Via Rasella, the bomb hidden in the cart, the fury of the Nazi retaliation. That attack that still divides – Corriere.it

fu the most important action of the Roman Resistance and has never ceased to arouse controversy. On 23 March 1944 some communist partisans detonated a bomb placed on a garbage cart in via Rasella, a parallel to via del Tritone, in the center of the capital. The target of the operation, which was completed with the throwing of hand grenades, was a department of the regiment
Bozen
(Bolzano in German), composed of South Tyrolean soldiers enlisted by the Nazis with police duties after the occupation of central-northern Italy, when South Tyrol was de facto annexed to Germany under the
gauleiter
Franz Hofer.

Those soldiers came by almost every day for the center of Rome returning from the shooting range located in Tor di Quinto and along the way they crossed the narrow via Rasella, where it was possible to hit them with deadly effectiveness. They marched singing, but they weren’t a marching band. They were on average older than the conscripts destined for the front, but they weren’t retired: the oldest were in their forties. Those who hit them were members of the Gap (Patriotic Action Groups), the formations created by the PCI to conduct urban guerrilla warfare against the Germans and fascists. The cart with the bomb was prepared by Rosario Bentivegna; in charge of the Roman gaps was Giorgio Amendola.

26 soldiers died instantly, 6 others died in the immediately following hours and one the following day. In all the fallen of the Bozen there were 33. Two Italian civilians were also killed by the bomb, while another 4 were killed by the wild fire opened by the Germans immediately after the explosion.

Enraged by what happened, the Nazis decided to implement an immediate one retaliation by eliminating ten hostages for every soldier lost. In great haste, the detained anti-fascists, the Jews not yet deported, people rounded up in via Rasella after the explosion were rounded up.

Compiling the hostage lists the fascist authorities of the Italian Social Republic also took part in being shot, in particular the questore of Rome Pietro Caruso, who was later sentenced to death for this. On March 24, 335 prisoners were killed by the SS at the Fosse Ardeatine, pozzolana quarries located just outside Rome, which were blown up after the massacre.

Contrary to what has sometimes been claimed, there was no appeal for the perpetrators of the attack to present themselves to be punished instead of the hostages, indeed the announcement of the retaliation was spread after the massacre had already been carried out. However, Amendola later said in this regard, it would have been unthinkable for fighters to surrender to the enemy under the pressure of such blackmail.

For the massacre of the Fosse Ardeatine in 1952 the head of the SS in Rome Herbert Kappler and in the 1990s his subordinate who had fled to Argentina, Captain Erich Priebke, were convicted. The related trials were an opportunity to relaunch the controversy surrounding the Via Rasella attack, which in truth has never died down. In addition of course to the exponents of the nostalgic right, among the most critical voices towards the work of the gappists we should mention those of Indro Montanelli and a man undoubtedly placed on the left like Marco Pannella.

The legitimacy of the action is not so much in questionwhich certainly fell within the ambit of partisan warfare, as much as its military importance, inevitably limited compared to the extent of the clash between the Allies and the Third Reich on Italian soil, and above all its opportunity, because it was easily predictable that such a bloody attack would provoked a ferocious response from the Nazis, who had already shot numerous resisters at Forte Bravetta following attacks carried out against them.