Giovanni Marciani

Giovanni Marciani (22 May 1886 in Mercato San Severino – 1964) was an Italian general during World War II.

Biography Early life and career Giovanni Marciani was born in 1886 in Mercato San Severino, in the province of Salerno, into a bourgeois family. In 1905 he entered the Royal Military Academy of Artillery and Engineers of Turin, graduating with the rank of artillery second lieutenant on September 5, 1907, and attended the Branch Application School before being promoted to lieutenant and assigned to the 24th Field Artillery Regiment, in Naples. In 1911 he was part of the expeditionary force in Libya during the Italo-Turkish War, in the ranks of the 2nd Special Field Artillery Regiment, participating in the battle of the Two Palms (for which he was awarded a Bronze Medal of Military Valor) and remaining in Libya until October 1912, when he returned to the 24th Field Artillery Regiment in Naples, as deputy adjutant of the regimental commander.

After being promoted to captain in December 1914, in February 1915 he assumed the position of commander of the 2nd Battery of the 22nd Field Artillery Regiment in Palermo and, for almost a year, of interim command of the 1st Artillery Group. He then left for the front during the First World War, earning a War Cross of Military Valor for an action on during the Fourth Battle of the Isonzo. In August 1917 he was promoted to major for war merit and took command of the 1st Group of the 2nd Field Artillery Regiment of Pesaro; in August 1918 he was given command of the 4th 102 mm battery group of the 23rd Heavy Field Artillery Regiment.

Interwar years Starting from 1919 he was assigned to serve in Cologna Veneta at the command of the 3rd Group of the Truck-Borne Mixed Field Artillery Regiment of Piacenza until 5 July 1920. On 30 September he established his headquarters at the Visconti Castle of Pavia and on 30 October he was posted to the "Renzo da Ceri" barracks in Crema. On 18 June 1922, Major Marciani left the command of the 3rd Group to Major Bartolomeo Pedrotti and was transferred to Milan at the Autocentro (Army motor vehicle depot), where he remained until 2 March 1924. He was then assigned to the horse artillery regiment of Milan from March 1924 to November 1925, and from November 1925 to June 1926, after promotion to lieutenant colonel, he became commander of the 4th Truckborne Group of the Voloire Regiment.

World War II and later years He was still holding this post when the Kingdom of Italy entered World War II, on 10 June 1940; on the following 4 September, he was appointed head of the third directorate of the Undersecretariat of State for War Production (later Ministry of War Industry), headed by the General Carlo Favagrossa. He remained in office until November 17, 1942, when he fell out with Favagrossa, who had him transferred to southern France.

On 10 July 1943, the Allies landed in southeastern Sicily; the area garrisoned by the 208th Coastal Division was unaffected by the initial landings. On 17 July Armed Forces Command Sicily, in an attempt to stop the American drive towards Palermo, established the Coastal Troops Command of the XII Army Corps, gathering all static units of the XII Army Corps under its command, and appointed Marciani as its commander. His troops, low in morale and crippled by rising desertions, were overwhelmed by Allied superiority of armament and air power, and on 22 July Marciani was captured in a coup de main by American troops of the 82nd Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, at his headquarters in the Royal Palace of Palermo. On the same day General Giuseppe Molinero, military commander of Palermo and subordinated to Marciani, surrendered the city to General Geoffrey Keyes, overriding his absent superior.

Marciani was then imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp in Saint-Cloud, near Oran, where he remained until December 1944. After his release and return to Italy, he learned of the death of his wife, killed in Bellona on 13 October 1943 (according to different sources, by a stray shot during the fighting between German and American troops, or by German soldiers for having sheltered Italian partisans). He remained at the disposal of the Ministry of War until 1945, when he was discharged from active duty and promoted to Lieutenant General of the reserve.

After the war, General Marciani was president of a center of military history studies. He died in 1964.