British war veterans are campaigning to halt plans to erect a memorial in Italy to German troops who died fighting on Italian soil during the Second World War.

The planned memorial at Ascoli Piceno, in le Marche (the Marches) on the Adriatic Coast, follows the belated discovery that 36 gravestones for German soldiers had been incorporated into steps leading to a municipal garden.

The gravestones were spotted by German tourists, who alerted German newspapers. Members of the Ascoli Piceno town council, embarrassed by the revelation that the gravestones had been walked on for decades, suggested that they should be transferred to the local cemetery to honour the German war dead.

Piero Celani, the Mayor of Ascoli Piceno, said that the headstones, which bear the names of the German soldiers and the symbol of the Iron Cross, had been removed from the flight of steps and put in storage. “This is a very delicate situation,” he said. “We did not create this situation, but we want to do the right thing, with due respect for all concerned”.

Harry Shindler, spokesman for the Italy Star Association, which represents British servicemen and women who fought in the Italian campaigns, said that placing the headstones in the cemetery at Ascoli Piceno was “totally unacceptable” because the cemetery already contained the graves of Italian partisans who had died “fighting to free Italy from Nazism and Fascism”. Mr Shindler, who this year campaigned successfully for the erection of a memorial in central Rome to Allied troops who liberated the Italian capital in 1944, also said that honouring German troops would offend British and American visitors to le Marche, increasingly popular as an alternative to Tuscany and Umbria for second-homeowners.

He said that there were no memorials to German troops in Italy “because memories of what they did are still too powerful. Many Italians still remember the brutal massacres of civilians.” A memorial would be “an offence not only to the Allied troops and partisans who fought in Italy but also to Italian families which helped them and gave shelter to POWs on the run”.

Mr Shindler, who has held talks with Mr Celani, said that the town council was also considering whether the headstones should be returned to the soldiers’ descendants in Germany or transferred to the German war cemetery at Pomezia, south of Rome.

Town officials said it was not clear why the gravestones had never been sent to Pomezia after the end of the Second World War or why they had been used for the steps.

Claudio Perini, whose older brother was commander of the partisans in the area, said: “We will never allow these Nazi criminals to be honoured next to our heroes who died for freedom and democracy. We owe respect to the dead, but you cannot transform butchers into victims.”

The mayor said that he was in touch with the German Embassy in Rome to try to find a “diplomatic solution”.

The battle for Italy

The main invasion came after the Allied victory in Sicily in 1943, which precipitated the overthrow of Mussolini — who clung on to limited power in Salò until 1945 — and the surrender of all Italian forces

Source: Veteran Affairs Canada

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