Death In The Mountains: Italy's Robin Hood

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Partisan Brigade Stellarossa Headquarters.

Order of the day, number one.

Comrades of the Stellarosa.

The national government has granted to patriots the definition of soldiers of the regular army.

I say this to you.

This is not enough for us, men of the SR.

We must show that we are the first and best soldiers of the new army in a new democratic Italy.

But we must be worthy of our position.

Now, more than ever, we must give tangible proof of our faith, our capabilities, and our worth.

We are about to enter into a crucial phase of our fight.

Now that the hated Hun, beaten on every front by the glorious Allied troops, has been driven back into its den by our bayonets, awaiting extermination.

Now that the servile fascists cling with criminal desperation to their sinking ship of despotism, our job is to shear off their blunted talons.

As for midnight of the 25th of May, we are condemned to death.

Today we must grit our teeth once and for all and demonstrate that the execution forces never existed, that the only men who were ever going to die were the Nazi fascists, and that if death ever claims us, it will only be on the battlefield, face to face with the enemy.

Our brigade has already overcome tough trials with recognition and praise.

More strife awaits us, perhaps even more bitter strife, and I am sure that, reinforced by our past successes, we will overcome any future difficulty.

It is, therefore, necessary, now more than ever, that each and every one of us observes and adheres to the regulations that I have often repeated, and am again reiterating.

Furthermore, I hereby transform those regulations into precise orders to be observed indiscriminately by everyone.

1.

Utmost discipline to be observed in even the most minor daily routines.

2.

Absolute subordination to your superiors, who will gain strength from your trust and esteem, and thus be able better to face the responsibilities and duties of their rank.

3.

Comradeship, which shall not only be borne because of the necessities of communal life, but shall be felt down to the smallest detail, and shown above all in an ambience of reciprocal support.

Thus, united, as never before, we will concentrate on the last bulwarks to destroy them and earn for ourselves the future of peace and honest toil which we all strive for.

Comrades of the SR, on the eve of our last battles and sacrifices, I wish you good luck.

Let us always remember that Italy is still divided and that everyone is watching us with admiration and trusting hope.

Great things are expected of us.

We must not disappoint.

Our dead wish it.

The Commander of the Brigade, Major Mario, May 1944.

Well, welcome to We Have Ways to Make You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland, the Second World War podcast of choice, of course.

And this is our two-part series that we've called Death in the Mountains, isn't it, Jim?

And what are we talking about today?

Well, we are talking about partisan activities in northern Italy, and we're talking about the biggest single civilian massacre in Western Europe outside of the camps.

It wasn't Orador, it wasn't Ledici, it was Montessoli at the end of September 1944.

And it's a subject which I have been living with for the past 25 years and a subject in which I've gone into in enormous detail.

I've walked that ground many, many times.

I've written a novel based on it.

I've written a film script based on it.

It's one that is very, very close to my heart.

I met a number of the people that were involved, and it's just the most astonishing story.

It's, you know, a warning.

I think you're all right in episode one.

Episode two is quite grim.

It has to be said.

But people ought to know about this.

You know, this was terrible, things were happening in Italy as the Allied forces were kind of heading their way north.

I mean, it's very easy to just assume it was just the battle lines.

Terrific battle was going on behind the world.

Lots and lots of partisan bands sort of emerging, but for me, there is only one, and that's the Stella Rossa.

These guys were total dudes.

And Major Mario was Mario Mussalesi, who's nom de guerre, who's actually his nickname from childhood, was Lupo, which means wolf.

And he's an incredibly alluring and charismatic character.

and more about him later on as we go through.

But it's a stunning part of the world.

I mean, really, I mean, it's just amazing.

What happens in Italy though is essentially once the the fascist government has collapsed and then a new puppet fascist government is is installed at Salo under Mussolini, you essentially have a vacuum, don't you?

An anarchic vacuum that develops.

With the the Germans under great pressure from the Allies of course, this feeling that the war is going to tip into victory, no one quite knows when it's going to end, there are scores to settle,

very much implied in that communique.

There are lines to be drawn for the future Italy to come.

And that essentially a kind of a state of civil war exists in the enemy rear, as it were, in Italy.

Absolutely.

And what we're going to do in this first episode is we're going to look at the bit of the background of this.

We'll look at the bit of the background of the politics of what's going on in northern Italy, the kind of sort of split between what control the Italians have, what control the Germans have, which is frankly is 99% of it, and the rise of the partisan bands in general.

But we're going to specifically look at this banda stellar rossa as a kind of an example they they are exceptional for a number of reasons which will become clear and they're operating in the mountains about 15 miles south of bologna incredibly beautiful part of the apennines um it's not really on the tourist trail because it's not in tuscany and these are our communities that have been going on for centuries and centuries and centuries a bit like san pietro south of of casino which suddenly over a course of a couple of days is just wiped clean forever anyway let's start with one of these characters that joins the.

I thought it'd be interesting to start with Carlo Venturi, who was a guy I met.

I met him with two other partisans, including one of them called Gastoni Scargi, and the other guy was called Hector.

I never quite got his surname.

But anyway, we met in Gastoni Scarghi's office at Bologna FC.

It's just absolutely amazing.

Really?

And we met in their office, talked to them all in turn.

Then Carlo sent me his manuscript of his book he'd written some years before, sort of at the time was unpublished.

Then we went off for lunch and had a big long lunch.

And at the end of it, they gave me a pair of boxing gloves and a bottle of limoncello.

It's just absolutely amazing.

I mean, these guys are all absolute dudes.

And all three of them were survivors of the Stellar Rossa.

But to go to Carlo, so Carlo was only 18 in the spring of 1944.

He lived in the tiny little village, mountain village of Fondazza, southwest of Bologna.

And in May 1944, he received his call-up papers as one of the class of 25, 1925, eligible for service.

And we will get onto this in a minute, I promise you.

But anyway, his family are Contadini, and Contadini are sharecroppers.

So a Contadino is a sharecropper farmer, Contadini are multiple farmers.

And basically what they would do is they would grow their crops for the Padrone, you know, the overseer.

It was usually a sort of absentee landlord.

Absentee landlord would have agents.

Agents would come around and go, hand over your half your profits.

That's how it worked.

And it's incredibly feudal, but that is how the vast majority of farming was played out in Italy at that time.

They weren't interested in politics at all.

They were neither pro-fascist nor anti-fascist.

They just couldn't care.

And to be honest, in these little rural communities, fascism had a much, you know, a much more tenuous hold than it did in the cities for obvious reasons.

These places are quite remote.

And, you know, and Carlo told me, he said, you know, my father just didn't want to get involved.

He just wanted to kind of keep his head down.

And he doesn't have a Tessera, which is the Nazi fashion, the fascist card, which everyone had to have because he's a Contadino, so he doesn't need one.

You need one if you're in public office of any kind, but you don't if you're a farmer.

Carlo, on on the other hand, was, you know, he's 18, he's young, he's a bright kid.

He really resents the fact that there's still fighting, resents deeply that the Germans are now occupying Italy.

He's a very proud young Italian, and he works in a factory in Casalecchio de Reno, which is in the Reno Valley.

And with a couple of friends at one point, they start talking.

They get, Carl, let's do something.

So they attack an abandoned army barracks.

Those of you who listened to the earlier Italy series will remember that the armistice was signed on the 8th of September, 1943.

And then the Germans just swept in and cleared out all the Italian armed forces and all the barracks and so on.

A lot of them have been cleared out by the Germans, but some of them are just sort of, you know, it's all a bit kind of, this is, this is, we're talking about October 1943.

So so they haven't all been cleared out.

There's quite a lot of, you know, there's a hiatus, there's a bit of confusion.

So they go in there and they break in and they kind of nick some rifles and stuff.

And they have a sort of vague notion of fighting back, but they don't really know what to do with any of it.

So they basically just hide them in Carlos Attic because he lives in the countryside.

So it's sort of, you know, it's safer.

But he's soon in trouble.

And one day he's on his way to Bologna and the tram he's on is stopped and GNR men, these are the fascist militia, come on and he's hauled off and accused of having a hand grenade in his pocket, you know.

But it's just a bread roll.

It is literally just a bread roll.

It's a bread roll.

It isn't a hand grenade.

So he's taken to

jail and then he's beaten up, you know, because these guys are just throwing their weight around.

You know, that's what's going on.

And he said, you know, from that time on, I told myself I had to make them pay.

You know, they're kind of like, you know, I'm not going to put up with this.

He's a young, proud guy.

He wants to kind of.

I bet he didn't get the bread roll back either.

They'll have eaten it.

Yeah, right in front of him.

Exactly.

Anyway, later he's then arrested again and taken.

And he's taken to the GNR barracks and he's accused of harbouring arms.

And it turns out he's been turned in by

the fascist who lives on the house on the hill above him, above his family.

So Carlo manages to convince them he's innocent.

So they get rid of the arms before they get raided.

But at the same time, it's time for him to report to duty because he's been drafted.

And at this point, he has a stark choice.

You know, sign on the dotted line or take to the hills.

And he thinks, well, you know, I don't really fancy that, to be honest.

So on the 16th of May, without telling his parents, without telling any of his family, because it wouldn't be safe to do so, he just leaves.

He just walks out of the house one day.

They have no idea what's happened to him.

Don't know where he is.

And he heads to Sasso Marconi, which is like a small little town.

And it's a just the river Reno goes down, or is it Seta?

I can't remember which one it is.

It flows into Bologna.

And it forks around some mountain chains.

So it's like a sort of triangular thing.

And on the western side is the river Reno, and on the eastern side is the Seta.

And Sasso Marconi is where the first radios were built, is at this confluence where the two rivers meet.

And he spots four young men sitting by the side of the road.

They just don't look like fascists, but he's not sure.

He doesn't know what to say, you know, because which way do you go?

It's kind of, you know, they're wearing civvies and stuff.

He goes, they go, go, where are you?

And he goes, oh, I was looking for you.

And they go, well, what do you mean?

And what are you doing here?

He has to have this leap of faith where he just goes, I'm looking to join the partisans.

But if he got that wrong, but he hasn't.

He's got it right.

So it's okay.

They are partisans.

And they take him to a house above the Seta Valley.

And they go, right, you're staying with us tonight.

And the next day they pick up someone else.

And then they head up into the mountains.

And this is the mountains of the Montessoli Massif.

And they take him to a place called Cabrigeda.

Cap apostrophe is a peculiarity to that part of Emilia-Romana.

And Cab means it is shorter for Casa, his house.

So they're up there the following morning and the sun is rising and towering above him.

He can see the heights of Monte Salvare and

Montessoli, which gives the name to the chain of mountains at that point.

He can see little settlements up in the mountains and little villages.

A lot of the hills are covered with woods with little sort of baby oaks, cuecha, as they're known, and chestnuts and hazels.

It's quite sort of dense, but there are fields and there's little villages and little spas of churches and stuff.

So it was quite sort of mountain settlement up there.

And now he's among partisans and he sees men carrying rifles and sten guns and stuff.

And they're all kind of looking at him quite suspiciously.

I mean, just imagine being him.

You're 18, you've left home, you haven't told your parents, suddenly you're in it,

you're sinking or swimming, aren't you?

I mean, it's just very brave.

I mean, just incredible.

And as he was telling it, I mean, you know, I was sort of feeling quite...

Because even if you do become a partisan and they accept you, you've now signed up to a life from which there is no escape until liberation comes.

You know, you can't suddenly walk out and be a partisan.

Yeah, it's not like joining the Italian army and throwing your rifle in the river and going home, is it?

It's quite different, different commitment.

Anyway, so the second man who's who's joined the day after him is then ordered to dig a pit.

Carlo suddenly thinks, oh my God, I can see what's going to happen.

So does the new guy.

Suddenly tweaks what's about to happen.

So he runs for it.

And as he runs for it, you know, someone opens fire with a stengun, cuts him down.

They chuck him in the pit and bury him.

And Carlo's just sort of like, oh, my God.

And they go, that guy was a spy.

He was a fascist spy.

And then they turn to him and he's just thinking, you know, he's absolutely khaki himself.

And he says, but I'm not like that.

I've stolen weapons.

I've done this.

I've done that.

And they go, okay, well, you know, we're going to check you out.

We can't afford to have spies here.

So we're going to check out your story.

Anyway, so for three days, he's kept up in the mountains under guard.

He doesn't know what to do.

And then suddenly some guys come in and they go, right, we're going to take you to see our leader.

And this is Mario Musalese, the author of that amazing pamphlet that you read out at the beginning, that kind of order of the day thing, known as Lupo.

He's in his late 20s.

He's like 28, 29 at this point, Lupo.

Sort of dark-haired, thin-faced, very charismatic, very sort of unhairy.

He's not a hirsuit man.

And Lupo shakes his hand and says, Yeah, no, we've checked you out.

You're your kosher.

It's good.

They then take him to see Gianni Rossi, who's a smaller guy who's a second in command.

He's sat there with his kind of like, he's got like a receding hair, but he's like a squat face.

And he's sort of like, absolutely, you just wouldn't cross Janny Rossi at all.

You know, Mario Musalese, Lupo is much more kind of open, obviously warm.

Janny is kind of sort of brooding.

Carlo is given a Sten gun, five magazines, assigned to a company led by Golfieri.

They all have nom de guerreres, and he's given a nom de guerre, which is Ming.

And this is after a character in a comic called Laventuroso.

All means of his ID are taken off him, everything.

He's sworn not to make contact with his family on pain of death, you know, a harsh necessity.

And they're like, you're now one of us.

You've crossed that threshold.

So he's a member of the Stellarosso.

That's Red Star, right?

Are these guys communists?

They're Marxists?

No, they are absolutely not.

And this is one of the great ironies of it is they are one of the very, very few partisans, if not the only partisan band which is apolitical and maintains its apolitical status right to the very end.

Lupo is having none of it.

He wants people of all persuasions.

He says, this is not a time for politics.

This is a time for beating the Nazi fascists.

Then we can sort out politics afterwards.

But you'd be forgiven for thinking with that name that they might be.

You absolutely would.

You absolutely would.

They maybe didn't think that one through very carefully.

Because after all, you know, this is the great tangle of contention for the Allies, is which ones to pick.

And, you know, the Western allies often, which partisan ban, you know, this is a big problem for them in France, after all, is who do we back?

And afterwards, who are we going to trust?

And if you're called a red star, the stellar rosser, you know, they might go cool on you, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it's one of the great ironies, but they absolutely won.

But anyway, you know, Carlos said to me, he said, said, you know, there were three crystal clear choices.

Either go with the fascists, the Germans, or choose to fight with the partisans.

As a young man, those were your three choices.

And failure to report to duty off the call-up was punishable by death.

And actually, it was quite rare that you'd be, you know, they don't want to kill the people they're trying to recruit.

But it did happen.

And word of these executions spread, of course, pretty rapidly.

So many do exactly what Carlo's done and flee to the hills and the mountains, of which there are a plentiful amount in Italy.

And where you are, you're not safe, but you're safer than staying at home waiting to be called up.

So, you know, he is now now a fully fledged member of the Stada Rosser as of the end of May, which is about the same time that Lupo was writing that missive.

But I think it's worth just sort of explaining to people about the German occupation, really.

Yeah.

Maybe we should do a little bit of that.

Well, yes, because that's what it is.

There is an occupation.

It's from being allies, close ideological pals and all that, it's quite the opposite.

Well, and we also know, you know, it's a thing we've talked about a lot, what the Germans tend to think of their allies, that they're just to be exploited.

So now the Italians are not their allies anymore essentially their enemy well yeah let's face it they don't exactly treat their allies particularly well

well that's it that's what that's the that's the point i'm making so the ambassador is dr dr rudolf rahn he says everything in occupied italy must be exploited by us for our war effort so they take italian gold reserves they're denied any economic or trade policy of their own the north's factories are turned over to spier as the allies advance they shut down and uh factories or blow blow plant up which is after all the you know what hitler's proposing for germany at the end of the war war.

The Italians are also then expected to pay for all German-related war costs.

So having taken the Italian gold and denuded Italian Italy of its means of production, they've also got to then pay for everything.

That's sheriff of Nottingham stuff, isn't it?

I mean, don't you think?

Yeah.

By May of 1944, the Republic is handing over 10 billion lira a month, which is £3 million today.

But basically, they have no money and

they're being ransacked.

They're having their pockets turned out.

If you're an Italian who thought that, you know, the previous september we've surrendered we've we're out of the war it's over this must be very um dismaying and there are however it's not it's not there isn't an end to the war there's german troops everywhere the country's being stripped bare and absolutely every infringement is punishable by death because the germans are they're not mucking about and don't you forget it i mean so so these notices are literally everywhere and there are not infrequently dangling civilians from street lamps and all the rest of it i mean you know they're left up there they're hanged publicly and then left it's It's all properly medieval stuff.

Yeah.

There's also this 10-for-one policy that Kesselring has set up after the attack on the Vera Cellar in Rome on the 23rd of March 1944, which is in your casino book, where basically the Germans will round up civilians.

Well, we'll round up anyone.

If they can't find partisans, then what they'll do is they'll kill 10 for every German killed.

Hitler wanted 50 for one.

But Kesslering is the voice of calm moderation about this and says, you know, that's just going too far.

He's such a vile man.

I mean, it's staggering.

Oh.

Yeah, well, as well as ransacking the country, they're taking its people, aren't they, Jim?

They are.

So you've got all the ex-armed forces, they've been sent to Germany.

So that's about 750,000 Italians.

And they're now under, you know, they're operating under forced labor under Fritz Sauckel.

So by May 1944, there's seven and a half million foreign workers in Germany.

Quite a number, isn't it?

And then Italian men are also recruited to the organisation Tots.

So people who are not of kind of service age, so this would be over 40s, you know, late 30s onwards, 50-year-olds.

They're all taken in and recruited into the organisation Todd, which is the kind of, you know, the labor force.

So these are the people that are building the Gothic line and doing manual labor and so on.

And they're all rounded up quite frequently by, you know, exactly the same way that the Royal Navy was doing press gangs in, you know, the late 18th century, for example.

It's exactly the same.

There's no difference whatsoever.

But the key thing is that Mussolini has persuaded Hitler to allow him to recruit some troops.

You know, no one in Italy, none of the Germans wanted this to happen.

But Hitler always maintained this sort of weird affection for Mussolini and so gives in.

And he's not allowed an army, but he's allowed to raise four divisions.

Since, you know, all these ex-forces were now in Germany, these had to be recruited from the younger generations of Italians.

So from the classes of 1923, 1924, and 1925.

Plus, 12,000 former officers and NTOs are released from Germany to go back and help set this up.

And Carlo Venturi is one of those.

You know, that is why he's being recruited.

The initial conscription raises 50,000 men very quickly by May 1944.

But then the numbers drop really, really dramatically.

Why?

Because it's summer.

Why?

Because the Allies are winning.

They've taken Rome.

And so everyone's thinking, oh, I don't want to be on the losing side.

And I don't really mind being in the mountains in summer.

Doesn't sound so great in winter, but there's a whole host of different reasons why that figure is.

But no one's interested anymore.

I mean, you know, there are still people who want to be fascists and stuff.

By and large, the wind is sort of starting to change.

What is really interesting, though, is that they're also recruiting for the SS police battalions under Carl Wolf, of course.

And they have 200,000 Italians join those, you know, so four times as many.

And there is also the fascist militia.

Is the pay good?

I mean, what?

Well, it's better than being a partisan.

Yeah.

You get pay.

You know, if you're a partisan, you are outlawed.

You are outside the law.

You are cast out of society.

So you have nothing.

Whereas if you're in the GNR or in the SS police battalion, you've got barracks.

You've got three square meals a day.

You've got, you know, blah, blah, blah.

You know, you've got a pay packet.

And ditto with the GNR.

GNR, so the SS tends to attract people who are just sort of thinking, well, I just need to look after number one.

The GNR are people who are fascist, you know, are right-wing and kind of sort of think, no, I think the fascist way is a good way.

So these are basically replacements for the old sort of squadristi.

And the GNR is the, well, we'll get onto that in a minute.

But, you know, if you don't fancy any of this, then the only alternative is to be a common outlaw.

And obviously, as I'm saying, you know, in the summer of 1944, May, late spring, May 1944, you've got summer ahead of you.

Rome is captured.

You know, the Allies are on the march.

You know, you've got to weigh up a whole host of different factors here.

But the odds are slightly more in your favor in summer than they are in winter with the Allies on the march.

Yeah, it's fascinating the idea, though, that there's something for more motivated people than the SS.

The GNR is sort of actually for the people who are into the politics, whereas the SS is kind of like there's three square meals a day.

How people make this choice, because after all, there's a spike in recruitment in the Middle East, isn't there, after D-Day.

That in France, you get a similar thing where people move to the fascist end of the political spectrum one way or another.

And as you pointed out, there are lots of reasons young men join organizations when they're pushed to.

Yeah, I think the other thing is I think the GNR is more localized.

You know, you'd have the Carabinieri, which is a sort of military wing of the police, but it's basically the police.

Then you have the GNR, which is the militia, but you would have those dotted in all the towns.

You know, there would be a GNR barracks in every town, as there would be a Carabinieri.

The SS battalion, you wouldn't.

So if you were joining the SS, you might be sent to the Alps.

You might be sent all over you could be anywhere and so you're you're taken away from your homestead whereas in the if you stayed in the gnr you would still probably be you know within 10 miles of your birthplace so that's also a factor you need to be with your mama and your papa and you know well or or your dad's a member or your brother's a member and you say you've got you know you've got to toe the line there's this all these push and pull things and as allied victory gets closer you're really thinking wow which one do i choose well yeah and the family the father might be I don't know, like he might have a job that's dependent on his Tesla, you know, his fascist card, which they still have at this time.

And so he's thinking, well, I don't, if you run off the hills, then we're not going to have anything.

You know, these are, these are really not straightforward choices at all.

At a time where the news and information about actually what is happening is incredibly sparse.

You know, at the end of the day, it's a punt.

But it's worth just mentioning about the RSI, which is the Repubblica Sociale di Italiano.

And this is

the neo-fascist, the new fascist government, government, a puppet government based in Salo, uh, which is a tiny town on Lake Garda, not Rome.

Mussolini is the figurehead, but he he is a much denuded figure since his overthrow the previous July.

He's sprung from prison by Ottis Gorzeni and his thugs in the Grand Sasso in uh a few days after the invasion of Italy.

And but but anyway, he's uh he's allowed to reform his fascist militia under under Renato Ricci, who was the former head of his the squadristi, which are the black shirt hit squads, the infamous hit squads of of militia of of the sort of nineteen 1930s and 20s.

And it's now renamed the Guada Nazniale Republicana, which is the GNR.

And this is run alongside the Carabinieri.

And the Fascist Party is up again and up and running, but now is not led by Mussolini.

It's led by Alessandro Pavolini, who is an intellectual and former magazine editor from Florence.

Very good-looking, dashing chap, touch of the Oswald Mosley about him.

And he is the head of the Partito Republicano Fascista, the PRF.

But the real control day to day is under Karl Wolff, who obviously we've we've talked about a lot this year, who is the Obergruppenführer and highest policed officer in Italy.

And basically, he's running the show.

So the idea is that Castlering is the military commander.

Wolf

deals with everything else.

So GNR, Republican policing, the Carabinieri, the day-to-day operations of the country, it's all run by Wolf, not by Mussolini.

So, you know, is it any surprise they're running to the mountains?

So we're going to take a quick break and then we're going to get into the birth of the Stellar Rossa, the probably poorly named red star.

We'll see you in a tick.

Welcome back to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland, and we're talking about, well, the Italian resistance.

It's interesting, isn't it, Jim?

Because the French resistance is synonymous with the Second World War, right?

Our ideas of it, our popular conception of it, how it sits in people's imagination.

The Italian partisans, less so.

Even the words, you would call the Italians partisans, wouldn't you?

Where you talk about the French resistance?

There's a kind of in people's imaginings, I think there's a kind of difference in the vocabulary.

The further east you go, the more partisans, their partisans, that they are resistors.

You know what I mean?

I think that's absolutely right.

I mean, obviously, the Italian campaign is just not as well known as the war in Northwest Europe and

the war in France and Normandy and so on.

So, you know, British female SOE types aren't sent to Italy as well, which, you know, helps in the narrative, I think.

Yeah.

But it's basically because the Italian campaign is less well known, which is why no one's heard of the massacre of Montessoli, for example.

It's incredible, really, because they play a huge part.

The ANPI, which is the Association Nazionale of Partisans d'Italia, is a very big deal, or certainly was a very, very big deal in Italy.

You know, every town would have its ANPI headquarters office, and you'd go there.

And these guys were mates for life.

And it was a very, very sort of, you know, deep run thing, but just less so outside of the outside of Italy, I suppose should we talk about the stellar rosser and how they came yes there are partisans popping up all over italy but i think here's an actual organized group what are their origins jim so i should just tell you about about the amazing meeting i had with janny rossi so i went so so this all came about because in 2004 there was a i read an article in the times president rau of germany as he then was the president of germany had gone over to marzabotto which was the town nearest montessoli and had publicly apologized for what had happened and there was a story there and they they'd interviewed some people who'd witnessed the massacre.

And, you know, they were horrendous stories.

And I remember thinking to myself, God, I don't know anything about this.

Why don't I know about this?

And this was a seed for a book I wrote called Italy's Sorrow, a war north of Rome, basically, and the last year of the war there.

And the Gothic line and all the rest of it.

But all the books about the Italian campaign were about the Italian campaign, the military campaign, rather than, you know, the fact that there were 44 million Italians stuck in the middle of all this, you know, and what were they doing?

And I had no idea about this huge partisan activity and fascists and GNR and all the rest of it and the the terrible choices one had to make and you know how it ripped apart kind of a lot of Italian society in the process it was this civil war so I was determined to go over there now I went over to Montessoli and and met lots of people and and interviewed lots of survivors and veterans and members of the Stada Rossa including Carlo Venturi and Gastoni Scarghi but I really went but when I was talking to one of them they said oh no no Johnny Ross is still alive I was like oh wow where do I find him they said well listen he loves going for a beer every morning in the uh in the in the bar in Gardaletta go down to Gardaletta and you'll find him there they'll they'll know So I went down to Gardaleta and, you know, Janny Rossi here.

He goes, oh, no, no, he doesn't live here anymore.

If you go to Vardo, just up the road, just go to Vardo and like the first roundabout, you'll see a little bar.

He's always in there.

Janny loves that bar.

He's always in there.

So we went to the next bar and went, oh, no, no, no, no, he doesn't live here anymore.

He's just moved on.

But if you go, if you go up here, you just go around the corner, there's a little roundabout, turn right up there, you'll see a bar on the right.

That's where he always goes.

He loves that.

Jani just loves that bar.

So we went to the third bar and the barman said, you've just missed him.

He just came in for his morning coffee but he's gone back but he'll be back i said well look you know i've come all the way from england to see him you know do you think you could just tell me where it is he goes well i don't suppose he'd mind so they gave me his address and i knocked on the door and the kind of eventually sort of shuffling of feet and and he opened the door and there he was there was janny rossi and i said i'm really sorry to bother you i know this is completely out of the blue but i've come all the way from england i'd really love to talk to you about your time the cellar rossa looked me up and down and went come back at two

so we went back to the bar and said look you know he said yes but you know do you think there's something we could get him to kind of of, you know, sweeten the whole thing?

And, you know, Tim and I said, well, he loves smoking.

Right.

So we bought him, we bought him a big, you know, like 10 packs of fags and went back at two, sat in his front room.

And this just incredible story came out.

I mean, he was quite sort of reserved to start off with, but kind of warmed to his theme a bit.

It was just amazing.

He still lives in the shadow of Montessoli after all these years.

You know, it's just incredible.

So, so Janny, he told me all about his life and his growing up and all the rest of it.

And he came from a family of anti-fascists.

I mean, lots of people would just Com Com son, but he wasn't.

You know, his father absolutely refused to join the party, never had a Tessera, so getting work was really difficult for him.

Every time there was a, they lived in Vardo, every time there was a fascist dignitary coming, Rossi Sr.

would be picked up by the Carabinierium, put in jail for a couple of days.

But his father had been a decorated veteran of the First World War, but was not a fascist.

And actually, they lived in Gardaletta, which which is just right on the banks of the River Seta.

So on the eastern side of the mountain chain.

You remember it forks as Reno and the Seta.

They're on the Seta side.

Gardaletta's a little tiny little village on the banks there, just south of Vardovada.

It's like a small, small town of maybe, you know, 5,000 or something.

Gardaletta is a kind of village of maybe a few hundred.

Anyway, Jan is born in February 1923.

He's an apprentice mechanic in Bologna.

And then he's drafted in the war and joins the Navy.

But in the summer of 1943, he's ill.

So he's convalescing back at home when the armistice comes, which is why he's not put in a bag or picked up by the Germans.

And during this time, he meets up with Mario Muzzalesi, who he's known as a boy.

Now, Mario is quite a few years older than him.

You know, Mario's Mario Muzzalese was always known as Lupo, even as a boy.

And he's this tall, stringy guy.

But he's also there because he's been in North Africa.

He was drafted into the army, served in North Africa, was captured by the British, managed to escape, got picked up, then got wounded in the Tunisia campaign, and was invalided back home, which is why he's again also avoided being put in the bag.

And also from an anti-fascist family.

But he's very smart, very charismatic.

He's one of these people that sort of draws people to him.

And he's popular and well-liked and well-known because he's gobby.

And he's approached by the fascists after the armistice and eventually become a civil servant for the RSI.

But he just goes, absolutely no way he's a, you know, thinks fascism is completely dead, strongly, strongly opposes German occupation.

And so he's sort of, you know, both of them are kind of sort of lumbering around, wondering when they're going to get drafted and picked up and thinking what their choices are.

And there's two events, two key events that push them towards resistance.

And the first one is suddenly there's a whole load of anti-fascist posters get put up in Vardo.

And Lupo is blamed for these because he's been so vehemently against being recruited.

They think, well, it must be him.

He's the only guy who'd have the nerve to do this.

Anyway, he's been denounced by someone.

So he finds that the guy's denounced him, beats him to a pulp, and then is arrested, but he's released, you know, after a couple of days.

But he's marked.

You are clearly an agitator.

You know, we're watching you, son.

That kind of thing.

And then the second thing is that Lupo moves back to the family home at Cavaneziani, which is a hamlet just close to Gardaletta.

And it's right on the River Setter, but it's on the side of the railway line, which is on the western side of the River Setter.

And so the mountains come right down.

And then you've got the railway line, then you've got the river.

It's all quite tight around there.

You know, there's not much river mover.

And obviously, the river, the river bends, and so the railway line bends around the curves of the river as well.

And when it goes around this river, this is just a single track line and the trains have to slow down quite a lot.

And they are watching,

they see this train come along and are watching when they see five Allied POWs jump from the train.

Gosh.

And one of them is injured as he jumps and is picked up again.

Another one's shot and killed, but three get away.

And Lupo and Jani spontaneously decide they're going to help them.

And one of them's a Jock, a Scott rather, who inevitably gets called Jock.

And the other two are South Africans called Steve and Hermes.

And they stay with the Stellar Rossa right to the very end.

Wow.

They're there right from the word go.

And right, they're founder members of the Stellar Ross, effectively.

They hide them in barns in the mountains.

At this point, Lupo and Janny decide to go underground permanently.

And that's around November, well, October, November, 1943.

And they kick off by raiding a local GNR barracks because they all have them.

There's a GNR barracks in Vardo, for example.

And as Janny said, he said, you know, we didn't have much of a plan.

We borrowed a lorry, raided one of the barracks, took a stash of rifles and ammunition.

And then it's like, God, now what do we do with it?

Well, Well, let's hide it in a barn up in the mountains and sort of see how, you know, they're kind of making up as

they're going along.

But they decide that they, you know, they need to have some organization.

They, you know, you can just imagine the kind of excitement, the kind of nerves, the apprehension, but also the kind of the thrill of going, right, we are now, we're rebels, we're partisans.

Even if we're partisans, we need to have a charter.

And they've now got like a dozen people, including Steve and Hermes and Jock.

And they've got a few, there's Sugano and there's a couple of other fellows.

And they consecrate the Stellar Rossett Rossa in the crypt of the church at Vardo overseen by the local priest who's Don Iolo Catani and Lupo is elected, voted in as the leader of this new band and Jani as the second in command and they call themselves the Stellar Rossa and right from the word go they go we're not going to be political.

Well, it's odd isn't it?

But also this is the autumn of 43.

You were talking in the first part about how people in the summer are thinking, well, you know, the mountains aren't that bad.

It'll be okay.

Their decision is tempered by that.

They're not thinking like this.

These are people who are properly mobilized, properly radicalized against the situation, aren't they?

Because they're making this commitment as it pitches into the winter.

So that's why you end up with this core of people who really, really want to do this, rather than the drift of people over the summer who they maybe necessarily can't trust.

Yeah, absolutely.

And it's very clear that Lupo's the right man for the job because he's got this terrific charisma.

We've all met these people.

They're the, you know, the guy in the village, they're the youngster in the village who everyone just sort of is drawn to because they're cleverer, they're sharper, they're just more self-confident, more self-assured.

You know, he's seen some action, you know, he's had military training.

I mean, you know, in the Italian army, that's sort of questionable, but he's, he's got some, he's got fire in his belly is the truth of it.

By end of November, there's about 20 of them.

And their first big action is blowing up a freight convoy, which is halted on the railway line.

So this is German stuff.

But they're all manned by the, the railway is manned by Italians.

And Janny said, you know, he opened fire of emotion.

He said it was just something I had to do.

And I remember saying to him, yeah, but didn't you feel a bit funny about opening fire on your fellow Italians?

And do you know what he said?

I remember this absolutely crystal clear.

He just went, they had their dance.

We had ours.

I think I might use that in difficult situations.

You have your dance, I have mine.

I mean, that's very, very tough, isn't it?

Yeah.

But anyway,

they're not doing very much over the winter, that first winter of 1943 and into the beginning of of 1944.

You know, the front is stagnant, nothing's much happening.

You know, they're basically what they're trying to do, they're basically hiding rather than being active.

You know, they've taken to the mountains.

Everyone knows them, but you know, this is so localized, this community.

Everyone knows everyone in those mountain villages of Ciepiano, of Cassaglia, of San Martino, Gardaleta, of Cuecha, of Cavaneziani, all these little settlements.

Everyone knows who Lupo is.

They've known him since he was a boy.

He's a figure.

So hiding in the mountains is like, you know, they're not going to be stitched up by those guys.

Or are they?

Because they are stitched up, because there are threats to them.

And at the end of January, 1944, Olindo Samaki, who is Cagnone, is one of the originals.

And he's one of the guys who's been in the crypt and the church of Vardo at the consecration of the Stellarossa.

And he betrays Lupo.

No one knows quite why he's done, but it's probably pressure from family.

You know, they're starving.

It's cold.

It's winter.

You know, it's just, he doesn't see any future for the Stellar Rossa.

And, you know, he's going to have to betray his friend because that's the only way he's going to survive is dog eat dog.

Anyway, whatever the reasons.

On the information from Cagnoni, the fascists then send a spy to infiltrate the Stellar Rossa, and this is Amadeo Arcioni.

And right from the moment that Arcone turns up, Lupo suspects him and talks to Janny about it.

But Lupo is always...

weirdly, for a man of his position, actually quite squeamish about killing people.

He doesn't like killing people.

He'll do it if he has to.

He's not murderous.

He doesn't know what to do about Archone.

So he differs a bit.

He just also can't believe that Kanyone has betrayed him.

So everyone else is going, this guy's the spy.

This guy's the guy.

And he's going, no, no, it's not.

You know, Kanyone wouldn't have done that.

He's just gone off.

He's had enough of it.

This can't be true.

And they're going, no, no, he really is.

So they really, really watch him.

And one night they're in this cave.

And the cave they've lined with wood to make it a little bit more habitable.

There's four of them up there.

There's Archone.

There's Jani.

There's another guy called Fonzo.

And Fonzo and Jani take it in turns to keep guard with Lupo and Lupo's on guard and he's got a knife and he's taken out his knife out of its sheaf and he's stuck it in the roof where the wood is so it's hanging down just while he's sort of sitting there smoking or doing whatever he's doing and Jani and Fonzo are asleep and suddenly Archone jumps up grabs a knife and attacks Lupo and stabs him in the arm and Lupo screams out which wakes up Jani so Janni tries to knock off Amadeo jumps on him rolls on him but Archone's still got the knife and gets on top of him he's bigger than janny Jani and the knife is coming down towards him the knife that pierces his forehead and when i met him he still had the scar just there and there's blood coming down his face and then fonzo and lupo managed to knock off arcioni and disarm him and uh

i said so what did you do with our chonee and uh he said i took him outside and gosh yeah and it's just it's so it was so unlike any interview that i've done with a war veteran because people shoot at germans from a distance they open their brand gun or, you know, they're firing on a Mescheschmid or they're kind of opening fire with their tank, but they're not taking, picking someone up by stuff,

taking them outside and shooting them in the back of the head, you know, which is what they do to Arcioni.

It was a kind of, you know, and you're sat there, this guy's smoking all the fags you've just given him, and he's telling you this story.

And you're there, there he is.

This is the guy that's, you know, you're talking to someone who has lived like this.

It is, it was pretty amazing.

Anyway, 6th of May, Lupo's brother, Guido, is arrested and he's been working undercover at the local fascist headquarters, you know, the local fascio, and feeding information to the Stellarosso.

And obviously they they don't exactly catch him, but they kind of they suspect him and anyway he's he's arrested.

The GNR then go to the Mussalesi um home in Cavaneziani and burn it to the ground and they lock up Lupo's parents as well.

And as you can imagine, he goes eight and they mount a raid on the GNR barracks, kill everyone and and spring them all out of prison.

And this has happened in early May, which is you know, then Carlo Venturi turns up two weeks later.

You can say, well, they're a bit suspicious, can't you?

springing your family does rather indicate that you you yes you are a bit partisan though doesn't it some of it's not particularly considered right in terms of you know not endangering people or whatever i mean it's interesting i'm sort of trying to resist saying this but it feels like clannish and the things maybe some of the things stereotypically about italy you know and uh and yet there they are literally springing his mum and dad from prison fair enough

you can understand it yeah i think it's all very robin hood if i'm honest i mean i think it's exactly what it is you know the mountains are sherwood forest and the villages and vardo is is nottingham or whatever i mean everyone by this point they're hiding so much they they're hiding from the from the fascists and they're hiding from the nazis but everyone knows who they are everyone knows there is the stellar ross a partisan band it's just to do that you've got to break into their fiefdom and their fiefdom is the mountains of montessoli so occasionally they're going to kind of head down into the valleys but but that is where they're basing and you know if you if you want to go up there and confront lupo good luck you know because everyone's going to see you coming this is their manor you know they they know every square yard of those mountains it's interesting because when you are up in montessolia monte salvare and that that mountain community it's not a huge area you know you're you're maybe three miles wide

six miles in length that kind of stretch something like that you know it's really and the core of it is you know a matter of a few square miles you'd know everywhere you know all the houses you know you know every track every trail every bit of wood you know all the floors of the mountains it's your job to do that i mean, you know, because you're constantly on the move, you're constantly finding different areas as well to kind of hide out and hang out and all the rest of it.

You can see how it sort of develops.

And, you know, the Stellar Rosseter gets stronger and stronger as it's summer, as the drafts are coming in, as the deadlines for kind of turning up is going in more and more people coming up.

And also there's the whiff of success.

And, you know, as I say, there's nothing like kind of the allied lines being on the move to kind of give everyone a massive Phillip.

So you can see how it, you know, but being a partisan is a summer job, basically.

You know, you don't really want to be a partisan in the winter

is the truth of it.

But,

you know, there is, there is a politicization going on of the partisans.

There is a wider resistance, a political resistance movement going on in Italy.

And obviously, before the armistice, you know, all political parties except fascist party had been banned in Italy.

But once the armistice has been signed, the six main opposition parties actually,

very interestingly, form themselves into a single anti-fascist entity in Rome.

And this is the CLN, the Comitato delliberazione Nazionale.

These are six parties.

So there is the Italian Communist Party, the PCI, the Christian Democrats, there are the Liberals, who are really quite right-wing, there are the Labour Democrats.

Then there is the Action Party, the Parpito Dazione, which is a new party named after Giuseppe Mazzini's party, which had been unification story of 1860 and so on.

And then there's the socialists.

And the PCI, the communists, the socialists, and the action party, they're all very anti-monarchist because there is still a monarchy in Italy at this point.

You know, even throughout the whole fascist period, there was still a king, Victoria Emmanuel III, the diminutive, he's only about four foot nine.

Absolute total piece of work.

And then the liberals, they're pro-monarchy.

But the amazing thing, so politically, they're all quite diverse, but they all stick together.

And the interesting thing is, very cleverly, they all agree that the president of the CLN should be Ivan Obonomy.

And he he is the former pre-fascist prime minister who is now also leader of the Labour Democrats.

And throughout the summer of 1943, the CLN is helping to set up clandestine committees in northern Italy behind Allied lines, you know, in the area of the Nazi occupation and the RSI,

the Socialist Republic, the neo-fascist party.

Milan becomes the official in inverted commas, clandestine government and supreme organ of the resistance movement.

And it's now becomes known as the CLNAI, L'Alta Italian, Higher Italy,

Northern Italy.

And at the same time, the communists and the Action Party are taking control of a large number of partisan bands.

So the Garibaldi brigades,

they emerge and they're broadly communist.

Typically, they have commanders of people who fought on the side of the Republicans

in the Spanish Civil War.

The Action Party brigades are known as the Justizia et Liberta, the Justice and Liberty Brigades.

And there's a lot of Garibaldi brigades.

You know, I remember talking to guys from the 8th Garibaldi Brigade that were sort of based in the Ravenna region, for example.

A guy called Yada Mizaroki.

He was an amazing bloke.

But Stellar Ross will want nothing to do with this.

They don't want political commissars.

They don't want politicization.

They just want to be neutral.

Lupo absolutely sticks to this.

We'll get rid of the Nazi fascists.

Then we can talk about politics.

But right now, I want everyone to be united.

I don't want this to be the party, I don't want the brigade to be split up on kind of political grounds.

And actually, I think he was quite sensible.

I think it is, that is pretty smart, but it's if everyone else is doing it, it puts you in an invidious position, is the truth.

Well, the problem is, is links are being made.

They create the Corp of Voluntaire de Liberazione, the CVL, which is the militarized wing of the CLNAI.

So the CLNAI is the political bit.

The CVL, under an ex-Italian general, I can't remember his name right now, Cordona, I think, is that is the military wing.

And then you have area ones.

So in Emilia-Romana, which is where Montessoli is, that's by an acronym called Kuma, K-C-U-M-E-R.

And they go, well, look, you know, if you come onto us and you allow commissars, we can get you more arms, we can give you more support.

And Lupo's in a bit of a bind about this, but then suddenly he has a real break of luck because in April 1944, and this is a big moment for Stella Rossa, they make contact with an OSS agent, an Italian called Lino Rocco.

And Lino Rocco has been a telegraphist in the Italian Navy.

And then after the armistice is in the south of the country and gets recruited by the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, which is the equivalent of the American equivalent of the SOE.

And the SOE and OSS operate together in Brindisi in southern Italy, but they're separate, but they operate together in terms of arm drops.

So OSS would send an agent to one partisan band, the SOE would send an agent to a different partisan band and through them they would have a radio and they would go back to brindisi and signal to 344 wing raf to deliver the drop so the 344 wing is doing the arms drops whether it's an oss led operation or an soe operation but berlino rocco is oss and the previous autumn previous summer he'd met a girl called liliana nicoletti in fiume uh which is up in the um you know near venezia but um near near venice in the foothills of the alps and he escapes south and he's later landed by submarine on the Adriatic coast.

And rather than going to where he's supposed to go, he immediately goes up to Fiume to look for his girlfriend.

You know, I mean, he's a good sort of you know, red-hearted Italian.

And when he gets there, he realizes that he finds out that Liliana has moved back to Bologna.

So he then goes all the way to Bologna, only to discover that her family has moved again to Vardo, this little town just south of Bologna on the Setta Valley.

So finally, he gets there and he's reunited.

So it's this guy's

he's been dropped in by the OS and basically just chasing skirts.

It's It's absolutely unbelievable.

It's unbelievable.

How are you going to run special operations if people are just

looking unless he's cleverer than any of us?

He figures the only way to stay with his girl is if he joins the OSS and

uses that to pursue her across Italy.

It's unbelievable.

Well, one of these days, I've got to dig out a report I've got of an SOE agent who goes into gets dropped into northern Italy.

It's the funniest thing you've ever read.

It's absolutely clear that he's been completely strung along by these fascists and he just doesn't realize it.

It's really funny.

I mean, these guys are really seriously amateur.

And I suspect what Lino Rock is said is, yeah, I'll do this.

I can do telegraphy.

I can do radio work.

I can do Morse.

You know, I'm just the guy you go.

I hate fascists.

And all he wants is to get back to his girlfriend.

And he's saying, I've got loads of contacts in the North and just send me up there.

And I've got contacts in Fiume.

You might need to give me quite a long lead.

So I can, you know, and I'll report about when I've got some decent information.

And he's probably sending back all sorts of, you know, troop movement reports and stuff.

So they're, you know, back in the OSS in Bradisi, they're quite happy, probably.

But anyway, I agree.

I mean, the whole thing is just absolutely fantastical.

It's so amateur, the whole thing.

Or they've priced in that someone might go walk about.

You know, they're going to lose a few, aren't you?

You know, they're not going to go where you want them.

Yeah.

But this does mean they have lots of weapons, though, because the drops have been successful and they're well equipped.

Well, because Liliana says, you need to contact the Stellar Rossa.

Because obviously he's in the force of the OSS.

He's in the force of the Allies.

So he puts them in touch with the Terra and he goes, great.

I finally got my Parcel band.

I can organise some arms drops.

It's all, again, it's, you know, the code is listen on, you know, we'll send these drops in.

They're going to be really good.

Listen on the BBC radio.

When it says Mario, get ready, Mario, get ready, that means it's going to happen imminently.

And then when the birds are singing, that means the drop's going to come that day, that night.

So get ready.

Anyway, it all goes absolutely accordingly to pan.

You know, lots of, they come down full of battle dresses and sten guns and ammunition and bren guns and grenades and explosives and TNT and, you know, everything you could possibly want.

You know, by the end of May, they've got about 250 people.

Gosh.

And this just gives them all the latitude that they could possibly hope for.

You know, by this point, they're really starting to make a serious impact is the truth of it.

Yeah.

And this is raids on trains, roadblocks, down the, you've the two valleys, the Setter and the Reno.

So you've actually got areas you can control.

So they're they're attacking.

There's a flak battery at Vardo as well that they attack.

And inevitably the Germans think, well, we're not going to put up with this.

On the 28th of May, 1944, they respond with a restrolemento, a sweep up with using using the GNR, and Stellar Rossa are ready.

Because the thing is, I imagine, as you're saying, you know, by this stage of the war, people know which way the war's going.

So some kid will run up into the hills and say to the Stellarossa, they're putting together a posse to come and find you.

You better be ready.

They drive off this sweep.

And Rossi says it was a good fight, really.

We killed about 240 Germans, but only one of our men was wounded.

Well,

they're defending.

They're hiding in the trees and caves and all the rest of it.

Seeing them coming, smow them down, and they're flushed with odds.

I mean, the Germans and the fascists couldn't have chosen a worse time to do this.

This is where they're absolutely at kind of peak power, the Stellarossa.

Yeah.

The GNR start deserting the following month in June, which is interesting.

Again, it's this thing of it all falling apart.

Janny then leads a raid on the barracks.

They steal more weapons.

They round up the rest and give them a chance to join the Stellarossa.

Rifle point, possibly.

Most do.

The rest are killed and with knives to save on ammunition.

I mean, if this is Robin Hood, it's not the Disney version, is it?

There's more Germans that are captured by Partisan south of Montessori.

They both surrender, but one's shot anyway.

The others are taken to the Partisan camp.

He's pleading for his life, showing photos of his family.

And instead, they pin him to the ground with knives and they leave him to die.

I mean, this is...

Yeah, that's done by some Russians, actually.

Deserted and joined.

Really?

Well, there we are.

This is what's going on, isn't it?

You know, the whirlwind being reaped, isn't it?

Then a member of the Stellarosser is captured by the Germans.

he's strung up for the germs bruise i mean their rope breaks so a member of the gnr goes to get a thicker piece of rope so the next fascist that's captured by the stellarossa is killed the same way direct reprisal i mean this is tough stuff isn't it but they they do also disarm gnr men at barracks and send them home so sometimes sometimes they don't have a taste for killing yeah to learn who's leading that particular act and i should also say that by this point they've they've they've all split up into battalions and companies and they are not all on the the Montessoli Massif the whole time.

They're spreading a much wider net.

I mean, it's a perfect place because you've got these two arteries going southwards either side of the mountains.

You know, you've got the main road going down the Reno Valley, you've got a main road and a railway line going down the Setter Valley.

You know, if you're going down to the, if you're German, you're going down the front, you have to go down these roads.

So, you know, obviously, perfectly placed, but there's mountains either side, you know, so there's the Montessoli Massive in the middle, then you've got other mountains on the western side of the Reno Valley, you've got other mountains on the eastern side of the Setter Valley.

So you're spreading all over the place.

You're never staying in one place at any one time.

And that's a key point.

But there is a little bit of a split in July because Lupo is still resisting approaches of the CLNAI and their military wing, which is, I mentioned, is Kuma, which is the Commando Unico Militare Emilia Romana.

And this is the local branch of the CBL.

And Kuma has been urging Lupo to move away from the Montessoli area.

And Sugano is one of the originals, and he argues with Lupo that they should move.

And Lupo refuses.

There's a big spat.

The shots are fired.

They patch things up.

but Sigano splits and joins the Medina branch of the partisans instead.

And Carlo Venturi is serving under Sigano, his battalion.

He's in, was it Alfieri's company, but he's in Sugano's battalion.

But he decides to stay with Lupo.

But it's, but, you know, morale is really fragile, as it would be.

These are kind of 18-year-olds, 19-year-olds, 20-year-olds, you know, who are scared witless most of the time.

But, you know, by August, they're several hundred strong and they're still causing mayhem with the Germans passing down either side of the the front.

And there's more POWs, there's more Russians.

There's a very charismatic Russian called Caraton.

At one point, Caraton has this big firefight about 15 miles south of Montessoli.

They see off several German patrols and they kill the German commander.

And usually at this point, they'd have backed off.

But on this moment, Lupo thinks, nah, this is a really good time to really...

go for it and so they envelop this huge really quite large german formation um as they're falling back onto Monte Oggioli.

A large number of Germans are killed.

An artillery battery is completely destroyed.

Wow.

But for the most part, you know, we're now talking about hit and run tactics, you know, playing havoc with German lines of supply.

And Lupo is, he's not interested in Kuma.

He's not interested in the CLNAI.

He's not interested in the CVL.

What he's interested in is the Allies.

He has this vision.

This is his dream, that the Allies come.

They embrace as comrades in arms.

He's treated that they're all treated as soldiers, fellow brothers in arms, and together they march on to Bologna.

That's his dream and that's how it's going to be.

Increasingly, he's less interested in the GNR and those GNR barracks.

He just thinks they're kind of, you know, local small fry stuff.

What he really wants to do is hit the Germans and the German

lines of supply and lines of communication.

So telephone lines cut, trucks attacks, roads blown, patrols attacking and sniping at lone vehicles going up the road and all this sort of stuff.

And the truth is, is in isolation, these attacks are kind of are a nuisance, but they're being repeated all over.

And between June and August 1944, Kesselring is told in an intelligence briefing that the Parsezans had killed in action 5,000 troops and wounded in action and captured 30,000.

So that's 35,000 in total, which is probably about four divisions by 1944 standards.

I mean, that's a lot.

That's quite the headache for Kesselring, for the Germans.

And of course, he's on the back foot, the front's closing, heading north, getting closer and closer.

You can hear hear the guns at the front line in Montessole.

And Lupo thinks, well, the Allies, the Allies are going to be here any minute and I'm going to join them and they'll treat me as a soldier and everything's going to work out.

However, however, the Germans have had enough of the Stellar Rossa and they're girding their loins for their largest Rastralimento

maximum effort against the Stellar Rossa.

And we'll be hearing in the next episode what happens next.

And I shall just give you a little bit of a spoiler.

The SS have arrived.

Yes, there we are.

If you want to find out what happens next immediately, then of course you could join our Patreon and become a patron of We Have Ways of Making You Talk, and we'll take you to the ads-free Nirvana of listening that you're looking for.

We don't have a festival.

Well, no, what are you talking about?

It's We Have Ways First Six.

I tell you what, I do have to plug is: I am doing, there's a day at the Jockey Club in Newmarket.

Saturday, the 15th of November.

The Jockey Club.

I'm doing a series of talks.

Um, Steve Prince is also going to be there, Clenn Mulley is going to be there, Saul David is going to be there.

Um, it's a whole Second World War day and a very nice um surroundings, drink and food thrown in.

Please do join us there.

Anyway, thanks everybody for listening.

We will see you very soon.

Cheerio, cheerio.