War Crimes

WAR CRIMES Grazie

There was none of Nuernberg's cold impersonality about the dingy Roman courtroom where two German generals stood trial last week before a British war crimes tribunal. "The blood of my husband claims justice!" screamed a woman as the chief witness for the defense took the stand. "Butchers, murderers!" spat 25 others standing with her, each wearing a silver badge marked "320." That stood for the number of Italian civilians the German Command had ordered killed in the Ardeatine Caves in reprisal for 32 Nazis bombed in Rome in March 1944.

In the venom-charged atmosphere the prisoners themselves seemed the least concerned. Towering, monocled Colonel General Eberhard von Mackensen stared impassively at his judges. Wax-faced Lieut. General Kurt Maeltzer, wartime Roman governor, sat beside him, hunched and bewildered. Between sessions he went to earn cigarets by building a playpen for a British guard's baby.

Mackensen and Maeltzer were merely links in the long German chain of command. Their defense, of course, was that they had only passed on superiors' orders.

As guilty or guiltier in the minds of the spectators were the witnesses: snaggle-toothed Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, able and ruthless wartime commander in Italy; and tough, ugly Lieut. Colonel Herbert Kappler, the SS officer who carried out Kesselring's orders down to the last pistol shot.

Loftily Kesselring defended his part in the business. "Reprisals and the shooting of civilians as a last resort," he said, smiling in the harsh light of the courtroom's naked bulbs, "are nowhere prohibited by international law." (In a general sense, this statement was true, although it did not necessarily apply to the case at bar.)

The prosecution reminded the court that it was not the principle of reprisal, but its abuse, that was on trial. "Three hundred and thirty-five persons, including 14-year-old boys, old men with their hands tied behind their backs, with no time to make peace with their Maker, with no time to say goodbye, led out five at a time to kneel while the life was shot out of them. That," said British King's Counsel C. L. Sterling, "is a picture that might well call for retribution."

Coolly fingering the long, deep dueling scar on the left side of his face, Kappler told the court how, after long consultations with Mackensen and Maeltzer, he had combed the streets of Rome looking for hostages. There were not enough condemned men in the Regina Coeli prison, so he had had to fill out the list with 57 Jews. Asked why he had shot 15 more than ordered, he explained: "Somebody must have sent them as extras, I guess."

Whatever it may have thought of the guilt of Kesselring or Kappler (soon to be tried themselves), the court sentenced Mackensen and Maeltzer to death by firing squad. For once the courtroom was almost quiet, but from the back, where the widows were gathered, gratefully came one word: "Grazie."

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