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1944: Four Italian fascist saboteurs

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On this date in 1944,* four young Italian fascist agents of Mussolini‘s rump state were shot as spies and saboteurs by the Allies at a quarry near Capua’s Sant’Angelo in Formis abbey.

Most of the information readily available about Franco Aschieri, Italo Palesse, Mario Tapoli-Timperi, and Vincenzo Tedesco is in Italian: specifically, in nationalist Italian pages celebrating the sacrificial patriotism of the young men who had parachuted into Allied-controlled southern Italy to operate as partisans. A number of their peers were shot in similar circumstances beginning in late 1943 and in greater numbers through the spring of 1944.

The quartet died game and then some, conferring upon posterity charismatic photos of handsome valor in the face of execution. The most startlingly iconic (at least one design based on it is available for sale) the shirtless and barrel-chested Palesse tied to the stake with an insouciant cigarette a-dangle from his lips. Inevitably their last cries ran to Viva il Duce! and Dio stramaledica gli inglesi! (God curse the Anglos!)


The condemned party in their cell on the morning of the execution, where their confessor remembered “I found them laughing.”


Having shucked off his shirt so the bullets won’t spoil it, Italo (sometimes given as Idalo) Palesse receives the comfort of a priest. (Source)


Franco Aschieri


Vincenzo Tedesco, from the firing squad’s perspective.

Mature Content: Video of this same scene records the men being shot.

On this day..