Massacre in the Ardeatin Caves: The mass execution of 335 people was in retaliation for 33 Germans killed

Thirty-three Germans died as a result of the attack, but there were also over a hundred wounded, including civilians, some of whom died in the coming weeks. The attack was very well organized from the point of view of the partisans, no losses were recorded on the side of the attackers and the action was evaluated as very successful. However, the payback was not long in coming.

Retribution ordered immediately

The representatives of Nazi Germany in Italy were furious, the commander of the decimated unit Herbert Kappler was summoned to the headquarters of the German armored forces a few hours after the attack and agreed with Luftwaffe Major General Kurt Mälzer that the retribution would be the killing of a selected number of civilians. In the end, the final ratio stopped at the number of ten dead Italians for one member of the SS, with the fact that Adolf Hitler approved the retribution for a short time and everything was to be carried out immediately the next day. The problem, however, came in finding those who should be executed, although without context and an understanding of how the Nazis approached killing people, this can sound quite misleading.

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Hitler was assured by Kappler that there were enough prisoners sentenced to death available, but the reality was quite the opposite, and high-ranking members of the SS literally began to search various prisons for those who would fulfill the threatening ratio. By noon on March 24, Kappler had a list of 271 victims with the specified crime for which they would be executed, that is, excluding the Jews, for whom the Germans sought no reason. Other prisoners eventually filled the number of future victims to the final 335 people, and shortly after noon, the appalling massacre came close to being carried out.

All the prisoners were transported to the former mines near Ardeatinská cesta and executed in groups of five, not by a traditional firing squad, but mostly by officers who had no previous experience. SS officer Erich Priebke was responsible for the massacre in the aforementioned caves, who at the same time had several liters of cognac brought to the site for the executions of the officers. Italian prisoners and Jews condemned to death had to watch the rampage of the SS in their last torturous hours and stumble over the already dead bodies of their comrades on their way to the cave. They were all then buried in caves under tons of stone when the Germans had the caves torn down.

The way the Germans killed, the number of people who lost their lives on March 24, 1944, or just the fact that many of those executed were found innocent at the last moment, makes this act one of the most terrible that the Germans committed in Italy. It also remains a symbol of the horrors of war and a permanent reminder of the cruelty carried out in the interest of dictatorial ideas. What’s more, the executioner Erich Priebke moved to Argentina after the war, where he made a living as a hotelier.

Source: TheBoot, H-net

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