Capistrello

Capistrello, a small town in the comune of Aquila. Numerous civilians lost their lives here during the retreat of German troops. © Udo Gümpel

4 June 1944 , L´Aquila, Abruzzo

Capistrello is a location in the Marsica region in the Liri Valley, east of Rome. Between late May and early June 1944, German troops moved through the region while withdrawing northward. In a situation marked by fear of Allied-supported partisan attacks, the Germans behaved brutally toward the local civilian populace. On 4 June, in a combing operation soldiers encountered a group of civilians, mainly shepherds. They first confined them to the railway station grounds, then shot them to death.

In the postwar period, there were several inquiries into the massacre in Italy and Germany, but the perpetrators could never be identified. Some documents kept in the central archives of the Russian Federation’s defence ministry have now allowed us to identify the 3^rd Company of Pioneer Battalion 80 as responsible for the murders.

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Involved Unit

3rdCompany of Pioneer Battalion 80

Commander

44. Reichsgrenadier-Division Hoch- und Deutschmeister

Culprits

Oberleutnant Herbert Boestel

Victims

Investigations and processes

1944-1951: first investigations of the Avezzano prosecutor’s office in connection with the so-called Cabinet of Shame.

1965-1967: German investigations by the Hof prosecutor’s office; termination because responsible persons could not be identified.

1994-2001: new investigations by the Rome military prosecutor’s office. Preliminary investigations by the Ludwigsburg Central Office. Both were inconclusively terminated.

Armed forces

Wehrmacht

The Massacre

The withdrawal through central Italy

Between late spring and summer of 1944, a new phase of the war began in Italy. Under Allied pressure, the German troops withdrew northward. The partisan resistance gained impetus.

Over the previous months, the Wehrmacht had been engaged in heavy fighting in the Cassino area and the Adriatic coast. In May 1944, the Allies gained the upper hand after French troops broke through the Gustav Line and Casino could be taken with the help of the Polish 2nd Corps. On 21 May 1944, the Allied offensive began at its Anzio beachhead. The left wing of the German defence quickly collapsed, Allied troops advancing from the south and from Anzio and meeting on 25 May in Terracina. This was the point where the German withdrawal began along the entire front; in their advance toward Rome, the Allies now inflicted grave losses on the German 14^th Army under General von Mackensen. Further to the east in the Apennines, the 10^th Army under General von Vietinghoff was less pressed and could thus withdraw more slowly.
The tense situation in the Liri Valley

Capistrello is located in the Liri Valley’s Marsica commune, some 80 km east of Rome. Between late May and early June 1944, Germany’s withdrawing 10^th Army moved through the area – especially troops of the 44^th Reichsgrenadier Division ‘Hoch- und Deutschmeister’, which had suffered heavy losses near Cassino.

The division was engaged in blocking off the Liri Valley near Balsorano when news arrived that 800 Allied parachutists had landed very close by in the mountains. This figure was greatly exaggerated – 60 men had actually landed, to carry out sabotage operations along the main street. Through the deployment of their reserves, the local Wehrmacht commanders intended to counter what they feared would be a large-scale Allies attack in cooperation with partisans. When it became clear that the opposing force was less numerous than had seemed the case, simply some Jagdkommandos were sent out to comb through the area.

The orders given to these troops were extraordinarily brutal, as exemplified in an entry in the diary of Pioneer Battalion 80 of the ‘Hoch- und Deutschmeister’ division: ‘All civilians encountered in the mountains are to be shot to death ruthlessly, without being searched or interrogated, including women and children.’ (Pioneer Battalion 80, 3 June 1944, signed Neu[mann], CAMO/500/12483/25/0056). This document was found in the course of research on this project. It is the only known written order of this sort issued on the Italian front. As a rule, orders of this sort were conveyed orally; if they did take written form, they would then be destroyed. In this case, the order was not carried out: no women or children were killed in the ensuing operation. But the document reveals the highly tense climate in which the massacre of 4 June took place.

Already in the previous days, fear of a partisan ambush had become rampant. General Ortner from the division command thus issued the following order: ‘All Italians who do not voluntarily leave the area of our positions are to be ruthlessly placed under fire.’ (Order of 1 June 1944, CAMO/500/12483/25/0047-48)

All civilians encountered in the mountains are to be shot to death ruthlessly, without being searched or interrogated, including women and children.

Pioneer Battalion 80, 3 June 1944, signed Neu[mann] :
CAMO/500/12483/25/0056

This document was found in the course of research on this project. It is the only known written order of this sort issued on the Italian front. As a rule, orders of this sort were conveyed orally; if they did take written form, they would then be destroyed. In this case, the order was not carried out: no women or children were killed in the ensuing operation. But the document reveals the highly tense climate in which the massacre of 4 June took place.

Already in the previous days, fear of a partisan ambush had become rampant. General Ortner from the division command thus issued the following order:

All Italians who do not voluntarily leave the area of our positions are to be ruthlessly placed under fire.

Order of 1 June 1944 :
CAMO/500/12483/25/0047-48

Responsibility for the massacre

To repel the attack by the Allied parachutists, the ‘Hoch- und Deutschmeister’ division formed a battle group, called ‘Kampfgruppe Nagel’. This included the 3^rd company of Capistrello-stationed Pioneer Battalion 80. The unit was commanded by Oberleutnant Herbert Boestel, who was also the small town’s local commander and responsible for maintaining order and security there.

On June 4, 1944, patrolling soldiers encountered local male civilians, mainly shepherds, in the surrounding hills. The soldiers arrested the men and brought them to Capistrello, where they were confined and then shot dead. Their corpses were thrown into and buried in a nearby bomb crater.

In the diary of the Pioneer Battalion, we read the following: ‘From the bandits, 3^rd Comp. delivered 2 Jews, extinguished [vernichtete] 22 bandits.’ Neither the identity nor the fate of the arrested Jews is known.

The motives for the soldiers' actions remained unclear for a long time. There were various theories proposed: the shepherds refused to hand over their animals, or the soldiers reacted to finding some dead comrades nearby. German historian Gerhard Schreiber suggested the men were killed because a coerced false statement from a farmer accused them of being partisans. According to this speculation, one victim had a leaflet suggesting as much in his possession, which was enough for the soldiers to kill the entire group.

The division commander's orders to the soldiers chosen for the combing operation were stringent and brutal. However, unlike in other massacres, the victims of this one were not women or children. Also, contrary to orders, the civilians were not shot on the spot. This shows there was some room for judgment and decision-making, even for individual units and soldiers. Within the German forces, carrying out illegal orders like killing women and children was not compulsory. In this case, the patrolling soldiers likely handed the arrested men over to the Capistrello garrison, leaving it to them to decide the prisoners' fate. While the orders were harsh, there was still agency for soldiers to avoid killing certain groups or in certain ways. The massacre, while horrific, could have been even worse.

Investigations and trials

In 1951, the initial investigations were terminated by the court in Avezzano.

The report of June 1944 and the first Italian investigations

A first report on the massacre of Capistrello was produced on 10 June 1944, in the presence of Avezzano’s district judge and a medical examiner. The corpses were identified through autopsying, and the causes of death were determined.

The initial investigations were terminated by the court in Avezzano because the responsible persons could not be identified. In April 1960, the files were archived in Rome’s Palazzo Cesi together with other documents tied to investigations by military justice of massacres of Italian civilians.
Investigations in Germany

In 1965, the West German government requested information from countries occupied by Germany during World War II about any Nazi crimes that had gone unpunished. In response, the Italian government provided Germany with investigative files on the Capistrello events and over forty other massacres.

The prosecutor's office in Hof, Bavaria was assigned the Capistrello case and initiated an investigation of unknown persons. However, this was terminated on November 29, 1967 since the responsible individuals could not be conclusively identified.

In the late 1990s, the Ludwigsburg Central Office reopened investigations when new details and suspect names arrived from Italy. But once again, the results were inconclusive and the investigation was closed.

This time as well the responsible persons could not be identified. On 2 Feb. 2001, the Rome military court closed the investigations.

Italian investigations in the 2000s

Investigations resumed in Italy after the rediscovery of the so-called Cabinet of Shame. There was a mistaken renewed focus on an otherwise unknown lieutenant named Nebgen. It was incorrectly assumed he was the commander of the Capistrello garrison. His name had already surfaced years before the massacre in connection with the March 1944 murder of a young student, Pietro Edoardo Masci, in Capistrello. Once again, the individuals responsible for the massacre could not be conclusively identified. Thus, the Rome military court terminated the proceedings on February 2, 2001.

Memory

Monuments and the Gold Medal for Civil Valour

In 1963, a memorial was set up with the names of the victims at the massacre’s location, near the Capistrello train station. The Via dei Martiri has been named in their memory. In the adjacent town of Avezzano, a memorial in the Via Bruno Corbi recalls the 33 murdered men.

In 1994, Capistrello was awarded the Gold Medal for Civil Valour by Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

Sources

The material tied to the investigations of the Hof prosecutor’s office in the mid-1960s (2Js 196/67) is kept In the Ludwigsburg Central Office (518 AR 3188/66; that tied to the Italian investigations in the archives of the Rome military court).

Examination of military documents discovered in archives of the former Soviet Union (https://germandocsinrussia.org) has offered new insight into the massacre at Capistrello. Among these documents is the war diary of Pioneer Battalion 80, the unit responsible for the murders in Capistrello (CAMO/500/12483/23 and 24).

Literature

Gloria Chianese, ‘Quando uscimmo dai rifugi’. Il Mezzogiorno tra guerra e dopoguerra

(1943-46), Rome, Carrocci, 2004, pp. 68-69.

Carlo Gentile, Wehrmacht und Waffen-SS im Partisanenkrieg: Italien 1943-1945, Paderborn, Ferdinand Schöningh, 2012, p. 150.

Antonio Rosini, Giustizia negata: martiri di Capistrello, martirio di Piero Masci, Luco dei Marsi, Aleph editrice, 1998.

Gerhard Schreiber, Deutsche Kriegsverbrechen in Italien. Täter, Opfer, Strafverfolgung, Munich 1996, pp. 164f.

Authorship and translation

Autor: Carlo Gentile

Translated from German by: Joel Golb

2023

Text: CC BY NC SA 4.0

Capistrello

The Massacre

The withdrawal through central Italy

The tense situation in the Liri Valley

Responsibility for the massacre

Investigations and trials

In 1951, the initial investigations were terminated by the court in Avezzano.

The report of June 1944 and the first Italian investigations

Investigations in Germany

This time as well the responsible persons could not be identified. On 2 Feb. 2001, the Rome military court closed the investigations.

Italian investigations in the 2000s

Memory

Monuments and the Gold Medal for Civil Valour

Information on data protection

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