British agent identified after 65 years

Kyt · Jun 10, 2009

Secret British agent identified after 65 years - Telegraph

The identity of a mysterious British agent who carried out secret missions against the Nazis has been revealed, 65 years after he was murdered in cold blood by SS troops in Italy.

The officer was one of 14 prisoners hurriedly moved out of Rome by the retreating Germans on June 4, 1944, on the day that the city was liberated by the advancing British and Americans.

The men were led into a patch of woodland on the outskirts of the capital and shot in the back of the head by their SS guards.

Thirteen of the victims were later identified – they were Italians and Poles, seven of whom had been working as agents for OSS, the American intelligence agency which was the precursor to the CIA.

But the last remained unknown, his final resting place marked by a plaque on a tree which read in Italian 'Inglese sconosciuto' – the Unknown Englishman.

It was long rumoured that 'the fourteenth man', as he became known, might have been a British Army officer by the name of Captain John Armstrong but no relatives ever came forward to confirm his identity.

Now an Italian investigative journalist has established that the special agent was Gabor Adler, a Hungarian Jew who had enlisted in the British army and been recruited by Special Operations Executive.

A memorial has been unveiled at the site of the massacre by the mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno.

The ceremony was attended by an honour guard of RAF servicemen from a Nato base south of Rome and the defence attaché to the British embassy, Colonel Charlie Darell.

"It's a fascinating story that was finally brought to a close with the ceremony," Col Darell said. "It was the culmination of a good piece of collaborative detective work."

Much of the research was carried out by journalist Gian Paolo Pellizzaro, who grew up in a house close to the massacre site on Rome's northern fringe, by the Via Cassia.

After 10 years of investigation, his breakthrough came when Ministry of Defence files relating to an operation undertaken by 'Captain Armstrong' were released by the National Archives in Kew in 2007.

Mr Pellizzaro found the officer's personal file, which confirmed that Armstrong was the alias of Gabor Adler.

Adler, who came from a Hungarian Jewish family, was living in Milan in 1938 when he was forced to flee after Mussolini introduced discriminatory race laws against Italian Jews.

He fled to Tangiers, where on the outbreak of war he joined the Free French army of General De Gaulle before requesting a transfer to the British Army.

The British recognised the usefulness of his language skills and sent him on SOE training courses in Scotland before dispatching him on his first mission.

In January 1943 he and another agent, an Italian ex-Carabinieri officer who had defected to the British in East Africa, were landed by a British submarine, HMS Splendid, off the coast of Sardinia.

They were ordered to organise resistance against the island's fascist Italian garrison in an operation code-named Moselle.

But within 24 hours the pair were captured and sent to Rome, where Adler, 24, was imprisoned from May 1943 to June 3, 1944.

Having survived torture by German secret police, he was executed by the side of the road hours after the Allies entered Rome.

"The Germans never discovered he was Jewish, otherwise he would have been sent straight to a concentration camp," Mr Pellizzaro said.

"I feel happy that I managed to finally identify him because as an officer in the British Army he fought and died so that Italy could be free. He deserves this recognition, and the British deserve recognition for the part they played in the liberation of Italy from fascism."
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Antipodean Andy · Jun 10, 2009

Some excellent research work there although it sounds as though it was frustrating before the release of the archival documents. I hope there's some family still around that finally have some closure.

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British agent identified after 65 years

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