 15 August 1977 he succeeded in escaping from his closely guarded hospital room with the assistance of his second wife, Anneliese whom he had married in 1972 and perhaps others. She spirited his frail body (his weight had fallen to 105 pounds) to (West) Germany and to his own house in Soltau, south of Hamburg. Italy requested his extradition, but the German government refused to acquiesce, which nearly produced an international incident. His disease was terminal: he died in his own bed on 9 February 1978. The New York Times, 10 Feb 78, p. A5; see also ibid., 17 Aug 77, p. 9. Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring 71 befehl, not its author. Nevertheless, in late 1946 Kesselring was informed that he, too, had been indicted as a war criminal,6 Kesselring's trial began on 10 February 1947 before a British Military Commis- sion in Venice. He faced two charges. The first, which alone will be discussed here, asserted that he had »committed a war crime« in passing to subordinate units a Führerbefehl which resulted in the shooting of 335 Italian nationals in the Ardeati- ne Caves in Rome on 24 March 1944/ On 6 May 1947 the Court found him guilty on both counts and sentenced him to be shot. On 3 July 1947 this sentence was com- muted to imprisonment for life, but in 1952 he was released from custody because of impaired health. He died at Bad Nauheim on 15 July I960.8 Throughout his trial Kesselring and his principal witnesses Generalmajor (later General der Kavallerie) Siegfried Westphal, his Chef des Generalstabes, and Oberst i.G (later Generalmajor) Dietrich Beelitz, his la, repeated without significant deviation the following testimony: At sunup on 23 March 1944 the Feldmarschall had been flown southward from his Kommandostelle on Monte Soratte,9 thirty-five kilometers north of Rome, to visit the Cassino Front, 120 kilometers southeast of the Eternal City, where the »Second Battle (German reckoning) for Cassino« had reached a crisis.10 6 For a brief summary of Kappler's trial see H. Lauterpacht, ed., »Case No. 151, in re Kapp- ler,« Annual Digest and Reports of Public International Law Cases: Being a Selection from the Decisions of International and National Courts and Tribunals and Military Courts given during the Year 1948 (London 1953), pp.