An Cosantóir

www.military.ie the defence forces magazine | 31 went off. Instantly, 28 SS men and two civilians, including an 11-year-old boy, were killed, and 60 more SS were wounded, 16 grievously. Partisans lobbed hand gre- nades among the dead and dying, before melting away into the crowd, leaving a final total of 33 dead. The German commandant in Rome, General Malzer, who was fond of his lunchtime tipple, was among the first to arrive on the scene of carnage, still under the influence of alcohol. One observer described him as having lost all control of himself; 'waving like a madman, crying in a voice choked with tears, shrieking for revenge, and shouting that he was going to blow up the whole street'. The next senior officer to arrive was the coldly-calculating head of the SD (Security Service), Colonel Herbert Kappler, who took charge after telling Malzer's driver to take the general home. News of the attack was immediately relayed to German Army Headquarters in East Prussia. Within 15 minutes a furious response came back from Hitler: for every SS man killed, 30 to 50 Italians were to be shot and the whole district blown up. Across the city in the Vatican, Cork- born and Kerry-reared Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, the affable head of a secret underground organisation credited with saving over 6,500 runaway Allied prison- ers, anti-Fascists and members of the Jewish community, from the Nazis, was startled by the explosion. His deputy, British Major Sam Derry, soon brought him the grim news. Both knew that the German response would be fast and furious, and they would have to act quickly. There were more than 200 'safe houses'– from convents, to houses of the aristoc- racy and ordinary people – strewn across Rome, and all would have to be emptied without delay. Fearing a massive series of surprise raids, O'Flaherty's fine-tuned organisa- tion swung into action. All those in hiding were told to take refuge in parks or take to the streets, mingle with the crowds and try to remain inconspicuous. But O'Flaherty's instincts were, for once, ill- founded; there would be no raids. Hitler had stipulated that the retaliation – now amended to ten Italians for every German – must take place within 24 hours. Victims were simply snatched off the streets indiscriminately; others were taken from prisons. They included men from many trades and professions, and none, a priest, doctors, bankers, lawyers, policemen, army officers, artists, diplo- mats, scores of Jews, merchants, captured partisans, petty criminals, and teenag- ers, the youngest being a 15-year-old boy. Several of O'Flaherty's key helpers were swept up in the mass of arrests. In all, 335 men were rounded up, five more than Hitler had stipulated. When the mistake was realized, the Germans decided to kill them anyway, so that the terrible atroc- ity on which they were about to embark would not be divulged. With their hands tied behind their backs, the captives were herded onto trucks and driven to the Ardeatine Caves, an abandoned network of tunnels in the south-east suburbs of Rome. There, SS troopers shot every man with a single bullet in the back of the head. The caverns were then dynamited to cover up the atrocity. This aspiration was short-lived, however. As soon as American forces en- tered Rome less than three months later, investigations began and the truth was quickly revealed. After the war a huge mausoleum was constructed at the site of the massacre and in 1949, on the fifth anniversary of the tragedy, the area was declared a national monument. Colonel Kappler was handed over to the Italian authorities by the Allies and was sentenced to life imprisonment. For years, he had only one visitor; the man he had once targeted for assassination if he could lure him outside the jurisdiction of the Vatican, his old adversary, Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty. In 1959, Kappler, a Prot- estant, became a Roman Catholic under O'Flaherty's guidance. The Monsignor passed away in 1963 aged 65, the recipi- ent of several awards for his humanitar- ian actions during the war, and is buried at Cahersiveen, Co Kerry. In 1972 Kappler married his second wife, Anneliese, a nurse, in a prison ceremony. Three years later he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. On one quiet night when staff were thin on the ground, she quickly hurried him from the sick bay to a waiting car and drove through the night to Germany. Six months later, on 9th February 1978, while the diplomatic wrangle was still playing out between Italy and Germany, he died at his home in Soltau, Lower Saxony, aged 70, having spent 32 years in custody. The scene of the massacre today; now a national monument. Pope Benedict XVI praying at the Ardeatine mausoleum.

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