| Lieutenant Pietro Koch (August 18, 1918 – June 4, 1945) of the Reparto Speciale di Polizia (“Special Police Unit”), walks to the Aula Magna, the main hall at Sapienza University of Rome, for his trial, accompanied by 2 armed Carabinieri. Angry Romans, remembering his reign of terror during the Nazi German occupation, watch as he is brought to justice. Born in Benevento, Koch did not have a secondary school diploma, for he had been expelled at 15 after he had unblushingly masturbated in front of the girls in his class. Always a winner at poker, always a “lady-killer,” he harbored a supreme sense of self-confidence and domination over others that gradually manifested itself in the sadism that he would come to relish. “Hate is a feeling,” he once confided to a friend, “that makes me vibrate far more than love. Even that of women.” Koch, an Italian with a German father, who became immensely rich from dealing in hard drugs and running protection rackets. Koch himself was a cocaine addict, and so were some of his men. Tall, elegant and well-groomed, Koch was a former 2nd lieutenant of grenadiers of Sardinia, and sold cars between the 2 World Wars. He married a woman 10 years older than he, described as little more than a prostitute. He took up with a show girl, Daisy Marchi (???? – ????). But he abandoned her almost immediately and persuaded a 16-year-old girl in Florence, named Tamara Cerri (1927 – ????), to run away with him to Rome. She organized parties and orgies for him there. Both of them participated in torturing Koch’s victims, often engaging in sexual acts with him while he tortured them. Koch became a member of the Partito fascista repubblicano and enlisted in the “Banda Carità” in Florence, an illegal police formation engaged in anti-partisan repression under the command of major Mario Carità in November 1943. Pietro Koch would rack up 435 arrests in his 4 months in Rome. Together with SS-Obersturmbannführer Herbert Kappler (September 23, 1907 – February 9, 1978) Chef des Gestapo Roma, though rarely working together, they had by June 1944 demolished the most vigorous part of the Roman underground, despite extraordinary feats of endurance by many of their prisoners in withstanding torture. Koch admitted to conducting interrogations patterned after what he called “the American third-degree.” In a nighttime downpour on the 1st day of winter – December 21, 1943, a mixed formation of Fascist and Gestapo agents made the 1st preventive strike against the Resistance. It came in the form of an audacious raid on 3 Vatican institutions known to be harboring influential anti-Fascists and military officers, labor and military service evaders, and Jews who had escaped the roundup. The assault was led by a new man in Rome, half-German-half-Italian Lieutenant Pietro Koch, a 25-year-old ex-officer of the Grenadiers of Sardinia. Calling himself “Doctor” although he never finished his law studies, he had arrived some days earlier with a mandate from the highest police official in the new Mussolini regime, and would now begin to mold what would become the most effective and most ruthless anti-Partisan Fascist force in occupied Rome. It was called the Reparto Speciale di Polizia (“Special Police Unit”), better known as the Banda Koch, or the Koch Gang. 1 of the purposes of the December raid was to test the Vatican’s reaction to a clear but only tangential violation of the vaunted German respect for the sovereignty of the Holy See. Koch, operating with approval from Gestapo Chief Kappler, was after much bigger game. The test targets-the Seminario Lombardo, the Pontifical Institute of Oriental Studies, and the Russicum Institute, a cluster of religious institutions in the immediate vicinity of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore did not have extraterritorial status, but were among the Vatican properties recognized by treaty. A property that did have such status, for example, was another seminary, the Seminario Romano, adjacent to the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano. It had become the hiding place of Italy’s anti-Fascist elite, including Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (CLN – “National Liberation Committee”) president Ivanoe Bonomi (October 18, 1873 – April 20, 1951) and the heads of 4 of the 6 parties in the coalition. The notice on the door of the Basilica of San Giovanni was in Italian and German. It said that all searches were prohibited because the church belonged to the Vatican. But more importantly, more than 200 people were in hiding there, some of Italy’s leading anti-Fascists and more than 50 Jews. There was a banging on the door and Pietro Koch and his Fascist soldiers burst in. Many of the men in hiding had been expecting a raid, and fled, but others were not so lucky. And they could not pretend that they were seminarians, or trainee priests either. Pietro Koch had thought of that. In his gang was a man who had once been a monk, and he set them a test. He asked each and every captured man to recite the Ave Maria: if he did not know the prayer, he could not possibly be a priest. 67, including 18 Jews, were captured. It was clear that the Germans were prepared to bend the rules to capture their prey, using Roch to disguise their own involvement in the raids. In public, though, they cracked down even harder on ordinary Roman citizens. Anyone sheltering Prisoners of War or owning a wireless transmitter would be executed. Anyone who even made contact with Prisoners of War or printed anything negative about the Germans, even taking photographs outdoors, would be sentenced to hard labor for life. And Pietro Koch was more dangerous than the Germans, in many ways. As an Italian, he was closer to the ground and had a network of informers, people who were ready to betray their fellow Romans for food or money. His network had also tracked down a number of radio transmitters in the city. Father Hugh O’Flaherty (February 28, 1898 – October 30, 1963) rescued some 4,000 Allied Prisoners of War through his escape network. The Nazi Germans learned of his identity and conspired to kidnap or assassinate him. Kappler and Koch tried to catch him outside the Vatican; O’Flaherty used disguises. Moles inserted into his network gave up several of his comrades, including Lieutenant Bill Simpson (June 12, 1918 – March 29, 2000), who used the nom de guerre William O’Flynn. On April 18, 1944, Simpson was arrested by Banda Koch and taken to Regina Coeli prison. Villa Fossati, aka “Villa Triste,” situated between via Paolo Uccello and via Masaccio, between the summer and autumn of 1944 was to headquarter of the “Banda Koch,” the special police department assigned to anti-Fascist repression. In December 1943, Koch moved to Rome where he established a new Reparto autonomo di polizia (“Autonomous Police Department”) under the leadership of Kappler. This department was temporarily located in the Pensione Oltremare, but moved in April 1944 to Pensione Jaccarino, where the basement and the attic served as cells for the prisoners. Interrogations were usually carried out at night and encouraged with beatings and maltreatments: among the torture equipment were “tongs to extirpate the teeth, pincers to tear off nails, red-hot daggers to be placed on the most delicate parts of a body”. During its activity, this department executed 600 arrests, 435 of which happened in Rome, 191 in Milan and 7 in other locations. On March 24, 1944, 335 persons were shot to death in the caves of the Via Ardeatina near Rome. The operation was a reprisal for an attack by the GAP partisan brigade in which 34 soldiers of the III.Battalion SS-Polizeiregiment “Bozen” were killed. The Commander-in-Chief of German forces in Italy, Albert Kesselring (November 30, 1885 – July 16, 1960), or possibly Führer und Reichskanzler (“Leader and Reich Chancellor”) Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945) himself, then ordered the killing of 10 Italians for every German death. The Security Police of the Außenkommando in Rome, under the command of Kappler, selected victims from the Regina Coeli prison as well as the subsequent executions. Koch and his men assisted in the preparation of the list of those Romans to be shot. María Denis (November 22, 1916 – April 15, 2004) was an Argentine-born actress in Italian films. Koch interrogated her in April 1944 for 6 hours about Italian film director Luchino Visconti (November 2, 1906 – March 17, 1976). Visconti was an opponent of Italian Prime Minister and Dictator Il Duce Benito Mussolini (July 29, 1883 – April 28, 1945) and joined the Communist Party to fight the Fascists. After the surrender of Italy in September 1943, Visconti used his villa as a meeting place for partisans and hid escaped Allied Prisoners of War. Adopting the nom de guerre Alfredo Guidi, he fled into the Apennines when the Germans took over Rome and Koch began to persecute the partisans. He returned to Rome in April 1944 and was arrested by Banda Koch. With renewed frenzy, the Germans began arresting people right and left. Among them was Visconti, arrested on April 15 at a friend’s house. He had a revolver on him, and so was taken for interrogation by Pietro Koch the Pensione Jaccarino. People all over Rome shuddered at the thought of what went on at the Pensione Jaccarino in those days. In this case, Koch’s 1st reaction was gratified excitement at having a man like Visconti in his power. This soon yielded to hysterical rage at what Koch called Visconti’s “unsatisfactory attitude.” Finally, he condemned Visconti to be shot. Visconti was kept in a cupboardlike cell for 9 days and nights, during which time Koch tried in vain to get names from him. Furiously determined not to let it stop at that, Koch then decided to hand Visconti over to the Germans. Despite Visconti’s homosexuality, Denis was deeply in love with him; Koch was infatuated with Denis. Here accounts diverge; Denis claims she was instrumental in keeping Visconti alive and safe from transport to a concentration camp in Germany. Visconti believed Denis became Koch’s lover, and never spoke to her again. Koch kept Visconti in the latrine at Pensione Jaccarino – the “hole” – 90 centimeters (3 feet) wide and a meter (3.2 feet) deep covered in excrement. Denis was also interrogated by the Schutzstaffel (SS), which terrified Koch; he worried she would reveal he had Visconti. By late May 1944, many within the German-Italian Fascist leadership realized that the Allies would arrive in the city within days. Monte Cassino had fallen into Allied hands and Us troops were within sight of Rome. For the city’s rulers time was running out. In his final days of power Pietro Koch had been thinking about what would happen to his family when the Allies arrived. He had a survival plan, so he sent a messenger to the 1 man who he thought could help – his long-time enemy Hugh O’Flaherty. The Monsignor was startled by the approach and at 1st he thought he was being led into a trap. In his office in the German College he listened as his visitor explained that he had been sent by the police chief. “He wants to make a bargain with you,” said his guest. “He says if the monsignor will arrange to place his wife and mother in a religious house when he goes, he in exchange will ensure that the monsignor’s friends are left in Regina Coeli instead of being transported to Germany.” O’Flaherty thought for a moment. This proposal was full of risk, and he needed some indication that Koch would stand by his word. Was it worth chancing it? He decided to test the police chief’s intentions. Some days earlier the monsignor had received written confirmation that Bill Simpson was alive and was being held in Regina Coeli, so it was only natural that he would be 1 of those who would be included in any deal. The priest responded to the offer, saying, “Tell Koch I agree to his suggestion on one condition. As evidence of his good faith, he must first deliver safely to me two British officers who are in Regina Coeli – Lieutenant Simpson and Captain John Armstrong (September 15, 1919 – circa June 3, 1944), nom de guerre Gabor Adler. If he does that I shall make the arrangements he desires for his wife and mother.” O’Flaherty’s visitor left the Vatican and took the offer back to Koch, who agreed to it instantly. However, the deal struck a snag. In custody, Simpson was still pretending he was an Irish citizen named William O’Flynn, so when the prison authorities looked for him they could find no record of a Lieutenant Simpson. O’Flaherty then told Koch’s contact to search the prison records for an inmate using the name Simpson had assumed. For days nothing was heard and the monsignor and Derry were convinced that the deal had broken down. Then, 1 day as 2 of O’Flaherty’s agents sat in their flat working on safehouse accounts, the doorbell rang. They both jumped up in fear, because the caller was using the secret signal. They were not expecting anybody, so was this a trap? Whoever was outside had some kind of inside knowledge. But who was it? When they tentatively opened the front door they both cried out with happiness on seeing a familiar face. Bill Simpson was a free man. Unfortunately John Armstrong was handed over to the Nazi Germans and shot outside of Rome with 13 other Allied Prisoners of War. His identity was not confirmed for 63 years and his remains have never been found. Pietro Koch, was luckier than other Fascist secret police chiefs when Rome was liberated on June 4, 1944 – at least for a while. He escaped to Milan, still under German control, where he set up a new torture house. But his feud with the Fascist naval leader Captain Valerio Borghese (June 6, 1906 – August 26, 1974), and other leading Fascists soon had him reserving cells for colleagues as well as partisans. Following the armistice which the Kingdom of Italy signed with the Anglo-American forces on September 8, 1943, Hitler supported the establishment of a puppet Repubblica Sociale Italiana (RSI – “Italian Social Republic”). In theory, this was led by Italian Duce and Prime Minister Benito Mussolini (July 29, 1883 – April 28, 1945), whom German paratroopers had freed from captivity, but there was no doubt that it was the German themselves who really commanded this puppet state, with the SS entering Milan in September 1943. Various fascist groups helped the Germans in rounding up such “suspects” – the Legione Muti, the X Mas, the Brigate Nere and the Banda Koch. The Banda Koch moved to Milan in Villa Fossati, via Paolo Uccello 19, seizing it from its old owner Adele Mariani Fossati. The Villa hosted the department offices and, in its basement, the security rooms. Barbed wire was installed on top of the surrounding walls, its facade had powerful searchlights. They had their own specific modus operandi: in most cases, the arrests were carried out at night and following a list of names and addresses. Once they reached their destination, the agents would break into the house of the victim armed and with their faces uncovered and order the victim to follow them and give any object of value. As for the treatment of prisoners, besides the practices already experimented in Rome – some maltreatment even had a precise name, like the “scientific slap” or the “somersault” – in Milan, the victims were forced to “sprint across a room between the shower and their cell with two rows of agents ready to hit them while they passed”. The afternoon of September 25, 1944, about 60 members of the Legione Muti and some public safety agents broke into Villa Triste and arrested the members of the department who were immediately sent to San Vittore. Koch, while detained, managed to escape with the help of the Germans a few days before the Liberation but, once he reached Florence, was recognized and arrested. The Koch squad was set up with Mussolini’s permission and paid and armed by the Interior Ministry. After Rome fell, it shifted its operations to Florence, then to Milan. Banda Koch stole 3 crates containing furniture, ceremonial objects and silver from the Milan synagogue. Koch and his gang participated in the arrest of Jews and partisans and in looting operations. Sacred silver belonging to the Milan Jewish community was found in the private home of Pietro Koch in Milan. The Koch headquarters in Milan ran its own private prison and torture chamber. The methods included the use of electric current, keeping prisoners in cells no higher than 3 1/2 feet, whipping, putting matches in toenails and setting them alight, crushing genitals, hitting people in the kidneys with sacks of sand to provoke internal lesions, making prisoners drink glasses of motor oil, forcing them to swallow salt and putting them in cellars with no light, water or sanitary facilities. Piero Pisenti (March 20, 1887 – September 29, 1980), Mussolini’s justice minister, persuaded Il Duce to put a stop to the Koch operation. The squad was dissolved when it was found to be working for the Germans and disobeying government orders. Minister of the Interior Guido Buffarini Guidi (August 17, 1895 – July 10, 1945) had to bring in the rival Muti Legion to assist the police in suppressing it. The Muti Legion freed 43 prisoners, including some who couldn’t walk and 5 who had to be hospitalized. The police arrested 53 members of the gang and found a considerable quantity of morphine and cocaine on the premises. The gang members were released by the Germans after a few hours and later assigned to police duties. Some of the prisoners the gang had held were deported to Germany. In the end Koch lost this contest for power. His competitors arrested him. He was freed 2 months later, however – only to be captured by the Allies. He had heard that his mother and his 1st mistress, Tamara Cerri – he had since abandoned Daisy Marchi, the show girl — had been arrested, though his mother, who had fled south (thereby releasing Monsignor O’Flaherty from his pledge to protect her), had apparently only been questioned. Allied police did not arrest Koch’s estranged wife. Koch was arrested again in December 1944 and held until April 25, 1945. Koch inquired about Tamara Cerri and his mother at a police station in Florence after the Allies had captured that city, and when his identity was suspected he finally admitted that he was Koch. For all his Germanic qualities, he had been trapped by a typically Italian characteristic: an extraordinary attachment to his mother. Put on trial in Rome by the Alta Corte di Giustizia per le Sanzioni Contro il Fascismo (“High Court of Justice for the Sanctions against Fascism” on June 4, 1945, a year after Rome was liberated, Koch, at his trial in June 1945, was his usual cynical self. He told the judge at 1 point, while raising an eyebrow sardonically: “I wish to be confronted with those who were supposedly tortured.” The judge exploded: “But how do you expect me to confront you with dead people?” Koch’s lawyer had 4 witnesses, including Luchino Visconti, who were supposed to testify to his benevolent nature in detention. Instead, Visconti, the 1st defense witness, denounced him on the stand, claiming to be threatened with death by Koch himself. The defense refused to call the other 3 witnesses. The indictment, in a scathing recounting of Koch’s crimes and victims, naming Luchino Visconti and many others, “including in particular that of having taken men away from the Fatherland and handed them over to the enemy,” placed Koch outside the public authority of the government. Koch was found guilty that same day for a host of high crimes against the Resistance, including torture, deportations, and “handing over numerous patriots to the German SS to be massacred in the Fosse Ardeatine.” In the final 2 days of his life, Koch spent most of his time smoking, chatting, and even joking, but above all explaining the reasons for his “mistakes.” He had never been a Fascist, he said in an interview in his Regina Coeli cell, driven instead by a “spirit of adventure.” Now there was nothing left for him to do but plead “forgiveness from God, forgiveness from all those he had made to suffer, forgiveness from all Italians.” To Monsignor Nasalli Rocca, he confessed that success had gone to his head, “reached” by ambition and power. He asked the priest to pray for him, for “I feel the weight of the tears of many mothers!” Koch had sent the Vatican a letter of apology for his part in a raid on St Peter’s Basilica. Koch told the monsignor that his hands were drenched in blood and were not worthy of touching the Holy Father’s rosary. In his cell, Koch told Rocca: “I am German in name and blood, and, like all good Germans, I may be a murderer but not a traitor.” The sentence was death by firing squad. He was shot the following day at the shooting range of Forte Bravetta. On the morning of the execution, after bidding Koch a final farewell, Archbishop of Bologna Nasalli Rocca (August 27, 1872 – March 13, 1952) was summoned with great urgency by Pope Pius XII (March 2, 1876 – October 9, 1958). “Hurry,” said the Pope, pressing a rosary into the Monsignor’s hand, “go at once to Lieutenant Koch and bring him my forgiveness, my blessing, and this rosary.” The Holy Father had received a handwritten apology from Koch for having violated the sanctuary of Saint Paul’s Basilica; he was still holding the letter as he dispatched Nasalli Rocca. Tears welled in the condemned man’s eyes when the future cardinal delivered Pius’s good wishes along with the rosary. “Father,” Koch said in a breaking voice, “these hands of mine are drenched in blood and unworthy of touching the Holy Father’s rosary.” He asked him to place it over his head, which Nasalli Rocca did, promising to ask the Pope to grant him one last request, a blessing for his mother.” In the early afternoon, kneeling in the grass at Fort Bravetta, Koch received the last rites, then rose and calmly took his place before the firing squad with his back to them, a sign of dishonor to not face his executioners. He refused the proffered blindfold. 17 rifle bullets tore through him, removing the entire cap of his skull and hurling it over the wall behind him. He was not yet 27 years old. Banda Koch were arrested, tried, and some were convicted in Milan in 1946. Survivors and relatives of the victims testified at the trial. No 1 should classify all those Italians who after September 8 joined the Fascist armed forces or co-operated with the Germans as “bad” Italians, or all anti-Fascists as ‘good’. After 21 years of Fascism the younger adult generation knew no other type of government, and had been indoctrinated with hatred of the Allies and loyalty towards Germany. However, as the months passed brutalities and massacres by the Germans alienated almost all Italians, and through their own fault the Germans were in the end waging war amid an entirely hostile population. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0659.jpg |
| Image Size | 980.49 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 4280 x 2870 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | United States Army Signal Corps |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | June 3, 1945 |
| Location | |
| City | Rome |
| State or Province | Lazio |
| Country | Italy |
| Archive | National World War II Museum |
| Record Number | 013.495.1395 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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