Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis (14 page)

Allied leaders took criticism for the decision to bomb Monte Cassino. President Roosevelt defended the action at a press conference by disclosing General Eisenhower’s December 29 order for the first time, emphasizing the senior commander’s concern for the lives of each Allied soldier. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Lang of Lambeth, took an opposing position, stating, “The loss of some temporary military advantage . . . could not be compared with a loss of civilization and religion which would be for all time, and irreparable.” Others, such as Reverend L. F. Harvey, countered, “Does the Archbishop wish to convey that he regards human life as of less value than a monument?” A reader sent a letter to the editor of
Time
magazine slicing the question a different way: “May I inquire if any of the gentlemen so deeply concerned over the ancient monuments of Rome have an only son whom they are prepared to sacrifice on the altar of St. Peter’s? If not, may I ask them to moderate the enthusiasm with which they propose to substitute mine?”

The “Allied lives or a monument” argument missed the point of Eisenhower’s order, which rested on whether or not “destruction of the Abbey would in fact achieve a useful military purpose.” General Alexander provided his perspective:

It was necessary more for the effect it would have on the morale of the attackers than for purely material reasons. . . . when soldiers are fighting for a just cause and are prepared to suffer death and mutilation in the process, bricks and mortar, no matter how venerable, cannot be allowed to weigh against human lives. Every good commander must consider the morale and feelings of the fighting men; and, what is equally important, the fighting men must know that their whole existence is in the hands of a man in whom they have complete confidence.

The morale of the fighting men, momentarily elevated by the punishing air attacks, did not stay elevated for long. German forces capitalized on the destruction of the monastery, using the remains as enhanced fortifications, just as some Allied commanders had argued they would. The rain and cold continued. So, too, did the dying.

*
Ricoveri
and
rifugi
are interchangeable. Visitors to Italy today may occasionally find a painted
R
or
Rifugi
with arrows on prewar buildings. These signs identified for civilians the nearest public air-raid shelter. The Monuments Men and other Allied soldiers often referred to these as
ricoveros
.

10

CLOSE CALL

MARCH 1944

O
n January 22, 1944, the Allies launched Operation Shingle, an amphibious landing of British and American troops of the U.S. Fifth Army’s VI Corps on the beaches of Anzio and Nettuno, some sixty miles west of the stalemate at Cassino and just thirty-five miles south of Rome. Allied military planners hoped to outflank German forces in the Liri Valley and, by threatening Rome and the German rear, draw off sufficient forces from the Cassino front to permit an Allied breakthrough. Neither objective succeeded. Kesselring had a contingency plan for just such an outcome and responded at once by holding at Cassino while also sending a rapid-reaction force to Anzio.

By early February, the Germans had amassed an army of more than ninety-five thousand men, preparing to launch a counterattack that would come close to driving the much smaller Allied force back into the sea. Only the magnificent stand of British and American troops saved the Anzio beachhead. Allied soldiers hunkered down in their foxholes, trying to survive the punishing shelling. One American soldier wrote, “Anzio was a fishbowl. We were the fish.” That month, a record nineteen hundred American soldiers died in the Mediterranean; March promised even worse casualties.

In an effort to change the dynamics on the ground, General Eaker and his Director of Operations, Brigadier General Lauris Norstad, expanded the use of Allied airpower, targeting German supplies and transportation in central Italy. The name of the operation—STRANGLE—defined its objective. Following a reorganization of United States Army Air Forces in the Mediterranean Theater, the heavy bombers of the Fifteenth Air Force oversaw “Strategic Operations”—longer-range missions targeting industrial sites in Germany and northern Italy. The Twelfth Air Force and the British Desert Air Force had responsibility for “Tactical Operations,” which supported Allied ground operations and disrupted enemy railroad marshaling yards, repair facilities, and supply and communication lines.

The lists designating towns of cultural importance and related maps, which Monuments officers Sizer, Maxse, and Baillie Reynolds had submitted to Professor Zuckerman in early December, were now provided to aircrews. But the maps bore no resemblance to the terrain observed by pilots and bombardiers flying overhead. To rectify this, the Air Force flew a series of photograph reconnaissance missions over seventy-nine towns and cities in Italy. They then worked with Monuments officers to overlay the data on protected targets. These “Shinnie maps” (named for their creator, archaeologist Peter Shinnie) were published in February 1944. Later that month, Norstad also issued a two-page directive updating the list of Italian cities and segregating each into one of three categories.

Group A included just four cities: Rome, Venice, Florence, and Torcello (an island near Venice likely chosen for its archaeological importance). Those cities were off-limits to any bombing without special authorization from Norstad. Group B included such cities as Ravenna, Assisi, Como, and San Gimignano; Group C cities included Pisa, Siena, Verona, Bologna, Lucca, and Padua. Pilots had authorization to perform day and night bombing over Groups B and C cities. The accompanying rules were designed to minimize damage to nearby monuments with the proviso that “it should be made quite clear to air-crews that the responsibility for such damage is accepted by this Headquarters.”

On March 2, as the battles in Cassino and Anzio entered their third months, Norstad approved an attack on a previously protected target: the marshaling yards of Florence, one of the four Group A cities.
*
Norstad’s instructions authorized his pilots to proceed if they deemed such a mission “necessary to meet critical military requirements. All possible precautions will be taken to avoid damaging the city, particularly within 1000 yards of Ponte Vecchio.” Aware that any such mission would be difficult, and eager to minimize the burden on his pilots, Norstad added: “It is appreciated that the main marshalling yard in Florence can not be attacked without some damage to the city resulting.”

Nine days later,
^†
at Decimomannu Airdrome in Sardinia, drivers made their usual morning run to pick up aircrews from the 319th and 320th Bomb Groups—men in their late teens and early twenties—and ferry them to the main building. Pilots, navigators, and bombardiers filed into their respective briefing rooms, dressed in heavy high-altitude jackets, the occasional flying helmets, parachute harnesses, and “Mae Wests” (flotation devices that, when inflated, protruded like the vaudeville actress’s buxom figure). The presence of a U.S. Army Signal Corps film crew, their cameras rolling, interrupted the otherwise-familiar routine. When the briefing commander entered the room, with its wall-size map of Italy and the Mediterranean area behind him, the chatter of the crews tailed off into silence.

“Gentlemen . . . The target for today is the marshaling yards at Florence.” As a round of low whistles filled the room, he continued:

We’ve been hitting targets around Florence for a long time, but we haven’t actually hit in the city itself because approximately ten percent of the world’s art treasures are located right here in Florence. And so we’ve got to be very careful. . . . It really is a hub of all of the rail supplies which come down into the Cassino Front and the Anzio beachhead. And so we’ve got to go in there today and we’ve got to smash the rail yards in Florence in order to relieve this pressure for these boys in the fox holes over at Anzio.

After distributing aerial photographs to each bombardier, the briefing commander directed their attention to the target pictures—photographs of the city’s northwest marshaling yards with superimposed white boxes around churches and cultural sites that had to be avoided. One bombardier spoke up: “Sure got a lot of things we can’t hit.” The wisecrack explained the presence of the film crew; the higher-ups wanted proof that precautions had been taken for the precarious bombing mission on Florence.

The “northwest marshaling yard,” or “main marshaling yard,” referred to the main city railroad station, Santa Maria Novella, named after the historic church located just 426 feet away. Begun in 1246, Santa Maria Novella was the city’s first great basilica. Its façade features unique S-shaped volutes and a broad, triangular pediment inlaid with geometric patterns of green and white marble. The upper portion is one of the few Renaissance façades on any of the churches in Florence. The interior, containing a wooden crucifix carved by Brunelleschi and fresco cycles painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio and Filippino Lippi, remains a critically important example of the late Gothic period in Europe.

In 1427, Santa Maria Novella received one of the divine gifts in the history of art—and its most treasured possession—the
Trinity
fresco by Masaccio. In this seminal piece, which represented an inflection point in the development of Western European art, Masaccio had introduced the concept of one-point linear perspective, a groundbreaking technique that created the illusion of three-dimensional depth on a flat wall. As early as 1550, Giorgio Vasari gazed upon Masaccio’s stunning achievement and explained how the artist “gave a beginning to beautiful attitudes, movements, liveliness, and vivacity, rendering relief in a way that was characteristic and natural and that no painter had ever before attempted.” Through the centuries, artists and architects have studied and admired the young master’s creation, which proved to be one of his final works. Masaccio died just one year after completing the
Trinity
fresco at the age of twenty-six.

Allied bombers used this “Shinnie” map of Florence for their March 11, 1944, bombing of Santa Maria Novella train station (inside boxed area at bottom center). The Arno River runs vertically through the center of the photograph. Each monument received a number identifying it by name. The Ponte Vecchio is in the center (number 46); the Ponte Santa Trinita is below it (number 45). [National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD]

The men of the 17th, 319th, and 320th Bomb Groups did their work astonishingly well. First Lieutenant Roy Seymour, a twenty-four-year-old pilot from the 319th, son of a logger from the state of Washington, saved a bomb pin removed just before the drop and noted on the attached tag, “First time Florence has been bombed—did a good job.”
*
The attack on Santa Maria Novella station may well have been the most precise bombing mission of the war. Seventy-eight B-26 Marauders dropped 145 tons of high explosives. All of the bombs stayed within the target area. The railroad tracks north and south of the city through the station were severed, and warehouses and repair shops were damaged or destroyed. There were at least twenty direct hits on the north end, and twelve toward the southern end nearest the church. “No flak or [enemy aircraft]. 1 B-26 crashed on take off, crew safe, and 1 is missing.” The Air Force had proven that it was possible to achieve necessary military goals without destroying monuments.

That same day, March 11, more than one hundred B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers of the Fifteenth Air Force hit the marshaling yards of the Group C northern city of Padua, about twenty-five miles west of Venice. This was a strategic mission, not a tactical one. Taking the opposite approach from the Santa Maria Novella station mission, aircrews focused on what to hit rather than what
not
to hit. According to the postmission report, “The main concentrations of bombs fell on and around the R.R. station.” From the view of the planners, this mission was also a success, but through the eyes of Lieutenant Fred Hartt, it had been a disaster.

Hartt had arrived in Italy on January 14, 1944. He spent his first three months as a photographic interpreter for the 90th Photo Wing Reconnaissance, evaluating bomb assessment photos. The army provided him with images of cities after the smoke had cleared from bombing runs. Hartt then used the photos to assess collateral damage to nearby monuments.

In the aftermath of the Allied bombing of Monte Cassino, German radio aired propaganda accusing the Allies of damaging Italian patrimony. This made Hartt’s mission all the more vital. Nevertheless, he found it agonizing. Hartt had signed up to save Italy’s great masterpieces, but he couldn’t save what had already been destroyed. He wanted to be a surgeon, not a pathologist. Restless and impatient, he looked for ways to wangle a transfer into the Monuments section.

The assessment photos from the Padua raid showed that bombs falling “around” the station had destroyed a number of key buildings. Even worse, two wayward projectiles had hit the Church of the Eremitani and its Ovetari Chapel. Hartt’s dispassionate report belied the personal wound he felt: “Chapel of Mantegna obliterated by a direct hit, together with the apse and the whole right transept. Façade half-destroyed by direct hit. E. side of monastic buildings demolished.” Moments later, the full impact of what he had just seen overwhelmed him. “I just couldn’t continue working. I wandered into the streets of San Severo and realized ‘the Mantegna frescoes are gone, they’re gone, and I’m the only one on this side who knows.’”

Like many artists of his period, Andrea Mantegna had moved to a thriving city seeking the support of a wealthy patron or atelier. Since the early 1300s, the prosperous university town of Padua had drawn such talent. After being adopted by his teacher, Francesco Squarcione, an older Paduan painter, Mantegna enrolled in the local painters guild in 1441 at just ten years of age. Eight years later, he began painting the walls of the Ovetari family chapel, located in the Church of the Eremitani. The frescoes depicted the lives of St. James and St. Christopher. Mantegna’s use of perspective—furthering the innovations of young Masaccio—and painstaking attention to detail resulted in lifelike scenes so beautiful that his name would be mentioned by the fifteenth-century Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto in the company of just two other artists: Giovanni Bellini, and Leonardo da Vinci.

Still filled with rage four weeks later, Hartt wrote a letter to the new director of the MFAA, Major Ernest DeWald, pleading for a transfer. He informed DeWald that, “The Eremitani has been very badly hit, & the Ovetari Chapel, with all the Mantegnas, utterly wiped out. As a matter of fact, you can hardly tell there was a building there. The last of the stick of bombs missed the Arena Chapel by a mere hundred yards.” Although not as well known as the Sistine Chapel, its destruction would have been no less great a loss.

Enrico Scrovegni, a wealthy Paduan banker, built the Arena Chapel in 1303 atop an ancient Roman arena. Dante had immortalized Scrovegni’s father as the wicked usurer in his
Inferno.
Seeking to expiate his family’s sins while demonstrating his own sense of good taste and piety, Scrovegni commissioned Giotto, who almost singlehandedly resurrected painting from the Dark Ages, to decorate the small and narrow devotional chapel. His creation was breathtaking: a series of individual stories or scenes, each part of a narrative, with common themes of the drama of human relationships. Giotto depicted the tenderness and affection of Joachim and Anna’s kiss at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem in one scene as a contrast to the treachery and betrayal of Judas’s kiss in another. These frescoes blended seamlessly from the walls to the barrel-vaulted ceiling, which Giotto had painted in lapis blue with gold stars, symbolizing heaven.