Philip Willan in Rome
Monday March 26, 2001
The Guardian Unlimited

Italian newspapers yesterday published harrowing eyewitness accounts of the 
second world war massacre of thousands of Italian soldiers on the island of 
Cephalonia by their former German allies.
 
The killings, described in the diaries of two German soldiers, provided part 
of the grim historical backdrop to Louis de Bernières' novel Captain 
Corelli's Mandolin. 

The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung first published the accounts last 
week and they were the subject of a documentary broadcast last night by the 
German television network ZDF. "The conspiracy of silence in Germany has been 
broken for the first time," said the Milan daily Corriere della Sera. 

Some 9,500 men of the 11,500-strong Italian force were killed by the Germans 
between September 12 and 22, 1943, and 5,000 are believed to have been 
executed after surrendering. President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi paid tribute a 
month ago to the soldiers who chose to die fighting after Italy signed an 
armistice with the allies on September 8, leaving the troops on Cephalonia 
without orders. "Their deliberate choice was the first act of the resistance, 
of an Italy free from fascism," the president said at ceremony on the island. 

The executions are described in the diary of Alfred Richter, a corporal in a 
German Alpine regiment, who stumbled on their bodies. "All bear the signs of 
a shot to the head, so they were killed by the 98th [regiment] after they had 
surrendered." he wrote. 

Later Corporal Richter came upon an Italian artillery position overrun by his 
comrades: "The gunners are lying on the ground, killed by gunshots, crushed 
by boots. It must have happened only minutes ago. Under that pile of bloody 
bodies there is one that trembles and still breathes." 

In the town of Frangata, the corporal sees two companies of Italian soldiers 
who have surrendered and are confident that they will be spared. Instead they 
are handed over for execution, platoon after platoon. "We stay in the town 
for two hours, during which the sound of the bursts of machinegun fire is 
incessant and the cries can be heard even from within the houses of the 
Greeks. Everyone is shot, without regard for rank or role, even the medics 
and the chaplains." 

In a scene that could have come from de Bernières' novel, soon to be released 
as a film starring Nicolas Cage and Penelope Cruz, an Italian soldier saved 
his life by breaking into song. "A prisoner cuts a tragi-comic figure by 
getting onto an improvised podium before us and singing opera arias with a 
beautiful voice and the appropriate gestures, saving his life, while his 
compatriots are being shot," Richter wrote. 

Photos accompanied the descriptions. In one, a German officer leans over the 
bodies, apparently administering a coup de grâce with his pistol. A hundred 
and thirty Italian officers were killed and their bodies tied to rocks and 
thrown into the sea, Richter's account said. 

The order to take no prisoners is believed to have come directly from Hitler, 
although Richter said he thought it came from his commanders, "for whom a 
person's life is no more than a number". The post-war cover-up was the result 
of a conspiracy between German veterans' associations, the judicial 
authorities and the government, Süddeutsche Zeitung said.

 <A 
HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,462977,00.html">
Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Secrets of a massacre</A> 
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