by Dino Messina
The resistance of the Italians in the Libyan oasis became legendary and was told in a song and in a film with Alberto Sordi
Surrender in war is not in itself a disgrace (here the article about the Mariupol Steel Works). One of the most famous and honorable renditions of World War II was that of Sevastopol, the siege by the Eleventh Division of the Wehrmacht under the command of General Erich von Manstein lasted over eight months, from October 30, 1941 to July 4, 1942. At last the Russians capitulated, but only after losing over a hundred thousand soldiers (95,000 prisoners, 11,000 dead) and inflicting considerable wounds on the enemy. The loss of the fortress did not prevent Soviet propaganda from portraying the Battle of Sevastopol as one of the glorious episodes of World War II.
By the way, we recall that a little less than a century ago another siege of Sevastopol took place, which ended in the surrender and victory of the besieging forces of Great Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia. the central episode of the Crimean War, which lasted about a year from September 1854 to September 1855 and in which the Russian writer Lev Tolstoy took part as an artillery officer. Unforgettable is his story of the long siege that killed at least four thousand Russians.
On the Eastern Front of World War II there is an episode that describes the defeat of the great German army, the Sixth, and the personal surrender of their general, one of the best prepared soldiers, Friedrich von Paulus, who in the winter of 1941-42 he led completed a series of brilliant operations until September 13, when he launched the offensive against Stalingrad. In two months, the Germans managed to capture a large part of the city, but from November 19, the Uranus operation began the salvation of the Soviets, which on February 2 ended the fighting with the almost complete annihilation of German troops prevailed. Von Paulus repeatedly refused to give up, in the end he only admitted a personal surrender.
One of the tributes that inspired the famous song interpreted by Carlo Buti, the Giarabub Feast (Colonel, I don’t want bread, give me lead for my musket…) was that imposed on an Italian unit besieged in Libya’s oasis by Giarabub. The battle, which took place between December 10, 1940 and March 21, 1941, was won by the 6th Australian Cavalry Regiment, which managed to isolate the Italian contingent under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Salvatore Castagna, who only recovered after a very hard and long struggle resulted . The Italians of 1350 were completely isolated and betrayed by almost all Libyan collaborators: over six hundred fled and surrendered to the enemy. Castagna, wounded, was captured and imprisoned in an English camp in India. When he returned to Italy, he learned that his resistance had become legendary and that the battle of Giarabub was not only sung about by Carlo Buti, but also became the subject of a film directed in 1942 by Goffredo Alessandrini, with the participation of a young and pale Alberto Sordi became .
From the Italian side, however, the Second World War was riddled with little honorable capitulations that were signed almost without a fight. One of the most famous was the surrender of Pantelleria, which Mussolini had defined as our Gibraltar, the guardian of the Empire, and which instead fell into Allied hands on June 11, 1943, after only a two-day siege. The more than eleven thousand Italian soldiers commanded by General Gino Pavesi hardly fought. According to General Pavesi, the surrender was determined by the lack of water and the inability to resupply under the fire of the British Navy’s long-range guns.
To remain in the dreadful year of 1943, after the armistice of September 8 and the change of front, there were numerous episodes of Italy’s surrender without a fight. Many episodes concerned the difficult region of the Balkans. We mention in particular one whose protagonist was General Gastone Gambara, who had been summoned to Rome on September 5th to receive the order to organize a large mobile unit that would deploy the forces of the II and VIII Armies, to counteract new enemies, the Germans. On the 9th Gambara flew to Rijeka, where he became aware of the deteriorating situation. After listening to him, his boss Mario Robotti took a yacht to Lussimpiccolo and left it to its own devices. Gambara decided at this point to surrender without a fight and handed over the town of Fiume, where 40,000 Italian soldiers were present, to a Wermacht officer, escorted by two motorcyclists. Only on the 14th did the Germans arrive in massive numbers, Gambara fled to Venice and joined the Social Republic. Remaining in World War II but in the distant Pacific theater, one cannot ignore Hong Kong’s dramatic surrender, signed by British Governor Mark Aitchison Young on December 26, 1941. The British troops, with the help of Canadians and Indians, could do nothing against the anger and organization of the Japanese, who managed to capture the city in ten days (they crossed the Victoria Bridge on December 18). By this time, Chinese intervention in support of the British, who had already lost control of the city, proved useless.
Christmas 1941 went down in the history of the city as Black Christmas. The conditions of the more than seven thousand prisoners being monitored by the Japanese are extremely difficult. So far we have talked about World War II, but I would like to end this brief review with an episode of 19th-century Italian history, namely the long siege of Gaeta, which lasted from November 5, 1860 to February September 1861. In those three and a half Months ago, Francesco II managed to regain his honor in a campaign that saw the army of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies fall against the volunteers of Giuseppe Garibaldi. The last and weak ruler of the Bourbons bravely faced the overwhelming and better armed troops of General Enrico Cialdini, who had 180 rifled and long-range guns with which he bombarded the fortress from the ground. Francesco II only had 4, the others were old plain-tube irons. Napoleon III’s French had prevented the siege from taking place even from the sea, but also to prevent the slaughter (Cladini’s cannons hit not only military but also civilian targets, including hospitals), they left Gaeta’s roadstead. On February 14, Francis II and his courageous wife Maria Sofia of Bavaria left the fortress of Gaeta aboard the French warship Mouette, sailing to Civitavecchia. Francesco II settled in Rome with his family, initially as a guest of Pope Pius IX. in the Quirinale, then in the Palazzo Farnese, which became the seat of the provisional government in exile.
April 21, 2022 (Change April 21, 2022 | 19:23)
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