Francesco Lamendola
Father Lombardi, in a crowded meeting held in Udine immediately after the end of World War II, recalling the recent tragedy Italy invaded and devastated by two opposing armies, spoke, among other things, these words, with a clear allusion to the so-called allies (but whose?): "We have called them liberators, we call them friends were all enemies '. could not synthesize the best sense of that historical event, while adding, immediately after - for intellectual honesty, but if you have a record that, immediately after the war did not exist - that, of those "enemies", there were well as several of our home.
Admirals, for example, the brave old Anthony Trizzino was the first to highlight how there are too many strange coincidences between the movements of our Navy (which, as the admiral said Angelo Iachino, was really a "great sea" (and in any case much stronger than the British Mediterranean Fleet) and deadly, timely actions that the enemy decimated and reduced significantly the offensive spirit, since the early months of war (apply to all the attack of torpedo bombers against the British naval base of Taranto and the tragic Battle of Cape Matapan).
But the list of the dark pages of the high command of the Navy (not sure of the crews, who went to face death with unflinching courage) could go on. Why fournished basis of Pantelleria surrendered without firing a shot, with the actual intact and hearing perfectly intact? And why, at the time of surrender, the war material and supplies of food and water were not destroyed, but the enemy delivered in excellent condition? (See our essay "The Fall of Pantelleria in 1943 opened the doors to the invasion of Italy", available at Arianna Editrice).
And why the stronghold of Augusta, the most powerful of the entire Mediterranean area, surrendered before being beset by the Anglo-American invasion forces?
This, as regards the responsibilities of the Navy.
But there are several other institutions and other powerful groups who played the card of betrayal, from the beginning of guerra, e che si attivarono in ogni modo per provocare la sconfitta e l'invasione dell'Italia e per consegnarla al nemico, con l'obiettivo - nemmeno tanto dissimulato - di conservare, rafforzare o restaurare le proprie posizioni egemoniche. Sono le cinque "M" di cui parla lo storico Alfio Caruso: oltre alla Marina, la Massoneria, i Monsignori (taluni settori della gerarchia vaticana), la Monarchia e, da ultimo ma non per ultimo, la Mafia, rientrodotta (vedi il caso del "gangster" Lucy Luciano), valorizzata e posta nei settori chiave dell'amministrazione, proprio dalle forze anglo-americane sbarcate in Sicilia il 10 luglio 1943.
Ma lasciamo perdere questo aspetto, per ora.
Resta la domanda: gli Alleati che landed in Italy, who bombed without saving, that traveled throughout the boot, were friends and liberators?
This is what the Vulgate democratic and pro-American would have us believe, by more than six decades from now. It would have us having had the United States and Great Britain an eternal gratitude, as they have freed us from ourselves ....
And to support this controversial claim, has not hesitated to swell beyond all the myth of German brutality and that, to mirroring it, the bonhomie and friendliness of the U.S., putting to rest all of the many, many episodes of cruelty , rage against civilians and disregard of international conventions that characterized the campaign of Italy, between 1943 and 1945 by Allied troops.
many Italians of today's generations, already familiar with the stereotype of the "good guy Yankee" who came to risk their lives to bring freedom and prosperity, they know - for example - that American fighter pilots were amused to strafe those children in Grosseto, on the rides, he allowed himself a moment of carelessness, in the midst of cruel hardship and continuing fears of war?
The episode in question is mentioned, among other things, in an unexpected source: the book of the priest Alessandro Pronzato "Come on, come on. Explorations in the News dei Salmi», Torno, Piero Gribaudi Editore, 1970, p. 148 (col "nihil obstat", ossia l'avallo dell'autorità ecclesiastica, del vescovo di Casale Monferrato, Leandro Rota).
E quanti Italiani delle odierne generazioni sanno che, durante la campagna di Sicilia, decine di soldati italiani vennero passati per le armi, a freddo, dopo aver combattuto valorosamente e dopo essersi arresi; e che una direttiva del generale Patton aveva esplicitamente incoraggiato i militari statunitensi ad agire in tal senso, affermando - alla vigilia dello sbarco del 10 luglio - che essi non avrebbero dovuto fare prigionieri?
Cediamo la parola allo storico Alfio Caruso, autore del libro «Arrivano i nostri» (Milano, Longanesi & C., 2004, pp. 236-37):
"The 14 [July 1943] the 180th Regiment attacked the airport Biscari Middleton, near Achates. The Germans defended the "Goering" and Italians around. The battle was fierce and long. The Americans complained several s'invelenirono losses and the unexpected resistance. Captured 36 Italian soldiers, some of them in civilian clothes, Captain John Compton, commander of Company C, commanded him to shoot them immediately. It was only the beginning of the massacre ignored for over half a century in Italy and rebuilt by Ezio Costanzo in "Sicily 1943". 48 other prisoners, 3 of them Germans, were in the hands of the company A. Sergeant Horace West had 37 Italian escort in the rear that were questioned, but had them line up along a ditch, took possession of a Thompson submachine gun and opened fire. It fell to 36, one tried to escape and was shot down by a corporal, upon specific order of the West ... "
And that's just one episode among many. But those facts - someone will object - have occurred in the white heat of battle, when it unleashed the murderous instincts, such things have always happened in every army, even the most disciplined in the world.
Fine. Let's see then if the allies acted in a humane and fair to the civilian population (of course, when they were not greeted by cheering crowds in a sad spectacle of obsequiousness, which was ever seen in history, either before or after).
Historians are waking up just in the last few years, but the writers had already talked about terrible events on several occasions, only that their voice was not taken too seriously by the culture of "official" Italian (strictly democratic, and anti-fascist filoaltantica ) and relegated to "mere" human evidence or unpleasant incidents along the way (a bit 'like the "smart bombs" U.S., during the two Gulf wars and in Afghanistan have produced countless victims among the unarmed population).
Giuseppe Berto, it 'The sky is red, "he told with a deadpan objectivity bombing suffered by the city of Treviso, April 7, 1944, that no reason could justify strategic and cost the lives of thousands of old men, women and children, how many exactly, you do not will ever know. And Alberto Moravia, in 'The Two Women, "she recalled the rape of two women fleeing the war - as a teenager mother and daughter - by Moroccan troops in the area of \u200b\u200bFrosinone, in the battle for Rome in May-June 1944 (from the novel in 1960, the director Vittorio De Sica would have taken one of his best films).
But there is no question of isolated cases. It was hundreds
and hundreds of cases, which were added to the beatings and killings of their husbands, brothers and other relatives who tried to defend their joint bestial fury of those colonial troops, framed in the French armed forces and commanded by European officers, who remained in look, let him vent to their liking.
Perhaps if those Romans - shameful and degrading spectacle - with enthusiastic cheers that greeted the entrance of the Allies in the capital, June 4, 1944, were aware of many atrocities, they would have retained at least in part manifestations of sympathy for those so-called "liberators", while understandable relief at the end of deprivation, fear of raids and aerial bombardment, night and day. A historical revisionism of
unexpected, indeed, among the strongest supporters of the Vulgate democratic and antifascist filoatlantica, Robert Katz (to the point of being sued for insinuations about the "innocence" of Pius XII's silence on the genocide of the Jews), has objective reconstruction of what happened after the U.S. military, by an overwhelming numerical superiority, had broken the front of Monte Cassino between 11 and 16 May 1944, overwhelming the defenses of Kesselring.
The testimony is contained in his book "Rome, Open City, September 1943 - June 1944)" (original title: "The Battle for Rome"; Italian translation by Daniele Ballarini and Maria Cristina Reinhart, Milano, The Assayer, 2003, pp. 324-25):
"In this operation, Juin [the French commander of the Moroccan troops] Kesselring gave a lesson of invincibility. Of the four French divisions, three were colonial troops trained for mountain fighting, but the most skilled of all was the dreaded Goumiers, eight thousand undocumented Moroccans. Soldiers whose uniform was the "burnous (wool coat with hood), who preferred to use the knife and run sull'infido soil, succeeding in the surprise of surprises). They were among the first to penetrate the enemy defenses, moving with great speed, swarming among the lines held by the Germans (and the bulk of the Allies), almost impenetrable, overwhelming the positions crushing all resistance, eliminate points ahead of Kesselring, making fatal breach in the Gustav Line.
few exceptions, the reports of historians end up here. Even the most detailed on the military value of Goumiers in the Italian countryside. But a bitter and traumatic episode of the last days of the battle for Rome was told by Alberto Moravia's novel "The Two Women", which was then drawn into a film. A first brief survey, conducted by the government after the Roman occupation, recorded more than seven hundred cases of "rape" committed by Goumiers of Juin in the province of Frosinone. A few farming families that lived in the area were spared. They were almost all illiterate, benighted by fascist bigotry, but capable of telling the hungry of Moroccan descent.
A woman from Hesperia, land in the province of Frosinone, identified only as M. Giovannina, told investigators:
"We expect the liberators, came as a high race. What was ugly. They seemed possessed of. We stole that little was left so much havoc and caused the population. They had carte blanche to the front and did all that dirt to the men and women. They made a mess. [...] a mountain in full, emerging by all parties, they took all the women who met and whether the ports in the bush. [...] [...] You want to get away? There were the NCOs who were white, French, and said nothing. We went to do comedy at the command [...] told us that in order to move forward the Moroccans had caused them to leave it. "
said Concetta C.:
" We brought here by the thousands. We saw down the mountain from a distance were like ants. But it was a step in three days, they made hell. They were a razzaccia ugly and dirty. They had the earrings in the nose, long dress, her eyes went outside. Throughout the mountains there were screams and groans. [...] Came and where we were not far There were also the French, those who command them. And there have been massacres. [...] I had my things, when he noticed the two that I had knocked it away. [...] You know how many old died from the pain. [...] Did what any other soldier. Skin color has nothing to do. They were beasts for how it behaves. The Germans compared to them behaved better. Even if we took the animals to retreat and destroyed everything. They, the Moroccans were also the liberators. But how? Sends us to leave, we come to help and combined so disgusting? [...] Took away the children and gave them the comfortable, those trying to defend itself, but you wanted to do? Those were always three or four against one. Husbands, brothers, fathers who are on the way to avoid them were beaten or killed. "
Later, when Clark [comandane of the Fifth U.S. Army, personally chosen by Eisenhower, and in eternal competition with the British Alexander , which would precede the fall of Rome], which could have only a vague notion of lust Moroccan firms in the Goumiers called "the key to success in the conquest of Rome, was referring of course to their military operations." Everybody knows
elle and everyone is talking about atrocities committed by the German army against the civilian population: the Fosse Ardeatine, Mazabotto.
Almost none speaks of the atrocities committed by the self-styled "liberators" Anglo-Americans and their composite units thereat: French, Moroccans, Poles, Brazilians. Maybe not to spoil the fairy tale of the generous brethren across the Channel and across the Atlantic, came to risk their skin on the Italian front to restore dignity and democracy?
And, as the German atrocities, many historians have had the honesty to bring the protests to be sent directly to Mussolini, Hitler, 15 September 1944, compared to which nothing similar exists in the correspondence between the political and military leaders of the Allies, even after the most heinous acts of cruelty against the civilian population, such as fire Dresden in 1945 by the Flying Fortresses triggered by Churchill out of pure vindictiveness?
Mussolini's note (cited in: Aurelio Lepre, "Mussolini the Italian" Milan, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 195, p. 341) deprecated
reprisals in which "... have been killed many women and children and burned whole countries in despair throwing hundreds of black families. [...] As a man and as a fascist, I can no longer bear the responsibility, even if only indirectly, of the massacre of women and children in addition to that caused by bombs and machine guns enemies. "
Of course, these protests do not will be served a lot; but it is well known that Mussolini, at that point, did not have more latitude in their almost against the Germans. Very different was the position of the commanders and politicians allied with respect to each other: they had a real power, but did not use the war to give a character a bit 'less inhumane.
The classic objection that we seem to hear, at this point is whether - despite everything - that really would have preferred to win the war were Hitler and Mussolini, rather than Roosevelt. Churchill and Stalin. Forget the talk about Stalin: just remember that it took decades for one could still recognize the criminal nature of his government, in nothing less than the Nazis.
As for the Western democracies, the question asked in those terms, it is simply in bad faith. This is not to regret that they have won the war and totalitarianism has been defeated, the issue is quite different.
Here we discuss whether democracies, in an ideological war against totalitarianism, can claim moral superiority, where employ control methods similar to those of their opponents, in terms of open-mindedness (mafia network usage), brutality (mass rapes ) or coldly deliberate cruelty (some rules in air raids on undefended cities).
Secondly, it discusses whether Italy, by the Allies has been truly "liberated" or if it was not, however, "the workers' employment yet another of its long history.
The fact, then, that the occupation has been fostered, encouraged and even applauded by the Italian people, or a good portion of it, make sure that story is particularly shameful for us, but do not move the substance of the matter.
We ask, finally, because they dig up ugly pages of our recent history and that of our so-called allies, for what purpose recall the shooting of Italian troops in Sicily, the machine-gunning of children in Grosseto, rapes and killings of Frosinone , and so on.
Our answer is not to inspire feelings of hatred towards anyone.
The younger generation, who have passed the narrow nationalism of their grandparents and great-grandparents probably never agree to go more to kill and be killed by short-sighted goals of power and naive dreams of glory.
However, it is certain that this can not be built on lies, that the respect between peoples can not be born by that dispassionate recognition of the historical truth that only a neutral and objective analysis of facts, not distorted by any ideological bias, can we can hope that such tragedies will not be repeated again.
http://www.italiasociale.net/storia07/storia130209-1.html
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