Bellona

Between 5 and 15 October, circa 70 persons fell victim to the violence of the retreating German troops. © Udo Gümpel

5 October 1943 – 15 October 1943 , Bellona (Caserta)

An attack by German soldiers on a family in Bellona on 6 October 1943 sparked a self-defence action by the family members. In reprisal, on 7 October, the Germans ordered the entire population to leave. Simultaneously, they assembled a group of the town’s able-bodied men in the church, selecting 54 men before shooting them dead in an abandoned quarry. Afterwards, the quarry was dynamited to conceal the bodies of the victims.

Upon the arrival of the Allies, those who had been forcibly evacuated from Bellona returned and exhumed the bodies. In the following days, an additional 22 dead were found in the surrounding area, also killed by German troops. The victims of the massacre included some young people between 12 and 16 years old and several older men, along with six members of the clergy. There are no known eyewitness accounts of this massacre.

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Involved Unit

Maucke Group (Panzergrenadier Regiment 115 and subordinate units)

Commander

15. Panzergrenadier-Division

Culprits

Oberst/Colonel Wolfgang Maucke

Victims

54 people were shot dead in the Bellona quarry on October 7, in addition to 22 bodies found in the surrounding area between October 5 and 15. Among the victims were several young people between the ages of 13 and 16 and some older people.

German casualties: one dead and one wounded from the staff company of Panzergrenadier Regiment 115 due to the explosion of a hand grenade (Bellona, October 6, 1943).

Investigations and processes

November 1943: American investigative report

1967: The prosecutor's office in Traunstein, Bavaria, opened an investigation based on files received from Italy.

1971: The proceedings were terminated due to the impossibility of reconstructing the crime.

1994: The military prosecutor’s office in Naples opened an investigation, where historian Carlo Gentile confirmed the responsibility of Oberst Wolfgang Maucke in 1999.

2000: The investigation was terminated due to the impossibility of legally ascertaining additional responsible persons with the necessary accuracy.

Armed forces

Wehrmacht

The massacre

Attacks by soldiers and the reaction of the local populace

During their withdrawal, daily conflicts erupted between German troops and Italian civilians. Resistance to forced labour, mandatory evacuation of villages on the front, and the confiscation of food and livestock was widespread. The Germans retaliated with a massive reprisal in Bellona.

In the early days of October 1943, the Maucke Battle Group (comprising Panzergrenadier Regiment 115 of the 15^th Panzergrenadier Division and units of the ‘Hermann Göring’ Division) established their headquarters in a building on the outskirts of the town. On the evening of 5 October, two soldiers forced their way into a house in Bellona, seeking wine and company. The soldiers, now inebriated, were only persuaded to leave after much coaxing by the residents. The next evening, the two men returned and attempted to abduct two young women. Their uncle intervened to free them, but the soldiers shot and wounded him. Another male family member then threw a hand grenade at the soldiers and fired a revolver. One of the Germans was killed, and the other was wounded.
The reprisal

On the morning of 7 October, Oberst Wolfgang Maucke ordered the forced evacuation of Bellona, which began at daybreak. The residents were prepared to leave their homes, but Maucke had approximately 100 people arrested. They were initially taken to the San Michele church, where a non-commissioned officer instructed the able-bodied men to divide into groups. These groups were removed from the church, leaving only the elderly and frail behind. The approximately 70 men who had been removed, now hostages, were then led to Maucke’s headquarters, where a selection process began.

Some of the hostages were forced to work for the Wehrmacht in a nearby village until the Allies arrived. The remaining men were led to the outskirts of Bellona, near a disused tuff quarry on the road from Bellona to Vitulazio, and killed there. The exact circumstances of the execution are unknown due to the absence of direct witnesses, but it is clear that no distinctions were made regarding age or social status. Among the victims were a 12-year-old boy and two 15-year-olds. Alongside workmen, farmers, and day labourers were six clerics, several clerical workers, a teacher, and a pharmacist.

The bodies were concealed by dynamiting the quarry’s sidewall and were only discovered and exhumed after the Allies arrived. An additional 22 corpses, of people murdered by German troops between 5 and 15 October, were found in the surrounding fields.

On 27 November 1943, an officer in the U.S. 5th Army prepared an investigative report on what had occurred, which included the first witness accounts from some Bellona residents. The report referred to Panzergrenadier Regiment 115 and mentioned two German officers, Hans Joachim, and Sandrog, who were said to have ordered the units present on the day of the killing. However they could not be indentified more closely.

Investigations and processes

Investigations by the U.S. 5th Army

Article in the Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno of 7 November 1943 about the Bellona massacre. © La gazzetta del Mezzogiorno

The earliest information about the massacre appeared in the local press a few days after it occurred. On 7 November 1943, the Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno published an article titled "The Quarry of Martyrs," reporting on the discovery of the corpses and their interment.

The Allies conducted the first investigation. On 27 November 1943, an officer in the U.S. 5^th Army prepared an investigative report on what had occurred, which included the first witness accounts from some Bellona residents. The report referred to Panzergrenadier Regiment 115 and mentioned two German officers, Hans Joachim, and Sandrog, who were said to have ordered the units present on the day of the killing. However, they could not be identified more closely.

In the mid-1960s, with the application of the statute of limitations drawing ever closer, the German government issued a call for information concerning still unexpiated crimes perpetrated by the Nazis in the occupation period.

Investigation by the Traunstein prosecutor in the 1960s

In the mid-1960s, investigators reopened the Bellona massacre case after the German government issued a call for information on unresolved Nazi crimes committed during the occupation period, as the statute of limitations was approaching. One of the files the Italian government delivered to Germany concerned the Bellona, Masseria Lepre, and Villa Volturno massacres. Based on a report by the head of the Villa Volturno carabinieri station (Villa Volturno being the commune that administratively included both Bellona and Vitulazio during Italy’s fascist period) and a reference by the Ludwigsburg Central Office, the Traunstein (Bavaria) prosecutor’s office opened an investigation.

However, this investigation led nowhere. Neither the Military History Research Office in Freiburg in Breisgau nor the Federal Archives could provide the prosecutor with exact information or identify Bellona on their topographic maps. The prosecutor questioned several former soldiers from the 3^rd Panzergrenadier Division and 16^th Panzer Division. Both divisions had been in Campania in 1943, but far from Bellona, and had not been involved in the massacre. None of the questioned former soldiers could supply more detailed information or recall the name ‘Bellona’. Consequently, in 1967, the prosecutor’s office terminated the inquiry.
Investigation of the Naples prosecutor’s office in 1994

An Italian investigation was only initiated after the discovery of documents in Rome in 1994. The first research efforts, conducted that same year by Interpol and the German Federal Criminal Police Office, yielded no results. However, starting in 2000, the Naples military prosecutor’s office was able to reconstruct a clear picture of the responsible individuals. Historian Carlo Gentile contributed to the investigation as a historical expert. In this capacity, he identified both the names of the soldiers involved in confrontations with civilians in Bellona and, crucially, some of the officers responsible for the massacre.

These officers included Oberst Wolfgang Maucke (commander of Panzergrenadier Regiment 115), who had died in Hamburg in 1963, and Hauptmann Hans Sandrock, commander of a unit of the ‘Hermann Göring’ Panzer Regiment, who was under Maucke’s command at the time of the massacre. The investigation of Sandrock was terminated on 7 March 2000 because he could not be located and no further inquiry into his role was possible. It was later discovered that Sandrock had already died on 23 September 1995 in Cologne.

Memory

The memorial in the quarry

A few months after the massacre, in December 1943, a committee was formed by Bellona residents and survivors of the victims to initiate a monument for those who had been murdered. Plans for the monument were realised, and it was dedicated on 7 January 1945, located in the tuff quarry near Bellona where the massacre took place. The monument is inscribed with the names of the victims and words by the philosopher Benedetto Croce.

On 7 October 1959, the National Association of Italian Martyrs’ Families (ANFIM) was formed, encompassing various communes. In 1969, the regional committees of ANFIM were established, and Bellona became the seat of Campania’s regional committee.

An ossuary for the mortal remains of those killed was constructed in time for the massacre’s 25^th anniversary in 1968. Since then, the memorial site has been visited by numerous Italian state representatives, including President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro in 1998. On that occasion, Bellona was awarded the Cross for Military Valour in Gold.

Sources

There are no references to the Bellona massacre in extant German military documents. However, there is one map showing the situation at the front and the position of different German units at the time of the massacre (map of the 3^rd Panzergrenadier Division, German Federal Archives, RH 26-3/13K; and the XIV Panzer Corps in German Federal Military Archives, Freiburg).

Investigations by the U.S. 5^th Army are kept in the National Archives, Washington (Record Group 153: Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General (Army), War Crimes Branch, Cases filed 1944-1949, Entry 143, Box 527: Case Villa Volturno).

The investigation of the Naples military court is kept in the archive of the prosecutor, military prosecutor’s office, Naples (no. 183/94 of the general register of reported offences – RGNR).

The 1999 report by historian Carlo Gentile to the Naples military court can be accessed at the following address: https://www.academia.edu/44434082/ProcMilNapoli_Bellona_1999

Literature

Carlo Gentile, Wehrmacht und Waffen-SS im Partisanenkrieg: Italien 1943-1945, Paderborn, Ferdinand Schöningh, 2012, pp. 48-51, 104-105.

Giovanni Giudicianni, Voci nella Storia. Vicende e testimonianze della strage nazista di Bellona, Vitulazio, Piccola Editalia, 2013.

Gabriella Gribaudi, Una rappresaglia: Bellon, 7 ottobre 1943, in: Gabriella Gribaudi (ed.), Terra bruciata. Le stragi naziste sul fronte meridionale, Naples, L’ancora del Mediterraneo, 2003, pp. 251-275.

Gerhard Schreiber, Deutsche Kriegsverbrechen in Italien. Täter, Opfer, Strafverfolgung, Munich, C.H. Beck, 1996, pp. 140-141.

Franco Valeriani, Bellona 7 ottobre 1943. Il culmine di una tragedia chiamata guerra, Vitulazio, Piccola Editalia, 2015.

Authorship and translation

Autor: Carlo Gentile

Translated from German by: Joel Golb

2024

Text: CC BY NC SA 4.0

Bellona

The massacre

Attacks by soldiers and the reaction of the local populace

The reprisal

Investigations and processes

Investigations by the U.S. 5th Army

In the mid-1960s, with the application of the statute of limitations drawing ever closer, the German government issued a call for information concerning still unexpiated crimes perpetrated by the Nazis in the occupation period.

Investigation by the Traunstein prosecutor in the 1960s

Investigation of the Naples prosecutor’s office in 1994

Memory

The memorial in the quarry

Information on data protection

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