Hide and Seek: The Irish Priest in the Vatican who Defied the Nazi Command. The dramatic true story of rivalry and survival during WWII.. Stephen Walker

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СКАЧАТЬ the Badoglio administration began to move Mussolini around. Through a contact in the Italian police, Kappler had learnt that the country’s most famous prisoner had first been taken by ambulance from Villa Savoia to the Podgora barracks in Via Quintino Sella, a thirty-minute high-speed drive from the royal residence. Kappler was also able to establish which part of the building Mussolini had been held in. He now knew that he had slept in a camp bed, in a small office which overlooked the parade ground where the cadets marched.

      Fascinating though this information was, for Kappler it was all too late. Mussolini’s captors had already moved their precious charge on. He had been driven from Rome to the port of Gaeta, where he was put aboard a vessel named the Persefone and taken to the island of Ponza, twenty-five miles to the north. Ponza, which was around five miles long, had a history as a penal colony.

      Kappler’s efforts to find Mussolini did not go unnoticed. The Führer himself was keeping an eye on his attempts to track down the former dictator. The previous month, August 1943, Hitler had called the police attaché in to see him. Having completed four years in Rome, Kappler thought he was about to be moved elsewhere in the Third Reich, but Hitler had other ideas. For the young SS man the meeting went better than he had expected. Hitler praised him and made it clear that his work in Rome was very important. He told him that he valued his contacts and that he was needed in the hunt for Mussolini and for future work organizing surveillance in the city. Ironically the very mission that Kappler had doubts about, the rescue of Mussolini, had secured his future in Rome.

      Day by day Kappler’s office tried to piece together Mussolini’s secret journey from Villa Savoia. The police attaché’s staff tried a variety of methods. Pro-Nazi officers in the Italian Army and police force were constantly badgered for titbits of information. Staff also monitored the airwaves for any unusual reports or coded messages.

      Finally they made a breakthrough. One of Kappler’s agents, who had been listening to Italian communication networks, came across an intriguing phrase. He heard the words, ‘Security preparations around the Gran Sasso complete.’ The message had been sent by an officer named Gueli, one of Mussolini’s captors, and was meant for one of his superiors.

      At 9 p.m. on 5 September Kappler sent a cable to senior offices in Berlin informing them that it was extremely likely that Mussolini was in the vicinity of the Gran Sasso mountain. He also informed that he had sent out a fresh reconnaissance party which would report back shortly.

      Kappler’s team would quickly discover that the former dictator was indeed where they suspected, in the Apennine mountains in the Abruzzo region of eastern Italy. He had been taken by boat from the island of Ponza around Italy to a villa on Maddalena, an island off Sardinia, and from there was flown to the winter resort of Campo Imperatore, near the Gran Sasso. The Italians had chosen Mussolini’s final hiding place wisely. They put him in a room in the Hotel Campo Imperatore, some 7,000 feet above sea level.

      As a hiding place the secluded location was ideal, as it was close to the highest peak in the Apennines and could be reached only by a ten-minute ride in a cable car. Although he was surrounded by hotel staff and policemen, Mussolini was the only official guest at the hotel. In conversations with his captors, Gueli and Faiola, he referred to his new surroundings as the ‘highest prison in the world’. As he played cards, read and listened to the radio, Mussolini was unaware that his German allies, after six weeks of searching, were just one step away from rescuing him. Kappler, although a reluctant participant in the manhunt, had proved his worth.

      As the rescue plans were finalized the Allies and the Italians struck in different ways. Allied bombers took to the skies over Italy. This time one of their targets was the major headquarters for German troops at Frascati. In a lunchtime attack 400 tonnes of explosives fell on the town, killing and injuring many hundreds of residents and German soldiers. The German military complex was hit and Otto Skorzeny’s quarters were wrecked. Field Marshal Kesselring climbed from the wreckage unharmed. He sensed the bombing was only part of a planned series of events.

      Kesselring was right. The attack was a forerunner to an Allied landing in Salerno, but there was more news to come. That evening, as smoke still hung over large parts of Italy, Marshal Badoglio announced on the radio that Italy had surrendered. The Italian leader said that he had requested an armistice from the Allied Commander, General Eisenhower, which had been accepted. Badoglio’s radio address took the Germans by surprise. They had known it was coming, but not when. The timing, rather like that of Mussolini’s kidnap in July, had caught them out.

      Colonel Eugen Dollmann, who had been assisting Kappler in the search for Mussolini, was tasked with finding out what was happening on the streets of Rome. There was great confusion in the city, and the rumours were many and varied. These ranged from reports that Allied troops were arriving to seize Rome to stories that German troops were about to take control.

      At the German embassy there was an altogether different atmosphere. Staff there, convinced that they were about to be ordered to leave the city, had begun to burn documents. However, amid all the chatter and speculation, Dollmann had secured one critical piece of hard information. When he reported back to Kesselring at the Frascati headquarters, the commander-in-chief of the Southern Front was intrigued. Dollmann had discovered that before the armistice announcement an American general, Maxwell Taylor, had been smuggled into Rome for secret discussions with Badoglio. Taylor, second-in-command of a US airborne unit, had been on a reconnaissance mission to examine the possibility of an airdrop of paratroops close to Rome.

      The discussions between Taylor and Badoglio had turned into farce when the Italian leader changed his mind about an airdrop and asked for the armistice announcement to be postponed. Angered by the Italian dithering, Eisenhower agreed to abandon the airdrop but refused to accept a cancellation of the announcement. Kesselring didn’t know this detail but assumed General Taylor’s presence in Rome meant that an Allied airdrop around Rome was imminent. He told Dollmann that if Allied paratroops landed, the goal of securing Rome was lost.

      Kesselring knew he had to act fast. He began by attempting to block all the entry points into Rome. When the King and Badoglio heard of the Germans’ intentions they too acted quickly. In darkness, clutching a few of their possessions, the royal family, along with Badoglio and his ministers, fled the city.

      No orders were left with the army and no one was given military command. As dawn broke on 9 September, Rome was at the mercy of the Germans.

      Over the course of the day gunfire could be heard across the city as pockets of Italians made up of soldiers and civilians began to resist the German troops who were edging their way towards the centre of Rome. The resistance was patchy and uncoordinated. Some of the Italians were bedraggled and appeared to be hungry, and many had no ammunition. The Germans had the upper hand militarily and tactically. On 10 September the battle for Rome entered its final phase.

      With the city under siege, Hugh O’Flaherty and Sir D’Arcy Osborne could only watch and wait as they stayed in the Vatican. They could see and hear the sounds of battle, and for the moment they were like prisoners of war themselves.

      The Pope was now seriously worried that the Germans would first take Rome and then move into the Vatican. He told his staff to keep their suitcases packed and then asked Cardinal Maglione to contact the German Ambassador to the Vatican, Baron Ernst von Weizsäcker, for some clarification. Maglione asked him if the Germans would respect the neutrality and extra-territorial status of the Holy See’s property. As gun battles continued across the city, Weizsäcker contacted his masters in Berlin and the Pope had to bide his time.

      By now German ‘Tiger’ tanks were moving through the streets and the last lines of resistance were being overcome. The initial unease felt in the Vatican had now turned to panic. Everyone in the Holy See was on full alert. In an unprecedented move, St Peter’s Basilica was closed off and the gates to the Vatican City were shut. The Swiss Guards, who СКАЧАТЬ