Herbert Kappler (23 September 1907 – 9 February 1978) was a key German SS functionary and war criminal during the Nazi era. He served as head of German police and security services (Sicherheitspolizei and SD) in Rome during the Second World War and was responsible for the Ardeatine massacre.[1][2] Following the end of the war, Kappler stood trial in Italy and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He escaped from prison shortly before his death in West Germany in 1978.
Early life
Kappler was born to a middle-class family in Stuttgart in what was still the German Empire. He joined the Nazi Party on 1 August 1931 and joined the SS in 1933. In January 1936, he was assigned to duty at the Gestapo main office in Stuttgart.
Kappler was immediately put in charge of implementing the Holocaust in Italy in both Rome and Lazio;[4] in his first action, 1,023 Roman Jews were rounded up and deported to Auschwitz; where only 16 survived. He later arranged the deportation of a further 993 Roman Jews, nearly all of whom also were murdered in the gas chambers. As part of the latter operation, Kappler successfully extorted50 kilograms (110 lb) kilograms of gold from the Jews of Rome, which Kappler later alleged was an attempt to prevent the deportations.[3][8][9]
Meanwhile, Kappler's moles inside the Vatican included an Estonian national and former Byzantine Rite seminarian from the Russicum named Aleksander Kurtna, who worked from 1940 until 1944 as a translator for the Vatican's Congregation for the Eastern Churches. During those same years, Kurtna covertly spied for the Soviet Union, with devastating results for the many underground priests and faithful whose names he passed to the NKVD. Kurtna, who was always loyal to the USSR, only started to also spy for Nazi Germany in 1943 because his new handler, Kappler, repeatedly threatened to otherwise send Kurtna and his wife to a concentration camp. Kurtna, however, turned the tables on Kappler by stealing the top-secret Sicherheitsdienst codebooks from his office during the chaos that surrounded the Liberation of Rome. Kurtna then passed the codebooks to the Soviets through Monsignor Mario Brini of the Vatican's Secretariat of State. Ironically, Kurtna's Soviet masters failed to appreciate or reward his loyalty. Kurtna was last seen in 1948 by Fr. Walter Ciszek as a fellow political prisoner in the Gulag complex located 300 km above the Arctic Circle and known as Norillag.[11][12]
Kappler organised the Ardeatine massacre, in which 335 Italian civilians were killed on 24 March 1944 in response to a direct order from Adolf Hitler to "kill 100 Italians for each German", in retaliation for an attack by the Italian Resistance that had resulted in the deaths of 33 men of the SS Police Regiment Bozen's garrison in Rome.[6][7][10][13]
Criminal conviction
Kappler was arrested by British authorities in 1945, turned over to the Italian government in 1947, and tried the following year. Kappler's second-in-command in Rome, SS-Captain Erich Priebke, managed to escape to Argentina and was not extradited to Italy to face trial over his own role in the Ardeatine Caves Massacre until 1996.[14][15]
In July 1948, Kappler was tried by an Italian Armymilitary tribunal and sentenced to life imprisonment,[16] to be served in the Gaetamilitary prison.[9][13] Kappler's first wife divorced him while he was serving his sentence. In 1972, he married Anneliese Kappler, a nurse with whom he had carried on a lengthy correspondence, in a prison wedding ceremony. By this time, Kappler had converted to Catholicism,[17] due to the influence of his war-time enemy, Monseigneur Hugh O'Flaherty, who often visited him in prison, and with whom Kappler often discussed literature and religion.[10]
In 1975, at the age of sixty-eight, Kappler was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Appeals by both his wife and the West German government for compassionate release were denied by Italian authorities but did earn him a transfer to a hospital in 1976.[2] Due to Kappler's deteriorating condition and his wife's nursing skills, Anneliese Kappler was allowed almost unlimited access to him. On a visit in August 1977, she carried him out in a large suitcase (Kappler weighed about 47 kg (104 lb) at the time) and escaped to West Germany, assisted by apparently unwitting Carabinieri member.[3][9]
Despite demands that Kappler be returned to Italy, the West German authorities refused to extradite him and did not prosecute him for any further war crimes, reportedly owing to his ill-health. Vittorio Lattanzio resigned from his position as Minister of Defence in the aftermath of the escape.[18] Six months after his escape, Kappler died at home in Soltau, on 9 February 1978, aged 70.[19]
Kappler's time in prison and the friendship with his former enemy Monsignor O'Flaherty born of the Monsignor's frequent visits to that prison cell, is dramatised in the radio play The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican, by Robin Glendinning. The radio play was first broadcast on 30 November 2006 on UK BBC Radio 4. It was later performed live under the name Kingfishers Catch Fire.[22]
^ David Alvarez and Robert A. Graham, S.J. (1997), Nothing Sacred: Nazi Espionage Against the Vatican, Frank Cass, London. Pages 114-139.
^ David Alvarez (2002), Spies in the Vatican: Espionage and Intrigue from Napoleon to the Holocaust, University Press of Kansas. Pages 222-236, 316-318.
^ abCignoni, Luigi (30 August 2020). "Kappler a Gaeta". Italynews.it (in Italian). Retrieved 2 September 2020.