SS Chief Who Stole 50 Kilos of Gold—Then Fled in a Suitcase

Herbert Kappler was one of the most powerful SS officials in German-occupied Rome during the Second World War. Born in Stuttgart in 1907, he trained as an engineer before joining the Nazi Party in 1931 and the SS two years later. After serving with the Gestapo, Kappler was sent to Rome in 1939, where he developed close links with the Italian authorities and directed the activities of the SS intelligence service. Following the fall of Benito Mussolini and Italy’s armistice with the Allies in 1943, German forces occupied Rome. Kappler became commander of the Security Police and SD in the capital and surrounding region. He played a major role in the persecution of Rome’s Jewish community, first demanding 50 kilograms of gold and later assisting operations that resulted in more than 1,000 Jews being deported to Auschwitz. Only sixteen of those deported in October 1943 survived the war. Kappler also pursued resistance networks and attempted to stop the activities of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, an Irish priest who helped hide thousands of Jews and escaped Allied prisoners. Yet the event most closely associated with Kappler came in March 1944. Following a partisan attack in Via Rasella that left 33 German policemen dead, Kappler helped organise the German reprisal and selected prisoners for the Ardeatine Caves. A miscount ultimately brought the number of victims to 335. After the war, Kappler was transferred to Italian custody and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1948. While imprisoned, he developed an extraordinary relationship with O’Flaherty and converted to Catholicism. Seriously ill, Kappler escaped from a military hospital in Rome with the assistance of his wife in 1977 and reached West Germany, where he died the following year. This documentary examines Herbert Kappler’s rise within the Nazi security apparatus, occupied Rome, the persecution of Italian Jews, the Italian resistance, the Ardeatine Caves, his post-war imprisonment and his controversial final escape. J