Sacrifice on the Steppe

The Italian Alpine Corps in the Stalingrad Campaign, 1942–1943

Hope Hamilton

• Editorial: Casemate
• Año: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781612000138
• Categoría: Histoire
• Categoría: Histoire de l'Italie

The tragic story of the Italians sent to the USSR by Mussolini—and the only division of elite mountain soldiers who didn't completely perish. When Germany's Sixth Army advanced to Stalingrad in 1942, its long-extended flanks were mainly held by its allied armies—the Romanians, Hungarians, and Italians. But as history tells us, these flanks quickly caved in before the massive Soviet counter-offensive that commenced that November, dooming the Germans to their first catastrophe of the war. However, the historical record also makes clear that one allied unit held out to the very end, fighting to stem the tide—the Italian Alpine Corps. As a result of Mussolini's disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany, by the fall of 1942, 227, 000 soldiers of the Italian Eighth Army were deployed on a 270 kilometer front along the Don River to protect the left flank of German troops intent on capturing Stalingrad. Sixty thousand of these were alpini, elite Italian mountain troops. When the Don front collapsed under Soviet hammer blows, it was the Alpine Corps that continued to hold out until it was completely isolated, then tried to fight its way out through both Russian encirclement and "General Winter, " to rejoin the rest of the Axis front. Only one of the three alpine divisions was able to emerge from the Russian encirclement with survivors. In the all-sides battle across the snowy steppe, thousands were killed and wounded and more were captured. By Summer 1946, ten thousand survivors returned to Italy from Russian POW camps. Based on extensive research and interviews with survivors, this is the first full English-language account of this complex, unsettling human story. Mussolini sent thousands of poorly equipped soldiers to a country far from their homeland, on a mission to wage war with an unclear mandate against a people who were not their enemies. Raw courage and endurance blend with human suffering, desperation, and altruism in this saga of the withdrawal from the Don lines, including the demise of thousands and survival of the few.

PART I

ITALIAN TROOPS ARE SENT TO RUSSIA

Chapter 1

THE INVASION OF RUSSIA

OPERATION BARBAROSSA

In the early morning hours of June 22, 1941, Hitler broke the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact signed by the two nations August 1939, and launched a massive surprise attack against the Soviet Union. More than three million German and other Axis troops organized in three army groups moved across a thousand-mile front between the Baltic and Black Seas in attacks aimed at Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev.

Hitler had declared his intention to invade the Soviet Union to his leading generals on July 31, 1940, making it clear that the acquisition of vast expanses of territory was not his only objective: “Wiping out the very power of Russia to exist! That is the goal!”¹

He set the date for the start of the invasion for May 1941, stating that the campaign would last five months, and thereby implying it would be finished before winter set in. In April, due to preliminary operations undertaken in the Balkans, Hitler postponed the invasion’s start-date to June 22, 1941.

Over the following months, meticulous planning for the destruction of the Red Army and the exploitation and mass murder of Soviet civilians and Jews took place. It was clear from Hitler’s remarks in March 1941 that no restraints would stand in the way of the German onslaught against Russia, code-named “Operation Barbarossa.” When the Nazi warlord spoke to leaders of the three armed services and key Army field commanders, he declared, “The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences, and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful, and unrelenting harshness. All officers will have to rid themselves of obsolete ideologies….”²

There then followed orders violating international law, including the infamous Kom m issarbefehl (Commissar Order): “The commissars are the bearers of ideologies directly opposed to National Socialism. Therefore, the commissars will be liquidated. German soldiers guilty of breaking international law…will be excused. Russia has not participated in the Hague Convention and therefore has no rights under it.”³

On May 13, at the behest of Hitler, General Wilhelm Keitel issued additional directives. The “Jurisdiction Order” exempted members of the Wehrmacht from prosecution should they commit crimes against Russian civilians. It also eliminated a system of appeals on the part of civilians suspected of a criminal offence. “Punishable offenses committed by enemy civilians do not, until further notice, come any longer under the jurisdiction of the courts-martial…”

“Persons suspected of crimi nal action w ill be brought at once before an officer. This officer w ill decide w hether they are to be shot.”

“With regard to offenses committed against enem y civilians by m em bers of the W ehrm acht, prosecution is not obligatory even when the deed is at the same time a military crime or offense.”⁴

Yet another directive, also signed by Keitel, placed Heinrich Himmler in charge of “special tasks…tasks which result from the struggle which has to be carried out between two opposing political systems.” As head of the Nazi secret police and the SS, Hitler entrusted Himmler to act independently of the army, sealing off occupied areas in order to complete his grisly work of extermination of Jews and other undesirables.⁵

Former German ambassador to Italy (1932–38) Ulrich von Hassell, an opponent of the Nazi Regime, had the opportunity to view copies of the illegal Barbarossa documents. In a diary entry, he wrote, “It makes one’s hair stand on end to learn about measures to be taken in Russia and about the systematic transformation of military law concerning the conquered population into uncontrolled despotism—indeed a caricature of all law. This kind of thing turns the German into a type of being which had existed only in enemy propaganda.”

In a following entry, he noted, “The army must assume the onus of the murders and burnings which up to now have been confined to the SS.”⁶

Not many German officers protested the abandonment of international law in Russia. British historian Antony Beevor notes that perhaps this was due in part to the fact that “Nazi propaganda had so effectively dehumanized the Soviet enemy in the eyes of the Wehrmacht that it was morally anaesthetized from the start of the invasion.” Even fewer officers raised objection to the rampant program of extermination of the Jews, owing to “the greatest measure of successful indoctrina tion… which was deliberately confused with the notion of rear-area security measures against partisans.”⁷

Hitler assigned Herman Goering to develop plans for “exploitation of the country and the securing of its economic assets for use by German industry.” Once military operations were concluded, Hitler declared that Russia was to be “divided up into individual states with governments of their own,” and he appointed Alfred Rosenberg the Commissioner for Central Control of Questions Connected with the East European Region.⁸

Two days prior to the beginning of the attack on Russia, Rosenberg spoke to his underlings. He didn’t mince words as he declared that Russia’s production of food was to be sent to Germany. “The southern [Russian] territories will have to serve…for the feeding of the German people. We see absolutely no reason for any obligation on our part to feed also the Russian people with the products of that surplus territory. We know that this is a harsh necessity, bare of any feelings…. The future will hold very hard years in store for the Russians.”⁹

FASCIST ITALY JOINS THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN

A military alliance between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy was signed in Berlin May 22, 1939 by Italy’s foreign minister Count Galeazzo Ciano (Mussolini’s son-in-law), and Germany’s foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. The alliance, known as the “Pact of Steel,” declared that either country would come to the aid of the other if attacked.

With the signing of the alliance and Italy’s entrance into the war in 1940, Italian historian Giorgio Rochat noted, “Mussolini accepted a subaltern role to the politics of Hitler that translated into an increasing dependence…. An unequal alliance wasn’t necessarily an unacceptable relationship per sè, if based on transparency and reciprocal loyalty…but [the Pact of Steel] was an alliance between a great power conducting a war of European domination with brutal confidence and a subaltern State holding on to its ally for its own survival, without the option of having any input whatsoever. It was an alliance based on mistrust and reciprocal deceit, and contributed to widespread images of the weaker ally as a loser and opportunist, in contrast to the arrogant and triumphal German.”¹⁰

Underlining these facts, during the years of alliance, there was no joint military command structure of any weight, nor did political-strategic consultations or exchanges of timely information occur.

A few hours before the Russian invasion began Hitler dictated a long letter to his ally Benito Mussolini, informing him of his reasons to attack the USSR. At that moment, Mussolini was residing in his summer residence in Riccione. Awakened by a phone call during the early morning hours of June 22, he listened to his foreign minister Count Ciano read Hitler’s “missive” over the telephone.¹¹

Upon hearing the news of the invasion, however, Mussolini immediately declared war on the Soviet Union. Deluded into thinking the war in Russia would be victorious for the Germans, and more importantly of short duration, the Italian dictator offered military support to Hitler. Hitler was not keen to accept his offer to send Italian troops to Russia; in fact, he suggested that Mussolini should send more troops to strengthen his own forces fighting in Northern Africa.¹²

Il D uce¹³ remained determined to come to the aid of his ally; he imagined he would be qualified to share a greater part of the spoils by assisting Hitler’s troops on the Eastern Front.

Mussolini had entered the war in 1940 with an army of seventy-four divisions, but only nineteen of them were complete in terms of numbers of men and armaments. General Mario Roatta described the level of equipment and armaments of the Italian Army at that time: “Everything modern is missing.”¹⁴

The army relied primarily on materiel from 1915–18, woefully inadequate for the kind of war being fought in Russia, which required rapid mobility, tanks, and modern weaponry, as well as tactical coordination between different branches of the military. Most Italian generals were not Fascists, owing their allegiance to the King, but they were inadequate, stuck in the past, lacking knowledge of “modern technologies and strategies.” They were “fossils of the First World War.”¹⁵

Although the Italian dictator was master of a grandiose repertoire of bellicose rhetoric, he possessed little knowledge of the materiel required to fight a modern war. Italian industrial preparedness as well as military preparedness was lacking; “Mussolini wants an imperial army, but he is educating it at the school of poverty…. He doesn’t understand, behind the clang of armaments, you need the coverage of a large industry and the strength of technologies.”¹⁶

Nevertheless, in August 1941, Mussolini sent 62,000 Italian troops to join the German offensive in Russia. He only worried that they might not arrive soon enough to join a triumphant German victory over the USSR.¹⁷

The Italian Expeditionary Corps, the Corpo di Spedizione Italiano in Russia ¹⁸ (hereafter CSIR), under the command of General Giovanni Messe, joined the German invading forces in the Ukraine two months after the German offensive began. Although divisions sent to Russia were some of the best of the Italian army, there was a fundamental weakness of the force, because divisions were binary, composed of only two regiments, which meant they were slightly larger than reinforced brigades.¹⁹

Moreover, the CSIR was equipped negligently: airplanes lacked deicing equipment, and the so-called “motorized divisions” (also called “self transportable divisions”) were motorized in name only. In fact, since there weren’t enough trucks to transport troops of the two infantry divisions, “this absurd euphemism was used to indicate they could be transported, but if trucks weren’t available these troops could move from place to place on foot,” which is what actually occurred.²⁰

Soldiers left Italy that summer wearing lightweight uniforms and lightweight boots. When infantryman Alarico Rocchi (Torino Division), recalled the 500 kilometers he and his fellow soldiers traversed on foot to reach the Don River, he described boots issued to the infantry as being flimsier than scarpe da baerina (ballerina shoes).

Troops of the CSIR were also poorly equipped in terms of individual and collective weapons. Rifles dated from 1891. Although they were sturdy and functioned, they were no match against the automatic rifles used by the Russians. Few sub-machine guns were available and Italian machine-guns functioned poorly in Russia’s extreme winter weather. Italian soldiers referred to their M-13 tanks as “sardine cans,” realizing they would have little impact when confronted by monstrous Russian tanks.²¹

During the summer of 1941, Mussolini accepted an invitation from Hitler to visit the Eastern Front in the Ukraine. On August 28 the two Axis leaders, and several German and Italian dignitaries, met with the commander of the CSIR forces, General Giovanni Messe. Upon introducing Hitler to General Messe, Mussolini turned toward the General and said, “I am sure you deserve the trust which the Führer places in Italian troops.”²²

Later that same morning, in a private conversation with Mussolini, General Messe described the current conditions facing his soldiers, focusing particularly on the shortage of adequate transportation hampering the ability of his troops to keep up with German mobile divisions, as well as slowing the necessary flow of supplies from distant bases. Messe also referred to a shortage of fuel. Deliveries of fuel to Italian troops arrived late, causing a slowdown in the Italian advance. At the same time, the Germans were becoming increasingly impatient and frustrated with the pace of Italian units, which were unable to rapidly reach German forces on the front lines.²³

Throughout Messe’s report, Mussolini didn’t respond; in fact, he spoke not a word. Messe noted he appeared “absent.” Shortly after, several units of the CSIR forces arrived and proceeded to march in formation in front of the gathered dignitaries. Following a review of the troops, both Hitler and Mussolini expressed their pleasure at the “order and fine appearance” of the Italian units.²⁴

The Soviets were not completely mobilized when the German offensive began, and were caught off guard, even though intelligence had indicated an impending German attack. German forces s...