PBS Ortona 1943 A Very Bloody Christmas
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01:00In a small Abruzzo town,
01:04young volunteers from faraway Canada
01:08found themselves thrown into an inferno...
01:13..along with other young men from the German special forces.
01:24Thousands of civilians found themselves trapped and many died.
01:28You have just a great ferocity of the battle.
01:31There's no rest times in the battle.
01:33They're just fighting day and night.
01:35You know, a lot of men couldn't keep up to it
01:38and there was a high degree of battle exhaustion cases at Ortona.
01:43A lot of them developing after the battle,
01:45where men just weren't capable of going back into action again.
01:53Why fight over this medieval town
01:55clustered around an ancient cathedral
01:57preserving the relics of the Apostle Thomas?
02:01Why was Ortona almost completely destroyed?
02:07Why did Hitler order that it be defended to the death?
02:13Why was Stalin so interested in its fate?
02:17And why did the commander of the Eighth Army, General Montgomery,
02:21not mention it in his memoirs?
02:31It was the only battle fought house to house on the entire Western Front.
02:36It was Christmas 1943 in Italy.
02:40A bloody Christmas.
03:30MUSIC
03:51For weeks, Allied radio and newspapers talked about the horrors
03:55of an apparently crucial battle to win the Italian campaign
03:59and deal a decisive blow to Nazi Germany.
04:02Was this true?
04:10I really can't give you an answer why Ortona was important,
04:14but once we got committed,
04:17we had to fight Ortona and take it in the end.
04:22Today, historical research into Ortona is looking in different directions.
04:27Andrea Di Marco is passionately following the path
04:30of identifying the fallen Germans.
04:32It was Christmas Eve 1943,
04:35and Canadian soldier Edmund Griffiths found himself in a dark alley.
04:40I got lost.
04:45I hear some footsteps.
04:53I drew my knife.
04:58I could see the buckle.
05:07I got him with the knife.
05:28EXPLOSION
05:47In 1939, Canadian army divisions had been united with the English forces.
05:52Among these volunteers were 16-year-olds
05:55who had lied about their age in order to join up.
05:59Their moment came when Churchill convinced the Allies
06:02not to wait for the Normandy landings,
06:04but to open a southern front in Europe,
06:07attacking the soft underbelly of the continent, Italy.
06:16In July, the British Eighth Army landed at Perchino
06:20and the American Fifth Army at Gela.
06:23The operation was a success, and Sicily was rapidly conquered.
06:27The Canadians were involved in some particularly fierce battles.
06:31These men didn't know it at the time, but a few months later,
06:35the same units would again face the elite units of the German army.
06:40It happened at Ortona, and it was a tragic encounter.
06:46Montgomery speaks to the victorious troops in Sicily.
06:50Soon, however, the Italian campaign revealed the contradictions at its heart.
06:55Unlike the British, the Americans were betting everything on the Normandy landings,
07:00but there was also a personal conflict between Montgomery
07:03and his American counterparts, in particular General Patton,
07:07and later, Mark Clark.
07:09It seems to be often the nature of war,
07:13It seems to be often the nature of generalship,
07:16that they have very strong egos, want the media attention on themselves,
07:21because they're trying to win a war,
07:23but they're also trying to build a career track for themselves.
07:26Both of them were jockeying to, not only for the higher promotion,
07:32but for the glory of being the one who liberated Rome.
07:37The Italian political situation came to a head.
07:40On the 25th of July, fascism collapsed.
07:43On the 8th of September, Marshal Pietro Badoglio announced
07:46that the Anglo-American allies had accepted the offer of armistice.
07:50The alliance with the Germans was over.
07:52King Victor Emmanuel abandoned Rome and sailed south,
07:55away from the Germans and close to the area controlled by the British.
07:58It is a little-known fact that he set off from the small Abruzzo port of Ortona.
08:06Beyond the Straits of Messina is the long Italian peninsula.
08:09The Americans moved up the Tyrrhenian Sea,
08:11while the British moved up the Adriatic coast.
08:14But this time, Hitler was waiting for them.
08:19For his commander of operations in Italy,
08:21he initially considered the military genius of Erwin Rommel,
08:24but in the end he chose Field Marshal Albert Kesselring.
08:28His strategy was summed up in the sinister word,
08:31Zentimeterkrieg, war fought centimetre by centimetre.
08:36Kesselring believed in a scorched earth and withdrawal policy,
08:40destroying the infrastructure behind him in order to slow down the enemy.
08:46Then, at strategic points, he constructed powerful fortified lines
08:50to prevent even a centimetre of territory being taken back.
08:55The centre of Italy was cut in half at its narrowest point by the Gustav Line,
09:00which stretched from Gaeta right up to Ortona.
09:04Until that summer, Ortona was a town little touched by war,
09:08and the rites of peacetime, like the traditional Maggiolata festival,
09:12seemed not far away.
09:18The people of Ortona are optimists.
09:21The Allies were moving rapidly up the peninsula.
09:24There was no reason to believe that the war
09:26would pay particular attention to their town.
09:30But Montgomery had a plan to get round the Gustav Line
09:34and grab the prize that his American rival Clark most coveted.
09:38It was vital to take Ortona.
09:41Who would be the first general in the modern era to conquer the Eternal City?
10:05The first rain transformed southern central Italy's minor rivers
10:09into uncontrollable forces of nature that swept away the temporary bridges.
10:15When the British and Americans tried to cross,
10:17they were bombarded by enemy artillery and by machine gun fire
10:20from along the fortified lines.
10:23Their advance became slower and bloodier.
10:33In Abruzzo, the bad weather aided the Germans
10:36and prevented the RAF, the British Air Force, from attacking from the air,
10:40had the Allies foreseen this.
10:43They knew it was going to be rainy come November and December of 1943,
10:48but I guess because of the image of sunny Italy,
10:52they didn't actually realise how rainy it was going to be.
10:55When they were in front of the resistance lines in the Adriatic,
10:59they didn't even have the meteorological data.
11:26British War Office maps indicate another area in which they were unprepared.
11:31Don't be fooled by the pretty colours.
11:33This German Truppenkarte of the area around Ortona has never been seen before.
11:38It shows centres of population, infrastructure,
11:41geophysical details of every sort and even small farms.
11:45The Germans knew the battle terrain better than the Allies.
11:49Furthermore, the scale of the Truppenkarte means
11:52that this was much more detailed than the British maps.
11:58By the beginning of November, the war was approaching Ortona.
12:02The Germans ordered the inhabitants to evacuate
12:05and began preparing to defend the town.
12:07Suddenly, the danger was very close.
12:13People began to flee to the countryside.
12:16They didn't really know where they would be safe.
12:19The Germans obeyed the order to evacuate and hid in cellars in the town.
12:23Saverio Albanese had a further reason to stay.
12:41Conquering Ortona meant not only breaking through the Gustav Line.
12:45The British also wanted to use the port to bring in supplies
12:48and reinforcements.
12:51This aerial photograph was taken on 30 November 1943.
12:56It is irrefutable proof that the port was no longer a good reason to attack.
13:01The harbour walls had been blown up by German sappers.
13:13Meanwhile, in Moscow, they were wondering why the advance had stopped.
13:17Stalin was complaining.
13:19The slow progress of the Italian campaign
13:21was not drawing German troops away from the war against the Soviet Union.
13:26As soon as the weather allowed,
13:28the offensive in Abruzzo began again with heavy aerial bombardment.
13:31Finally, the Germans withdrew across the river Sangro
13:35and then beyond the Moro,
13:37but only after they had fought over every inch of terrain.
13:41It was a massacre on both sides.
13:44The battle for Ortona had begun.
13:58The task was assigned to the Canadian troops.
14:01Here are the Canadian cannons in action.
14:10The artillery terrified the population.
14:12The sky was full of columns of smoke.
14:15What did it feel like to be attacked by those bombs?
14:20You are about to see and hear, edited together for the first time,
14:24actual images of the bombing
14:26and the original sound recorded by a Canadian radio reporter.
14:31It's half past four now. That attack is going in.
14:35The guns are shooting again.
14:38I'd better take the mike outside.
14:42It was part of a recording made at the Moro River front today
14:46during a tremendous shoot on the enemy positions.
14:50The engineers recorded the enemy shells
14:52when they were falling right on us or near us.
14:55There were some grim moments.
14:58Here is the actual recording.
15:02It's half past four now.
15:05The guns are shooting again.
15:08I'd better take the mike outside.
15:10It's half past four now.
15:30In order to control the road leading to Ortona,
15:33first they had to take this farmhouse, the Baradi farmhouse.
15:37General Chris Vokes was in command of the Canadian 1st Division.
15:40He decided to launch the infantry in a bloody and useless frontal assault
15:44supported by continuous bombing.
15:46The owners of the farmhouse suddenly found themselves in the line of fire.
15:50Fernando Baradi was ten years old.
16:08It was a surprise attack by Captain Paul Tricquet and his men
16:12that got past the German positions and captured the Baradi farmhouse.
16:16In London, King George VI awarded Tricquet the first Victoria Cross
16:21given to a Canadian in Europe.
16:25The battle raged on in fields, scattered with dead bodies and troops,
16:29until it was finally over.
16:32The battle raged on in fields, scattered with dead bodies and troops,
16:36whose nerves were in shreds.
16:42One morning, a patrol of Canadians such as this one
16:45entered the farm where the Dadamo family was hiding.
16:53They immediately spotted a man in a black shirt.
16:56It was this child's father.
17:02I was immediately escorted to the wall
17:07because the Allied soldiers thought it was a fascist.
17:15In fact, he was wearing a black shirt as a sign of mourning
17:19for the loss of his young wife two years earlier.
17:22A child who had recently lost his mother
17:24was about to witness his father being shot.
17:32My grandmother, my grandfather, my uncle, who lived with us,
17:38immediately understood the gravity of the situation
17:42because they pulled out their machine guns,
17:45which they were holding in their arms, and wanted to shoot him immediately.
17:49They began to shout, they began to beg,
17:55they began to beg these Allied boys.
18:01The soldiers were implacable.
18:03Tommaso had his back to the wall.
18:05Then the grandmother tried a desperate move.
18:31It was still full of flowers.
18:34It was still lit by lights that always remember the dead.
18:43And this soldier finally convinced himself
18:49that it was a deceased person
18:52and that it was not the fascist's black shirt.
18:58Then the machine gun was pointed at this picture
19:03and nine shots were fired.
19:06Nine shots at my mother's photograph.
19:10I keep this picture very, very jealously
19:16because it wants to be a monument.
19:21War is a great ugly beast.
19:23We must keep it away from our thoughts,
19:25we must keep it away from our hearts.
19:32The Canadian units had been decimated,
19:35but the worst was yet to come.
19:37In the middle of December, the Fallschirmjäger,
19:40the paratroopers from the 1st Division of the Luftwaffe,
19:43were deployed to defend Ortona.
19:56They were highly trained,
19:58all volunteers with a strong allegiance to their regiment.
20:01The Allied press referred to them as fanatical Nazis.
20:05They were not fanatics.
20:07They were good, trained parachute troops
20:10and they were good soldiers, really good soldiers.
20:17One night, paratroop colonel Heilman personally visited Ortona.
20:22This medieval structure seemed to him perfect for the defence.
20:26When the Canadians set foot in the maze of alleyways,
20:29they would find a carefully prepared battleground.
20:35The paratroopers set to work.
20:41Their aim? To create a hell on earth.
20:53One day, a young paratrooper, Bernhard Rebers,
20:56was mining a house when a man begged him to stop.
21:22That was an exception.
21:24The paratroopers' work was meticulous.
21:27Huge heaps of rubble obstructed the streets
21:30in order to channel the attacking forces towards the terrible Annihilation Zone.
21:35Under the rubble lurked anti-tank mines.
21:38Everywhere there were deadly mines known as ballerinas.
21:53If you avoided the mines,
21:55you found yourself facing those infallible death machines,
21:59the MG-42 machine guns,
22:01able to spew out 1,200 rounds of bullets,
22:04almost eight centimetres long,
22:07in only a matter of seconds.
22:09The machine guns were capable of firing up to 10,000 rounds
22:13in a single shot.
22:15The machine guns were capable of firing up to 10,000 rounds
22:18in a single shot.
22:21This footage shows crossfire training.
22:24Three MGs spray an area with laser-like accuracy.
22:28There was no escape.
22:30That's why in the diary of a paratrooper who was at Ortona,
22:34the MG is called the Nazis' saw.
22:45Hitler was aware of the exceptional defensive capabilities
22:48of Ortona.
22:50The Germans could pull back several kilometres
22:53without breaking the Gustav Line,
22:55but the Fuhrer ordered them to stand firm.
22:58Canadian command didn't know this yet.
23:01Brigadier Wyman discusses the situation with his colleagues.
23:04Many men have already died since the battle over the River Moro,
23:08but the first Canadian victory on the continent
23:11seemed only hours away.
23:14Sherman tanks and infantry are heading for the town.
23:18A mule carries its melancholy load of new crosses.
23:22Soon, hundreds of them will be needed.
23:27Here we see the Canadian soldiers advancing towards the city
23:30along the coast.
23:32As soon as they arrived at the houses on the outskirts,
23:35an area known as Constantinople,
23:37they came across the first pockets of German resistance.
23:42The platoon commander calls for the Bren gun.
24:03Just behind, on a plain by the sea,
24:06the Canadian artillery,
24:09Many civilians had taken refuge in the cemetery.
24:12Among them were the Baradi family
24:14who had escaped from the hell of their farmhouse.
24:17The situation was critical.
24:39Hundreds of people slept for days among the tombs, in the chapel
24:43and in the watchman's house
24:45under the most appallingly unhygienic conditions
24:48while the Germans patrolled the supposedly evacuated town.
24:52One group couldn't take it any longer in the cemetery
24:55and followed a tailor, a Signor Primavera,
24:58into the cellar of a small country house.
25:01But along the way, Maria Teresa Baradi refused to go any further.
25:09No, no, no.
25:17At the Primavera house, the Germans hammered at the door,
25:20warning them that the house was mined.
25:22They held their breaths and didn't answer.
25:38The house exploded.
25:40About 40 people died.
25:42For hours under the bombing, cries for help could be heard
25:45and then silence.
25:47A few hours later, another mysterious event occurred
25:50in the small town that housed the relics of the Apostle Thomas.
25:54To the side of the cathedral, an old tower used to signal shipping.
25:58It served as an observation point for those defending the town
26:02but also as a valuable point of reference for the attacking artillery.
26:09It was the 21st of December, 1943.
26:14St Thomas.
26:15The day that liturgically was then
26:18the feast of St Thomas the Apostle, patron saint of the town.
26:22We were at home. I was sleeping.
26:31And that morning, at 6.30am...
26:38a terrible explosion.
26:45We went outside.
26:46It was open on St Thomas Square.
26:48And we saw the spectacle.
26:50The dome of the cathedral was cut in half.
27:09The relics of St Thomas had been safely hidden for months
27:13but the emotional effect of the destruction on the people of Ortona
27:17was devastating.
27:18There was very little doubt who was responsible.
27:29But there is another version.
27:31Corporal Karl Beierlein was a paratroop sapper
27:34Corporal Karl Beierlein was a paratroop sapper who mined many buildings.
27:39In this never-seen-before signed document from 1996
27:43he claims that it was not the Germans who destroyed the cathedral tower.
27:47He swears he is telling the truth.
27:49Perhaps it was the Tommies, as the Germans call British and Canadian soldiers.
28:05The cathedral? No.
28:07I don't know.
28:08I only know that the Tommies...
28:13...destroyed the church tower in Ortona.
28:16That's all I know.
28:18Canadian Brigadier Bertram Hoffmeister's surname comes from his German father.
28:22He was a very talented soldier who was popular with his men.
28:26In a fragment from a declaration from the 1960s
28:29he recounts what he saw happen from his command post.
28:32I saw this huge dome of the church in Ortona
28:36overlooking his battalion position.
28:39This alarmed me somewhat, so I ordered up some tanks
28:45and the tanks immediately, of course, demolished half the dome of the church
28:51and destroyed it as an observation post
28:54which I'm sure was the main purpose of it up to that point.
28:59On the morning of the 21st of December, the Canadians are fighting on this bend in the road.
29:05Here is the footage.
29:07They still haven't succeeded in overcoming German resistance on the outskirts
29:11and penetrating into the town.
29:13Advancing is a nightmare.
29:16There are snipers and machine gun posts everywhere.
29:19Look how cautious the soldiers are.
29:22Go round the wrong bend and you're dead.
29:27And you're dead.
29:35But the young Canadian soldiers were very brave.
29:38The German paratroopers withdrew towards the centre of the town.
29:42The soldiers moved along a wall that is considered to be safe.
29:46Suddenly something moves among the rubble.
29:50A few minutes later, they capture three German soldiers.
29:54One is wounded and being held up by another.
29:57Despite the ferocity of the battle, prisoners are always treated with respect
30:01but the looks these young combatants exchange are very revealing.
30:08An anti-tank cannon is immediately set up in order to protect the advance
30:12towards the piazza leading into the main street.
30:16Finally, the Sherman tanks manage to advance the 200 metres to the piazza.
30:30The infantry immediately followed behind the tanks.
30:35A wounded German is shot in the head.
30:39The infantry immediately followed behind the tanks.
30:44A wounded German is given water and taken to the hospital.
30:48And this is Sergeant Johnny Marchand being treated by the medical corps
30:52which were suffering great losses on both sides
30:55because they were often operating under heavy fire.
30:58Basically, once they got up and took, say, the church at Constantinople
31:03and the houses around there that were on the approach into the town,
31:07they expected that the Germans would say,
31:09OK, that's enough, let's pull out.
31:12They were wrong. The nightmare was just beginning.
31:16As the grenades exploded, civilians wandered about almost unnoticed
31:20among the rubble searching for a safe refuge.
31:23Was anywhere safe now?
31:26It's the 22nd of December.
31:28The Sherman tanks are preparing to advance along Corso Vittorio Emanuele,
31:32the only street that has been left open and it's wide enough for the tanks.
31:36It's a trap. The German paras were waiting for them.
31:39What you are seeing are the only photographs of the battle
31:42from German sources seen here for the first time.
31:45It's a trap. The German paras were waiting for them.
31:48It's a trap. The German paras were waiting for them.
31:51It's the only photographs of the battle from German sources
31:54seen here for the first time.
31:56There was no official cameraman.
31:58These pictures were taken by Corporal Siegfried Baer from his hiding place.
32:07Through the surreal atmosphere of the abandoned town,
32:10the Sherman tanks advance in columns.
32:21Those in Fulham following them don't know it,
32:23but they have begun to advance towards the annihilation zone.
32:29In a city, you need infantry support around you for protection.
32:36You protect them, but they also protect you.
32:52During the time in Artona, we lost 14.
32:59The column comes to a halt in front of the first huge heap of rubble
33:02in front of the town hall.
33:0814.
33:11A tank is blown up by a mine.
33:22German machine guns are spraying the streets and anything that moves.
33:39By sunset, it is clear that the men and tanks cannot advance along the main road.
33:44The following day, everything goes according to the German plan.
33:50The Canadians are forced to enter the narrow side streets
33:52where the Sherman tanks cannot go.
34:10It's hard to imagine the tension these young men were feeling as they advanced,
34:14the air almost impossible to breathe
34:16due to the dust from the rubble and the smoke from the bombing.
34:19They knew that every step could be their last.
34:34Every second in those streets seemed like an hour.
34:37The fear spared no one.
34:47You never knew where the enemy was.
34:50You were stuck in the houses and you never had a real front.
35:07The physical distance from the enemy could disappear in a moment.
35:11Enemy patrols kept appearing.
35:16In a battle, where you don't sleep, you shoot,
35:19where you set fire before you can recognize
35:23if the man moving has the same uniform or not.
35:27And then in the urban scenario, where everything is destroyed,
35:29where everything is dust, even the colors of the uniforms tend to be similar.
35:34It was the first battle of its kind on the Western Front.
35:38A miniature Stalingrad, the newspapers called it.
35:41It was a lesson in urban warfare, but a dreadful sacrifice of men.
35:48It became a battle house by house and street by street.
35:53The Canadians understood that it was suicide.
35:56They knew that the Germans were coming.
36:00The Canadians understood that it was suicide to fight in the alleyways.
36:04They tried a new tactic, mouseholing.
36:06And mouseholing meant blowing a hole through the wall of a house
36:12and going through that hole into the house next door.
36:18The Piet is an anti-tank weapon.
36:20It proved invaluable when aimed against the wall of a house opening a breach.
36:24In that way, the riflemen were able to move from house to house
36:28without having to expose themselves in the alleyways.
36:32They cleared out the enemy from the ground floor upwards,
36:35then opened another hole in the wall and moved into the building next door,
36:39proceeding from the top floor down.
36:41But the enemy was waiting for them.
36:44MUSIC
36:54GUNSHOT
37:10Here is Montgomery at Chieti near Otona.
37:13Winter had arrived and Montgomery's plan to avoid the Gustav Line
37:16by passing through Otona now seemed impossible to achieve,
37:19yet he insisted on attacking. Why?
37:22Montgomery constantly coming to Chris Vokes and saying,
37:26hurry up, hurry up.
37:28He becomes less concerned about casualties than...
37:31He really doesn't care how many casualties are suffered
37:35as long as this battle is resolved.
37:38I do think it was not just his drive to want to continue the offensive to Rome
37:43that was behind this.
37:45I think it was he felt he had to deliver a media victory
37:48because of the pressure that was on him.
37:51Faced with the losses, for the first time,
37:54Vokes proposed stopping the attack, but Hofmeister disagreed.
37:58At this point, giving up would destroy the men's morale.
38:02The Otona nightmare had still not reached its peak.
38:09It is Christmas Eve, 1943.
38:12Many witnesses say they heard the soldiers hiding in the rubble
38:16singing Stille Nacht, followed by Silent Night,
38:19the same song in two different languages.
38:38On Christmas Day, the Canadians managed to organise an amazing Christmas lunch
38:42in the half-destroyed church Santa Maria di Costantinopoli,
38:45just a few dozen metres from the fighting.
38:48The menu consisted of soup, pork with apple sauce, vegetables,
38:51fruit salad, Christmas pudding and a bottle of beer.
38:54The Seaforth Highlanders of Canada are able to pull one company after another
38:59out of the front lines, even as the battle rages.
39:02They bring them back to the cathedral and they feed them a Christmas dinner,
39:07they sing carols and then they're shuffled back into the line
39:11so yet another company can come out.
39:18For some of the men here, it is the last lunch they'll ever have.
39:29Death takes no account of age.
39:38This young man with his elbow resting on the table
39:41will survive only a few hours after Christmas.
39:44He will fall on the 26th.
39:47Many Germans will meet the same fate.
40:07It was also the last real and concrete act of resistance against the Ottomans
40:12because it was proven that it was true that the Germans were giving up
40:15every metre of land at a very high price,
40:17but it was also true that they were giving up that land.
40:37And I've never forgotten it.
40:44On the night of Christmas Eve in one of the few habitable houses,
40:4815 Canadians shared their food with civilians.
40:51One of the soldiers was a major, but few realised that he was
40:55commanding part of the operations in the town.
40:59The dramatic events that followed are recorded in this memoir
41:02written by a woman, Maria Moro, and kept by her relative, Amelia.
41:06At the time, a child at the mercy of the war.
41:22Maria spoke French to the major, and so the following day...
41:36GERMAN
41:42Terrified, Maria realised what was about to happen.
41:52The desperate woman told the Canadian officer that the attack would mean a massacre.
42:07GERMAN
42:15The major took no notice of the danger in the street.
42:18Perhaps he was thinking of Maria's stark phrase,
42:20it's full of civilians.
42:25The tanks were aiming at the hospital.
42:27I've never forgotten, you know, it was Christmas Day.
42:31You know, you don't spend Christmas Day killing people.
43:02Stop!
43:14Stop! Stop!
43:17Hundreds of people owe their lives to that man's sudden decision.
43:25But one shot was fired and struck the hospital's woodshed.
43:31GERMAN
44:01There was a German in the hospital.
44:04But there was also a Republican in the living room.
44:08To me, I must say, he was a delinquent.
44:11In fact, it was this man who grabbed me and told me,
44:15go into that room, go and see if there are any wounded.
44:20In fact, I recognize the daughter of my mother's cousin,
44:26a beautiful girl who was both
44:29her and her mother embraced.
44:33Then there were three of the same family.
44:50The end was nigh.
44:52Here we see Canadian men and tanks on 26 December
44:56finally occupying the heart of the Annihilation Zone
44:59in Piazza del Municipio.
45:09It had taken them almost a week to cover 400 metres.
45:15But they only had to turn the corner to come face to face
45:18with the new horror of the battle.
45:22With bayonet fixed, ready for hand-to-hand combat,
45:25a soldier heads for the ruined cathedral,
45:28the enemy pockets of resistance still active
45:31all through the day of the 27th.
45:33And then that night, something unexpected happened.
45:47I was always afraid.
45:49Anything could happen at any moment.
45:53As soon as we came out, the train station was on fire.
45:58Thank God we got out of there.
46:03It's indescribable, such misery.
46:07It is the morning of the 28th.
46:09An old man proceeds slowly down the main street
46:12in an atmosphere of strange calm.
46:22The vanguards of the Canadian army begin their advance
46:25until they realise that there is no one left.
46:28The Germans withdrew at night, in good order,
46:31and took away as many wounded as possible.
46:34The incredulous Canadians saw men, women and children
46:37emerge from the rubble.
46:39Since the beginning of December,
46:41around 3,500 civilians and soldiers had died,
46:44but soon they would try to erase all records
46:47of the bloodiest battle of the Italian campaign.
46:50It is certainly an uncomfortable memory,
46:52because there is no heroism in the Battle of Orton.
46:55It is what makes you point the medals at the general's chest
46:59or make him remember them in history.
47:02This event, inflated by propaganda,
47:04inflated by the soldiers,
47:06inflated by those who wanted this decisive battle
47:11for a campaign,
47:13which does not even explode in their hands.
47:15It collapses and only remains the desolation
47:19of a completely destroyed city,
47:21of a battle that has nothing heroic,
47:25except for the suffering of the simple soldier.
47:32But in history books, simple soldiers never go,
47:34only generals do.
47:36A mere three days later,
47:38Bernard Montgomery had already abandoned the Italian front,
47:41having been called to prepare the Normandy landings
47:43under the command of General Eisenhower.
47:46He hardly ever spoke of Ortona again.
47:53It was not he who conquered Rome,
47:55but the Americans, much later, at the beginning of June,
47:58just before the Normandy landings.
48:03The conquest of Ortona did not produce
48:05any significant advance of terrain.
48:07The Germans simply drew back a few kilometres.
48:11While a deep bond was formed between the Canadians
48:14and the people of Ortona that endures to this day.
48:19But part of the truth of the motives of the battle
48:22has remained hidden until now.
48:25The footage you're about to see has never been seen before
48:29and is the missing part of the puzzle.
48:31It shows the bombing near Ortona.
48:40Some soldiers are fleeing to safety.
48:43Who are they?
48:44Their uniforms leave no doubt.
48:46They are Russian officers.
48:49The Soviet observers can only be there for one reason.
48:53To prove to Stalin that the accusations
48:55that the war on the Italian front is easing off
48:58and that the call to bring forward the Normandy landings
49:01are unfounded.
49:04The soldiers' sacrifice and this small Italian Stalingrad
49:07were the bloody but irrefutable proof
49:09to silence the Russian allies.
49:13That is the real reason for the battle
49:15and why it has been removed from history.
49:18It is an uncontrollable mix of the pressure of public opinion
49:21fed by a press that today we would call embedded.
49:25Political motives and the personal ambitions of the generals
49:29did the rest.
49:31A cocktail that makes the battle of Ortona seem very modern.
49:34An extremely topical parable for the inevitable stupidity of war.
49:43The loss of the German and Italian and Canadian sides,
49:49it wasn't worth it really.
49:56But in war these things happen.
50:04No, no.
50:06When I think about it now, I don't know why.
50:09Why would you destroy a house?
50:11For whom?
50:14Totally nonsense.
50:19I just go to see old friends.
50:22You know, people that I knew and people I respect.
50:25It's an emotional thing.
50:27I, you know, I have no...
50:32..no real way of expressing myself.
50:36They're old friends, so I just go to say hello.
50:46Andrea Di Marco's research finally seems to have come to an end.
51:02There was only one German soldier born in 1925.
51:06His name was Paul Jeska.
51:09Buried by the Canadians, he died on the date indicated by Griffiths.
51:13He was killed in Ortona on Christmas Day 1943.
51:17Bernhard Rebers lives near Hanover.
51:20Many years ago, he was a baby-faced soldier.
51:23His hands are still agile.
51:26He constructs amazing miniature merry-go-rounds
51:29to the delight of his grandchildren.
51:31But he has never forgotten when he used to prepare mines.
51:35He used to dream of going to Italy on holiday.
51:51There were other battles that I have memories of,
51:56but this was, I think, the most difficult battle that I've ever encountered.
52:56© BF-WATCH TV 2021