The Italian Campaign

[Kahu]

I am 38 years old and I work in the shipping industry (Big Carriers). I am very fond of history and I do collect military insignia and collecticles.
Born in Trieste, I am naturally interested in the history of my city, especially for the period 1943-1954. We had an Allied Military Government here from 1945 to 1954 and also New Zealandese Troops were stationed in the city.
One of the reasons why I joined this forum is because I would like to discuss with you an episode occurred just after Ww2 end, where it was claimed that some new zealandese soldiers were killed by tito partisans. It is reported from different sources here, but it seems that NZ Government at the time (the early stage of the Cold War) officially denied it.B.regards

Matt

I have started to collect information in order to answer your question Matt.....
It would help if you posted what you have heard, as you state that the New Zealanders were killed by Tito partisans, as I've found reference to deaths of New Zealanders by both Chetniks and by Tito partisans. It probably isn't surprising that I've found no evidence to support the assertion that the NZ Government officially denied it as my primary source is an Army Board, Wellington publication, 'One more River' (1946).
I also have enlisted support from other interested members of the MSN History Page, and I'll include their suggestions too.

From: Flashman191  in response to Message 1 Sent: 26/03/2008 3:04 a.m.
Tito's forces were the darling of the Left Wing,and both Churchill and Roosevelt were duped by Soviet agents of influence into believing they were the most effective opponents of the Germans.
 
 In fact the Chetniks were. As happened with the Italians  French and Greeks the Royalist and right wing factions did the fighting; the Left stockpiled their weapons for the ensuing civil wars about which everyone appears totlally ignorant.

From: Tiger593  in response to Message 2 Sent: 26/03/2008 3:32 a.m.
Yugoslav and New Zealand involvement
On April 30, 1945, the Italian anti-fascists Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (CLN) of don Marzari and Savio Fonda, constituted of 3500 volunteers, incited a riot against the Nazis. On May 1, Yugoslav partisans of Tito's army arrived and freed most of the city from the Nazis. The 2nd New Zealand Division continued to advance towards Trieste along Route 14 around the northern coast of the Adriatic sea and arrived in the city the next day. The German forces eventually capitulated on the evening of May 2 following the arrival. The Yugoslav troops of Tito held full control of the city until June 12, a period known as the 'forty days of Trieste'. Afterwards, the western Allies asked the Yugoslav army to leave, which brought the German soldiers to surrender definitively.

The above citation from Wikipedia is the only reference I've been able to find regarding New Zealand troops and Titoists. The late 1940's were indeed  a murky time in central and eastern Europe. In many of the countries jockying among royalist, liberal, socialist and communists played itself out over a matter of several years as Flashman points out until the Soviet puppet governments were firmly established. Because of the division of  Trieste during those years the city-state became something of a southern Berlin with a lot of real and fictional intrigue going on as you indicate. The fact that Tito broke with Stalin gave him some leverage with the West as a Communist we could work with so I do not go along with Flashman's notion that we soldthe Chetniks out.  Efforts were made to broker an accommodation which given the ideological bent of either side would not have had much of a chance.That the Chetniks were fierce fighters against the Germans cannot be denied.

Good luck with your search. Let us know if you come up with anything.

TIGER593
 

From: MarkGB5  in response to Message 1 Sent: 26/03/2008 8:22 a.m.
I've got an Italian 20 cent (I thought they had lira ?) postage stamp overprinted A.M.G.V.G (Allied Military Government of Venezia Giulia). Presumably it dates from the immediate post war years. Was Trieste part of this Allied area of control AMGVG ?   

[Kahu]

Danger in Trieste
Monday, May. 28, 1945  

In Trieste last week U.S. and New Zealand troops played soccer with their Yugoslav comrades-in-arms, swam with them in the warm Adriatic, laughed together at British films shown through Yugoslav projectors.

But of all the spots in Europe where trouble between allies brewed. Trieste for a time was closest to actual battle. After Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander issued a blistering statement denouncing Marshal Tito's occupation of the city, New Zealand troops followed the Yugoslav example and went about the streets with automatic rifles. North of Trieste Tito withdrew some troops to the defensible line of the Isonzo river (see map). The Yugoslavs moved their main headquarters back from Trieste, but showed no sign of relaxing their grip on the city. Lest it be cut off in case of fighting, the one U.S. battalion in the city withdrew toward the main U.S. force at Gorizia. The New Zealanders remained, their tanks patrolling streets commanded by Yugoslav artillery. In the harbor lay three British warships.

The show of force gave Tito pause. This week he conceded the main point of the Allies—that title to Trieste must be settled at the European peace conference, not by seizure. His protector in the Kremlin, his disturbed Allies in London and Washington breathed a little easier. None of them had wanted battle at Trieste; yet all had risked it. If Trieste was nothing else, it was a study in the power-political hazards of the Big Three's world.

Link to 1945 TIME Story http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,775643,00.html

[Kahu]

Like so many other escaped prisoners-of-war, Lance-Corporal Russell had obtained civilian clothes and was living with an Italian peasant, Giuseppe Vettorello. He was well-known and liked by the people of the locality. According to Giuseppe Vettorello, Lance-Corporal Russell maintained contact with a number of other ex-prisoners-of-war, visiting them regularly by bicycle. On about 22nd February, 1945, Lance-Corporal Russell was arrested by a patrol of Italian Fascist troops near the house of Giuseppe Vettorello. Giuseppe Vettorello himself was arrested on suspicion of having harboured Lance-Corporal Russell. Their captors were members of a mixed German-Italian police regiment. The prisoners were taken to the Compay Headquarters of Oberleutnant Haupt at Ponte di Piave. Here an attempt was made to force Lance-Corporal Russell to betray Giuseppe Vettorello, but he refused to do so, denying that he had ever seen him before. According to an Italian soldier who was present, Lance-Corporal Russell was beaten up by Haupt, but maintained his silence. Thanks to Lance-Corporal Russell's loyalty, Giuseppe Vettorello was released. The Germans were evidently convinced that Lance-Corporal Russell had been in contact with other ex-prisoners-of-war and Partisans, and were determined that he should disclose their whereabouts. He was chained to a wall in a stable, and told that, unless he gave the required information within three days, he would be shot. Again, on the testimony of two Italians who were present, Lance-Corporal Russell was beaten up, but he resolutely refused to speak. A civilian who took him food tried to persuade him to save his life, but he replied, 'Let them shoot me'. Haupt's interpreter, an Italian says: 'The behaviour of the Englishman was splendid, and it won the admiration of Haupt himself'. On the third day Lance-Corporal Russell was shot. The German warrant officer who witnessed the execution, says: 'The prisoner died very bravely'. There can be be no doubt whatsoever that Lance-Corporal Russell in the midst of his enemies and in the face of death, bore himself with courage and dignity of a very high order."

Return to Trieste May - June 2005 http://www.frogs.co.nz/italy05/index.htm
A rich source of contemporary photos

The 2nd of May 2005  marked the 60th Anniversary of the end of the Second World War for the New Zealand Forces in Italy, for on that date a small army group entered the northern Italian city of Trieste and were presented with the surrender of the German Army. Thus ended a long and costly war for New Zealand. But their time in Italy was not over. The occupation of Trieste was contested by the Yugoslav partisan forces who had entered from the north and east and the NZers now found themselves facing both partisans and renegade German units. Despite the surrender, several NZers lost their lives in the first few days, becoming the first victims of the "Cold War". We visited the grave of the first of these, Jack Russell. Many of the NZ troops remained in Trieste for several months until relieved by British and American forces.

To mark the occasion, a large party of 104 veterans and over 50 family and supporters made the pilgrimage back to Trieste, to visit the city, to recall memories and to seek closure on events from 60 years ago.

[Kahu]

Taking two Chetniks with them, a party of six New Zealanders in two jeeps drove from the 26th Battalion straight into the Chetnik lines, contacted General Damjanovic, the commanding officer, and negotiated a twenty-four-hour truce between the opposing Yugoslav armies. This undoubtedly saved the lives of many innocent civilians in Gorizia, as well as those of men of the fighting forces. Meanwhile another party from Divisional headquarters were able to reach the Chetniks, and these and other negotiations led to the eventual surrender and disarming of the 12,000 Chetniks by British troops. The 26th Battalion suffered one man killed when a Chetnik force mistook a New Zealand convoy for a Tito column moving to attack.

The position was surrounded by Tito's men, who had been engaging the enemy for some time with little success. As the Germans moved, the partisans opened fire on the road with mortars and small arms. One New Zealander was killed and two were wounded. Prolonged negotiations failed to shake the partisans in their attitude, but in the meantime Divisional headquarters had decided that the responsibility was a partisan one. This decision was communicated to the German commander, who reluctantly agreed to surrender to the partisans.

The Forty Days of Trieste May 2 - June 12 1945 period was certainly one of confusion, retribution and savagery. Just a quick look at any mention of the Basovizza foibe is enough to induce nightmares and remind people of the recent horrors of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo.
I found mention of Geoffrey Cox, a 'British intelligence officer' - we were all known as 'British' then - in "The Problem of Trieste and the Italo-Yugoslav Border: Difference, Identity and Sovereignty in 20th Century Europe" Glenda Sluga in reference to the chaos and confusion......

In the months and years that followed the forty days some sources claimed that the Pro Yugoslav forces had arrested in total 6 000 persons in Trieste and neighbouring Gorizia of which 4 500 were later released; 1 850 persons deported and 1 150 had never returned. By contrast, a British intelligence officer in Trieste, Geoffrey Cox, reflected that although the arrest of Fascists in Trieste was widespread, these must have "followed no coherent plan" since a good portion of Gestapo agents and Fascists of some seniority came unsscathed through the Yugoslav clutches to fall into our hands later.

I am assuming the Intelligence Officer was later Sir Geoffrey Cox http://www.library.otago.ac.nz/exhibitions/rhodes_scholars/geoffrey_cox.html an eminent scholar, diplomat, broadcaster. http://www.opshop.co.nz/pages/exiles/exiles_2.html In "Dance of the Peacocks" James McNeish outlines the stories of several highly educated and politically active New Zealanders

James McNeish was the National Library Fellow in 1999. (Information from David Ling publishing.)

Dance of the Peacocks (2003) is the story of five New Zealand Rhodes Scholars who went to Oxford, but found they couldn't come home again. James Bertram, Geoffrey Cox, Dan Davin, Ian Milner and John Mulgan all left New Zealand in the 1930s, a time of political ideas and ideals. Dance of the Peacocks: New Zealanders at large in the time of Hitler and Mao Tse-Tung was on show in the National Library Gallery, Wellington in 2003.

[Kahu]

TRIESTE'S FOND FAREWELL TO ITS LIBERATORS




Mr. John Cocker, a New Zealand soldier who was in Trieste at the time of the occupation, submits the following New Zealand newspaper report copied from the paper shortly after the end of World War II. The report includes 2 reports copied from Trieste newspapers:


Few Kiwis who were in Italy at the end of World War II will forget the occupation of Trieste, and doubtless the same can be said for the majority of the citizens of that much-disputed city. It is now almost a year since the New Zealand Division handed over control of the city to the Allied Military Government and shortly after, left the city for a rest period on the shores of Lake Trasimeno. Writing of the New Zealand Division at the time of its departure, one Trieste newspaper stated:


"To the New Zealanders who are leaving our City and the Territory of Trieste go our cordial salutations. We will not forget the hours of expectation before their tanks and soldiers, after hard fighting up the peninsular, arrived for a spell in Via Ghega and Plaza Del Unita covered with flowers and led by a joyous flag waving crowd. Moreover, we have come to know them, these strong and fine looking young men who came from a distant land similar to our own. Cordial, ample, open-hearted, of big and serene ideals, they were our liberators and our guests and now, as good friends they leave."


And from another Newspaper:


"This is written to enable you to understand what you saw today written on the tanks and trucks which carry away from us those soldiers -citizens- those open hearted, easy going, clear spirited New Zealanders. 'Caio Trieste' was written so because 'ciao' would be spelt that way in English. They have borrowed our brotherly form of goodbye or cheerio. It was a 'ciao' of nostalgia that we saw, not frivilous or a 'ciao' of worldly circumstance, because many of them were sad to leave this city which entertained them so well; a city more brotherly, intimate and kind than all the other cities they have passed through in their long and bloody campaign. They found here too, a similarity in spirit and appearance to their Auckland and Wellington. They found here a second home unfortunately, at the present time rather full of political turmoil. How could we but love boys who overthrew the last Nazi and Fascist resistance in our fair city, and who were our guests from May, their youthful pranks with our children, their loyalty and their democratic army. Goodbye New Zealand brothers. We are happy that you are returning to your country before you become corrupted like ourselves by this sick place called Europe, where, if you stayed, she would with her evil, gnaw into you all, as she has eaten into us. So, farewell friends, goodbye and please understand us."
http://www.oldsoho.com/id19.html

[Kahu]

Sir Geoffrey Cox

A pioneer of broadcast news, he covered the Spanish civil war and later founded ITV's News at Ten
Philip Purser The Guardian, Friday April 4 2008 Article historyAbout this articleClose This article appeared in the Guardian on Friday April 04 2008 on p37 of the Obituaries section. It was last updated at 07:54 on April 04 2008. 
Sir Geoffrey Cox: was transfixed as he watched how live, unedited coverage reavealed McCarthy's witch-hunting methods. Photograph: ITV

The broadcasting executive and journalist Sir Geoffrey Cox, who has died aged 97, was a pioneering influence in the growth of television news in Britain. Appointed as the second editor of Independent Television News (ITN) in 1956, he launched News at Ten in 1967 as the first half-hour news programme in peak time on a mass audience channel. The programme quickly become a national institution, famous for its sharp, accurate journalism, larger-than-life presenters and the Big Ben chimes that accompanied its opening headlines.

After leaving the station in 1968, Cox became deputy chairman of Yorkshire Television and chairman of both Tyne Tees Television and the London radio news station LBC. Earlier, he had a distinguished career as a print journalist, covering the Spanish civil war for the News Chronicle, and the annexation of Austria and the fall of France for the Daily Express. He was also briefly a diplomat, representing his native New Zealand at its legation in Washington. After the second world war, he returned to print journalism and became a Fleet Street executive.

Born at Palmerston North, on New Zealand's North Island, Cox took a history degree at Otago University in 1931, before winning a Rhodes scholarship to Oriel College, Oxford (1932-35). On graduating, he went straight to the News Chronicle, then a renowned liberal newspaper with a tradition of outspoken foreign reporting. In Spain, its celebrated correspondent Arthur Koestler had already been flung into jail for being less than complimentary to General Franco. The paper had considered sending the eminent Vernon Bartlett to beleaguered Madrid, but young Cox was regarded as more expendable. He also had the advantage of a New Zealand passport, which might just mislead the Falangists if they caught him. In the event, Cox filed some vivid dispatches about the civil war and made his name.

Back in London in 1937, he speedily wrote a book, The Defence of Madrid, which caught the eye of the legendary Daily Express editor Arthur Christiansen, whose paper was then outselling all other dailies. Cox was promptly appointed as the Express correspondent in Vienna, from where he covered the Anschluss and the Munich crisis. He became head of the Express bureau in Paris in time for the outbreak of the second world war, and went on to cover the invasion of Poland, the Finno-Russian winter war of 1939-40, and finally the blitzkrieg with which the Germans overran the Low Countries.

Escaping through Bordeaux after the fall of France in 1940, Cox enlisted in a New Zealand army brigade that had been diverted to Britain, and fought with it in Greece, Crete and through the 1941 western desert campaign. Later in the war, he took part with the 2nd New Zealand division in the long slog up through Italy from Monte Cassino to the occupation of Trieste, finishing the conflict as chief intelligence officer for General Sir Bernard Freyberg, commander of the Allied forces in Crete. He was twice mentioned in dispatches and awarded a military MBE.

In between came a curious interlude when, in 1943, Cox was plucked from the army and sent to staff his country's newly established legation in Washington. The minister, Walter Nash, was still a member of the New Zealand government, and his presence was frequently required back in Wellington. Left in charge for weeks on end, the 32-year-old Cox found himself signing historic treaties on behalf of his country, on one occasion ahead of the Soviet Union's formidable Andrei Gromyko. He also represented New Zealand at the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration conference in 1943.

On demobilisation in 1945, Cox was thus equipped not only with first-hand experience of diplomacy but also with an advance taste of the postwar animosities that would bedevil the world. He rejoined the News Chronicle as lobby correspondent and set out to make his name as a commentator on world and domestic affairs. As well as speaking on the BBC Home and television services whenever asked, he would regularly rise early to broadcast to Australia and New Zealand, and stay up late to reach north America. One way or another, he said later, he saw more dawns breaking over Portland Place than he liked to recall.

An old aim to pursue an executive career in journalism was renewed when, in 1954, the News Chronicle made him an assistant editor. Two years later he was offered the deputy editorship, and his letter of acceptance was in his pocket, ready to be delivered, when he picked up a fragment of gossip that was to switch his career into television.

The most generally respected element of the young commercial television system was its news service, ITN, which had no advertising revenue of its own and was paid for by the other companies. Aidan Crawley, a former junior minister and assured TV performer in his own right, had brilliantly humanised the presentation of news on the small screen by introducing newscasters - including Robin Day, Christopher Chataway and Barbara Mandell - who, while the BBC stuck to po-faced news-readers, would apparently gather the news themselves and deliver it in their own words. ITN liked news film while BBC News, under the austere leadership of a fellow New Zealander, Tahu Hole, remained deeply suspicious of pictures.

But after a first year of mounting losses, the commercial companies of ITV had begun to cut short bulletins and shift them to off-peak hours. Crawley resigned in protest, and on a hunch, Cox stalled on the Chronicle's offer and applied instead to ITN.

He was summoned to lunch by Captain Tom Brownrigg, the formidable ex-naval officer who ran the London programme company Associated-Rediffusion and was also chairman of ITN. By chance, Brownrigg had been a staff officer when the British navy was sent to Crete to take off British and New Zealand troops - among them Cox - after German forces had captured the island in 1941. "Would have left you there if I'd had my way," he grunted. "We had already lost half the Mediterranean fleet. It was madness to risk losing more ships." But he offered Cox the job.

As so often happens, the new man in the job was granted some of the things his predecessor had demanded, and at the belated insistence of the Independent Television Authority the companies agreed to restore some cuts imposed on ITN. Chataway, a star newscaster, had resigned to join the BBC, and Cox swiftly replaced him with Ludovic Kennedy. He also rescued Mandell from scriptwriting duties, and put her back on the screen.

Cox's particular contribution, however, was to promote the virtues of live television in a news service. In the summer of 1953, he had been in Washington when Senator Joe McCarthy's communist witchhunt was in full swing. He was transfixed as he watched the televised proceedings of the senate investigations sub-committee, and how the live, unedited coverage gradually revealed McCarthy's methods. The following year McCarthy was exposed by Ed Murrow and Fred Friendly in their CBS television show, See It Now, which also went out live.

Cox, whose own memoirs 30 years later would be called See It Happen, strove for such immediacy. Though a combination of studio-bound newscaster and newsfilm was bound to remain the staple fare of his bulletins, he leapt at any opportunity to go live to a reporter on the spot. When President Kennedy first visited Britain in 1961, ITN collared him on the air. In 1962, in the middle of the main bulletin - still only 15 minutes long - ITN switched to cameras deep under the Alps for the moment when engineers linked the road tunnel from both ends. To celebrate the first transatlantic satellite link that same year, they flew Brian Connell to New York to introduce the news.

To make optimum use of such assets Cox was soon campaigning for a full half-hour for the evening bulletin, plus a later start so that they could over-run, if necessary, without wrecking the network schedules. He was repeatedly turned down by the companies but finally got his way with News at Ten.

Meanwhile, he had become a member of a consortium bidding for Yorkshire Television, one of the new ITV contracts to be awarded in the 1968 reshuffle. They were successful, and in due course a newly-knighted Sir Geoffrey had to bid farewell to ITN and take up his duties as deputy chairman of YTV. When this company took over Tyne-Tees in 1971, he ran the latter as executive chairman. In 1977 he returned to his old love as chairman of UPITN, the international agency formed by ITN and United Press, finally retiring in 1982.

A shrewd and popular chief executive, he had a knack of picking the right people for the right job, in front of the screen - his discoveries included Peter Snow, Reginald Bosanquet, Andrew Gardner and Sandy Gall - and behind it. He laid down his own moral guidelines. When, for example, he happened to recognise the face of a road accident victim in an ITN bulletin, he ruled that in future no close-ups were to go out.

Away from work, he loved fishing, especially in the river Coln, near his house in Gloucestershire. He was also a keen watercolour painter. He was married to Cecily Turner, who pre-deceased him. He is survived by his children, Peter, Patrick, Rosamond and Evelyn.

· Geoffrey Sandford Cox, television pioneer, journalist and diplomat, born April 7 1910; died April 2 2008

[Kahu]

http://www.nzembassy.com/info.cfm?c=31&l=86&CFID=2250531&CFTOKEN=6282&s=bu&p=60358

Later in the year, the Deputy Prime Minister (and subsequent Prime Minister), Walter Nash, was appointed to Washington as 'Special Minister " to the United States. (He would retain both his Ministerial portfolios and his parliamentary seat in New Zealand).

Nash arrived in January and presented his credentials to President Roosevelt on 16 February 1942, the day after the fall of Singapore. The collapse of the British imperial presence in Southeast Asia in effect brought into sharp focus the new facts of strategic life for New Zealand, as for the United States; the Asian-Pacific dimension of things had loomed threateningly and very large into sight for both countries. It is a reflection of this reciprocity of concern that the first United States Legation in New Zealand was established 1 April 1942; Patrick J. Hurley, the first Minister, presented his credentials in Wellington on 24 April 1942.

NEW ZEALAND IN WASHINGTON

1942-45: The Wartime Legation

The task ahead of Walter Nash and his small staff was formidable. In wartime Washington, as the United States was marshalling its amazing resources and being propelled into world leadership, the Legation had to ensure a New Zealand voice in the formulation of allied strategy, to foster bilateral ties, to arrange supplies and equipment and to speak for New Zealand on a whole range of issues. The history shows that New Zealand often felt frustrated by the difficulty of securing recognition as a full and equal partner.

The many demands on Nash within the United States, back home and representing New Zealand in wartime councils, meant that he spent much time away from Washington. Geoffrey Cox acted as Charge d'Affaires for much of the time between his arrival in July 1942 and Nash's final departure from Washington in July 1944. Cox, who was seconded from the New Zealand Division in the Middle East, recalls that on his arrival in Washington Walter Nash took him down to the White House to meet President Roosevelt. The President asked if the Alamein position - which Rommel had reached a few days earlier - would hold. Cox, who had just left the New Zealanders there, said it was a good defensive position and should be held. "Well, I hope so," said the President, "since we've sent them all our best tanks and my generals didn't like that at all".

Cox later wrote of the Special Minister:

". . . Nash rapidly won for himself a remarkable degree of influence in Washington. He had reasonably easy access to the President (access he skilfully did not over use), to Cordell Hull at the State Department, and very importantly to Admiral King, who was the dominant figure in controlling the war in the Pacific . . . he did a first class job for New Zealand during the intermittent periods he spent in Washington between 1942 and 1944".

Nash's biographer, Sir Keith Sinclair, writes that Nash spoke often (to U.S. audiences) about New Zealand's welfare state, but also about the great issues of war and peace, about what the allies were fighting for, about the better world to come. People had to believe this, and wanted to hear it. He came to be referred to very often in the press as a Pacific New Dealer..... His sentiments and opinions on such topics as international aid, peace, social welfare, happily coincided with the very strong streak of idealism in American opinion at that time. He gave speeches called, for instance, "The End of Imperialism", which were very much in line with liberal American thinking .... Nash very often hit the front pages. For all the pressures Nash later described his time in Washington as one of the happiest periods of his life.

During the McCarthy era of the early 50's Nash was refused entry to the US on the grounds he was a 'communist'!

[Kahu]

- It's ciao and haere mai

http://video.stuff.co.nz/waikato/WTSSpro/index.html

Wellington theatre company Taki Rua performed the play Strange Resting Places at Hamilton's Clarence St Theatre this week. The play is a funny, yet moving, portrayal of the experiences of the Maori Battalion in Italy in World War II and explores some of the similarities in Maori and Italian culture. The final performance is in Hamilton tonight. Times photographer Iain McGregor caught some of the play's highlights. Click on the headline for his audio slideshow.