Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis (30 page)

At 9:30 p.m., Wolff received a secret telegram from Field Marshal Harold Alexander seeking confirmation that the surrender agreement, and the agreed-upon hour of cease-fire, would be honored. With Kesselring still unavailable, Wolff could only respond that an answer would be forthcoming within an hour. Even that was a guess. After placing another call to Kesselring’s headquarters, the generals were told that the Generalfeldmarschall was inspecting what remained of his troops; he would not return before midnight.

During the intervening hours, everyone took a break to eat. With the arrival of warm sausages and mustard, the barriers separating those “for” the surrender and those “against” fell away. Camaraderie reemerged and, with it, a breakthrough. One of the subordinate commanders previously opposed to the surrender yielded and instructed his adjutant to notify troops of the cease-fire. In successive order, most of the other generals—but not all—followed suit.

Relieved that the logjam had been broken and a consensus for surrender was building, Wolff sent a second message to Alexander around 11:15 p.m., informing him that the surrender was proceeding by way of accord among individual unit commanders of Army Group C. The absence of Kesselring’s overarching consent made this a messy solution, but the end result would be the same; at 2 p.m. the following day, May 2, the war in Italy would end.

Startling news arrived moments later. “It is reported from the Führer’s headquarters that our Führer Adolf Hitler, fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism, fell for Germany this afternoon in his operational headquarters in the Reich Chancellery.” The radio announcer for Reichssender Hamburg then introduced Hitler’s successor, Grand-Admiral Karl Dönitz, who solemnly stated: “At the end of his struggle . . . stands his hero’s death in the capital of the German Reich. . . . It is my first task to save Germany from destruction by the advancing Bolshevist enemy. For this aim alone the military struggle continues. As far and for so long as achievement of this aim is impeded by the British and the Americans, we shall be forced to carry on our defensive fight against them as well.”

Those gathered in the German Army Headquarters in Bolzano “breathed a sigh of relief,” Wolff later said. “There were tears in our eyes, because after all the difficulties we had been through and all the wrestling we had had to do with so many people, fate had been kind to us and . . . had removed the last obstacle.” Wolff and the other generals had known the end was near, surrender or not. All that mattered now were the terms. Further delays would only undercut the Allies’ motivation to negotiate a surrender. Ironically, Hitler’s death had offered the group salvation. Kesselring, freed from his oath to the Führer, would certainly now endorse Wolff’s plan.

They were wrong. “A message from Kesselring’s headquarters: ‘No, it’s out of the question . . . the fight goes on.’ ” Schulz backed Kesselring, telling Wolff, “I’m still the Supreme Commander in this place. If you choose to go your own way, well and good; but then it’s on your own responsibility; and for God’s sake don’t expect me to do the same.” Suspecting that he and his fellow generals were once again at risk of being arrested, Wolff urged those still supporting surrender to leave Army Group Headquarters and return to their own command posts, or wherever they felt safest. Wolff departed for SS headquarters in the Palazzo Reale, a few blocks away. Röttiger, “who had walked up in the rain without hat and coat, eventually arrived too, completely soaked.” After days without sleep, the exhaustion of both men was temporarily soothed by a late-night snack and sparkling wine.

Sometime after midnight, new orders arrived, less than fourteen hours before the cease-fire deadline. General Max Pohl, Chief of the Luftwaffe in Italy, one of the earliest supporters of surrender, was to be arrested immediately. At 1:15 a.m., replacement General Schulz received additional arrest orders for Vietinghoff (a precaution in case it hadn’t been done), Röttiger, Schweinitz, and others. Fifteen minutes later, “in view of the threatening danger,” seven SS tanks and 250 troops from Wolff’s special units established a protective perimeter within the SS compound.

At 2 a.m., “as all the excitement was mounting to a fever pitch and our emergency luggage was standing in the hall ready and packed for flight,” Kesselring telephoned Wolff and unloaded his anger and frustration for proceeding with his plan, having known all along that the terms would be an unconditional surrender. Responding with his own reasons for consummating the surrender plan, Wolff pleaded with Kesselring to vest it with the authority of his position. The impassioned discussion, over a “frightfully bad connection” with “every single telephone exchange” in the SS headquarters building listening in, went back and forth for two hours.

“It is not only a military capitulation in order to avoid further destruction and shedding of blood,” Wolff told Kesselring. “A cease-fire now will give the Anglo-Americans the possibility of stopping the advance of the Russians into the West, of countering the threat of the Tito forces to take Trieste, and of a Communist uprising which will seek to establish a Soviet republic in Northern Italy.” Kesselring didn’t disagree, but his immediate concern rested with the hundreds of thousands of German soldiers who would “feel themselves deserted and betrayed to their pitiless fate.” Each hour that passed bought time for them to escape the vengeance of Soviet Red Army soldiers by surrendering to British and American troops. Wolff pointed out that the Führer’s death released Kesselring from his oath. “It is your duty to refuse to transfer this oath to any other person. No oath of personal loyalty is transferable anyway.” But for Kesselring, it was no longer about an oath to the Führer; his concerns centered on his fellow soldiers, which demanded that they “fight it out to the bitter end.”

At 4 a.m. Kesselring ended the call, telling Wolff he would consider the matter for half an hour and call back. True to his word, Kesselring called General Schultz, who then telephoned Wolff to inform him that Kesselring had agreed to endorse the surrender and honor the 2 p.m. cease-fire deadline, now a little more than nine hours away. All arrest orders had been withdrawn. At the urging of Ambassador Rahn, and over the objection and disgust of many of his fellow officers, Kesselring also reinstated Vietinghoff to maintain the integrity of the surrender process. In the ensuing hours, field radios crackled with instructions to German forces to lay down their arms; the war in Italy had come to an end.

26

THE RACE

MAY 2–MAY 18, 1945

O
n May 2, at the moment of the German surrender, the Allied armies in Italy extended from the Po Valley north to the Alps, and from the port cities of Genoa on the Ligurian Sea to Venice on the Adriatic. Communication problems prevented an even dissemination of the welcome news. Some U.S. Fifth Army troops learned of the cease-fire when German units approached forward lines under white flags to surrender. Others heard a BBC Radio broadcast from London, which reported that “joy was unconfined among front-line troops in Italy tonight as they celebrated the end of a long and bitter campaign.” But the truth was far more muted. One infantry lieutenant said, “You feel sort of let down, as if the bottom had fallen out of everything.”

Deane Keller heard the news that evening while driving back to Fifth Army AMG base camp in Modena, after an exhausting eleven days of inspections. Springtime may have come to Florence, but from his view, bundled up in a canvas-top jeep in northern Italy, winter had yet to take its leave. Since April 21, he and Charley Bernholz had driven through bitter cold, rain showers, and mud as thick as pudding to get from one northern city to another. They began in Verona, then went to Vicenza, Mantua, Parma, Brescia, and Piacenza, with visits to numerous smaller towns along the way. An end to the fighting meant more inspections, more reports, and more time to think about when he would be reunited with his family.

While the myth of the vaunted Alpine Redoubt had been exposed, some Nazi leaders had still sought refuge in that area. Fifth Army troops raced northward to link up with U.S. Seventh Army troops pushing southward through Germany and Austria to seal the Brenner Pass. The front was so diffused that the army equipped airplanes with loudspeakers to broadcast news of the surrender and instruct German troops to turn themselves in at the nearest village. OSS and U.S. Army counterintelligence teams helped eliminate the last pockets of Nazi resistance. Others began hunting for those suspected of war crimes, including Himmler, Göring, and Kaltenbrunner.

On May 4, as Keller prepared to depart for Milan, he received a report from his counterpart in Eighth Army, Norman Newton, that the Florentine works of art could be found at Campo Tures and San Leonardo. The message contained agonizingly few details about the condition of the repositories. Keller immediately notified Lieutenant Colonel Ward-Perkins of the discovery and asked him to head north as soon as possible. With large territories newly liberated, and hundreds of works of art waiting to be removed from the repositories, he would need help. Keller also sent a message to Fred Hartt, instructing him to depart Florence with all haste. Despite their differences, Keller knew that no other Monuments officer possessed more knowledge about the Florentine works.

Much as Keller wanted to drive straight to the repositories, he and Charley had to spend a few days in Milan assisting the newly assigned Regional Monuments Officer for Lombardy, Lieutenant Perry Cott. With any luck, he could finish in Milan and still reach the repositories to greet Ward-Perkins and Hartt. But upon arriving in Milan, Keller was shocked to learn that Cott wasn’t there and wouldn’t be arriving anytime soon. Due to an army snafu, his orders had not been cut. It would take at least three or four days for Cott to get to Milan and begin work. Keller would have to cover for him.

Milan and its rich culture, too often overshadowed by the sunnier, more visited cities to the south, had been punished by Allied firebombing during 1943, before the Allies made protecting cultural treasures a priority. The April 15, 1944, bomb damage assessment report prepared by Hartt had provided a detailed analysis of the impact on the city’s prominent monuments and churches, citing, in particular, the scene of destruction adjacent to Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece,
The Last Supper
. But his perspective had been limited to aerial photographs; Keller would now have a chance to see the destruction at ground level.

Keller began his work in Milan as he always did, by meeting with local officials. He then started moving about the city to assess damage. His initial report contained three pages of heartbreaking details about the loss of magnificent churches, museums, and other historic structures, mostly due to fires caused by incendiaries. Sant’Ambrogio, one of Milan’s ancient sanctuaries, dating to 387 AD, had suffered direct bomb hits. Ceiling frescoes by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, one of the last great Old Master painters, were destroyed; Bramante’s Early Renaissance cloister was “about gone.” Keller’s casualty list included most of the city’s landmarks, including the Castello Sforzesco, the Brera and Ambrosiana Picture Galleries, and La Scala. But the scene of devastation to the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, and the miracle that had occurred there, took his breath away.

“Bomb hit of August 1943 in the cloister destroyed the right [east] wall of the refectory facing Leonardo’s
Last Supper
,” Keller noted in his report of that first visit. “The roof was hit and collapsed when the wall fell. The painting had been sandbagged for protection, plus wood planks and iron scaffolding. . . . The roof is nearing completion and the [east] wall has been reconstructed. Until there is no danger from the elements, or danger from what is left of the vaults, which is little, the painting will not be uncovered. . . . Its fate is not known.” It was still on his mind when he wrote Kathy on May 11, telling her, “Leonardo’s
Last Supper
is in peril and we won’t know for some time what it looks like.” In another letter the next day, he added, “Leonardo’s
Last Supper
may be in ruins.”

After the 1943 raids, the Milanese had made an admirable effort to clean up their city and begin the rebuilding process. But scarcity of funds, lack of materials, and precarious transportation had impaired local officials from doing much more than making the most urgent repairs. Mussolini’s government had proven quicker to hinder than to help. As the Milan Superintendent said, “Some authorities even returned our letters requesting their support. Nevertheless, we did not lose our sense of responsibility, both in the defense of damaged monuments and in the wider spectrum of the historical heritage of our city.”

Keller believed that if Leonardo’s
Last Supper
did emerge intact from behind the scaffolding, its survival would be a miraculous event. By any measure, the high-explosive detonation that destroyed the east wall and roof of the Refectory could easily have taken the north wall—and the creator’s work—with it. The protective bracing installed by local officials had provided additional structural support for the north wall. Without that, Leonardo’s masterpiece certainly would have been reduced to fragments of plaster and paint. But another miracle of sorts occurred during the early hours of August 16, 1943. Had incendiaries also landed in the courtyard, the wooden scaffolding and the bags of sand behind it might well have ignited. Leonardo da Vinci’s mural would have been baked off the wall—just as occurred with the frescoes at the Camposanto in Pisa.

The night of the bombing in August 1943, Padre Acerbi and his fellow Dominican brothers had emerged from their underground shelter and taken urgent action to safeguard the north wall and Leonardo’s painting. Battling panic and confusion, Acerbi sent word of the damage to local art officials. He then borrowed a car and drove 360 miles in one day, gathering young, able-bodied Dominican friars in other towns who volunteered to help with the cleanup and protective work. By the following day, a number of men had discarded their habits for overalls.

The future of
The Last Supper
depended on the stability of the north wall. After removing the debris, Acerbi realized there was another threat: rain. Within days, he obtained a waterproof tarp from civil engineers in Piacenza. By September 8, Acerbi watched as workers completed construction of a temporary roof similar to the one Keller later assembled to protect the Camposanto. Acerbi’s quick thinking, and the action of his fellow Dominicans and a team of military engineers (
Pontieri del Genio
), had protected the masterpiece from immediate danger. Until the east wall of the refectory could be rebuilt, a new roof installed, and the north side of the painted wall stabilized, removing the scaffolding and the sandbags to conduct a thorough inspection of the painting would create unknown risks.

On May 8, Keller halted his inspections in Milan long enough to write Kathy about the biggest news yet: “Dearest: It seems the war in Europe is definitely over.” The previous day, Eisenhower had informed the Combined Chiefs of Staff of the German surrender, succinctly and with little fanfare: “The mission of this Allied Force was fulfilled at 0241, local time, May 7th, 1945.” In New York City, some two million people filled Times Square to celebrate the news, but Keller told Kathy, “There was no celebration here. Even among the soldiers there was little show of emotion.”

PIETRO FERRARO,
Alessandro Cagiati’s OSS operative, had played a significant role in sparing the fragile city of Venice from last-minute destruction by the German garrison. Ferraro, whose mission code name was “Margot,” now scrambled to find a way to get to the Alto Adige region.

Days earlier, working out of a room at the famed Hotel Danieli, Ferraro had manned a telephone switchboard that enabled communication between partisan leaders in most of Italy’s northeastern cities, and coordination of their activities with advancing Allied troops. On April 27, the German garrison in Venice had threatened to destroy the city’s harbors, utilities, and shipping unless they were allowed safe passage to withdraw. Ferraro, the designated go-between, responded by promising the German commander that forty-five hundred partisans, whom he and the OSS had equipped through twenty-three parachute drops of weapons and supplies, would annihilate the forty-one hundred German and Fascist troops if they dared act on such a threat. After short consideration, the German garrison surrendered; Venice survived with nary a scratch. Ferraro not only succeeded in staring down the commander of the German garrison, he also obtained their maps, designating the positions of mines placed in the harbors and canals, thus sparing the city unimaginable destruction.

Following Venice’s liberation in the closing days of April, Ferraro shifted his attention to the art repositories at Campo Tures and San Leonardo. Long on information but short on transportation, Ferraro sought the help of another OSS officer, Lieutenant Richard Kelly, chief of the agency’s Maritime Detachment. Kelly arranged for travel permits to the Alto Adige area for the Venetian Superintendent, Ferdinando Forlati, and his team of art experts, along with a vehicle, a driver, and armed guards. Ferraro then requested Cagiati to coordinate the suspension of aerial activity near the repositories, arrange on-site protection, and do everything possible to send advance units that might be able to get there sooner than Forlati’s team. Ferraro’s telegram concluded with the sentiments of all: “The whole world of art and culture will be grateful for your efforts.”
*

Ferraro also sent Cagiati an important tip, which he had gleaned from conversations with the sympathetic members of the Kunstschutz stationed in Venice: the contents of the famous Hertziana Library, the Kunsthistorisches Institut, and other archives could be found in an underground salt mine in Kochendorf, near Heilbronn, Germany.

On Thursday afternoon, May 3, the Forlati team departed Venice for the repository at San Leonardo. They entered the city of Trento alongside Fifth Army troops at the moment of its liberation, but it was too late and too dark to proceed farther. The following day, they drove to San Leonardo. According to Forlati, the Kunstschutz representatives—Professors Leopold Reidemeister and Leo Bruhns—were on-site and “mistook us for American reconnaissance . . . the few Italians living there greeted us with celebration.” Relieved that the contents at San Leonardo appeared undisturbed, they proceeded to Campo Tures, arriving on Sunday afternoon, May 6. Captain Michael Mohr and his troops of the 3rd Battalion, 339th Infantry, 85th Division (the “Custer” division), had already secured the Castle Neumelans and its adjacent carriage house at 9 a.m. that morning.
*
Those contents also appeared intact. With both repositories safe, Forlati and the others returned to Venice, their mission complete. Everyone now awaited the arrival of the Monuments officers and the all-important inventory lists.

ON MAY 9,
Gero von Gaevernitz, Allen Dulles’s right-hand man, and Ted Ryan, another of Dulles’s senior OSS officers, accepted Wolff’s invitation and arrived in Bolzano to meet with Wolff at his headquarters.Wolff took the opportunity to honor one of his promises to Dulles by formally transferring control of the Florentine treasures to representatives of the Western Allies, not the Italians to whom they belonged. Gaevernitz and Ryan only had time to visit one of the repositories, so Wolff arranged for his car and driver to take them to San Leonardo.

But Gaevernitz’s trip to meet with the SS general was not a social call. As he noted six days later, “Many hours were spent in private conversations.” His extensive debriefing of both Wolff and Vietinghoff resulted in a fifty-six-page report, “The First German Surrender,” which Dulles and Gaevernitz finished within two weeks. Gaevernitz had one other urgent piece of business: to personally inform Wolff that he would soon be arrested. Allowing a senior Nazi official of Wolff’s stature to remain free was untenable for the Allies. For his part, Wolff understood that this was all part of the arrangement he had reached with Dulles through Max Husmann and Max Waibel. On May 12, having no desire to witness the arrest of a man who had, as promised, handed them “Italy on a silver platter,” Gaevernitz and Ryan departed.

WITH ORDERS IN
hand, a very excited Fred Hartt, accompanied by his driver, Franco Ruggenini, and Professor Filippo Rossi, Director of the Galleries of Florence, departed Tuscany on May 10 for the drive to Campo Tures and San Leonardo. Hartt still had no idea whether his message to Cagiati months earlier had set in motion a chain of events that led to the discovery of the missing works. The passengers in
Lucky 13
headed north, through territory defaced by the war. “Hundreds of square miles of country pitted everywhere by shell holes, and mountainsides showing more shell holes than grass,” Hartt noted. “The trees were shaved into spikes by the passing shells, the farmhouses reduced to sand heaps, the roads torn by artillery and mines, the villages smashed and tottering, reeking sharply of death in the warm air of a spring morning.”