Giuseppe Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo

Giuseppe Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo (26 May 1901 – 24 March 1944) was an Italian soldier and Italian Resistance member.

Biography

He was born in Rome into a family of the old Piedmontese nobility, hailing from Mondovì, with ancient military traditions; his father Demetrio was a brigadier general, and his mother Luisa Dezza was the daughter of General and Risorgimento hero Giuseppe Dezza.

At age seventeen, he fought in the final months of the First World War as a volunteer in the 3rd Alpini Regiment, and at the end of the war he continued his career in the Engineering Corps of the Royal Italian Army; he then attended university and obtained a degree in civil engineering in 1923. In 1924 he returned to the Army, where he was promoted to captain in 1928, and was commissioned to teach at the Army Application School.

In 1940 he was again called to the General Staff, and assigned to the Supreme Command of the Army (Superesercito), with responsibility for the North African theatre and later as head of the Operations Office. He was sent to North Africa and promoted to colonel in 1943. For his wartime service, he was awarded a Silver and Bronze Medal of Military Valor (the latter for action near Tobruk in April 1941), as well as the Iron Cross by the Germans.

On 19 July 1943, Montezemolo participated in the meeting between Mussolini and Hitler in Feltre, acting as an interpreter. After the fall of the Fascist regime on 25 July 1943, the new head of the government, Marshal Pietro Badoglio, entrusted Montezemolo with the direction of his secretariat; he was also appointed commander of the 11th Armored Engineers Group. Following the announcement of the Armistice of Cassibile, while the king and the government fled from Rome, Montezemolo remained in the capital; he was part of the Italian delegation that negotiated with Field Marshal Albert Kesselring the conditions of the ceasefire in the capital on 10 September 1943, after which General Giorgio Calvi di Bergolo, appointed commander of the "Open City" of Rome, made him head of the Civil Affairs Office of the Open City Command. On 23 September, following the establishment of the Italian Social Republic, German troops surrounded the Ministry of War, where the command of the open city had established its seat, and arrested Calvi di Bergolo, while Montezemolo donned civilian clothes and was able to escape through the cellars of the Ministry.

Montezemolo worked hard to coordinate with the other elements of the Roman National Liberation Committee and in particular with Communist Giorgio Amendola, with whom he planned military operations following the Anzio landing. Despite existing rivalry, the Clandestine Military Front was instrumental in providing the GAP with explosives, data and information essential for the attacks on the railway lines used by the Germans to supply their troops on the Gustav Line.

Armellini sent a communication to Brindisi asking that Montezemolo be exchanged with some German prisoners of equal importance, but Badoglio did not follow up on the request. On 24 March 1944, after the Via Rasella attack in which thirty-three German soldiers were killed, Montezemolo was among the 335 people chosen for execution in reprisal. He was shot on the same day in the Fosse Ardeatine massacre, along with De Grenet and several prominent members of the Clandestine Military Front. He was posthumously awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valor.