Death In The Mountains: Massacre At Monte Sole

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This episode of We Have Ways of Making You Talk contains content that some might find distressing.

Everybody was shouting, all crying desperately, and I couldn't cry.

I just tried to save myself.

It's different what you feel when you're there, different than just listening to the story.

But entering the cemetery, we were more or less 200, and everybody was pushing.

But I wanted to end up in the center to protect myself in the middle of the crowd.

Everyone was pushing forwards and backwards.

It was like a waving mass.

And in that way, instead of being in the centre, I ended up on the extreme left, close to one of the walls.

Well, these were my thoughts.

That I should jump or hide myself or stay in the mass.

I only wanted to be safe until the very last moment, but there was absolutely no way out.

Well, because I was on the right-hand side.

I was pushing to go to the centre.

And meanwhile, the soldier was now inside the cemetery setting up his machine gun.

He placed it on the the left in the corner and he loaded it with a belt of bullets, right in front of us.

One lady tried to escape because she realized what was going on.

She was shouting, I want to go to my daughter, I want to go to my daughter and they shot her.

And I was still at the edge and the soldier was loading the machine gun, and suddenly, like a jolt, there was an explosion so intense and the blast threw me into the air, so that I arrived in the middle of the crowd with my head down and my legs up in the air.

It had been a grenade.

One of them had thrown a grenade, and so I was then in the middle of the mass of of people, but on the ground.

I was conscious, but I was able to shout.

Nothing.

Then everybody started shouting.

Everyone calling out, crying, who was hurt, crying in despair.

Help me.

I could hear the voices.

Everybody calling, shouting.

And then the machine guns started.

Well, that was the testimony of Cornelia Pacelli about the events at Cassaglia, below Montessoli, on the 29th of September, 1944.

Well, welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk, the second part of our short series about Death at the Mountains, the events at Montessolo in September of 1944.

And, Jim, in the previous episode, we laid out the origins of the partisan group, the Stellar Rossa.

We talked about their lack of political affiliation, their great success, their leader, Lupo.

But also, with that, comes the German decline in tolerance for such activity, essentially.

And at the end of the last episode, we pointed out that the SS were now turning their attention to dealing with the Stella Rosser.

And that account, I think, points us in the direction of the tragic events that are to follow.

Well, yes.

And let me tell you a little bit about Cornelia Pacelli.

And I have to say, of all the many hundreds of interviews I've done with veterans of the Second World War, the one I did with Cornelia in her flat in Bologna in 2005 is one of the ones that just stays with me with utmost clarity.

It was the most extraordinary conversation.

But we did talk a lot about her life beforehand and mountain life and what it was like being, you know, a sort of working-class rural types in Italy at that time.

And she and her family were very typical of the folk living in that area at that time.

She was 18 years old in 1944.

She was born in the aforementioned Gardelletta.

We mentioned that little village just south of Vardo on the Setta Valley on the eastern side of the Montessori Massive.

Although she'd been born in Cavaneziani, which is where the Mussolese family home was.

You remember that was Lupo's family were forced out of the house and their house destroyed in cavernziani and she also knew janni rossi and lupo and succano and the others in the in the stellar rosa all kind of like super localized and her father virginio worked on the railway so he did have a tessera because this is the fascist member card because he has to for his job but they're just again like a lot of people in these eras they're very commsi comms are about or cuzi kuzi as you would say in italy um not political doesn't follow any party the pozzelli family is a family of contadino um they're contadini rather, you know, these share crop of farmers.

And what tends to happen is the oldest son gets the farm and the younger son has to think of something else to do.

So Virginia joins the railways where his brother gets the family farm up in the mountains.

And there's lots of farms all along the valley floor, but there's also a lot up in the mountains.

And the interesting thing about the Montessori Massive is it climbs quite sort of steeply to start off with as it comes either side of the two rivers.

And then it kind of sort of flattens out.

So it's sort of, there's this sort of mountain plain where there are fields and you can farm farm and you could grow corn and have livestock and so on.

And there's these little villages, these little hamlets and little settlements as well and farmsteads where in a farmstead you'd have the main family farm, a few barns, maybe another couple of houses, something like that.

So a handful of families living there.

And then you have the peaks, you know, of Montessoli, Monte Salvare and so on, you know, heading along this massive.

So that's how it works.

And there's up there, there is Cassalia, where there's a church, San Martino, where there's a church.

These are small little villages of maybe, you know, only 100 people, something like that.

And Cassalia and San Martino and Cerpiano, they're all half a mile apart, a mile apart, something like that.

I mean, it's like super close and tight.

This is not a big area.

And towering over them all are the twin peaks of Montessoli, which is the tallest one in Monte Salvare.

And these are wooded slopes.

Right up to the top of Montessoli, it's wooded.

You know, so there's a track that you can go all the way.

There's two tracks that go both sides of Montessoli.

You can walk all the way to the top of the Montessoli.

And I remember walking up Montessoli for for the first time.

It was a May morning before breakfast.

Suddenly there was this massive clatter and a wild boar just ran straight across in front of me.

I nearly kind of jumped out of my skin, as you can imagine.

But that's the landscape.

That's what it's like.

Cornelia's uncle, Giuseppe, he farms the land up there.

And as children,

they would have gone up there for feast days, you know, Pasqua, which is Easter, and Natale, which of course is Christmas, various feast days.

The 15th of August is a very big feast day in Italian culture, for example.

So Cornelia leaves school at 14, she becomes an apprentice seamstress in Bologna, and she cycles daily from Cavaneziani, where their house is, to Vardo, and then takes a train to Bologna.

But once the bombing begins by the Allies in 1943, her boss pleads with her to take her son back to live with her own family.

And so Leandro is taken in by the Pazzellis, but reluctantly, because it's another mouth to feed, because they're already quite a big, big family.

Angelina, who is Cornelia's mother, has their eldest daughter is Cornelia.

Then there's Giuseppina, who's 16.

And then there are the twins who are 10 or 12.

So with Leandro as well, that makes seven in the entire household.

And by June 1944, you know, rationing is pretty severe.

And it's made worse because, you know, throughout northern Italy, because only about 70 to 75% of the prescribed rations are actually being distributed.

And this, of course, is because of the lack of fuel and lack of transport and cuts to power.

And because it's incredibly dangerous to be out on the roads during the day because of marauding Yarbos, you know, fighter bombers and allied planes, but also because of partisans, because partisans are nicking it as well.

You know, the Pizzelli family does okay.

They have chickens and rabbits and they've got a pet lamb as well.

But these extras are definitely starting to dry up by the kind of back end of the summer of 1944.

Yeah.

And meanwhile, the Stellarossa have a dilemma, don't they?

Because basically they've been doing well.

They've been having quite an effect.

Although, as you said in the previous episode, the morale is fragile or brittle is probably the right word for it.

When it's going well, it's going well, but when it isn't, it's not brilliant.

There's about 400 of them.

Well, you can imagine you're Carlo Venturi.

Yeah.

You're sleeping in your cave one night and you're 18 and you wake up in the middle of the night and you suddenly think, what the heck am I doing?

My parents don't even know if I'm alive or dead.

Yeah.

And also the whole thing's predicated on the Allies arriving soon.

So the longer that takes, you know, we started in May, didn't we?

With people joining and the summer's coming and the weather's good.

And now we're into September and you're starting to look at another autumn and the weather tailing off and the Allies still aren't here.

It must have been May, June, when Rome falls.

It must just feel like it's a matter of days, a week, a fortnight, if anything.

But now you're into the autumn.

And he has 400 strong.

They're split into battalions and companies, although not as we have talked about battalions before.

The battalions are eight to 100 people.

Companies are smaller.

So really, his battalions are companies and his companies are platoons, really.

But that's how they're organising themselves.

And he calls his battalion commanders together on the 11th of September.

And he's finally, the previous month in August, he's given in to the pressure from the political part of the resistance to allow political commissars from the CLNAI the CVL and Kumea because he wants support and he's compromised his merry band of free-roaming apolitical get the Germans out by any means possible group and he hates it because they're doing daily political chats but it's it's the price he's got to pay but he doesn't like it.

His solution to this is to suggest that the commissars remain at brigade command, but the partisans with difficult political leanings can take the sort of political strain and act as commissars within their own battalions.

Because obviously, people may have joined his band for different reasons, politically themselves.

So, he's rather than let it be top-down, he's sort of letting it be kind of bottom-up from his own movement.

Well, what he doesn't want is he doesn't want there suddenly to be a communist battalion and suddenly a, you know, because then they'll all start fighting amongst themselves.

So, he wants to try and keep it as apolitical as he possibly can.

That's basically it.

And I think he's absolutely spot on about that.

No, that's a very elegant solution, isn't it?

Yeah.

But the big problem is, you know, he's trying to kind of create a sense of cohesion and unity, but they're getting short of arms.

Yeah.

And unfortunately, this is the Allies are so ruthless with partisans.

They are in France.

You know, either you're useful to the Allies, in which case you'll get arms drops, or you're not useful to the Allies, in which case you'll be hung out to dry.

That happens in France.

It happens here as well, but it happens across Italy because the second front's opened and Operation Dragoon has taken place on the 15th of August.

So now arms are needed to be dropped to southern French Macquis as well.

Yeah.

And they've also decided that they're going to really focus on Tito's partisans in Yugoslavia because there aren't any Allied troops in Yugoslavia.

So if you help the partisans do that, they're doing the job of tying down German divisions there without getting them sent to the Allied front in Italy or the Western Front for that matter.

So from a point of view of the Allies, Yugoslavian partisans are more useful to them than Italian partisans.

Italian partisans are useful, but as ever with the Allies, it's a matter of choices and priorities.

So the amount of supplies that are getting dropped to the Italian partisans is tailed off dramatically.

Alexander has had this sort of massive call to arms at the beginning of June 1944, saying everyone should rise up in the north.

They've done that, and now they're being hung out to dry, is the truth of it.

Yeah.

It's a problem.

They're getting low on ammunition because you're quite free with your ammo when you've got lots of it.

You're not thinking, well, I better hold on to this because you're just thinking these arms drops are going to continue forever.

And they don't.

And then on the 17th of September, Kessering issues his final warning to the Stellar Rossa.

This is specifically to them.

And this is printed in the Bologna newspaper Il Resto del Carlino, and he talks about the actions of bandits that can no longer be tolerated.

He goes, This battle without quarter for the destruction of banditry and delinquency must therefore be carried out by the entire Italian population.

You know, so what he's basically saying is, you need to turn in all these guys, and if you don't, we're going to treat you all as Parisans.

Yeah, that's basically what it is.

And of course, the truth is, the Parthisans can only exist in the mountains with the tacit support of the locals.

Yeah.

Same as Robin Hood.

Yeah, the same as Robin Hood.

And of course, that makes them very vulnerable to reprisal, doesn't it?

It's the truth.

Or vulnerable to a German tactic of reprisal.

It's what you're going to resort to if you're the Germans, isn't it?

You're going to say, well, these people are dependent on the locals, so we're going to punish them via the locals.

It's not a big leap of imagination to know that that's what's going to happen next, is it?

But Lupo's attitude is the Allies are on their way.

We're not going to quit right at the point of victory.

No way.

I mean, what do the partisans and the locals, because the front's closing in?

What do they know about what's going on?

This is the critical thing.

Well, almost nothing.

You know, this is the point.

A lot of it's just sort of guesswork and rumour mill.

And, you know, they can hear the guns going to the, you know, from the south getting closer.

And someone's sort of, you know, managed to get through Allied lines and says, oh, yeah, no, the Allies are coming.

You know, they're on the on the march and all the rest of it.

And, you know, but Canelia Pazzelli is seeing ever more numbers of Allied bombers streaming over.

Well, this is all part of the late summer assault on the Gothic line, you know, and the bombers going over, attacking the Brenna Pass again and hitting those, you know, German lines of supplies and deep in the rear and all the rest of it.

Fifth Army's assault has begun.

So the Gothic line, they're in the Gothic line.

So the Gothic line is, you know, it's in depth.

It's sort of 15 miles deep.

So to the south of them, the battles for the Giogo and Futa Passes is raging between the 13th and the 21st of September.

And the Allies do break through.

So, you know, it's understandable that on Montessolo, they would think that the Allies are kind of almost upon them because they literally are.

And the Stellar Rossa are now pretty much all gathered up on around Montessole.

And Kuma had had even asked Lupo to take command of all partisans in the region to help liberate Bologna.

And Luco actually declines this.

He feels it's too much responsibility, and he wants to be standing shoulder to shoulder with the Allies, not with a bunch of, you know, bedraggled partisans.

You know, he wants to enter the city as Bravo Zones.

This is his great big dream.

This is his vision.

This is the thing that's sort of sustaining him.

And this is why he insists they all suddenly now draw in on the Montessoli massive.

So deployment of them all is much easier.

But of course, it's a high-risk strategy because if the Germans launch a Rastro Elemento, they're all sitting ducks because they're now low of ammo.

It's not like the attack on the 28th of May when they were just flushed with guns and they could see them off.

And in actual fact, General Clark, who's the commander of Fifth Army, is continuing the pressure towards Bologna.

Originally, the main effort was towards Imola, but it's been raining a lot.

And on the Adriatic, General Leese has made a complete hash of Operation Olive.

And so the idea of Fifth Army and Eighth Army converging isn't quite so clear-cut as it was in the pre-battle plan.

And because 8th Army is now bogged down, Clark very sensibly decides to switch the main effort towards Bologna after all and use their control of the Jogo Pass and the Futa Pass as their main kind of axis further north.

And this means that the US 85th Division is pushing down Highway 65, which is the Seta Valley.

This is the Seta Valley Road, with the Guards Armoured Brigade and the 6th South African Armoured Division along the mountains.

So the Guards Armoured is on the flank of, on the left-hand flank of US 85th Division.

And then the South African Armoured Division, 6th South African Armoured Division, is along the mountains and up the Reno Valley on the other side of the Montessoli Massif.

And by the 26th of September, the 6th South African Armoured Division are in Castiglione di Pepoli, which is only 10 miles as the crow flies from Montessoli.

So it is super close.

And the road out of Castiglione di Pepoli then goes all the way up to, you know, San Martino and Cassalia and, you know, those mountain villages.

The South Africa's axis of Avos is that same mountain road that goes all the way along the top.

Not only can they hear the guns, they're effectively in range of them.

Is the thing, aren't they?

If they're 10 miles as the crow flies.

Yeah.

However, on the other side of the hill, 16th Waffen-SS Panzergrenadier Division have taken over this stretch of the front from the 362nd Infantry Division.

So there are some aggrieved and angry Nazis in town.

And in reserve at Rio Veggio with the 16th SS Reckey Battalion is a unit that includes Hauptsturm führer Wilfried Segebrecht.

And Segebrecht keeps a DARI.

He keeps a DARI.

Yeah, and he sums up how Germans feel about partisans.

They know that they're really, really keenly aware of them in Italy.

Their attitude is they've got this thing to deal with at the front that's really, really difficult.

And, you know, even if they get bogged down one place, they've got an answer somewhere else.

They're keeping the pressure and the momentum up on the Germans.

They've got them in the Weiss.

And Segerecht basically, the last thing we need is partisans at our back.

And he's heard that there's 2,000 partisans in the Stellar Rossa.

Yeah, because, of course, everything's always exaggerated.

Well, yes, Lupo's reputation is clearly worth 1,800 men or something, or or 1,600 men.

For us fighting troops on the Gothic line, the question of supplies was a question of life.

Without regular supplies of munitions and food and without the possibility of moving the wounded back, our positions against the Allies could not be held.

So it's a strategic effect that the Stellar Ross are having as far as Segelbecht is concerned from his point of view.

And it's, you know, bad enough that they're in their rear, but now that the lines are pushing onto Montessolo, they're actually moving through as they retreat through absolute

copper bottom partisan territory yep either side of the mountains you know and they're on the top their access to the front is the reno valley and the settle valley and partisans are looking down on them i mean it's completely intolerable clearly uh and and rio veggio is only about two and a half miles from cardoletta amazing this is you know and and three miles from cavaneziani and maybe four miles from vardo they're there they are right you know the stellar rossa are looking down on them effectively well they're seeing and they're seeing the germans retreat so they're seeing 362nd division moving out so they're seeing this ruined division well they think it's retreat they're not retreating it's just a changeover but they but they're seeing these disheveled german troops uh you know i mean the 362nd is not a good high quality um you know this is full of host battalions and and whatnot and you know these are these are troops in german uniforms rather than german troops and and they they're sort of stumbling back and they look absolutely awful and you know the guns are booming only a dozen miles away and they also they capture capture the Stellar Rossa catcher sack of German post, where it's absolutely clear that morale is at rock bottom.

There's huge complaints about Yarbo attacks and weight of Allied firepower.

There's plenty of complaints about partisans as well, by the way.

And of course, word gets out about what is going on, that suddenly it feels like the front is moving.

It feels like things are happening.

And just imagine if you're a civilian in the valleys below.

Yeah.

Well, you think it's coming, isn't it?

But also, you got to get out the way of what's coming because the Allied, if nothing else, the weight weight of allied firepower is something to avoid.

That chat we had a while ago with Willems, wasn't it, about Koenigsberg, about Kalinigrad, you know, that people are scared of shellfire.

Forget the politics.

They're not scared of anything apart from war.

War is coming.

So

what are you going to do?

You're going to get out up into the mountains.

Getting away from gunnery is a priority.

It doesn't matter which side's doing it.

right there's a storm of steel coming to kind of phrase they want to get out of the way so as a result the Pacelli family Virginio Pacelli says right okay We're out of here.

We're going up to the mountains So he takes them all up to the village of Cepiano, which is it'll be safer in the mountains even though the mountains are known to be full of partisans But what choice have these people got?

That's the other thing.

What choice do you have when you can hear the guns 10 miles

less than 10 miles away the thunder of it you know exactly what's coming and you know the Germans are going to fight.

You've got no one to advise you.

You can't ring up the local, you know, the local council and go, um i'm in a bit of a pickle here you are on your own you've you can only make the decision that you think is the best with the very very limited amount of information that you have yeah so he takes them all up to cherpiano which is on a spur directly below montessoli and there there is a nun called sister antoinetta benni and she has arranged a refuge in a large church house known as il palazzo belonging to one of the it belongs to the diocese of of bologna and there's a whole load of other people there's a lot of people there and each of the families are given a single room And Cornelia told me, she said, everyone was calm, we all knew each other.

I had with me a dress and a coat to sew.

I thought I could use my time while we waited for the front to pass.

There's a sort of sense of full security, I would say, in numbers.

You know, they're not the only family that have made this decision to go up into the mountains.

They all have.

And, you know, well, it must be the right decision then, you know, because we've all done it.

So, what are the German plans?

Well, they're pretty ruthless, as you can imagine.

Yeah, they've decided that they can't have trouble in their rear so kesseling knows about stellarossa but um general alfred schlem who's the officer commanding of first fashionbjäger corps which includes 16th ss he's like well we've got to do something about this I can't I can't try to deal with two problems at once so he speaks to Gruppenfuhr Max Simon who's the officer commanding of 16th SS says can you chuck me some spare troops you need to get some spare troops carry out an action against the stellarosser so The people he can spare are the Recke Battalion, 16th SS Reckey Battalion, under Sturmbanfuhr Wolter Reder, who's a one-armed veteran of the Eastern Front.

So I think we know what he might be like.

They've already done, they're already involved in anti-partisan operations.

They're involved in an attack at Bardini Santeren Terenzo in August, where they captured and killed 159 civilians.

So these people, they have form.

It's as simple as that, isn't it?

But Gruppen Fuhrer Simon says going to need more people

for something this big.

So Reda's put in charge and he's given a platoon from the Panzer Regiment 36 for extra firepower and a battalion from an OS regiment from

334 Infantry Division and Flat Regiment and 105.

So it's a classic German drawing people in different people from different places with different track records and different backgrounds, but one clear aim which is to sort these partisans out.

The planning of it is left Ober Sturmban Fuhrer loose from the 16th SS Divisional staff and his brief is absolutely clear.

Clear the mountains entirely from Grizana Mirandi, which is on that road.

You go from Castiglione de Pepeli up to Monte Verghese, and then you go to Grizzana Mirandi, which is a little sort of village, and that's on that road, on the mountain road that then leads up to Montessoli, to Sasse Marconi, which is that village that we talked about when Carlo Venturi first splits from home.

So basically the entire Montessoli massive, which is, as I said, is about kind of three miles by six, something like that, or three miles by five, something like that.

And Luce is helped by a fascist spy, a chap called Lorenzo Mingardi.

So he knows that the mass of the Stellar Rossa is now on on and around Montessoli.

And absolutely nothing is to be left to chance.

There's going to be no repeat of the kind of 28th of May attack which you've seen off.

The attacks are going to, the troops are going to attack in a wide encirclement.

So the idea is to cast a wide net either side of the valley, you know, both from the Seta Valley and the Reno Valley, and just basically go up, like, up like that, and just destroy everything and then converge at the top.

But the main thrust is going to be coming from Raider, Volta Raider's Recce Battalion.

And Wilfried Segebrecht, who is the number number one company commander, is fully briefed.

And he goes, This brigade is known as one of the most radical and fanatical with strong communist tendencies.

He writes in his diary.

And the partisans, they've been told, will be a mixture of British, US, and even German uniforms and include Russian deserters.

Hard and desperate battles, which could be supported and strengthened by the resistance population, are to be expected.

And that's the key bit: the resident population.

Supported and strengthened by the resident population.

In other words, what they've been told is don't discriminate between partisan and civilian.

They're all in it together.

Kill the lot is basically the message.

Yeah.

You know, and it is not spelt out exactly, but they all know that's what they're being told to do.

Destroy everything, then you haven't got a problem anymore.

But you've had people from the Eastern Front anyway, where this is absolutely standard.

They know all about partisans.

They know all about partisans.

They know exactly what that means.

And strong communist tendencies is enough to set off any stout-hearted German who's spent years of indoctrination about communism.

So they're going to start at dawn on Friday the 29th of September.

The Rastro Lamento will commence then.

Two days prior to that, Cornelius sees Lupo and Gianni at Caprara and she's gone to get some look for food and has some apples that she's bought.

And Lupo said to her, so you're here, you're safe up in the mountains.

So he seems to think things are going to be okay.

Yeah,

he's confident to the last.

Yeah, on the 28th, word reaches the Stellarosso that Lagaro is now in Allied hands.

They're coming.

They're only a few miles to the south of the Grisanda Mirande.

Later that afternoon, Lupo disagrees with Elvecchio.

Elvecchio worries that he thinks they're sitting ducks, you know, that they're actually put their head in the noose, so to speak.

And Lupo's being overconfident is what Elvecchio thinks.

And Lupo and Gianni, then they want to go down to Cardotto, which is a farmstead halfway up the mountain, overlooking the Seta Valley, but they decide we're going to stay.

And Lupo, I mean, it's unbelievable.

Lupo says, what's your problem?

Let the Germans come.

Legaro has already been freed.

So he thinks the House of Cards is about to fall in.

He's not suspecting at all that there is a Russia Lemento coming one bit.

And amazingly, Lupo and Gianni, they both have girlfriends at Cadoto and Leone.

And one of the battalion commanders says, wife, so they go down to Cadato late that afternoon to see their partners.

It's extraordinary.

There is a picket.

There are men on duty.

Squad of men are on duty, but they do stay the night with their wives and girlfriends.

Well, Ivechio has been saying you should stay up here in the top of the mountains.

We've got our brigade headquartered up here.

Don't go down to Kadoto, you know, because if the Germans do come, then at least you can see and you can do something about it.

And they go, no, no, no, it'll be fine.

You know, but he does, you know, so Lupus sends out some guards and some pickets and stuff, but he's confident and he and he wants to see his girlfriend.

So there's a sort of, you know, Vivecchio says, well, go and see them, but then come back.

come back at night and you know but it's but it's dark and it's raining and they just think ah what the heck let's just let's stay where we were they stay in kadoto dot dot dot.

Yeah.

And in the next part, well, we'll get to what happens.

I think the direction of travel, you might have figured out what's going to happen next.

Join us for part two for the attack on Kodoto.

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Welcome back to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland for, well, the second half of our second part of Death in the Mountains.

The story of what happened at Montessori at the end of the Italian war.

And actually, it's the fact that there's a little bit to go.

The fact that people think it's the end that has precipitated so much of what's going to happen, isn't it, Jim?

This feeling that it's coming.

Well, yes, because actually, Bologna doesn't fall until April 1944, and nor does Montessoli.

The Guards Brigade are on Montessoli by November, something like that, I think.

And they winter there.

So the Germans start their attack at 5 a.m.

They're on the start line.

They've crossed the Beseta.

The Ost Regiment is in place south of Marzabotto at Serpicano, a little village, as well as a bridge on the Reno Valley side.

The 16th SS Recce Battalion.

Five and number five and number one companies are between Le Cuercha and Morazze, and three and two companies are further along the valley.

So basically, they've got the whole stretch of the Monteconi between south of Vardo all the way to Cuercha,

which is a little hamlet just at the bottom where there's a railway bridge.

And they've all got their defined area where they're attacking.

So the plan is to move up systematically and destroy everything.

And Haufstern Führers Wilfried Segebrecht, who we've mentioned in the first half, his one company is attacking up towards the mountain village of San Martino and clearing farmsteads and partisans on the way.

And so that means that Cadotto, where Lupo and Jani and Leone have been overnight, is literally one of the first farmsteads they come to.

And they're there.

They're approaching Cadotto by 6 a.m.

and it's raining and it's first light and the rain is creating very kind of sort of misty, hazy conditions up there on the mountains.

I mean, you can just picture it, can't you?

I mean, you know, shapes ill-defined, the sort of looming sense of woods and trees and the mountains and, you know, I think the leaves still dripping with water and so on.

I mean,

I'm feeling tense just thinking about it.

Well, if people want to picture exactly how this operation is going to work, and in fact, think about Montessoli,

it is worth popping onto Google Maps or onto Google Earth and having a look, because the challenges of this whole thing just lay themselves bare if you go and look at the map.

Well, I've sent you some maps.

You can see where Cadotto is on the first one.

You know, it's all super, super close.

Yeah, and that is actually the thing I think is really striking about this, is how small this area is, really.

And how, while the terrain worked for the partisans when they were trying to harass German traffic on the railway line and so on, while they were doing that, the terrain worked very well for them.

It's now where they are is working completely against them, is the truth.

Once they're short of ammunition.

But you can see from the map how comparatively close Cadotto is to the Seta Valley.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, compared to San Martino and Cassalia and stuff, you know, this is on the lower of the slopes.

Yeah.

It's that thing that now they have no ammunition, or right now they're lower on ammunition.

They don't have the sort of freedom of movement that they had.

And also, the start of the season, they were into it.

They hadn't been undermined politically and all this sort of stuff.

And here they are now.

This is a much more serious effort by the Germans than the one they faced earlier in the summer.

So there's a lone guard on the track, but the patrols that Lupo had ordered, they're nowhere to be seen.

They've buggered off, basically.

They're with their own girls, or they've just taken...

Probably they're taking shelter because it's raining.

But anyway, the guard

spots figures and he fires two shots and then killed by a volley of fire.

That starts to wake everybody up.

There's the main house at Kodotto, then there's the stables.

Parzan's in the stable below the main house.

They're woken up first.

And two Parsezans, Reno and Colonello, open the stable door and charge out to see a whole load of German troops only 20 yards away.

And they'll be sort of...

grey figures in the in the mist and the and the rain and reno is hit but not killed but he's wounded and colonello manages to fire a magazine of his sten gun and the germans pull back a little bit but with the rest of the bar now opening fire the battle has begun basically and everyone is now awake.

And Jani Rossi is in the main house, and he opens the front door and is met with a burst of machine gun bullets that effectively slices Leone's wife in half.

So she's dead.

There's a pause and Jani shouts out and Colonello replies that they seem to be completely surrounded.

And Janny says, do what you can and we'll try and get to the command post.

And Colonello says, but we're surrounded on all sides.

You won't be able to make it.

And in the farmhouse, this was pandemonium.

as you can imagine.

You know, Lupo's raging around about the lack of patrols going, well, you know, where the hell are they?

How on earth have we been caught short?

But his anger is clearly directed at his own foolishness.

You know, he knows that he's cocked up.

And so he's sort of hurling the blame at others.

Germans are setting up machine guns.

They're firing trace rounds into the barn, which then catches fire.

Lupo and Janny rush to the top of the house and look out.

And they can see German troops pushing on up the slopes either side of Cadotto towards a place called Stecola and up towards the brigade headquarters at Prinaro di Sopra, which is sort of between the church of Cassalia and San Martino, just further up the mountains to the north.

And Gianni says to Lupa, look, I think, you know, and Leone, I think we should make a dash for it.

You know, the light is dim, it's raining, they know the mountains, the Germans don't.

And frankly, they don't have really any choice.

Yeah.

So the three of them go from a door in the house to the hayloft next to it.

And then they jump into a ditch facing a little catermine.

It's like a farmhouse just above Cadotto.

And they run for it.

And Gianni is ahead ahead of the other twos when they're spotted.

And they can hear someone shout out.

There's a crack of rifle fire.

Gianni's hit in the elbow, but he still manages to turn around and fire back, as does Lupo and Leone.

And three Germans are dropped to the ground.

It's not very far to the cover.

And this area here, you have this little open ground around Kadotto and Katermine, but the trees and the shrub are really pretty close.

This is, you know, what are we talking about?

Like maybe 150 yards, they've got a cover, something like that.

And there's more firing from the Germans.

And Jani's hit again in the other arm and he falls over into the mud and bullets are whistling over his head and Leone and Lupo collapse beside him and Jani goes I can't go on and Lupo says in it you know it says stag tranquillo which means in Italian means stay calm Janny kind of pauses a bit he manages to get to his feet they're running blindly they managed to reach the trees and suddenly the firing stops immediately after them but he can't see Lupo or Leone and he just thinks where the hell are they but but there's some other partisans there there's a partisan patrol who help him up to catermine where his wounds are dressed and he's able to rest for a while.

But there's still no sign of Leone or Lupe.

He doesn't know where they are.

You know, it's all kind of, you can imagine, can't you?

You know, it's absolutely pell-mell.

You don't know what's going on.

There's shots firing out.

There's the rain.

You know,

you're wounded, et cetera, et cetera.

But it's absolutely clear that the Germans have been very badly hit too.

And Wilfried Segebret is just below Cadato and he's tending a sergeant that's been hit in the chest.

blood is pumping from the root the wounds and he literally sees this guy die in his arms.

He can't save him.

One of his junior officers is killed too and he'd only joined a few days earlier and you know there's big firefights going on and colonello is amazing he's still holding out and and and ilvecchio are fighting in a in another farmstead further up at cadi durino and segabrecht is actually quite cautious because he he doesn't know the ground he doesn't know what his enemy is um he doesn't know that they're low on ammunition all he knows is that they've got machine guns and submachine guns and a few grenades and that's it so they haven't got heavy weapons and he doesn't want all his men to be be killed.

So he's actually holding off a bit.

So the firefighter Kodotto has got quite a long way to run at this point.

But by this time, the rest of the Germans are slowly kind of moving up the mountain slopes, burning, setting fire to farmsteads and rounding up the women and children.

And of course, that includes Cornelia Pacelli and her family.

So you can imagine how terrifying it must have all have been.

Yeah.

Well, the cry, her father says, wake up, wake up.

The Germans are burning houses.

It's not safe here.

Go take refuge in the church.

And the description at the start of this episode is from Cornelia's memory of what happened in the church.

And you'd think that's a safe place to go.

Well, no, that's the cemetery.

That's the cemetery, which is 100 yards, 75 yards from the church.

No, but my point is, you'd think you'd go to a church, sanctuary in a church.

These are people who take church seriously.

They're not going there to attract attention to themselves.

The civilized people respect churches, no matter what the Nazis might be like.

You go to the church, you'll be safe.

So she goes with her mother, her younger sister, and the younger twins they're all hurried up along the track and it's not far there's an aunt and cousins with them they can hear shooting and see fire and smoke they get to the church at eight o'clock in the morning they do what you would do in the set of circumstances they pray they all pray an hour later there's loud knocking on the door it's german troops shouting there's 202 people in all the rain has stopped they're huddled outside the church there's seven or eight germans from halpsturm fuhr's schmidtkunst three company number three company and they go and talk to the priest Cornelia watches them talk to the priest Don Ubaldo.

And she doesn't understand German, but she gets the gist.

The Germans have found a cache of arms at Cadizola, which is a farmstead between Casali and Ciapiano.

And this was where the 4th Battalion of the Stellarossa have been, but they've slipped away.

Now, of course, the Germans have been told civilians are part of the insurgency.

They're organic to the insurgency.

So she might think, well, you know, we're okay because we're obviously civilians, but the Germans are under pressure.

They're in a hurry.

They're barking orders and they're scaring people.

Donald Baldo, the priest, tries to reason with them.

And then they're stopped near the cemetery, which is 100 yards or so from the church.

A German smashes in the lock of the gate of the cemetery with the butt of his rifle.

Another stands guard with a submachine gun and it starts to rain again.

Jim,

this is awful.

Well, you can just imagine what it was like listening to Cornelia telling us this story.

She told us, I have to say, she sat there telling us this story with just no emotion whatsoever.

You know,

she was in her 70s at this point, and she had time to process this.

She could talk about it.

And that was her point in the opening bit that we read out at the start of the episode.

She said, it's not like me telling you this now.

This was a different, you know, when I was there, I was thinking in a different way.

It was like she just, I don't know, kind of sort of emotionally switched off something so that she could tell us.

You had an interpreter with you, right?

Yeah, I had one of my great, great mates from Durham with me, Roddy.

And Roddy was translating.

And he was just, he was just going, geez.

and I was going what's she saying and she said okay so she just told me this and I'm just sort of going oh

it was just and actually it was very useful in that circumstance it was very useful having a translator because it allowed me to process what she was saying and think about what to ask her next yeah so the the break that the translation allowed me was was useful it was just incredible um and anyway you know i recorded it all then had it all properly recorded in italian then properly translated so so the two guards are left with the people at the cemetery while the others go back towards the church with with the priest.

20 minutes pass, and Cornelia's thinking about getting away.

Her mother's crying.

Cornelia says there's only one reason to open the gate.

I said to myself, this is the end.

There was no reason otherwise for them to have opened the gate.

I kept thinking, if only I could move a few meters, I could jump and hide myself.

They hear a single shot, and that is Don Ubaldo being killed.

So the Germans then return without the priest, and they're shouting, Grauss, Rauss, ushering them into the cemetery.

Cornelia says there was an old lady with an umbrella.

They even gave her an arm to help her inside.

I mean, can you believe it?

Can you believe it?

She said, I can picture this now.

They literally took her elbow and helped her across the threshold of the cemetery.

And this cemetery is walled.

So the walls, I guess, are maybe eight feet high, something like that.

And inside, there is a tiny little chapel.

It's really small, little stone chapel.

It's not big at all.

And lots of sort of metal crosses.

And they were told to go in there and line up against the far end of the wall.

And I guess, you know, it's sort of tennis court size, something like that.

You know, it's really, really not big.

This is just a little village cemetery that's all it is you see these walled cemeteries all over the place in this part of italy it's quite clear on google maps it's marked out with its walls you could see it right there still to this day and now we're at the point of the start of the episode that cornelia described to you so there's been a grenade thrown into the crowd Yes, and this has concussed Cornelia and blown her into the center.

So this actually saves her because she's concussed, but she's not wounded.

And as machine guns open up, she's still on the ground.

So the the bodies start falling on top of her and blood is spreading all over her body and she said i immediately thought this is other people's blood but what if they've shot me and i haven't felt it and at this point she then faints and when she comes to more bodies are piled all around her and she can hear voices and she can hear her mother going cornelia cornelia are you still alive and cornelia goes mama be quiet please don't talk otherwise they'll kill you And her mother goes, the twins are dead.

The twins are dead.

You know, she's absolutely distraught.

She'd been holding the twins to her.

So she's had a row of machine gun bullets has gone across Angelina's legs, Cornelia's mother, but her thighs are the height of her twins' chests.

So that has killed them.

And Cornelia says again, please, mama, don't talk.

And her mother then calls out to Cornelia's sister, Gisipina.

But then another shot rings out and Giuseppina then begins to cry.

And she goes, my head, my head, I'm hurt.

And again, Cornelia urges them to be quiet.

And then her sister calms down.

The bullet has only grazed her head.

And they then wait there for a long time, several hours.

And Cornelia is just listening she just doesn't dare move an inch or barely breathe and not until about four o'clock that afternoon bear in mind this is happening about 9 30 in the morning does she feel it's safe to move so she's been there well over six hours and she said to me dead bodies are really heavy but eventually i managed to free herself and she was totally completely drenched topped of her hair her skin everything her whole clothes drenched in blood and she just didn't know what to do so gigi and maria the twins were dead her mother's legs had been nearly you know been shot across.

There was no one around.

Her sister was traumatized and bleeding badly with her bullet graze.

Cornelia managed to lift her mother and lean her against the wall.

And then using some of the material that she'd had to do her sewing, she ripped it up and tore tourniquets around the legs of both her mother's legs, which undoubtedly saved her from a much earlier death.

And then she said, I'm going to try and try and get help.

And she heads towards Terpiano, but she sees troops around, so she hurries down the other side of the valley to guard a letter instead.

And she's barefoot.

And unfortunately, the massacre at the cemetery has been repeated all over the mountains in the villages and hamlets and farmsteads.

And they are being systematically cleared.

Men, women, children herded into barns.

and shot or burns.

And another guy I got to meet was a guy called Francesco Perini.

And he'd been 17 at the time.

And his family had lived in the same house in Gardaletta since 1770.

And when I met him, he still lived there.

And I went there and met him at his house, beautiful house.

And they had also headed up into the mountains at the very end of August.

And Francesco had tried to escape to Montessoli the previous morning because he was 17.

His family said it's the young men and the older teenagers that they're going to be after.

So head to the mountains.

So he'd try and go, but he couldn't get away in time.

So he was, see, he was hiding in some sort of woods, a little bit of woods and thick shrubbery close to Cerpiano.

And he watched as the troops then spread through the village, clearing all the houses, including the nine members of his own family who were then led to Cerpiano's chapel, which is tiny.

And then he sees a soldier lobbying a single grenade and hears a whole load of screams.

But most of them in the chapel are still alive, including Sister Antoinette Benny.

But troops are guarding them and they guard them all day.

And Francesco is kind of frozen to spot the whole of that day, the 29th of September, watching it all, just doesn't dare move.

And all the rest of that day and into the night, the guards are continuing to watch the chapel.

And he just doesn't feel he can move from where he is.

And there's 49 Italian civilians inside.

But meanwhile, the battle at Cadotto is also over by the evening, but a number of the Potisans have managed to escape.

But those who haven't, obviously, are all killed.

And that includes a number of civilians, including Leone's wife.

But as I said earlier, Wilfield Segabrecht has lacked the heavy weapons.

And so he does withdraw his troops in the evening.

And this gives Colonello, who's still alive, and a few others a chance to escape.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cornelia, meanwhile, reaches Gardelletto and sees German, so then goes to the family home in Cavaneziani.

But it's locked, of course, as it was when they left.

So she goes to the farm a few hundred yards away where they got milk and where they'd left their pet lamb, and that they find the lamb dead, but also the farmer and wife killed as well.

And at this point, having kept calm all day, she finally loses the plot.

God.

This incident.

It is interesting that it's not better known, Jim, because this has got all the elements of all the stories we, you know, that you said it's orador, Ledice, you know, it's got all those elements in it.

And yet, and yet, yes, the Italian theatre is a forgotten or a neglected theatre, but this is as appalling and dramatic and tragic and brutal as

anything anywhere, right?

It's extraordinary.

And up on Montessoli, which from Montessoli, you can look down on the cemetery.

So Virginio, Cornelia's father, has been wandering through the scrub, deranged with grief.

He'd seen it all.

And he tried to persuade the partisans to do something because they'd seen them being marched down the road from the church.

He says, this is what's going to happen.

We've got to do something.

We've got to do something.

The partisans go, it's impossible.

We just can't.

You know, we'll all get killed.

So he sees the massacre and he sees that mountain community, which he's known all his life, being destroyed.

Yeah.

And at midnight, he scrambles down and goes to the cemetery.

But by this point, it's locked again.

The Germans have locked the gate.

And he thinks they're all dead.

All he can just see in the moonlight are these bodies.

And in fact, actually, Giuseppina is alive and is tending his wife at that point, who is now by this point slipping in and out of consciousness.

So Virginia thinks they're all dead and slips back into the night.

He's absolutely losing his mind.

And this terrible day for this centuries-old community is just horrendous.

But the next day, Saturday,

the 30th of September, it's not over.

Angelina Pazzelli is lying, dying.

She tells her daughter, Gisapina, that she dreamed her husband had been there.

By this point, she's increasingly fretful during her conscious moments and calling out for Cornelia.

And Gisapina goes, no, you know, Papa wasn't here.

You know, he wasn't here, but he had been.

And it's not clear whether it was just a dream and she just imagined it or whether she really had seen his face in the...

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, right.

Oh, it's just, it's so heartbreaking.

It's just, it's just, it's so upsetting.

But Cornelia is alive.

She'd wandered aimlessly and then waded across the setter.

And as she's wading across, shots ring out and hit the water.

But she calls out and cries for help.

And one of her father's colleagues appears and curries her into a hut in the woods.

Says, God, just keep out of the way.

Shut up, you know.

And they won't.

And Cornelia begs them to help her, but they won't.

They go, absolutely no way.

We're not leaving here.

We're not going to let you go either.

So they say, stay the night and the morning, we'll go and help.

But the following morning, they're back.

You know, they're back clearing it up, combing through the mountains, setting fire to remaining houses.

Jani Rossi is still alive, actually, but still no sign of Lupo.

And Jani is now on Monte Salvaro.

His wounds are serious, but they're not life-threatening.

The troops have also returned to Cepiano, so Francesco Perini is still stuck in the woods and he's still got his eyes on the chapel.

And then more troops, German troops arrive, and the door of the chapel is opened and all of them are gunned down.

So he sees them just open up with a machine gun at the hip and boom, that's it.

And then the men go to the schoolhouse and start playing the piano.

And he's just sat in this shrub clutching his head, you know, having witnessed nine members of his family being killed.

And then he hears these tones of the piano sort of trilling out over the air.

I mean, can you imagine it?

And it's not until Tuesday, the 3rd of October that Cornelia is finally allowed to leave the hut.

So she hurries up to Cherpiano and sees someone scavenging for food.

It's a young girl who's covered in blood.

And And she goes, Cornelia, is that you?

And Cornelia hurries over and learns that Gisapina is still alive, but that her mother had died two days earlier on the 1st of October.

So, you know, and this is the awful thing is because the tourniquets, that would have probably saved her.

You know, she probably, something could have been done, but

maybe she didn't really want to survive after this.

I don't know.

But anyway, she finds her sister and they go to a refuge in San Mamante, which is a farmstead a few miles to the north.

And a week later, their father finds them.

And Cornelia says, you know, when he saw us, he laughed and cried of pain and of happiness, but he seemed a different person.

He said it was painful.

I really suffered seeing him like that.

And he told them that he was going to try and find some food and left them.

But no sooner did he do that, he was picked up by the German troops and pressed gang into the organization top.

God.

And a few months later, he died too from exhaustion and broken heart.

You know, so 772 people are killed over the three days on Montessoli, which, which, you know, in terms of numbers, that Trump's Ladici and Orador.

191 killed in the cemetery cemetery at Cassalia, all civilians.

And actually, I knew an officer in the Royal Natal Carboniers, a guy called Kendall Brooke, and he told me he never, when I interviewed him, he never heard of the Montessoli massacre.

And he said, you know, it was really horrible.

We were on this road, we were approaching this village called San Martino, which had been destroyed.

And he said, we came across this barn and there were loads of rotting bodies in there, including pregnant women.

And that was that was in a barn at San Martino.

God.

216 partisans killed, two-thirds of those on Montessoli.

The Stella Rosso was finished.

But if you think about it, you know, that's less than half.

Yeah.

So most of them are able to get away because they know where to go.

They know their targets.

So they know to kind of run a mile.

They know that hiding in a church isn't going to cut it.

And, you know, the Germans aren't going to go up to the top of Montessoli.

They're not going to go up to the Monte Salvari.

They, you know, they're just not.

And Jani manages to sneak through to the Allied lines and packed off to hospital.

And later, he joins Italian forces attached to the Allies and does help liberate Bologna just as Lupo had imagined.

But of Lupo, there is absolutely no sign at all.

Hmm.

And we'll come to Lupo another time.

Well, we will come to Lupo, yeah.

What happens to him?

Yeah.

It's a great success for the Germans, isn't it?

They've knocked out the Stellar Rossa, so they haven't got that problem in their rear as they prepare to defend Bologna.

There's 174 buildings destroyed, seven ammo dumps destroyed, papers, reports, passwords, typewriters.

Printing press is discovered and captured.

315 cows are taken, 14 horses as well.

And Segebrech, he's, I mean,

this quote is,

well, I don't know.

It's unbelievable.

It also feels quite irrelevant, doesn't it?

The battles were made much more difficult due to the malicious methods used by the partisans, such as shooting from ambush positions, from holes in cellars, haystacks, dugouts, and caves.

Some of these places were partly occupied by women and civilians, even by children, in order to trick us into believing they were harmless.

I mean, haystacks occupied by women and children?

Well, that's just nonsense.

It's a house.

Malicious methods of partisans shooting from ambush positions.

I mean, you know, it's a war.

Since when has hiding and shooting been, you know, malicious?

I mean, you know, it's of course it's malicious, it's a war.

When you've people so brutalized the German army, the Wehrmacht and the SS, you know, we're five years into their Europe-wide brutalization as they take, they put Europe to the sword and scorched earth everywhere.

And it is this thing.

The Eastern Front is the norm.

The Western Front is the exception.

And so when the East methods from the East visit the West, they feel extra shocking, don't they?

It's perhaps part of what's happening here.

Yeah.

Also, well, I think it's sort of because this is Italy and Italy is the place of the Renaissance and it's the place of Florence and the Duomo and Tuscany and Venice and all that amazing art and Botticelli and

Michelangelo and sophistication and this beautiful food and amazing wine.

And, you know, these are on our doorstep and this doesn't happen here.

And yet it does.

With that, the Germans are the most cultured people in europe as well you know that's the thing that's always the question mark about how does that happen in the supposedly the most advanced and clever country in the in europe this last half of this episode i've found absolutely harrowing personally harrowing it's unimaginable for me i find it incredibly upsetting i must just tell you i'll just end on this thing i know we're going to talk about this a little bit in the the next wash-up episode but I first went there in May 2005 and I got there on an afternoon I was on my own and and it's May you know this is this is a time of birdsong right and this is this is an era where birdsong should be plentiful not a bird you couldn't hear a single sound and I walked up to Cassali and I got into the cemetery I'd already interviewed Cornelia at this point so I knew her story and there was the cemetery and as I got there there was an old man delivering a reef a green white and red reef Italian flag

He asked me what I was doing there.

And I said, well, I've come to kind of pay my respects in my very, very broken Italian.

And he was really, really touched and he said no one remembers much outside of here and then he left and drove off in his little fiat and i was left alone in that in that spot and and the sun was shining it was the most beautiful gorgeous afternoon i looked out of this valley you could see the setta valley from that side of the the mountains montessoli above me and i went into the uh i went into the cemetery the bullet holes are still there those metal crosses where you can still see the holes from that moment it's just unbelievable and i should also say that cassalia the church is a complete ruin.

I mean, all those villages, Cerpiano, Cassalia, San Martino, ruined.

It's like San Pietro.

They've just gone.

They're gone forever.

Never rebuilt.

No one ever lived there again.

It's

a haunting, haunting place.

And more so because it's so beautiful.

It's absolutely got me there.

And it's the reason why I write a lot about civilians in the war is because of that.

It's because it's not military history.

This is history of war that we're talking about.

That you and I talk about when we talk about this.

We do talk about military history, but it's conflict.

And conflict, when it's in a built-up area like Italy or France or anywhere or Ukraine, affects civilians.

And it becomes a story of everybody.

And it just really, you know, I was young in my career then and I didn't know anything about anything.

And it just absolutely struck with me.

And the fact that I was lucky enough to interview Janni Rossi, Carlo Venturi also escaped incidentally, Gastoni Scarghi.

Francesco Perini, Janni, of course, it was just amazing, this tough old guy who'd been the second in in command of the standard roster.

And of course, Cornelia.

Oh, my God.

I mean, this stuff doesn't leave you.

You know, it is absolutely there like it was yesterday in a way that other interviews have come and gone.

This is a very personal story to me.

Well, thanks for sharing it with all of us, Jim.

We are going to return to this a little in our next episode, which will be, because in a way, what you want to do is have a think about this and come back to it, actually.

Well, and that's what we're going to do.

That's exactly what we're going to do.

Anyway, thanks, everyone, for listening.

Thanks, James, for taking us through that extraordinary and awful story.

We'll see you again very soon.

Cheerio!

Cheerio.

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Alistair Campbell here from the REST is Politics.

Now, we've just released a series on one of the most controversial and consequential people of the past 50 years, Rupert Murdoch.

I think you can argue that he is the most consequential figure of the second half of the 20th century.

He holds power longer than anyone else in our time.

And it's meaningful power.

It's phenomenal power.

Power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.

This is where he becomes not just a newspaper owner, he becomes a major newsmaker.

Fuck Dacre publish.

There is always a premium on bringing him gossip.

I don't know what you mean by down market and up market.

That is so English, class-ridden, snobbery when you talk like that.

How you get it doesn't make any difference.

Actually, to be perfectly honest, whether it's true or not doesn't make much difference.

There is a massive, massive scandal brewing.

This was industrial, illegal activity, and that I think is what really cuts through to the public and thinks you people are really really bad.

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This is the most humble day of my life.

There is no Donald Trump without Fox News.

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