Biscari massacre
The Biscari massacre was the killing of 71 unarmed Italian and two unarmed German prisoners of war by American soldiers on 13 July 1943 at the Biscari airfield, Sicily.
History
The killings occurred on two separate occasions, after facing stiff resistance, in one case after snipers had targeted wounded soldiers as well as the medics attempting to aid them. When he was informed of the massacres, General Omar Bradley told General George S. Patton that U.S. troops had murdered some 50 to 70 prisoners in cold blood. Patton noted his response in his diary:
- "I told Bradley that it was probably an exaggeration, but in any case to tell the Officer to certify that the dead men were snipers or had attempted to escape or something, as it would make a stink in the press and also would make the civilians mad. Anyhow, they are dead, so nothing can be done about it."
Bradley refused Patton's suggestions. Patton later changed his mind. After he learned that the 45th Division's Inspector General found "no provocation on the part of the prisoners....They had been slaughtered," Patton is reported to have said, "Try the bastards."
At the trials, both Sergeant Horace T. West and Captain John T. Compton stated that Patton had ordered that if the enemy continued to resist after U.S. troops had come within 200 yards of their defensive position, then surrender of those enemy soldiers needed not be accepted, thus trying the superior orders defense. This apparently worked for Captain Compton, who was acquitted, but not for Sergeant West, who was sentenced to life imprisonment, but with the sentence soon remitted and West continuing to serve and eventually receiving an honorable discharge.
General Patton was questioned about the alleged speech. Patton stated that his comments in the speech had been misinterpreted and nothing he had said "by the wildest stretch of the imagination" could have been taken as an order to murder POWs. An investigation ultimately cleared Patton of any wrongdoing.
- If there are better histories of World War II being written than the books in Rick Atkinson’s Liberation Trilogy, I haven’t read them. A former reporter and editor for the Washington Post, Atkinson conceived the massive project of writing the history of how the British and Americans fought their way back to Europe. [...] Here Atkinson tells a story that I had never heard. A story that presents American soldiers as neither the “deliverers” nor “captors” of Italians, but as their murderers. A story that contradicts Winston Churchill’s assertion — made at a press conference in Washington after the meetings that planned the invasions of Sicily and Italy — that “We shall not stain our name by an inhuman act.” Not quite two months after Churchill’s statement, on Wednesday, July 14, 1943, Oklahoma National Guardsmen in the 180th Infantry executed dozens of Axis prisoners near Biscari, Sicily. Outside a cluster of olive trees by the Ficuzza River, Sgt. Horace West turned a submachine gun on a group of 46 men (all but three Italian), killing thirty-seven. Then that afternoon, Capt. John Travers Compton organized a firing squad (“several men volunteered”) that executed all 36 of his Italian prisoners (five in civilian clothes). Partly thanks to the intervention of a Baptist chaplain and two war correspondents, news of the Biscari massacres soon reached American commanders. Gen. Omar Bradley confronted Gen. George Patton, who suggested obliquely that his superior engineer a cover-up. Patton’s diary entry on the subject ended with a shrug: “Anyhow, they are dead, so nothing can be done about it.” In the event, something was done: an internal investigation concluded that the prisoners had made no provocation: “They had been slaughtered.” Patton finally agreed to hold courts-martial, but the truth didn’t come out. Compton was acquitted and returned to duty; he died that November while fighting in Italy. While West was convicted and sentenced to life in a New York prison, Allied commander Dwight Eisenhower reviewed the case and decided to keep West in North Africa, away from the press. (Partly, Eisenhower seems to have feared that if news got out, it would inspire Axis reprisals against Allied troops.) In late November 1944, West was granted clemency and allowed back into the ranks. [...] The whole affair was hushed up, with the records of the courts-martial classified top secret and locked away in the safe of the Secretary of the Army. As best I can discern, it came to light in a 1989 article in The Historian by James J. Weingartner, then received new attention a little over ten years ago thanks to the work of an Italian historian, court, and newspaper. Atkinson does cite Weingartner, but also conducted his own research in the U.S. National Archives, obtaining records of West’s trial through a Freedom of Information Act request. In any case, what happened at Biscari is far from unique in the history of this war. But in a recent interview in The Telegraph, British historian Antony Beevor contends that Allied executions of Axis prisoners remain virtually “unmentionable,” especially among Americans. His recent research into the bitter fighting on the German border in late 1944 and early 1945 convinced him that American commanders actually encouraged atrocities (e.g., the execution of five dozen Germans at Chenogne) that led the Wehrmacht to start calling GIs “Roosevelt’s Butchers.”[1]
Quotes
- Sergeant Horace T. West killed 37 prisoners of war in cold blood at Biscari. He was court-martialed, his trial began at 2 September 1943. He was found guilty, stripped of his rank, and sentenced to life imprisonment. On 23 November 1944, he was pardoned quietly and his status restored. I find that an apt example of how the Western Allies ‘prosecuted’ criminals on their side. It seems the life of a man was worth about eleven days in prison.[2]