“Glorious” RAPES by the Allies in May 1944 in Italy – using Muslims already at that time to humiliate the white race

The crimes of 1944 in Italy, specifically in Ciociaria, Lazio and Tuscany, are mass rapes and killings of civilians by members of the Army of Africa who served under the orders of General Juin during the Battle of Monte Cassino, Italy. They are nicknamed in Italy the “marocchinate” (literally “Morocco affair”, referring to the Moroccan origin of many soldiers of the French expeditionary force in Italy).

Between April and June 1944, members of the French expeditionary force, half of which consisted of Moroccan Goumiers, Algerian soldiers, Tunisian sharpshooters and Senegalese [black African] riflemen, were guilty of war crimes in central and southern Italy and in particular in the surrounding area. Mount Cassin, a region locally called Ciociaria.

According to a bill of the Italian Senate dated 1996, more than 2,000 women and children were raped (from 11 years for the youngest, to 86 years), as well as 600 men2.

According to some sources, these figures are not supported by any French archive 3. By contrast, on 1 January 1947, the French authorities authorized compensation for 1,488 victims of sexual violence4. In 2004 the Italian government recognized as proven violence and rape committed by Moroccan troops and decorated with Medals for civil merit certain individuals in many cities of Ciociaria.

These events served as a backdrop to a novel by Alberto Moravia, adapted to the cinema by Vittorio De Sica:  La Ciociara.

*** film on the same subject of 1961 with Sophia Loren

Context

The Goums, formations of the Army of Africa (to distinguish it from the colonial army), were recruited in a regular way, but collectively in complete units, with recrutement included.

These contract troops, called Moroccan gangs, but with a special status, close to the local customs of the recruiting zone, provided the backbone of the infantry of a Moroccan infantry division.

They belonged to the CEF (French Expeditionary Force) alongside the 2nd Moroccan Infantry Division, the 3rd Algerian Infantry Division, the 4th Moroccan Mountain Division and the 1st Motorized Infantry Division (1st IMG) which called himself the 1st Free French Division. The goums were under the orders of the French General Augustin Guillaume.

On May 14, 1944 the goumiers, with their convoys of mules, passed through a place deemed insurmountable in the Aurunces Mountains and bypassed the German defense lines in the Liri Valley, allowing the XIIIth British Corps to drive the Gustav line and advance to the next line of defense that the German troops had prepared, the Hitler Line. It was after this battle that violence took place against the civilian population.

The crimes

During his first visit to the Italian front in March 1944, De Gaulle already plans to repatriate the goumiers to Morocco and use them only for non-combat, public purposes. The urgent demand of ther officers to reinforce the contingent of prostitutes and have 300 Moroccan women and 150 Algerian women led to the arrival of only 171 Moroccan women…5.

In Italy, the abuses of Moroccan gumiers gave birth to the terms “marocchinate”, “marocchinare” which refer to the rapes of unsurpassable cruelty that were committed5.

From May 15 to 17, more than 600 women are raped, many men suffering the same fate as well as a priest. 

An English report reveals that women and girls, adolescents and children were raped on the street, prisoners were sodomized and notable persons castrated 5. 

In post-war Italy, talking about “a Morocco affair” always evokes scenes of looting and rape.

The first mention of four rapes occurred already on December 11, 1943, when soldiers of the 573rd regiment commanded by a French lieutenant “who seemed unable to control them” were involved. The French writer Jean-Christophe Notin argues that these are the “first echoes of real, or more often imaginary, behaviors that Moroccans were to be accused of” 7.

In the early 1950s, the Unione Donne Italiane [“!Association of Italian swomen”], a women’s communist organization, sought compensation for about 12,000 women who had been victims of sexual violence by the French Expeditionary Force.But the numbers in this respect diverge a lot. The Italian historian Giovanni De Luna places it between a minimum of 300 (number of indictments) and a maximum of 60,000 (total number of claims).

Testimonials on “Marocchinate”

The mayor of Esperia (municipality of Frosinone province) said that in his city of 2,500 people, 700 women were raped and some died.

According to a testimony given by Professor Bruno D’Epiro8, it is said that 

the priest of Esperia tried in vain to save three women from the violence of the soldiers. He was tied up, sodomized all night — and died as a result of the violence.

In Pico, according to some testimonies, American soldiers wanted to join the goumiers while the latter were carrying out their crimes, but they were prevented by their officers.

The writer Norman Lewis, at the time a British officer on the Montecassino front, recounted the events in a book:

“Recently, all the women of Patrica, Pofi, Isoletta, Supino, and Morolo have been raped. In Lenola, taken by the Allies on May 21, fifty women were raped, and – as there was not enough for all – children and even old people were raped.

It seems normal that two Moroccans simultaneously attack the woman, one having a normal intercourse, while the other sodomizes her. “
– Norman Lewis, Naples ’44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy

However this violence was not limited to this area of ​​Italy alone: ​​the phenomenon had begun in July 1943 in Sicily, before spreading thereafter throughout the peninsula and it would not end until October 1944 , with the transfer to Provence of the CEF.

In Sicily, the goumiers would have had very severe clashes with the population for this reason: we speak of some soldiers who found killed with their genitals cut off.

With the advance of the Allies along the Italian peninsula, events of this kind are also reported in northern Lazio 4 and southern Tuscany where the goumiers raped and sometimes killed women and children after the retreat of German troops, sometimes not even sparing members of the pro-Allied Italian Resistance.

The same misdeeds were repeated during the capture of Freudenstadt, Germany, on 16 and 17 April 1945, when at least 600 women were raped by French troops, including Moroccan goumiers 10.

The reactions of the authorities

On June 18, 1944, Pope Pius XII solicited General de Gaulle to take action against this situation. The response he received from the general showed both his compassion and his irritation. The French justice system entered the picture, and 207 soldiers were tried for sexual violence; just 39 of them were acquitted, and for lack of evidence 4. To these figures, however, we must add the number of those (28) who were caught in the act and were shot.

On January 1, 1947, France authorized financial compensation for 1,488 victims of sexual violence; compensation, however, was paid out by Italy for crimes committed by French troops. 4

Historiographic interpretations

Contemporary Witnesses and Historians’ Works

In a letter addressed to General de Gaulle on July 18, 1944, Marshal Jean de Lattre de Tassigny writes about Moroccan goumiers: “I know that they are accused of acts of violence committed against Italian civilians, but I believe that such facts have been singularly distorted and exaggerated for anti-French purposes. “

A bill introduced into the Italian Senate in 1996 speaks of 2,000 women and 600 men raped 2.

According to the archives of S.H.A.E.F [Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force] 12, based on documents from the headquarters of the Fifth US Army where  the complaints of victims or parents of victims were recorded, there was 160 judicial investigations concerning 360 individuals. There were 125 convictions for rape, 12 for indecent assault and 17 for intentional homicide. According to these archives, the most serious cases were committed from May 29th to May 31st.

The report of Captain Umberto Pittali dated May 28, 1944, archived by the Archivio Storico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri (ASMAE – “Historical Archives of the Ministry of External Affairs”) describes in detail the atrocities committed:

“Whoever is in their path is attacked by armed men […]. They seize everything […], and if in the group there are women, they are stripped for rape and with violence in case of resistance. 

If, for example, they rush into some farms that are still inhabited, they indulge in a real rampage; as a result, with weapons in hand, they drive men out of the houses and rape women with no respect for the young or for the elderly. […] In all cases, it is regrettable that acts of carnal violence are accompanied by very violent blows. The medical reports mention in the medican diagnoses of such deflorations multiple lesions, bruises and other traumatisms […].

Overall, it is safe to say that 90% of the people who crossed the area of ​​operations of Moroccan troops were robbed of all their belongings, and that a high number of women were abused, AND that there have been a large number of men who have been subjected to unnatural acts.“

By way of comparison, but referring to a larger overall force of armies than the battalions in question here, the American historian J. Robert Tilly in his book The Hidden Face of the GIs, reports on 379 archived records, 879 officially counted, and extrapolating on these bases to take into account cases that have never given rise to complaints, estimates that more than 17,000 rapes were committed by the US military during the campaigns of France and Germany between 1942 and 1945 14.

The rapes committed by the Soviet Army are estimated at more than two million German women raped in 1944-1945 (including 100,000 during the Battle of Berlin alone).

Some English journalists acknowledged that the only incidents they remember did not involve Moroccans, but American GIs 17. An investigation in 1946 found that the Italian Government paid the plaintiff 15,000 lire each time a complaint was lodged, which may have encouraged certain women to invent abuses.

According to General Guillaume, who commanded the Moroccan goumiers at the time of the facts, the smear campaign was born in the diplomatic circles of the Axis that were stationed in the neutral countries; a propaganda that was not new at that time and resumed the concept of the “Black Shame”, a nationalist and racialist campaign launched in Weimar Germany in the early 1920s to denounce the [crimes committed during the] occupation of the Rhineland by French colonial troops.

The false message of General Juin

A document published in 1965 by the National Association of Civilian Victims of War (ANVCG) 19 mentions a “leaflet” in French and Arabic that circulated among the goumiers 20 and according to which General Juin promised to his soldiers fifty hours of “freedom” after the battle:

“Beyond the mountains, beyond the enemies whom this night you will kill, there is an abundant land rich in women, wine, and houses. If you succeed in passing this line without leaving a single living enemy, your general promises it, you swear it, you proclaim it: these women, these houses, this wine, all that you will find will be yours, your good pleasure and your will. For fifty hours. And you can have everything, do everything, take everything, destroy everything or take everything away, if you have won, if you deserved it. Your general will keep his promise, if you obey for the last time until victory. “
– Translation of the text as presented in Italian by the ANVCG13.

This is a simple claim that the Italian association for victims has not used. This is not mentioned by the Italian Senate in its 1996 bill.21 No copy of this “leaflet” has ever been presented 13 and no French archive mentions it 3. Since then, and among others, by the Italian far-right, 22 “the idea of ​​the fifty hours of “carte blanche” has become deeply rooted in the collective imagination.”

Others claim that it is “the Americans [who] gave the Moroccans carte blanche in order to get them to break through the front line” because “without a carte blanche, the Moroccans no longer would fight or advance”.

Position of the Italian State

The Italian state has officially acknowledged the events that occurred in the province of Frosinone and Latina following the rupture of the Gustav Line. The municipalities of Esperia 25 and Lenola 26 received the Gold Medal of Civil Merit, while Castro dei Volsci27, Ceccano28, Campodimele29, Pofi30, Saturnia 31 received the Silver Medal. The crimes committed by Moroccan troops are explicitly mentioned in the motivations for attribution.

On 14 March 2004, the President of the Italian Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, told Cassino in this regard: “No one can ever forgive the violence inflicted on women, children and the elderly in Esperia and many other villages 32. “

A bronze stele to commemorate the rape of women from the municipalities of Monti Aurunci, Ausoni and Lepini was inaugurated on 27 July 2006 in Campodimele by the deputy speaker of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Giorgia Meloni.

The “marocchinate” at the cinema

A scene from the film La Ciociara, inspired by the homonymous novel by Alberto Moravia and directed by Vittorio De Sica, evokes these events.

 

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…..See also

UPDATED On the Moroccan beheading video — Louisa Jespersen, RIP