German and Italian (RSI) troops round up local civilians in the aftermath of the Via Rasella attack on Polizei Regiment "Bozen".  The immediate reaction of some German officials seems to have been to indulge in a large scale "wild action", in which Italian civilians would have been killed more or less indiscriminately as an act of revenge.  This was suppressed by the more sensible elements of the German security apparatus.  What actually happened was little less obscene.  JR.

Roundup in Rome.

The Via Rasella, Rome, a typical brown-stone "canyon" common in central Rome.  On 23 March, 1944, 11 Company, 3 Battalion of Polizei Regiment "Bozen" were making a regularly scheduled march along a route that included this street.  The object of these demonstrations was to impress/intimidate the Roman population at the "strength" of the continuing German presence which was, in fact, increasingly threatened by invading US and British forces.  Unfortunately for them, they were targeted by a local unit of Italian partisans which, as the Company marched by, detonated a powerful bomb hidden in a street cleaner's cart, and opened fire from cover.  28 of the Company died immediately; 5 more would die of their injury within days.  JR.


Via Rasella, Rome.

German Special Police and RSI soldiers round up civilians in the aftermath of the Via Rasella attack.  The "Police Eagle" emblem on the German helmets can just be made out under magnification.

The laws of war at the time allowed an occuping army to exact "collective punishment" (that is to say, random reprisals) against a civilian population supposed to have assisted the enemy in attacks on the occupier.  Having gotten over the "wild action" impulse, the German security authorities (that which was headed by Obergruppenfuhrer Karl Wolff, with Obersturmbannfuhrer Herbert Kappler as local Roman chief) indulged in a debate, in effect, as to what was "proportionate".  This went all the way to Hitler.  The final determination was that the killing of 10 Italians for every dead German was "proportionate".  JR.

