Via Rasella and the Fosse Ardeatine
The idea of "Rome, the open city", was dear to the heart of Pius XII, and he devoted most of his energy during 1944 to making that ideal a reality. The Holy Father's sentiments were shared by most Romans and even by the leaders of the Resistance. Accordingly, most members of the Resistance avoided provocative acts that might evoke drastic reactions, thus jeopardizing the existing uneasy equilibrium. Nevertheless, a few members of the Resistance thought it dishonorable that in Rome alone, of all Italian cities, there should be no rising, no open sign of anti-Fascist resistance. The most active of such groups was the communist-directed GAP (Gruppi Azione Patriotica) which, after a series of minor attacks, decided that the time had come for a major gesture. On March 23, 1944, in the Via Rasella, a bomb exploded as a German unit was marching by. It killed 33 soldiers.
Regarding the action as a direct challenge to its authority, the German High Command in Berlin ordered the immediate execution of 10 Italians for every soldier who had been killed. According to the order, issued in Hitler's name, the reprisal must be completed within 24 hours. What followed, of course, is well known. By noon the next day, a convoy bearing the victims of the reprisal, who were yet unaware of their impending fate, was directed to the Ardeatine caves on the outskirts of Rome. Under the direction of SS Lt. Col. Herbert Kappler, 335 Italians who had no connection with the Rasella affair were taken from various prisons and shot to death in groups of five and buried in the caves. The executions were carried out in secrecy, but on the next day German authorities briefly announced that 10 Italians had been executed for every soldier who had been killed in the Via Rasella. Months passed, however, before the identities of all the victims became known.
The only record of the incident to be found in the archives of the Secretariat of State of His Holiness was a memo written by a Vatican secretary reporting a call received at 10:15 a.m. on March 24. The caller, who described the bombing, added: "Countermeasures are still not known; it is thought, however, that for every German killed, 10 Italians will be executed."
Beyond a doubt, the bloody massacre of German soldiers in a Roman street, with its obvious provocative intentions, prompted considerable concern and alarm in the Vatican. The prospect of a German reaction threatened to disrupt whatever tranquillity remained in the city. It is impossible to suppose that Pius XII could fail to react with some effort to avert the worst, and the record of the Pontiff's concern for the lives of the unfortunates who fell into German and neo-Fascist hands during those months shows eloquently his sensitivity to such situations.
In the absence of documentation, therefore, one is left to surmise that the Pontiff intervened personally, as he had on so many earlier occasions, through his nephew Prince Carlo Pacelli or through the General Superior of the Salvatorian Fathers, Father Pancrazio Pfeiffer. Nor should one be surprised that such a supposed intervention had little chance of success; the order had come from Berlin and, moreover, what argument could a papal emissary use in favor of restraint? For the past several months, the Pope had argued that German restraint would ease the tension in Rome. Suddenly, the entire papal strategy had been undermined by the spectacular and tragic liquidation of 33 German soldiers.
Ironically, about 35 of the Ardeatine victims had already been the objects of papal intervention. The Pope had intervened on behalf of many captured resistance leaders, including Bruno Buozzi, Giacomo Matei, Leon Ginzburg, Giuseppe LoPresti, Enzo Malatesta, Gianfranco Mastei, General Angelo Oddone, Mario Sbardella, Carlo Scalara, Stefano Siglienti and Antonello Trombadori.
Trombadori, who was chief of the GAP in Rome, managed to convince his interrogators that he had "never got involved in politics," thanks no doubt at least in part to the favorable testimony given by the Secretariat of State. Such manifest readiness by the Holy See to intervene for the lives of members of the Resistance strongly indicates that on March 23 and 24 the Holy Father also used all his influence in the direction of restraint, after calculated "resistance" on the Via Rasella.
The German embassy to the Vatican withdrew into discreet silence, and on March 29, von Weizsacker's office said that inquiries about persons jailed by the Germans should be addressed to the German police command, Via Tasso, 155, the notorious headquarters of SS Lt. Col. Herbert Kappler, the Nazi chief of police in Rome.