Eighty years after the Allied landings in Sicily, a reflection on the
historical framework and on the legacy that the war and the Alliedconquest of the island left to the Sicilians: an increasingly fleetingmemory of death and endless rubble, the aftermath of military bases andservitude which constitute a constant humiliation of their will forpeace and self-determination. ---- ASSASSIN AIR FORCE ---- In these daysthe centenary of the birth of the Italian Air Force is being celebratedwith great pomp. At the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Palermo, a travelingexhibition will also be exhibited from 15 to 30 July which will retrace"the history, capabilities and traditions" of the Arma "in its first 100years"[sic!]. At the same time, in various Sicilian locations, thebloody clashes, the unpunished massacres, the generalized destructionsand, almost as if they were throwing sweets, the indiscriminate bombingsthat preceded and accompanied the Allied landing of July 1943, will bejoyfully remembered. which preserves a large part of the island's publicopinion while journalists and enslaved intellectuals promulgatejustification and conciliatory theses (for example: that victims andrubble were the result of those unwanted "side effects" of which everywar abounds).To date it has not been possible to quantify the number of civilianvictims, but in the order of tens of thousands, caused by Alliedbombing, nor is there an overall catalog of the enormous damage sufferedby the artistic and cultural heritage of the island. Major cities wererepeatedly attacked and razed; secular memories disintegrated;historical centers became unrecognizable: the Allied planes specificallyaimed at the "Quattro Canti", the intersection of the main city streets. From mid-April to mid-July 1943, the American "flying fortresses"struck Agrigento 17 times, Augusta 43, Caltanissetta 6 (200 dead in onego), Castelvetrano 13, Catania 87, Comiso 12, Gela 12, Licata 19,Marsala 16, Messina 58, Palermo 69, Porto Empedocle 21, Pozzallo 12,Ragusa 27, Sciacca 10, Syracuse 36, Trapani 41, Paternò 9 (over 2,000dead on 14 July, when the field hospital erected was also bombed totreat the wounded of the previous days), Regalbuto (razed to the groundby mistake, in the place of Troina), Naro (the same, in place ofCanicattì), Palazzolo Acreide and Taormina ("cleared" because theyhoused the German commands), Randazzo ( the homicidal fury raged for noother reason than the symbolic one of having been the first capital ofthe Normans in Sicily).Some dates were carefully chosen: May 9, which saw the island's highestauthorities gathered in Palermo for the celebration of "Army and EmpireDay", "the city suffered the heaviest and mostdestructive[carpet]bombardment of the entire period of the war[inItaly]" (Alessandro Bellomo-Clara Picciotto, Bombe su Palermo, p. 116:the provisional toll was 373 dead). Marsala was severely hit on May 11,the anniversary of the Garibaldi landing (790 dead). The alliestreacherously made these two cities, and the Sicilian cities ferociouslydevastated in the following days, pay for the sins of a fascist Italy towhich Sicily had only minimally adhered. No compensation will ever beoffered to the island by the allies or by republican Italy. On thecontrary ...But what does the Italian Air Force have to do with all this?It comes in, yes! The first theorist of the terrorist bombing of citiesand civilian populations in order to weaken morale and cut off suppliesto the front was an Italian, Giulio Douhet, a pioneer of militaryaviation, to whose delusional writings (in particular the book Ildominio dell 'aria, which appeared in two editions, in 1921 and 1927)and to whose bizarre figure the most generous tributes are periodicallypaid by the Arms that he helped to found, and by the English, German,Russian and American sister Arms which have abundantly applied criminalprinciples, so much so that in 2006 he even dedicated the militaryschool of the air force based in Florence to him.It was Douhet who suggested the mass employment, in successive waves, ofthe Air Army. "Bombardment from above - he explained - certainly cannotachieve the accuracy of artillery fire; but that is of no importance,because such precision is not necessary at all. (The targets) willtherefore generally be surfaces of certain extensions on which normalbuildings, homes, establishments, etc. exist. and a certain population.To destroy such targets it is necessary to employ the three types ofbombs: explosive, incendiary and poisonous, proportioning them suitably. Explosives are used to produce the first ruins, incendiaries todetermine the hearths of fire, poisonous ones to prevent fires frombeing put out by anyone's work. The poisonous action must be such as topersist for a long time, for whole days, and this can be obtained boththrough the quality of the materials used and by using projectiles withvariously delayed fuses. It is understandable how, in this way, it ispossible, even with limited quantities of explosive and incendiaryprojectiles, to cause complete destruction over large areas of inhabitedareas and to interrupt transit through them for a significant time".However, the primary purpose was not the material destruction of therear of the enemy but its moral annihilation, as this other famouspassage testifies: "On a town, even a very large one, the action of asingle bombardment unit inserting its own destructible surface, forexample 500 meters in diameter, cannot fail to produce an enormouseffect. Let us imagine a large city which, in a few minutes, sees itscentral part, for a radius of approximately 250 metres, hit by a mass ofprojectiles weighing a total of about twenty tons: some explosion, somestart of fire, poisonous gases that kill and prevent you fromapproaching the affected area; then the fires that develop, the poisonthat remains; the hours go by, the night goes by, the fires flare upmore and more, while the poison filters and widens its action. The lifeof the city is suspended; if any large arterial road passes through it,the passage is suspended. But what happens in a city can, on the sameday, take place in 10, 20, 50 large inhabited centers in a given area.The news of what happened in the affected centers spreads to the sparedcenters, who feel the possibility of being hit the next day, in thefollowing hour. What power of empire can manage to maintain order insuch threatened centres, how to make services work regularly, how toproduce in the workshops? Even if a semblance of order can be maintainedand some work can be done, will not the sight of even a single enemyaircraft be enough to induce formidable panics? Normal life cannot takeplace under the constant nightmare of imminent death and destruction.And if, on the second day, another 10, 20, 50 centers are hit, who willstill be able to keep the lost populations from throwing themselves intothe countryside, to escape from the centers that constitute the enemy'stargets? Necessarily a dissolution must take place, a profounddissolution of the whole organism, and the moment cannot fail to arrivequickly in which, in order to escape anguish, the populations, drivensolely by the instinct of conservation, will require, under anyconditions, the cessation of the struggle".Douhet's aeronautical principles (destruction of cities - war againstthe defenseless - moral annihilation of the adversary, without regard tohumanitarian and international law considerations), were taken up by thecommander of the Royal Air Force, the Englishman John Fuller, and by theAmerican general Billy Mitchell, and applied to the allied bombing ofSicily. To cause greater damage to the cities undisturbed, they broughtthe bombers' altitude first to 2,000 and then even up to 5,000 metres,compensating for the lower precision with the so-called "saturationbombing", i.e. "large formations of aircraft which simultaneously droptheir bombs at the signal of the 'leader aircraft, in order to obtainthe maximum concentration of the effects of destruction in a givenarea". The greatest effects will be seen in the bombing of German cities(Hamburg, Dresden ...) and, subsequently, in Vietnam (where they will beaccompanied by the use, also already theorized by Douhet, of napalm).All wars cause massacres, destructions, nullification of the most basicrights. All armies, on the other hand, serve to kill, violate andhumiliate defeated nations. But the Allied bombings in Sicily, in theirintentional and gratuitous will to terrorize civilian populations,surpassed all previous savagery, paving the way for the atomic bombs onHiroshima and Nagasaki. Having been perpetrated by the "victors", theyhave never known the justice of the courts and it is still difficulttoday to submit them to the judgment of history.Musarra Christmashttps://www.sicilialibertaria.it/_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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