§ Mining Memory
- Our Father and uncles were called up and survived WWII. The Australian Charlie Gilbert enlisted to escape the pervasive poverty after the Great Depression. The Vogels connected the German immigration into the Balkans post the Ottoman retreat. Elements for the composition of a remarkable story.
- The basis for conviction in one’s capabilities to explore is established.
- Methodology developed to be the foundational logic of the book’s structure.
- Working with memory, connecting the dots is not easy but doable if important enough.
- Foundations to forming opinions explored.
- The limitation perceived with genealogical research leads to a table to provide a simple understanding of genetic dilution over several generations.
- The importance of knowing where we come from supported by Luc Ferry[1]
Michele & Maria Concetta Pre WWII
- Known oral history of our Mother and Father blended into the documented historical narrative of the times.
- Father’s paternal aunt, Caterina had gone to North Africa North Africa to better herself.
- Another known adventurism was that Francesco Ielapi going to join in the Spanish Civil War.
- Contextual review made of the Spanish Civil War and its relationship to the Nazi ‘Final Solution’ with reference made to Ernest Hemmingway’s book ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’.There is also a dovetailing into Father’s being interned in Germany to work for the Junkers aircraft factories in Dessau.
- Fascist education implemented; Father participates in the young Fascist movement but is aware that something is not quite right. Older folks participated in Fascist social events; nationalism grew.
- Brigands attend church services in Francavilla.
- Class structures at the grassroots level. Day-to-day living in Francavilla. Father’s life is in contrast with one more socially privileged: Claudio Sommaruga[2] another who shall become interned courtesy of the Germans.
- Mother benefited from the mandatory education enforced by Fascism. She grew up whilst her father went to Abyssinia. Life was harsh on a female, Mother suffered from the cultural customs of the times.
A Macro View: Poor Logic and Neurotic Reasons
- My capacity to interpret the goings on around my life is narrated.
- Factual narrative citations: Personal interpretation of John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’to light-heartedly explore a ‘thought bubble’ concept of ‘fate’.
- Introduction to Historian, Professor Victor Davis Hansen (AKA VDH) and his narrating empiric logic and reasons for the escalation of German border wars to a Global Conflict.
- VDH’s packaging of the power plays makes for a sombre tutorial of the resulting worldwide carnage. VDH says that from Hitler’s point of view, it was a matter of it “seemed like a good idea at the time”.
- Dots between all major participants of the war are connected taking prior related events into account.
- German hubris caused it to miss out on the lesson which history provides ‘gratis’ as one of Murphy’s Laws to the effect, that ‘anything which can go wrong will go wrong’. The Japanese weren’t much smarter.
- The Pacific war is compared to Achilles’ struggle with his nemesis Asteropaeus of Greek mythology aided and abetted Zeus and his wife Hera taking opposing sides.
- Factual narrative citations: Sir Robert Menzies about leadership and VDH ‘Therapeutic Society’, one that emphasizes pacifism.
- Factual narrative citations: Joshua Philipp’s essay ‘Nazism, Fascism, and Socialism Are All Rooted in Communism’.
- Summary of strategically critical events of the war.
- The war draws to an eventual end in Europe, and attention is drawn to the difficulties of managing the peace. Stalin’s duplicity was finally revealed, and Churchill pronounced the establishment of the ‘Iron Curtain’.
- Hitler was representative of Germans resenting post-WWI imposts, however, the reality was that Germany was not occupied nor were its cities bombed. Supposed punitive sanctions were not poorly implemented. Post-WWII was managed much differently, Germany was occupied but the Communist spectre forced an overarching agenda; NATO was formed.
- Italy post-war became an oddity for having sacked its leader. The allies deemed that it had suffered enough. The threat of communism ameliorated the possibility of imposing harsher actions.
- VDH cuts across the debates that raged about Japan holding out and that the nukes saved an invasion. He offers that the firepower in place included 2200 B29 bombers. If necessary, these would have rained an incendiary apocalypse on all Japanese cities.
- Antiwar sentiment explored. Factual narrative citations: Edwin Starr’s song War “What Is It Good For?”: VDH cites military history recorded by Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Polybius through the studies of the Persian Wars, Peloponnesian Wars and the Punic Wars. VDH’s opinion that understanding is paramount to deterring aggressors is explored via more contemporary geopolitics.
- Bitter end of the War in which the US and Britain end up with the ‘albatrosses’ of Italy, Japan and Germany as their ‘booty’ for winning the war. Communism rebranded as United Soviet Socialist Russia (USSR) is ascending.
- Has the West lost its way by university emphasis on “Gender and Peace Studies”?
§ War Unravels Fascism
Simonetti Family Surface Into Flaming Waters
- Hitler withdrew from the League of Nations,war was coming, Churchill knew.
- The Spanish Civil War was a training ground for Messer’s Hitler and Mussolini. Their skills in battle planning however did not improve. Ernest Hemingway ‘reports’ from the other side of that war.
- Italy has win in Libya became the high-water mark for Fascism. Italy lacked natural resources for further adventurism.
- Simonetti’s extended family braces for war.
Volksdeuchen Vogels Collide With Nazis
- The logic for conceptually exploring ‘Bosphorus Phosphorus’; Eastern Europe’s troubled past comes into view contemporarily melded with toxic German ‘Aryan Race’ideology and the duplicitous relationship between the Nazis and Yugoslav Monarchy.
- Factual narrative citations: Helga Horiak Harriman looks at the classification of people with German heritage concerning the spreading of war fronts. A US Army pamphlet and an Australian Government Research Paper explain the Balkan quandary.
- The ‘Volksdeutschen’ reviewed in light of their Hapsburg past. In the war, the complex nature of their ethnic existence is explored.
- Franz Vogel, a Catholic, marries a Serbian Orthodox, Desanka Çarević.
- Known oral history of the Vogels is blended into the documented historical narrative of the times. Franz Vogel became embroiled in the military of both Yugoslavia and later the Waffen SS.
- Atrocities abound, perpetrated by Ustashi military units including the killing of Franz Vogel’s father-in-law Pavao Çarević.
- Factual narrative citations: Dr Valentin Oberkersch[3] reviews Yugoslavia’s entry into the war. Helga Horiak Harriman explores the obligations being forced on ‘Volksdeutschen’, critical in this is the formation of the Waffen SS 7th SS-Volunteer Mountain Division Prince Eugene’.
- My anecdote of the ‘Ustaša’relates to an acquaintance made in Melbourne; his family was executed by the group.
North Africa: Pietro, Bruno, Chic’Antuoini and Charlie Gilbert
- Simonetti brothers and their brother-in-law make up their participation in the North Africa battles. Australian, Charlie Gilbert is the in the clean-up crew which eventually dislodges Italy and Germany from that theatre of war.
- Pietro ends up in Cobram and Charlie and his family settle in a hamlet west of the town in Northern Victoria.
- Bruno and Chic’Antuoini are interned by the British in South Africa.
§ Greek Occupation Turmoil & Resistance Movements
- Retelling of Father’s war memoirs, begin in the awful shack in which we lived. The setting has eerie similarities to the conditions, he experienced as a POW in Dessau.
Fellow Travellers: Amedeo, Emanuele, Gian Carlo, Giuseppe & Michele
- Introduction of those Italians caught up in the German dragnet after Italy signed the Armistice with the Allies.
Greeks’ Aggravated Courting & Shotgun Wedding
- What Greece was, socially and politically, a tutorial.
- Greeks say ‘no’ to Italy’s overtures. Prime Minister of Greece, Ioannis Metaxas had what it took to snub his nose at the Italians; unlike Hitler and Mussolini, he had military training.
- The Italian Campaign falters, eyewitness accounts are telling that the invasion of Greece was lost before it started. Theatres of war are explored from various perspectives: British, Spain’s neutrality and German intent.
- Australian Prime Minister, Robert Menzies was haunted by the Battle of Gallipoli, the first of Churchill’s, not so better moments, in the opening of the Eastern Front during WWI.
- Menzies has his ghost to deal with as a result of Australia’s sending pig iron to Japan. Factual narrative citations: Menzies book: ‘Afternoon Light’, some memoirs of men and events.
Michele, the Australian and Andartiko Greek Resistance
- Germany distracted from other matters to complete the invasion of Greece dubbed ‘Operation Marita’.
- Charlie Gilbert’s war waxes and wanes and spends a brief time as a POW of the Germans in Greece. That battle is documented by The Australian War Memorial.
- Greece is maltreated by the Bulgarian occupational army. Britain finds it difficult to react to the advancing Germans in Greece; all made worse by the splinter partisan paramilitary groups backed by disparate political ideologies.
- Greek resistance has the hallmarks of a civil war in which the Communist EAM/ELAS is pitted against EDES under Colonel Napoleon Zervas.
- The Italian occupation of Greece is related to the film Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’ set on the island of Kefalonia. The island is also the setting for atrocities inflicted by Wehrmacht’s 104 Jäger Division on the Italian Acqui Division (33ª Divisione Acqui) after the armistice.
- Michele’s induction and assignment to Greece are explored in the melee of events that had occurred before his arrival. He was stationed in Ioannina and an area under threat from Colonel Napoleon Zervas. Factual narrative citations: Inside Hitler’s Greece: The experience of occupation, 1941-1944 by Mark Mazower and, Department of the Army Pamphlet, No. 20-243, Pages 28-29, US Army Centre for Military History website.
- Greek political turmoil during the occupation is put into perspective of the times including the civil revenge killings going on.
- Charlie Gilber is reassigned to fight in the Pacific War.
Balkan Calamities with Fascists, Royalists & Communists
- Postage stamp summary of the state of the war.
- Himmler targets Volksdeutschenmen to fill the ranks of the infamous Waffen-SS newly formed ‘7th SS-Volunteer Mountain Division Prince Eugene’. Franz Vogel’s transition into the group is explored.
- The rise of two diametrically opposing movements, that of Mihailović’s Chetnik and Tito’s (Josip Broz) partisan is explored.
- German intelligence fails to distinguish between the two movements leading to dire consequences for its war effort. The Fascists concocted Ustaša also in the wings to wreak savagery on Serbs.
- Michele and Franz Vogel on the same side for a brief time.
- Franz Vogel’s participation in ‘Prince Eugene’is explored through documented battles. The Vogel family’s exit from Croatia due to security risks faced by ethnic Germans from the Ustaše death squads is followed as part of the mass exodus. Factual narrative citations: Dr Valentin Oberkersch.[4]
§ Did Anyone See That Coming?
Pre-Armistice Quandary
- The Italian body politics’ immaturity is dramatically displayed by the sequence of events that followed the dismal planning and reasons for going to war.
Italian Campaign via Pizzo 3 September 1943
- Allies launch ‘Operation Husky’ invasion through Sicily. The Italian mainland is breached at Pizzo by Montgomery’s Eighth Army across the straits of Messina code-named ‘Operation Baytown.
- Simonetti farm ‘Farco’is bombed. Maria Concetta recalls ‘ee’mericani’camping along the Angitola River skirting the Attisani ‘Pontana’
- The Government and Monarchy abandoning Rome is interpreted by comparison with the British Royal Family remaining in London.
- Winston Churchill’s influence over the future of Italy is explored.
- Mussolini by then frail, formed the Republic of Salò retaining the confidence of only General, Rodolfo Graziani.
Italian Mainland Sitting Ducks Army
- Father’s oral history is augmented by diarised accounts by Amedeo Usai, Gian Carlo Turchetto, Claudio Sommaruga and finally by Giuseppe Sammito’s brief but laconic observations of his internment.
- Claudio Sommaruga’s account of the fiasco of his Garrison being dismantled by the Germans makes for a grim realisation of the pathetic chain of command in the Royal Italian Army.
Armistice Turbulence Causes Catastrophic Risk Management
- The British deceptions, amongst which, one was code-named ‘Operation Mincemeat’ are explored. Factual narrative citations: Mark Mazower[5] connects the dots to Churchill’s failed attempt to open a war front through the Dardanelles in WWI.
- A memoir connection for Charlie Gilbert’s dislike of Germans is made via General Löhr’s capture of Crete in May 1941.
- Michele’s war service is put in the context of Greek partisan attacks on German patrols.
- Italian occupation at odds with German intent for brutality to maintain control.
- Germans dupe General Carlo Vecchiarelli into believing that there would be orderly demobilisation of the Italian Army in Greece and possibly allowed to return home.
- Antonio Gandin commander of 12,000 strong Italian 33ª Divisione Acquiresists German demands, resulting in massacres of Italians Michele could well have been in that Division. The atrocities were committed by 104. Jäger-Division’ which earlier in the year, had been engaged with ‘Einsatzstaffel der Deutsche Mannschaft (ES d. DM)’ to which Franz Vogel, was assigned to, in Croatia. Factual narrative citations: Mark Mazower in a chapter headed ‘This Heroic Madness’.
- Factual narrative citations: The number of Italians interned is given by Gerhard Schreiber.[6]
- Propaganda initiated for Germany to recruit Italians for Mussolini’s RSI army.
- The Greek partisan war of attrition summarised by Winston Churchill in parliament and blogger Jack Ray, provides a less political opinion.
§ Michele Simonetti Caught in Armistice Heartburn
Royal Italian Army Besieged in Greece
- The big picture narration shifts to detailed individual accounts of the effects of war on the soldiers.
- Italian POWs were known as Internati Militari Italiani (IMIs).
- Factual narrative citations: Silvia Pascale’s book “Una Candella Illumina Il Lager,the diarised testimonial written by Lieutenant General Gian Carlo Turchetto is read and interpreted in Italian. Some passages quoted are personal translations.
- The Italian and German occupation of Greece is explored. Factual narrative citations: Mark Mazower[7]
- Andartes at war with Italians vacillates between hate and tolerance.
- The Greek Spartan amongst us, George Spiliotacoploulos in contemporary times; his father was in the Hellenic Navy. Greek politico effects on the family forced his grandfather to immigrate to Egypt. Oral history thereafter matches events from a Greek perspective.
- Eyewitness account of his harrowing internment process by Fiorelli Angiolini. Ivo Cardini, a mechanic confirms the poor state of Italian mechanisation. Ivo tries to join the Albanian resistance, but their desperate state forces a rethink.
Diarised Transportation Journeys: Greece-to-Germany
- Routes out of Greece mapped on Google Earth.
- Conditions on board livestock rail wagons deteriorate over time.
- Michele’s passage out of Giannina is diarised by Emanuele Caffiero.[8] The diary is translated and a synopsis narrates key events.
- Introduction to Hungarian Mike Kovacs’ family’s oral history of the refugees streaming out of the Eastern European countries.
- Amedeo Usai and Giuseppe Sammito who also ended up in Dessau are introduced into the narrative. Ivo Cardini was another of those who was sent to Dessau. Their collective inputs enabled piecing together the Stammlagersystems and the conditions suffered by the Italians.
[1] French philosopher, politician, and a proponent of secular humanism. Former Minister for Youth, National Education and Research of France
[2] Claudio Sommaruga Memoirs “L’Altra Resistenza; (“The Other Resistance”; purposely translated by the author)
[3] Book: Die Deutschen in Syrmien, Slavonien, Kroatien und Bosnien” Translated by Henry A. Fischer
[4] Book: Die Deutschen in Syrmien, Slavonien, Kroatien und Bosnien” Translated by Henry A. Fischer
[5] Inside Hitler’s Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44
[6] Book: The Italian soldiers interned in the concentration camps of the Third Reich 1943-1945
[7] Inside Hitler’s Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44
[8] Quaderni, del Centro di Studi Sulla Deportazione e ‘Linternimento Volume 9, Rome ANEI. Translated by the author, from original Italian text.