Padule di Fucecchio

The Padule di Fucecchio area, scene of the massacre of 23 August 1944. © Udo Gümpel

23 August 1944 , Toscana

On 23 August 1944, the 26th Panzer Division conducted a 'mopping up' operation in the Fucecchio marshes with the stated goal of eliminating partisan groups. However, the partisans could not be found. Instead, civilian persons from the surrounding farms became the sole victims of the operation.

Out of the total victims, 62 individuals, approximately one-third, were women. Additionally, there were 25 children under the age of 14 years old killed. The victims also included 26 elderly individuals over the age of 60. The age range of those killed was particularly wide, spanning from a 5-month-old infant to a 93-year-old. The nature of the killings, often carried out through point-blank shooting with automatic weapons, indicates a deliberate intent to massacre civilians.

The conduct of the participating units varied significantly: while certain soldiers diligently followed orders to kill civilians, others quickly grasped the operation had descended into the massacre of non-combatants and refused to participate in shooting innocent people.

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Involved Unit

Panzer Reconnaissance battalion 26, Panzergrenadier Regiment 9, Engineering Battalion 93

Commander

26^th Panzer Division

Culprits

Oberst Peter Eduard Crasemann, Rittmeister Josef Strauch

Victims

174

Investigations and processes

1947: Peter Eduard Crasemann is sentenced to 10 years in prison by a British military court in Padua.

1948: The military court of Florence sentences Josef Strauch to 6 years in prison.

2011: Verdicts of Rome military court (investigations were initiated by La Spezia prosecutor’s office)): three in absentia sentences of life in prison, two of which are confirmed the following year by appeals court (one sentence null and void because of death of the accused).

Armed forces

Wehrmacht

Along with the area of Bientina, the Padule di Fucecchio form one of the largest marshlands in Italy. © Udo Gümpel

The massacre

Partisans and civilians take shelter in the marshes

On 23 August 1944, soldiers of the 26^th Panzer Division carried out a “mopping up” operation against partisans in the marsh area of Fucecchio, Tuscany. This marsh area and the neighboring Bientina region constitute one of the largest wetlands in Italy. In the 19th century, an intricate network of canals and channels was constructed during drainage projects; this network was used as hiding spots for small partisan groups during the German occupation. However, the actual number of partisans utilizing this area is unclear. The most active group was certainly the 30-40 member ‘Silvano Fedi’ unit. In late July 1944, the frontline reached the northern bank of the River Arno, leading civilians in towns and villages north of the river to seek shelter in the marshes to avoid Allied artillery fire on their homes.

The Germans were aware that some partisans hid in the marshes as well, although they did not know the exact numbers. While 26th Panzer Division headquarters estimated 200-300 partisans, absurd rumors of 5,000 armed men circulated among German troops, stoking fears of attack. Between 12-20 August, partisan assaults did intensify in the region.

Commanded by Oberst Eduard Crasemann, 26th Panzer Division headquarters began to plan a combing operation in the marshes, putting the 34-year-old commander of the Reconnaissance Battalion, Rittmeister Josef Strauch in charge of the operation. For the operation planned the next day, August 23^rd, Strauch had at his disposal his own understaffed battalion and supplementary units from the Panzergrenadier Regiment 9 and Engineering Battalion 93. These troops received their orders at a briefing on the evening of August 22^nd.

The extent to which the soldiers tried to advance into the part of the marsh where the partisans were hiding remains uncertain. The partisans remained largely undetected.

The massacre and its victims

Late in the night of 23 August, the soldiers took positions on the edge of the marsh area. In the early morning hours, they entered the marsh, pressing forward from different sides. Additional troops closed off the area and fired at targets there with heavy weapons.

According to survivors, the soldiers arrived at reed huts in the marshland and at farmsteads on its edges. Those living there were forced to exit and were then immediately killed. In a few instances, young men were spared, to serve as ammunition carriers. The extent to which the soldiers tried to advance into the part of the marsh where the partisans were hiding remains uncertain. The partisans remained largely undetected.

During the massacre, which unfolded in several locations, nearly all those killed were civilians. The documentary evidence shows that most of these persons were killed in the farmsteads along the western and eastern borders of the marsh. On the La Bassa farmstead and in the immediate vicinity, for example, 25 civilians were killed, and 11 near Casa Silvestri, including women and children. In addition, several persons were killed on the delle Colmate farmstead southwest of Monsummano and in the Via del Fossetto on the eastern border of the marsh area. In the southern portion of Stabbia and Massarella, armoured vehicles were deployed to open fire on the surrounding buildings. In Pratogrande and Capannone, local fascists helped the Germans in their search for some individuals they personally knew. In this area, evidently, only family members of known anti-fascists and non-local persons were killed.

One family about to be gunned down could save itself by showing letters and postcards from relatives working in Germany.
Responsibility of the various units

In the west, where sections of the Engineering Battalion were deployed, around 50 persons were killed in the Pratogrande and Capannone farmsteads. In the east, where mainly sections of the Panzer Reconnaissance Battalion were active, circa 90 to 100 persons were killed on the Casa Silvestri, Casa Simoni, Case Morette, Casa del Pescatore, and Podere La Bassa farmsteads and along the Via del Fossetto. In the south of the marshes, another 20 to 30 mainly male persons were gunned down by the soldiers. It is impossible, however, to ascribe individual crimes to specific units. One witness testified that not only common soldiers but also officers, including a captain, participated in the mass killings. The men of the 1st Company were reported to have covered the corpses of women and children with straw and set them on fire. These soldiers may have been responsible for the killings on the Casa Silvestri farm, as such a procedure was only used there.

Already a few hours after the operation began, fleeing and injured civilians reached the villages on the edge of the marsh area and spread news of the massacre.

Coverup efforts

Already a few hours after the operation began, fleeing and injured civilians reached the villages on the edge of the marsh area and spread news of the unfolding massacre. Lieutenant Colonel Henning von Witzleben, commander of Panzergrenadier Regiment 9, was located at the Villa Banchieri, a stately building in Castelmartini overlooking key sites of the massacre. He commanded the Flak Company, likely the only unit from his regiment directly participating by firing on houses and huts with heavy machine guns. The German-speaking head of the Banchieri household, Giulia Poggi Banchieri, implored von Witzleben to end the operation since it was only harming unarmed civilians. In response, von Witzleben sent an officer to investigate Banchieri's claims. When the officer confirmed civilians were under attack, around 11 AM von Witzleben phoned the division’s operations officer, von Bernstorff, who ordered an immediate cease-fire and treatment of injured Italians.

In the evening report on 23 August, the German Army claimed “around 100 bandits” were killed, adding that “after the operation’s end a single marching group of 40 bandits” was shot. Yet they provided no German casualties, despite this ostensibly being an armed clash. One Wehrmacht document stated a group of women fired on soldiers from a house - a claim uncorroborated by other sources. This appears to have been an attempt to disguise the massacre of civilians by depicting it as a military response to an attack.

Ermittlungen und Prozesse

Strauch asserted that Crasemann personally assigned him the task of annihilating ‘bandits’ in the marshes, with all civilians encountered in the deployment-area meant to be considered partisans and killed, regardless of age or sex.

The trials of Crasemann and Strauch

In the immediate postwar period, the trials of Crasemann (British military court, Padua, 1947) and later of Strauch himself (military court, Florence, 1948) were above all concerned with reconstructing Crasemann’s orders during the officers’ debriefing on the evening before the operation. During the Padua trial, in which Crasemann was the accused person and Strauch was present as a witness, the two officers repeatedly engaged in mutual accusations. Strauch asserted that Crasemann personally assigned him the task of eradicating ‘bandits’ in the marshes, with all civilians encountered in the deployment area meant to be considered partisans and killed, regardless of age or sex. Strauch maintained that even during the debriefing he tried fruitlessly to get Crasemann to change his mind – something that would be confirmed by other officers who had been present. Crasemann rebutted Strauch, insisting that on 23 August 1944, the situation slipped out of control through a chain of unfortunate circumstances. The court was not convinced by Crasemann’s argument, sentencing him to 10 years in prison in April 1947. A year later, the Florence military court likewise sentenced Strauch to prison, this time for six years – a sentence later reduced to three years. After intercession by the German government, he was pardoned on 30 December 1949 and released.

The two court verdicts make clear that the main persons responsible for the murder of civilians in Padule di Fucecchio were Oberst Crasemann and Rittmeister Strauch. The Oberst gave the orders, and the Rittmeister carried them out, leading the operation.
Investigation of the La Spezia military prosecutor and the 2011 Rome trial

In 2004, ten years after the discovery of documents stored in the ‘cabinet of shame’, the La Spezia military prosecutor’s office, working together with German prosecutors, took up a new investigation aimed at identifying still-living members of the 26^th Panzer Division. In 2008, the La Spezia military court was dissolved, and the proceedings were taken over by the military court in Rome. In 2011, that court sentenced three former members of the 26th Panzer Division in absentia to prison terms on account of murder. The men were the division’s ordinance officer Ernst August Arthur Pistor and two members of the 2^nd Company of the 26th Panzer Reconnaissance Battalion, Fritz Jauss and Johann Robert Riss. The following year, the appeals court in Rome confirmed the sentence in the last two cases; Pistor’s sentence had meanwhile become null and void because of his death.

Memoria

The German government’s engagement

In September 2002, in Castelmartini, a village that is part of the Larciano commune, a sculpture by Gino Terreni memorializing the victims was dedicated in the presence of Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. Inscribed on a tablet next to the sculpture are the victims’ names and places of birth.

In 2006, the Larciano commune was awarded the Gold Medal for Civic Merit. Six years later, the Fucecchio, Ponte Buggianese, Monsummano Terme and Cerreto Guidi communes received silver medals.

Many initiatives in remembrance of the massacre were supported by the German government. In 2015, a "garden of memory" was dedicated in Massarella, in the presence of, among others, the head of the German embassy’s cultural office in Rome. In Ponte Buggianese that same year, Paolo Gentiloni, Italy’s minister for foreign affairs and international cooperation, together with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier, opened a documentation centre devoted to the Padule di Fucecchio massacre: a project financed by the German-Italian Fund for the Future.

This monument at Castelmartini is dedicated to the victims of the massacre on 23 Aug. 1944 and the fallen of the Secon World War. © Udo Gümpel
A detail on the monument. © Udo Gümpel
The plaque of the Castelmartini monument. © Udo Gümpel

Testimonies

Statements by German soldiers

As commander of the 3^rd Company of the Reconnaissance Battalion, Oberleutnant Leopold von Buch participated in the operation in the marshes. According to his account, he received an order to consider all persons encountered as partisans and to kill them, regardless of age and sex, but did not follow the order. He noted the following in his diary:

00:00 start. 5:00 assembly. 7:00 fall in[,] no partisans. Women and children. In part horrid images emerge. Swamp impassable, countless deep ditches. Many reed huts with civilians, only refugees from the area. Crazy heat. 14:00 end.

In 1969, he explained that the troops were convinced they faced a superior force of partisans. The anxiety of the soldiers was, he indicated, compounded by, on the one hand, partisan and Allied leaflets and broadcasts and, on the other hand, the circulation among the troops of exaggerated rumours. The Germans saw their fears confirmed of being again surrounded like in Stalingrad.

In his description of the fighting of the 26th Panzer Division in Italy, Georg Staiger, a former officer of Panzer Regiment 26, focuses on the events in Padule di Fucecchio on 23 August 1944. He emphasizes that the events ‘cast a confusing shadow on the otherwise blemish-free soldierly approach of the division. Civilians become [sic] tragic victims in this operation, including women and children. [...] May […] ]there be a space for hope that the event is now forgiven and we may bow down together with the bereaved in reverence before the victims’.

Sources

The massacre of Padule die Fucecchio has hardly left a trace in German military documents. Noteworthy is Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv file RH 27-26/40, containing excerpts from the private diary of Leutnant Leopold von Buch with references to the massacre. Additional documents are kept in the files of correspondence of the high command of the 14^th Army (RH 20-14) and esp. in documents of the XIV Panzer Corps, kept in archives in Moscow (CAMO, Bestand 500, Findbuch 12475); now digitalized and accessible online: https://wwii.germandocsinrussia.org/de/nodes/9329-findbuch-12475-panzerkorps

The documentation of the division’s crimes is kept in the U.S. National Archives, College Park, MD, The British National Archives (Kew), the Ludwigsburg Central Office, and the archives of the Italian military prosecutor, Rome.

National Archives, College Park, Maryland (NARA): Record Group 153, Entry 143, Box 529, Case 16-81, Incidents at Ponte Buggianese, Fucecchio Swamps, Larciano, Monsummano, Montecatini Terme.

The National Archives (TNA), WO 235/335, Defendant: Peter Crasemann, Padua): WO 310/104-105, Fucecchio Marshes, Pistoia, Italy: German war crimes against civilians 1944. am

Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen zur Aufklärung nationalsozialistischer Verbrechen, Ludwigsburg, Verfahren Nr. V 518 AR 3226/66; Verfahren Nr. V 518 AR 3231/66.

The documents kept in the archives of the Rome military court concern the investigations and trials organized in Italy.

Literature

Michele Battini, Paolo Pezzino, Guerra ai civili. Occupazione tedesca e politica del massacro: Toscana 1944, Venice, Marsilio, 1997, pp. 143-165.

Claudio Biscarini, Morte in Padule. 23 agosto 1944: analisi di una strage, Edizioni dell'Erba, Fucecchio, 2014.

Vasco Ferretti, Vernichten. Eccidio del Padule di Fucecchio: 23 agosto 1944. Analisi storica della strage attraverso gli atti del processo di Venezia, Maria Pacini Fazzi, Lucca, 1988.

Carlo Gentile, Wehrmacht und Waffen-SS im Partisanenkrieg: Italien 1943-1945, Schöningh, Paderborn, 2012, pp. 379-390.

Authorship and translation

Autor: Carlo Gentile

Translated from German by: Joel Golb

2023

Text: CC BY NC SA 4.0