19 Facts About Herbert Kappler

Herbert Kappler was a key German SS functionary and war criminal during the Nazi era.

Herbert Kappler served as head of German police and security services in Rome during the Second World War and was responsible for the Ardeatine massacre.

Herbert Kappler escaped from prison shortly before his death in West Germany in 1978.

Herbert Kappler was born to a middle-class family in Stuttgart in what was still the German Empire.

Herbert Kappler joined the Nazi Party on 1 August 1931 and joined the SS in 1933.

In 1938, during the Anschluss, Herbert Kappler supervised the mass deportations of Austrian Jews as part of the Holocaust in Austria.

Herbert Kappler was posted to Rome as head of the Sicherheitsdienst and, from the beginning of the Second World War, he cooperated closely with the Italian police.

In retaliation for the armistice between Italy and the Allies on 8 September 1943, the German military occupied Rome and Herbert Kappler was appointed as Chief of the Security Police and Security Service for all SS and Order Police units deployed in Rome.

Herbert Kappler was immediately put in charge of implementing the Holocaust in Italy in both Rome and Lazio; in his first action, 1,023 Roman Jews were rounded up and deported to Auschwitz; where only 16 survived.

Herbert Kappler later arranged the deportation of a further 993 Roman Jews, nearly all of whom were murdered in the gas chambers.

Herbert Kappler came into direct conflict with the neutral Vatican under Pope Pius XII, which Herbert Kappler correctly believed was harbouring escaped Allied POWs, members of the Italian Resistance, and Jews.

Kurtna, who was always loyal to the USSR, only started to spy for Nazi Germany in 1943 because his new handler, Herbert Kappler, repeatedly threatened to otherwise send Kurtna and his wife to a concentration camp.

Kurtna turned the tables on Herbert Kappler by stealing the top-secret Sicherheitsdienst codebooks from his office during the chaos that surrounded the Liberation of Rome.

Herbert Kappler organised the Ardeatine massacre, in which 335 Italian civilians were killed on 24 March 1944 in response to a direct order from Adolf Hitler to "kill 100 Italians for each German", in retaliation for an attack by the Italian Resistance that had resulted in the deaths of 33 men of the SS Police Regiment Bozen's garrison in Rome.

Herbert Kappler was arrested by British authorities in 1945, turned over to the Italian government in 1947, and tried the following year.

In July 1948, Herbert Kappler was tried by an Italian Army military tribunal and sentenced to life imprisonment, to be served in the Gaeta military prison.

In 1975, at the age of sixty-eight, Herbert Kappler was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Six months after his escape, Herbert Kappler died at home in Soltau, on 9 February 1978, aged 70.

Herbert Kappler's time in prison and the friendship with his former enemy Monsignor O'Flaherty born of the Monsignor's frequent visits to that prison cell, is dramatised in the radio play The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican, by Robin Glendinning.