Massacre at Civitella, Cornia and San Pancrazio
![The village of Civitella in Val di Chiana is situated along a road, surrounded by trees. A wooded, hilly landscape can be seen in the background.](/fileadmin/_processed_/7/b/csm_Civitella_in_Val_di_Chiana_61202e9339.jpg 320w, /fileadmin/_processed_/7/b/csm_Civitella_in_Val_di_Chiana_90609aec6f.jpg 480w, /fileadmin/_processed_/7/b/csm_Civitella_in_Val_di_Chiana_39bc0e7138.jpg 640w, /fileadmin/_processed_/7/b/csm_Civitella_in_Val_di_Chiana_d7c5bca0a9.jpg 960w, /fileadmin/_processed_/7/b/csm_Civitella_in_Val_di_Chiana_3ecde3d550.jpg 1280w, /fileadmin/_processed_/7/b/csm_Civitella_in_Val_di_Chiana_5691cfc07e.jpg 1920w, /fileadmin/_processed_/7/b/csm_Civitella_in_Val_di_Chiana_5ca60b011c.jpg 2560w)
29 June 1944 , Civitella in Val di Chiana, Cornia, San Pancrazio (Arezzo, Tuscany)
In the summer of 1944 in the Arezzo province, German troops, especially from the 'Hermann Göring' Panzer Division, killed 744 people, predominantly civilians, under the pretext of anti-partisan operations. Several of the most bloody episodes occurred on June 29th in the villages of Civitella, Cornia, and San Pancrazio, located between the Val di Chiana and Val d'Ambra valleys, which were considered partisan strongholds.
In the postwar period, investigations into the massacres dragged on for decades without resolution. Finally, in 2006, a single perpetrator would be convicted for his role in the killings.
- Involved Unit
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Military Police Detachment b 1000; Alarm Company ‘Vesuv’; Alarm Company ‘Pauke’; ‘Hermann Göring’ military band
- Culprits
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Schutzpolizei Hauptmann Heinz Barz; Oberleutnant Siegfried Böttcher
- Victims
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204: 98 in Civitella, 32 in Cornia, 16 in Gebbia and 58 in San Pancrazio
- Investigations and processes
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June 1945: Investigation of the SIB.
1948-1950: Proceedings of the Florence military court against Wilhelm Schmalz, later (12 July 1950) exonerated by the Rome military court.
1998-: New investigations in Italy (La Spezia) and Germany (Dortmund and Stuttgart).
2006: Termination of Stuttgart proceedings on account of death of accused person.
2006: Trial in La Spezia, confirmation of the sentence passed by appeals court in 2007; confirmation by court of cassation in 2008.
15 May 2019: Termination of Dortmund proceedings.
- Additional crime scenes
- Armed forces
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Wehrmacht
The massacre
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The situation in the Arezzo area, late June 1944
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The partisan activity and the reaction of the ‘Hermann Göring’ division
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German documents and ‘Operation Silkworm’
No original documents have survived. For this reason, we cannot know whether the LXXVI Panzer Corps or the ‘Hermann Göring’ Division was responsible for the action. It was led by Hauptmann Heinz Barz, head of the division’s military-police unit.
![The map shows the area from Florence in the north to Lago Trasimeno in the south. The three villages affected by the massacre are circled.](/fileadmin/_processed_/8/3/csm_Civitella_Cornia_San_Pancrazio_LXXVI_Panzerkorps_30.6.44_a7d705b48f.jpg 320w, /fileadmin/_processed_/8/3/csm_Civitella_Cornia_San_Pancrazio_LXXVI_Panzerkorps_30.6.44_3dc856bfd3.jpg 480w, /fileadmin/_processed_/8/3/csm_Civitella_Cornia_San_Pancrazio_LXXVI_Panzerkorps_30.6.44_f5d20f1995.jpg 640w, /fileadmin/_processed_/8/3/csm_Civitella_Cornia_San_Pancrazio_LXXVI_Panzerkorps_30.6.44_fb89a29843.jpg 960w, /fileadmin/_processed_/8/3/csm_Civitella_Cornia_San_Pancrazio_LXXVI_Panzerkorps_30.6.44_688fd9c013.jpg 1280w, /fileadmin/_processed_/8/3/csm_Civitella_Cornia_San_Pancrazio_LXXVI_Panzerkorps_30.6.44_92a272f62c.jpg 1920w, /fileadmin/_processed_/8/3/csm_Civitella_Cornia_San_Pancrazio_LXXVI_Panzerkorps_30.6.44_ebe833cfb8.jpg 2560w)
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Participants in the Civitella action
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The actions on 29 June 1944
In one of the indictments in the postwar Nuremberg proceedings, Civitella in Val di Chiana was introduced as an example of the violence perpetrated by German soldiers in Italy, together with the massacre in Rome’s Fosse Ardeatine.
Investigations and trials
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Early British investigations and citation at Nuremberg
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The 1948 trial of former General Wilhelm Schmalz
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1956 investigations of the Düsseldorf prosecutor’s office
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New proceedings by the Stuttgart prosecutor in the 1980s
The names of possible perpetrators emerged in the framework of historical research; other persons were identified for the first time, including Heinz Barz, Siegfried Böttcher and many other commissioned officers and non-coms in the “Hermann Göring” Panzer Division.
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Historical documents and the identification of the perpetrators
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Responses to Christiane Kohl’s Villa Paradiso
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Proceedings in La Spezia, Dortmund and Stuttgart
On 21 October 2008, judges of the first criminal chamber of Italy’s Court of Cassation ordered the German Federal Republic to pay compensation to nine relatives of the victims. Germany responded with an appeal to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which accepted the case and then confirmed that international law guaranteed the immunity of sovereign states from cases brought by national courts.
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The victims request compensation
Memory
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Tensions and fractures
Sources
The Civitella massacre is hardly mentioned in extant German military documents. The only such document that can be clearly connected to the event is a map from of the Ic-detachment from 30 June 1944 showing the putative location of ‘bandits’. On the map, a large circle has been drawn around the area of Civitella, Cornia and San Pancrazio, identified as a ‘bandit area’ (Bandengebiet) and reference to a ‘countermeasure’ (G[egen]M[aßnahme)“ implimented there on 29 June: German Federal Archives, Freiburg, BArch, RH 24-76/13, Gen.Kdo. LXXVI. Pz.K., Ic-map of bandit locations, 30 June 1944. The reference to ‘Operation SIlkworm’, in which 391 persons were killed between 22 June and 8 July 1944, is located in BArch, RH 19 X/107 K. Information concerning the losses suffered by German battalions in Civitella and surroundings before the massacre is found in German Federal Archived section PA, Berlin.
Documents tied to the Allied investigation are kept in the British National Archives, London (Kew): WO 204/11479, Atrocities committed by German Troops at Civitella, Cornia and San Pancrazio; and WO 310/220. Material tied to the 1948-1950 trial of former General Wilhelm Schmalz is partly kept in the Rome military prosecutor’s office, together with material of the most recent investigations and proceedings. The 1956 and 1958 investigations of the Düsseldorf prosecutor’s office are kept in the state archive of North Rhine-Westphalia: NW 377, no. 3786. Files of the investigation of the Dortmund prosecutor’s office are kept in the office’s archive (45 Js 1/04).
Literature
Ida Balò-Valli, Giugno 1944. Civitella racconta, Cortona, L'Etruria, 1994.
Giovanni Contini, La memoria divisa, Milan, Rizzoli, 1997.
Carlo Gentile,
Carlo Gentile, Le stragi del 1944 in provincia di Arezzo ed i loro perpetratori (Relazione presentata in preparazione della richiesta di apertura di indagini da parte dei comuni di Bucine, Cavriglia, Civitella in Val di Chiana e Stia), Colonia, 1998; available at: https://uni-koeln.academia.edu/CarloGentile
Christiane Kohl, Villa Paradiso. Als der Krieg in die Toskana kam, Munich, Goldmann, 2002.
Authorship and translation
Author: Carlo Gentile
Translated from German by: Joel Golb
© Project ‘The Massacres in Occupied Italy (1943-1945): Integrating the Perpetrators’ Memories’
2023