A journey of thousands of miles, around the forbidding bulge of West Africa, up
the Atlantic coast of Portugal, across the Bay of Biscay, headed for the Channel, for the North Sea,
and then for England, Lincolnshire, and home. This is enough to fill even the most stout-hearted
of us with terror, but for Major Jim Almonds, setting sail from Ghana on a self-built craft,
it was the culmination of a long-held dream – a dream that had refused to die.
Even the boat upon which Major Almonds sailed was the product of a dream. Taken prisoner at
Benghazi, Libya in 1942, the SAS soldier endured months of brutal treatment at the
hands of his Italian captors before being shipped across the Mediterranean to Europe, and to Italy.
In 1943, after escape and recapture, Major Almonds found himself locked
in a room the size of a toilet. After assaulting an officer during his attempt
at liberty, he was placed in solitary confinement, awaiting a death sentence.
In a battle to keep his body fit and his mind sharp, he did daily push-ups,
sketched his thoughts in diary entries on the wall, and designed a sea-going craft in his head.
Now, as his fully realised vision of a craft pulled away from the Ghanian coast,
Major Almonds felt the sea breeze upon his face and understood the perils that lay ahead
of him. But – far, far more important than this – he understood that he was going home.
Jim Almond's story is an exceptional one, but it is not wholly unique. Stories of
Allied prisoners of war in Germany, or in Japanese camps in South East Asia, are well
told and have been the subjects of countless books, movies, and TV shows over the years.
But for the many thousands of POWs held in Italian camps, often brutalised by their fascist guards,
their stories are almost forgotten. Few people have lived lives like that of Jim Almonds,
but many would have experienced the horror of the Italian camps in just the same way he did.
In this video, we're going to be shining a light on these experiences and understand
just why Allied soldiers dreaded Italian POW camps during World War II.
At least 75,000 Allied prisoners of war were held in a network of camps that spanned the
length and breadth of Italy. From the Piedmont in the northwest to the Yugoslav border in the east,
and as far south as Brindisi in the heel of Italy's boot, and Castelvetrano on the
island of Sicily, Allied soldiers passed through a complex system of detention.
This system included dozens of P.G. prigionieri di guerra, prisoner of war facilities,
as well as military hospitals, transit camps, and work camps. These locations existed alongside the
C.C. campo di concentramento, or concentration camps, designed for Italy's civilian population.
C.C.s also served as Fascist Italy's contribution to the Nazi's Holocaust.
In some cases, the infrastructure was already in place. The savage
fighting along Italy's Alpine front during World War I made POW camps a necessity.
Campo 78 at Sulmona had seen the detention of Austrian prisoners from Isonzo and Trentino
during the First World War and was reopened some two decades later to process up to
3,000 British and Commonwealth officers. South African author, Uys Krige,
would write about his experiences at Sulmona in his 1946 book, The Way Out – Krige escaped from
the camp after his Italian guards deserted in 1943, slipping away into the hills with
hundreds of his fellow prisoners before German forces could take control of the situation.
A map recovered from a war diary kept by the Italian Royal Army's General Staff outlines
segregated camps for French, English, Greeks, Yugoslavs, and Russians, but we know that camps
were often segregated further. Aquafredda and Vercelli, for example, were predominately for
Australian and New Zealander troops, while Grumello del Piano held mainly Cypriot and
Indian troops. Others were barely segregated at all, like Servigliano, which was home to soldiers
from France, Cyprus, the US, Yugoslavia, Malta, and Greece, among other far-flung locations.
It was in this complex network of military detention that soldiers like Jim Almonds,
along with thousands of others, were swallowed.
Some would escape, but more would serve out their time under the watchful gaze
of their captors until Italy fell to the Allies. A huge number would suffer extreme
treatment along the way, and many would not survive to see the end of the war in Europe.
The fact that inmates worked so hard to escape from prison camps, often putting their own lives
in grave danger, doesn't really tell us much. While the war still raged,
many soldiers – particularly SAS men like Jim Almonds – felt a strong sense of duty.
They wanted, or even needed, to escape, and to keep fighting,
to serve the war effort. POW could have been sleeping on featherbeds
and receiving four-course meals at dinner time, and there would still have been escape attempts.
In most cases, though, prisoners of war were not sleeping on featherbeds and were not being
generously fed. Records from Italian camps show us that the situation across fascist-held territories
was dire, with prisoners subjected to wretched treatment and forced to endure pitiful conditions.
Italian POW camps were frequently overcrowded, with inadequate food,
water and medical supplies spread across thousands of inmates.
There was also a lack of infrastructure – some camps may have been left over from the
First World War, but this doesn't mean they were ready to handle the massive influx of prisoners
from campaigns in Africa and across Europe. Sanitation and shelter were sorely lacking.
Despite the fascist obsession with discipline and rigid social structure, camps were often
disorganised and poorly run. The result of this was chaos and violence on a serious scale. Neglect
was also an issue – the Italian government was simply not that bothered about the welfare of
the soldiers they captured in the field. As camps sprung up – and filled up – across the country,
they needed vast amounts of resources and support; resources and support that simply did not come.
And then there was the brutality. Physical violence, forced labour, and abuse in many
different forms were often deployed to control and intimidate prisoners. The story of Major
Almonds gives us a glimpse of what was going on behind the barbed wire and the sentry posts,
but there are many other stories – and many other instances of abuse – just like this one.
Let's explore this in a bit more detail.
After the static slaughter of the Eastern and Western Fronts of World War I,
the Second World War was an enormous departure. The slaughter was still there,
and so was the misery, but the rigid battle lines gave way to a far more mobile brand of warfare.
The German Blitzkrieg is the most famous example, but Montgomery's push westwards from Egypt after
El Alamein, and the American island-hopping surge through the Pacific in the final year of the war,
show us just how critical movement and strategy had become in modern combat.
This movement and strategy meant sweeping victories for some, and catastrophic defeats
for others. The arrival of Rommel in North Africa in 1941 is something we've spoken about before on
this channel, but the ruthless efficiency with which he ran his units was a crucial
factor in reversing Allied gains and driving British and Commonwealth forces back east,
isolating the 33,000 man garrison at Tobruk. When Tobruk fell on June 21st,
1942, the influx of prisoners into Axis camps was immense.
One of these camps was P.G. 54 – Passo Corese, Fara in Sabina – some 22 miles from Rome.
Around 4,000 prisoners were placed here in two compounds of tents. Men were held here in abject
conditions, as the camp simply could not cope. P.G. 54 was eventually reorganised as a transit
camp after the Italian Armistice in September 1943, but the inmates would endure many months
of overcrowding and sub-human treatment before they were evacuated. As a grim twist to the tale,
a German train evacuating prisoners from P.G. 54 on January 28th 1944 was struck by Allied
bombers while crossing the Orvieto Bridge in Umbria – around half the 1,100 prisoners
either perished in their burning railroad cars or fell to their deaths in the river below.
The tents of Passo Corese, with their poor sanitation and inadequate shelter,
were far from a unique feature in the camp network.
POWs across the country were forced to battle brutal summer temperatures
and withering winters with only a thin sheet of canvas to protect them. And then we've got P.G.
12, the Candeli / Vincigliata camp near Florence. While only a handful of prisoners were held here,
the crumbling structure of a 13th Century castle provided little comfort for the inmates.
Up and down Italy, buildings were hastily repurposed into makeshift prisons.
P.G. 21, Chieti, had been a convent. P.G. 49 at Fontanellato, near Parma:
an orphanage. The secure hospitals of Bergamo,
Lucca, and Altamura, had been almshouses, monasteries, and schools, respectively.
While these buildings might have offered some protection against the elements, they were often
woefully under-resourced, and the swift conversion of civilian infrastructure into military prisons
frequently left much to be desired. Of course, it was the prisoners who would pay the price.
The Italian military is often portrayed as one of the great failures of the Second
World War. This is almost certainly grossly unfair. Italian units fought with valour and
dignity in European and African theatres throughout the war, and almost 320,000
Italian soldiers gave up their lives in battle.
What is true, however, is that Italy was not the staunch ally that Nazi Germany hoped it would be.
Time and time again, Italy's naval, air, and land forces did not secure their objectives,
essentially having to be bailed out by Nazi units.
This happened in Greece in 1940, when invading Italian battalions were driven out of the country,
leaving the Axis oil infrastructure in Romania dangerously exposed. Eventually,
it would be the Germans that overran and occupied Greece. This also happened in North Africa,
where the Italians were almost destroyed before Rommel and his Desert Rats arrived.
Poorly led, and seriously ill-equipped, the Italians just could not muster the
same devastating power as the Germans. The Italian military was overstretched and
repeatedly outclassed, while, back home, this same military also had to oversee its prison camps.
This led to a breakdown in command that meant chaos and violence in the camps themselves,
as guards and commanders became unaccountable to those higher up the chain. When North Africa
finally fell in 1943, and the invasion of mainland Italy began, the fleeing Italian guards basically
left prisoners to fend for themselves until German units could reach the abandoned camps.
Neglect of prisoners was already a significant issue even before Allied troops landed in Italy.
In 1932, the future dictator outlined his vision for the fascist future of Italy – how Italians
should live, how Italians should govern, and how Italians should sacrifice all for their nation.
And, crucially, how Italians should fight.
"Fascism carries this anti-pacifistic attitude into the life of the individual," Mussolini wrote.
"'I don't care a damn' – the proud motto of the fighting squads scrawled by a wounded
man onto his bandages. [This] is evidence of a fighting spirit that accepts all risks".
This was not a regime of compassion, not even for its own people. For its enemies,
the outlook was even bleaker. Why should the Italians divert valuable time, resources,
and money, in looking after those who had taken up arms against them – those who had
killed their brothers and compatriots? For the Fascist government, and for the
military who supported this government, the answer was simple: they shouldn't. And so
prisoners were left to suffer in their camps or worked to death in fields and factories.
Jack Byrne was an impressive soldier. His actions in France and then in North Africa
caught the attention of Captain David Stirling, who was putting together a new
outfit that would change the way wars were fought forever. "L" Detachment, 1st Special
Service Brigade consisted of only elite troops, brave, resourceful, and incredibly well trained.
This unit would become the 1st SAS Regiment, and Jack Byrne would be one of its original members.
March 15th, 1942, and Byrne is already a veteran of numerous SAS raids behind enemy lines.
Tonight, Byrne is in a four-man team, commanded by the legendary Blair “Paddy “ Mayne.
Their target – the Berca airfield to the south of Benghazi. Just after midnight,
the team begins laying their charges, targeting anti-aircraft guns, petrol dumps,
and then a line of Axis planes that sat unattended on the airfield. In the chaos that followed,
Byrne found himself alone. With bombs detonating and the airfield descending into panic,
Byrne struck out for the second rendezvous point, convinced he was too late to make the first.
It was a miscalculation, and Byrne was faced with a 200 miles solo hike back to Allied lines across
the burning desert. Five days later, and 70 miles from safety, he was picked up by a German patrol.
"The German officer] stopped about three feet away... his pistol within inches of
my face. As I yanked my revolver from its holster and flung it on the ground,
the German... drew back his pistol... then fired point-blank into my face. I fell,
half-stunned, face down in the sand, blood spurting from my nose and temple".
Miraculously, Byrne survived what should have been certain death, but his torment was far
from over. Italian officers, delighted at the capture of one of the ghosts of the night who
blew up their airfields and sowed havoc behind their lines, were out for revenge. The wounded
Byrne was beaten savagely, and repeatedly, by the Italians, who were in no mood for mercy.
Byrne would eventually be detained in Germany, before escaping to Sweden and returning to Britain
in the bomb hold of a Mosquito aircraft. As Allied troops returned to France in 1944,
Byrne would be with them, back to finish the war that had already taken so much from
him. Decorated and celebrated after his wartime actions, Jack Byrne passed away in 2007 aged 85.
War crimes, abuses of power, horrific acts of brutality – this was a grim
reality for all armies in the Second World War, both on the Axis and the Allied side.
However, spurred on by the fiery rhetoric of a text like Mussolini's Doctrine of Fascism,
the methods of the Italian forces rank among the most chilling. Giovanni Ravalli
was a respected policeman in postwar Italy, noted for his dogged pursuit of criminals,
and for his love of gardening and peace and quiet during a well-earned retirement.
Few who knew Ravalli could believe that this was the same man who used pliers to rip the teeth from
the head of Greek police officer Isaac Sinanoglu in 1941. At Ravalli's hands, Sinanoglu was dragged
behind a horse and then tortured to death over several agonising days. Ravioli's wartime
escapades included raping prisoners and ordering his men to pour boiling oil over their captors.
Surely, this could not be the same Ravalli who served as an advisor to the prime minister, or who
caught the thieves who stole a Caravaggio painting from a Palermo church in 1969? And yet, it was.
From Greece to Yugoslavia, from Libya to Ethiopia, the reports of Italian war crimes are startling.
General Rudolfo Graziani massacred entire communities in Italy's African colonies,
while the soldiers serving under General Mario
Roatta in the Balkans nicknamed him the Black Beast after repeated atrocities.
One of Roatta's soldiers wrote: "We have destroyed everything from top to bottom without sparing
the innocent. We kill entire families every night, beating them to death or shooting them."
The civilian death toll at the hands of Roatta's units is believed to be in the tens of thousands.
In Montenegro, the troops of General Alessandro Pirzio Biroli murdered dozens
of civilians and partisan prisoners in the Pljevlja massacre. In Croatia,
around 100 civilians were massacred at Podhum. The Italian occupation of Albania resulted in
28,000 dead, while at least 3,500 bodies were recovered from the Rab concentration
camp in Dalmatia – just one of the countless similar camps across Italy's territories.
World War Two was a conflict marked by human suffering. From the Bataan Death
March to starvation at Leningrad, and from the concentration camps of eastern Europe
to the POW camps of the Axis powers. The Italian forces of World War Two
fought across Europe and North Africa and encountered prisoners from many nations.
However, the Italian government was simply not up to the task of treating them with dignity.
While this same can be said of many nations throughout the conflict,
The question at the heart of today's video is, "why were Italian prisoner-of-war camps
so feared by Allied soldiers?" The answer, as is so often the case within war is complex and
defies a simple explanation. The Italian infrastructure was not prepared for the
influx of so many prisoners leading to makeshift and haphazard accommodations,
some going so far back as the Great War. The lack of strong leadership meant that
mistreatment ran rampant across some camps, but was tightly controlled in others,
and as the Italian war effort collapsed confusion and neglect reigned supreme among the camps.
After months at sea, Major Jim Almonds made it home. He would live to see his beloved
Lincolnshire again, he would see his family, and he would grow old with stories to tell.
Jim Byrne, with his own daring tales of escape, fortitude, and cunning, would achieve the same,
living to old age, but never quite shaking the horrors he'd experienced as one of the
original SAS soldiers. Isaac Sinanoglu would not be so lucky. Nor would hundreds
of men who perished on the Orvieto Bridge in 1944, left for dead by their fleeing guards,
all fell victim to the great scourge of POW camp deaths during World War II.
What do you think? What were the root causes behind the failure of Italy's prisoner-of-war
camps? Why are these stories so often forgotten? Let us know in the comments.