Italy's Great Escape

...THE KAPPLER MYSTERY Italy's Great ESAPE BY SILVIO F SENIGALLIA Rome If the pity and the horror aroused by the 1944 killing of 335 hostages in Rome's Ar-deatine Caves were not still so vivid in this country, the August 15 escape of SS Colonel Herbert Kappler from the Celio military hospital here would surely have occasioned sardonic comments about material being available now for a film entitled Breakout Italian Style As it was, though, the episode launched the biggest controversy of Italy's summer The details are by now well known Kappler carried out the mass murder in retaliation for a bomb attack against an SS unit by the civilian resistance He was sentenced to life imprisonment by an Italian court in 1948, and transferred from a maximum security fortress to the Celio last November because he was found to be ill with terminal stomach cancer During the night of August 15-16, he walked or was spirited out of his hospital room and is currently in well-publicized hiding in Soltau (Lower Saxony), West Germany The apparently favorable attitude toward the escape on the part of even large sectors of moderate West German public opinion has quite reasonably kindled widespread concern over the possible resurgence of Nazism In Italy, however, the reaction has been a mixture of hysteria by the media and fumbling incompetence by government officials True, news is scarce in mid-August and the excitement shown by the newspapers and state-owned radio and television in tackling a sensational story with political undertones could perhaps be expected Less predictable, and more disheartening, was the blatant play for ideological mileage in the uncompromisingly strident anti-German slant of most articles run by the predominantly left-of-center press Thus soon after the escape, it was broadly hinted that Kappler had been liberated by German agents with the indirect complicity of the Italian intelligence service Some stories also suggested that West Germany, a rich and powerful ally of Italy, had made any future financial assistance to Rome contingent upon the freeing of the former Gestapo Colonel, thereby inducing the government here to close one, if not both, official eyes When it became obvious that there had been neither a German master plan nor Italian collusion, the papers attacked Bonn for failing to return the prisoner (West German law does not permit extradition ot a citizen), and accused it of lingering Nazi sympathy They quoted Willy Brandt's July letter to Chancellor Helmut Schmidt denouncing recent rallies ol extreme Rightist groups, pointed to the demonstrations ol pro-kappler sentiment among ultra-Rightist elements in West Germany and Austria, and charged that the present Social Democratic administration is wavering on the war-crimes issue to woo the middle-class votes it needs to thwart the Christian Democratic challenge The keynote of most comments by the Italian Left was a call for unity and vigilance by the anti-Fascist forces In Rome, for example, Communist Mayor Giuho Carlo Argan officially requested an immediate analysis of the political, social and legal implications of the Kappler case by the Union of the European Community Capitals Previously, he had maintained that the escape, "an act of revenge by the Nazis," had been assisted by West German and Italian neo-Fascists Argan's reaction was typical 32 years after the fall of Mussolini, and Eurocommunism notwithstanding, Italy's Left continues to make constant use of the Fascist issue as the clinching argument for a return to the broad postwar coalition of all political parties, including, naturally, the Communists Regardless of its actual significance, any matter concerning the lunatic fringe of nostalgic diehard Nazis or neo-Fascist hoodlums is always blown up as evidence of a clear and present danger The majority of Italians, though, have looked at the Kappler case from a strictly domestic angle They were enraged by the official incompetence in holding the prisoner, the national impotence in effecting his return, and the farcical nature of the escape itself But worst of all has been the authorities' apparent inability to determine exactly what happened Over a month after the event, they were still groping in the dark, and the tentative explanations leaked to the press have been unconvincing, to put it mildly According to the first, Frau Kappler, who visited the Celio daily and had the freedom of the place, helped her husband into a large suitcase, carried all 105 pounds of him to the parking lot, and drove her rented car through the night, crossing the Brenner border at dawn The two young carabmien assigned to guard Kappler's third-floor room were supposedly offered a glass of drugged wine by the energetic lady, therefore the Colonel's absence was not discovered until 10 o'clock the next morning The suitcase-cum-drug theory was soon shelved and replaced by a slightly more plausible one, based on the proximity of the freight elevator to Kappler's room According to the second scenario, the couple sneaked out in the middle of the night, taking advantage of the scarce surveillance, and reached the car without being challenged on the third floor, the ground floor or at the gate This clearly implied negligence on the part of the guards, and two young men were in fact arrested But the carabinteri corps, traditionally loyal to king and country, is one of Italy's sacred cows Since, in addition, no solid evidence was produced against the guards, the impression grew that they were being used to cover the responsibility of high officials That grated on Italian populism and sentimentality, rendering the second theory unpalatable too The latest explanation has as its main clue a piece of rope found outside a window at the Celio 15 days after the escape It is said to be proof that Kappler was hoisted down the 40-foot hospital wall by his wife, with the possible complicity of a man hidden in the leafy branches of a tall magnolia tree In part, at least, it conveniently coincides with the "true story" Frau Kappler told to a German magazine for a large fee, but very few people are accusing her of making a completely clean breast of it While Italy is waiting for the final official version, three considerations should be taken into account 1) Convicts are daily walking out of Italian prisons because of negligence and/or lack of qualified personnel 2) The escape took place on Ferragosto, the very peak of Italy's long summer holiday season and a day when literally every office, store and restaurant in Rome is closed The city was a desert and so probably was the military hospital 3) The carabmien had been instructed to treat Frau Kappler and official visitors of the presumably dying prisoner with due civility It should further be noted that before Kappler's breakout there was considerable debate on the question of his clemency Many people, representing a wide range of political viewpoints, seemed to feel that even though his unspeakable crimes could be neither condoned nor forgotten, this cancer-ridden old man who had spent 30 years in jail should be allowed to go home to die in peace A year ago an Italian court actually moved to grant the prisoner provisional freedom When this set off a broad wave of protests and street demonstrations by private citizens, Jewish groups, World War II veterans, partisan organizations, and Left-wing movements, the country's highest military court overturned the decision At that point, caught in a squeeze between the desire to accommodate Bonn and the fear of antagonizing the Left on a very sensitive issue, Prime Minister Giuho Andreotti's government apparently decided to adopt a middle-of-the-road position no provisional freedom for the prisoner, but more comfort and less rigorous surveillance The rationale was that with Kappler too ill to escape he might as well be treated as kindly and humanely as possible Unfortunately, Frau Kappler's Teutonic determination, coupled with typical Italian disorganization, caused the plan to backfire, and Andreotti finds himself dealing with a very hot potato Though time and his consummate political ability will probably get him out of the fix, he owes no thanks to his defense minister, Vito Lattanzio, who in any other country would have promptly been forced to resign Indeed, the man in the street is probably right in feeling that the proper scapegoat for the whole mess should be a clumsy Cabinet member SILVIO F. SENIGALLIA reports regularly for THE NEW LEADER from Rome...