Fabio Ruini's blog

October 25th: One of the most famous acts of chivalry was that of Sir Walter Raleigh draping his cloak over a puddle so that Queen Elizabeth I wouldn’t get her shoes muddy. It’s very romantic but very untrue. This story was the invention of Thomas Fuller, a seventeenth-century historian, who embellished otherwise boring historical stories, or, in this case, made them up all together.

October 26th: In February 1657, three teenage girls in Tokyo became fatally ill, and their deaths were blamed on a silk kimono possessed by evil demons. A priest was summoned to perform an exorcism on the garment. The kimono was ceremoniously burned, but the fire quickly got out of hand. Before it was contained, the notorious Long-Sleeved Kimono Fire incinerated three quarters of the city and took the lives of more than 100,000 people.

October 27th: Johannes Gutenberg (1398-1468) is credited not only with inventing a printing press with movable type but also with ushering in the Rennaissance period in Europe. But Gutenberg didn’t know how to make money, and he certainly didn’t print it. He was soon in financial crisis, and his business and invention were taken over by his creditors. Gutenberg never made a penny from his invention or received any fame during his lifetime.

October 30rd: In Boston, Massachusetts, in 1634, a carpenter named Edward Palmer was commissioned by the town’s elders to build the first wooden stocks intended for public punishment. Palmer submitted his bill for one pound, thirteen shillings, and seven pence, which Puritan officials felt was so high as to be considered extortion and voted to punish Palmer. He was fined five pounds and also ordered to “be sett an houre in the stocks,” becoming the first victim of his handiwork.

November 1st: In November 1977, approximately 500 deadly and dying blackbirds and pigeons dropped on the streets and sidewalks of San Luis Obispo, California, over a period of several hours. No local spraying had occurred, so authorities had no explanation as to why the birds had died en mass over their town.

The plan on the Ministry’s conference table on September 18, 1939, was simple. Why not have the Reichsbank print millions of counterfeit British banknotes, unload them on the streets and rooftops of the enemy, and then stand aside as the British economy collapsed? The dubious idea of printing enemy currency was not especially new or even original; similar plans also rippled across the desks of no less than Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. One hundred and fifty years before, the British had counterfeited the currency of the French revolution to stoke the inflation already created by the revolutionaries’ own printing presses. And Frederick the Great, who had forged the unforgiving Prussian military ethos that molded the German state, also forged money to undermine his 18th Century enemies. But these schemes had all been hatched in a pre-industrial age. Now, given the immense resources and brutal efficiency of Adolf Hitler’s war machine, it should be much easier to print English banknotes on a vast scale, in greater quantities than any counterfeit bills ever produced before..

It was not beyond calculation that the Nazi plot could devastate the economy of Britain and its empire, whose worldwide commerce was transacted through the financial nerve center of the City of London, which enriched Britain’s gentry while financing its wars. Details were put forward by Arthur Nebe, chief of the SS criminal police, a schoolteacher’s son and an ambitious, opportunistic senior civil servant who habitually injected himself into the many conspiracies that lay at the heart of the Nazi movement. He was a party member even before Hitler came to power in 1933, whose principal utility was his knowledge of the criminal underworld. Inventive and sinister, he was ever at the service of his superiors. Nebe had helped Hitler win supreme command of the armed forces in 1938 by fingering War Minister Werner von Blomberg’s new wife as a former prostitute, forcing the old Prussian’s resignation in disgrace. He was the German representative on the International Criminal Police Commission, formed after World War I principally to track counterfeiters and drug smugglers across Europe ‘s borders and later known as Interpol from its cable address. After the Nazis marched into Austria in 1938, they moved the commission’s headquarters from Vienna to Berlin, gaining access to fifteen years of case files and suborning its original purpose of tracking counterfeiters and drug smugglers.. (Nebe is also helped adapt the mobile gas van, originally used in the Nazi euthanasia of mental patients, for mass murder in Eastern Europe to soothe the sensibilities of the Reich Security Chief Heinrich Himmler, who said he could not stand the sight of people being shot, even Jews.)

Nebe proposed mobilizing the extensive roster of professional counterfeiters in his police files. His immediate superior was Reinhard Heydrich, protégé of Himmler, the leader of the murderous SS, the Schutzstaffel (Defense Squadron) that began as the Nazi Party’s armed militia. Heydrich was not in the least constrained by any legal scruples or even police protocol in rejecting Nebe’s proposal, but he excluded the use of police files lest this discredit Germany ‘s control over the international police organization, of which he was titular chief. . Instead, he wanted to continue using the commission’s European police network to track down anti-Nazis and Jews who had escaped from Germany . Heydrich also hoped to extend his reach as far as the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation in order to obtain U.S. passport forms for possible forgery. (The FBI remained hesitantly in touch with the International Criminal Police Commission, breaking all contact only three days before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.)

However resistant he was about using criminal files, Heydrich was enthusiastic about the counterfeit plan from the start. As cunning as he was cruel, he was an avid reader of spy stories. He liked to sign his memos with the single initial C in the mode of the English espionage thrillers fashionable between the wars. (It was and in fact remains the code letter for the chief of the British secret service.) Heydrich’s days were full of dark assemblings. He ran Himmler’s Reichssicherheitshauptamt , the RSHA or Reich Central Security Office. It compiled huge files on Germans suspected of disloyalty, liberal connections, and of course Jews, whose methodical extermination Heydrich planned and initially supervised.

Heydrich was as physically self-confident as Himmler was shy and short-sighted. He was a skier, aviator, fencer, and succeeded ably at whatever he did, even at playing the violin with fierce emotion, which he did as a young officer at musical evenings. Heydrich’s inner tensions were betrayed principally by his high, metallic voice, his harsh temper, and his nightclubbing habits in Berlin, where the women preferred his aides to the wolf-eyed officer with prodigious sexual appetites.

The only serious objection to the counterfeiting plan came from Walther Funk, a homosexual former financial journalist, fat and well fed, who served as Hitler’s economics minister. Funk was the principal Nazi liaison to German industry until the bitter end and the titular head of the Reichsbank. He refused the use of the Berlin laboratories of the central bank’s print shop, warning that the counterfeiting plan was contrary to international law and that it simply would not work. Funk also demanded that fake bills be barred from Germany ‘s conquered territories. He knew that the locals would dump Nazi scrip for what they thought were real pound notes. The last thing he needed while bleeding their resources for the Reich would be an infusion of forged pounds soaking up his overvalued and suspect occupation currency.

Joseph Goebbels also found the idea grotesque–” einen grotesken Plan ,” as he wrote in his diary–but he did not reject it out of hand. A similar plan had already been mooted privately to Goebbels by Leopold Gutterer, one of his most imaginative deputies. On September 6, Gutterer suggested dumping the notes over Britain in quantities large enough to equal 30 per cent of the currency in circulation. That would mean tons of paper for the overstretched Luftwaffe to carry, but it was the kind of mad scheme forever being dreamed up by Goebbels’ own Propaganda Ministry, the megaphone for Hitler’s Big Lies–the more often repeated, the more they stuck.

Goebbels, a blindly devoted follower who had spread the “Heil Hitler” greeting among Nazi Party members, was the only person with an advanced degree –he had a doctorate in philology– to remain in Hitler’s immediate entourage throughout the war, and one of the very few with any college education at all. He confided his misgivings to his diary: “But what if the English do the same to us? I [will] let the plan be further explored…” Whether Goebbels was represented at the September 18 meeting is unknown, but he clearly was well aware that a whiff of counterfeit paper might blow away the Reich’s finances. They were already stacked as delicately as a house of cards because Hitler had refused to endanger his solid bourgeois support by raising taxes to rearm Germany until the day after the war actually began.

Despite the intense secrecy, word of the counterfeiting plan soon reached London. The Berlin meeting was outlined comprehensively in a letter from Michael Palairet, chief of the British Legation in Athens and the very model of an English aristocrat representing his class and country. (His daughter married into the ennobled family of Britain ‘s World War I prime minister, Herbert Asquith.) Palairet’s letter to London was marked “Very Confidential” and dated November 21–just two months after the September 18 meeting–and contained material from the notebook of a Russian émigré named Paul Chourapine. Exactly how he had come by the information was not explained, nor were his sources named. Chourapine had been tossed out of Greece by the police in October and deported to France, where he could not be further interrogated. But his report was startling both in its detail and the level of its political and financial sophistication.

During a conference of experts in monetary matters held on the 18th September of this year [1939] at the German Ministry of Finance, the following plan was discussed:

“Offensive against Sterling and Destruction of its Position as World Currency”

This plan, which was unanimously approved, contemplates in the first place the necessity of careful preparation and perfect execution of the work enabling the proposed aims to be realised in all the countries of the Near East as well as in North Africa, in the British Colonies and in South America .

It was decided to proceed with the printing in the printing works of the Reichsbank of 30 milliards [billions] of forged bank notes of £1 and of 2 milliards of various other notes. The transfer of these forged notes to foreign countries would be effected through the diplomatic bags of the Ministry of the Navy.

The consular representatives of Germany of the abovementioned countries would be charged with the disposal of this original merchandise in the most prudent manner. They have received instructions to try to obtain at first as much profit as possible until they receive the order to distribute the bank notes at a ridiculous price and even gratuitously, the main object being to flood the money markets with an enormous quantity of forged pounds.

The plan contemplates the moment when these forged notes in spite of their perfect get-up will be discovered. This moment will be the one when the coup which is already being prepared will be executed in the largest exchanges of the world, in those of New York, Amsterdam, The Hague, Lisbon, Rome, Naples, etc. and which is to lead to the collapse of sterling or to its serious depreciation. To make the success of this coup possible, the Ministry of Propaganda is to start an accusation against the Bank of England of having itself put the forged currency into circulation with the object of ensuring the support of the “pays états” [nation- states] and of concealing from the world its own bankruptcy.

The Navy and the Air Force of the Reich will be called upon to perform certain great exploits, if possible spectacular, which should coincide with the execution of the coup explained above.

Confidence in the British currency having been destroyed, the [German] mark will be able to overrun the world market.

This document remains the only contemporaneous description of the Germans’ original plan. Although it was modified by the exigencies of war–and what battle plan is not?–Chourapine had captured the essence of the scheme.

British diplomats shared the Athens memo with the Americans in February, 1940. Herschel Johnson, the highly respected senior career diplomat at the American Embassy in London, quickly passed a summary to Washington, where the State Department then warned the Treasury. Washington was watching apprehensively lest the dollar also become a counter in a game that many Americans hoped to stay out of, considering it Europe’s war and the Nazis as Europe’s problem.

The directors of the Bank of England, anachronistically known as “the Court,” were soon alerted along with Sir Montagu Norman, the Bank’s governor. Norman ran the place with an iron hand, and the inner circle kept the information so close that for many years the Bank’s staff did not know that Palairet’s letter had been its principal tip. Instead, they believed it had come via a dubious character dealing with the British Embassy in Paris . This kind of obfuscation characterized the Bank’s smug, pusillanimous behavior from then on. And indeed, for years the Bank of England was unable, and until recently unwilling, to tell the full story because its officials insisted that many of their own records were transferred to the British secret services or lost. After the war, officials of the Bank even destroyed some records on their own.

Credo di essere stato fra questi. Non ho mai odiato nessuno. Puo’ sembrare scontato, ma mi e’ sempre piaciuto andare d’accordo con tutti. Anche nei momenti in cui la lotta partigiana si fece piu’ cruenta e feroce, non lasciai mai spazio – ne’ a me stesso ne’ ai miei uomini – alle facili vendette contro qualcuno, fosse tata anche soltanto una donna compromessa da rapare a zero.

Partimmo da Vergato in quttro, diventammo piu’ di cento e ritornammo in cinquanta. E’ ancora oggi un motivo d’orgoglio, per me che li ho comandati, pensare che nessuno di questi partigiani e’ mai stato denunciato o imprigionato per fatti accaduti durante la Resistenza. E si’ che dopo la guerra il clima non fu dei piu’ favorevoli per noi partigiani, molto spesso considerati alla stregua di banditi e profittatori.

Certo, non ho mai sopportato troppo la disciplina militare del regime fascista, in particolare quando a farla rispettare furono messi i peggiori. Non ho mai tollerato la protervia degli ignoranti. Questi furono i motivi che mi spinsero a darmi alla macchia e a imbracciare un fucile; ma non furono – dopo – quelli che animarono in me uno spirito di rivalsa o di vendetta che andasse oltre uno schiaffo o un alterco verbale con qualche irriducibile fascista.

Altrettanto non posso dire dei miei nemici. Gia’ subito dopo la guerra dovetti difendermi dalle calunnie di un maresciallo fascista che cerco’ di screditare me e i miei partigiani.

E poi alla fine degli anni Ottanta, quando, dopo l’uscita di un volume di testimonianze curate dalle scuole di Vergato, mi vidi recapitare una lettera dell’Unione dei reduci combattenti della Repubblica sociale, dove mi si dava del disertore, del ladro e dell’assassino. Un po’ di fastidio, certamente, ma non c’era da preoccuparsi troppo di una lettera firmata dal comandante di una brigata nera. Da che pulpito, pensai. Amarezze grandi e piccole che forse andavano messe in conto, considerato il clima da guerra civile che ci eravamo trovati a vivere in quei dieci mesi di lotta partigiana.

Come le contestazioni di quel giovane partigiano che avevo accolto nella mia formazione, sul fatto che avessimo aderito o meno nella prima fase alla divisione Modena, cosa peraltro testimoniata per iscritto dopo la guerra da ben cinque comandanti partigiani. Questioni di lana caprina e nient’altro, di qualcuno che forse si era montato un po’ la testa rispetto ai gradi da tenente che io stesso gli avevo riconosciuto dopo la guerra dietro sua precisa richiesta: un mio subalterno da partigiano divenuto mio pari grado da civile. Da quel giorno s’impegno’ piu’ a gettar scredito sul sottoscritto che a difendere la comune causa della Resistenza.

Ma non solo ad amici e compagni riconosco meriti. I meriti e l’oensta’ non hanno bandiera. Non ho mai avuto difficolta’ ad ammetterlo, proprio perche’ l’esperienza della guerra partigiana me lo ha insegnato piu’ di una volta.

Per tutti quei mesi da comandante partigiano pregai di non dovermi mai trovare di fronte a quel gerarca fascista che mi salvo’ la vita nella vicenda delle armi nascoste. Sarebbe stato penoso trovarmelo davanti da prigioniero e magari dover decidere io della sua sorte. Cosi’ come non ho mai dimenticato quello che hanno fatto per me e per la mia famiglia altri notabili fascisti, come ad esempio i medici dell’ospedale.

Le brave persone hanno una caratura cosi’ alta che passa sopra ogni steccato ideologico.

Troppe volte ho sentito dire cose insensate su quegli anni e, in particolare, sulla Resistenza. Cose prive di senso perche’ non reali e non veritiere. Resoconti di battaglie gonfiati a dismisura da una parte, cosi’ come fango e accuse di misfatti mai commessi dall’altra. Sempre con la memoria comune nel grave pericolo di veder sedimentare versioni di convenienza a scapito della storia autentica.

La verita’, innanzitutto. La verita’ dei fatti. Quella mi preme, oggi piu’ di allora. Oggi che, a novantadue anni suonati, sono avviato verso il gran finale, il tramonto della mia vita.

Domani finalmente mi dimettono da questo ospedale. Ce l’ho fatta anche stavolta. Una brutta caduta e il cuore debole, ma le medicine e un nuove pacemaker hanno fatto il miracolo.

Anche la mia tempra ci ha messo del suo, credo. Domani saro’ fuori da questo posto e tornero’ a casa con tutto il mio fardello di ricordi sulle spalle.

I rottami dell’aereo di Chavez«Bisogna che io parta» e volò via verso il Sempione per tentare un’impresa giudicata quasi impossibile: la traversata delle Alpi. Così, impaziente e irrequieto per le segnalazioni dei venti in quota, Geo Chavez ruppe gli indugi decollando da Briga con meta Domodossola e Milano. Erano le 13.29 del 23 settembre 1910: cento anni fa. Aveva 23 anni il giovanissimo francese di origine peruviana, biondo e occhi azzurri, appena laureato in ingegneria, ma il più determinato nell’affrontare l’arduo balzo. Nella carlinga del suo Bleriot XII di legno e tela, con un barografo appeso al collo, una bussola e un tachimetro, scomparve in fretta nel cielo.
Nei giorni precedenti aveva compiuto alcune ricognizioni dell’ambiente. Lo accompagnava con la sua auto Luigi Barzini, il grande inviato del Corriere della Sera già celebre per il famoso raid Parigi-Pechino. Il Corriere aveva sponsorizzato l’iniziativa garantendo quasi la metà del premio di 120 mila lire destinato al vincitore. In quegli anni piloti e costruttori andavano a caccia di queste occasioni per poter realizzare, con i proventi, nuovi aeroplani. Il momento era di grande euforia per il nascente mondo delle ali. L’anno precedente a Brescia si era tenuto il primo circuito aereo italiano e a Roma Wilburg Wright, protagonista del primo volo nel 1903 negli Stati Uniti, addestrava i primi due piloti italiani. Nello stesso anno Louis Bleriot compiva la traversata della Manica.

Milano guarda alle imprese con crescente interesse e organizza per l’autunno 1910 un circuito aereo internazionale con uno scopo ben diverso che supera la competizione sportiva mirando a coinvolgere l’industria interessata per stimolare lo sviluppo del settore. Milano, con l’Expo del 1906, si era confermata la capitale industriale del Paese e guardava al futuro. Occorreva però anche un’avventura eccezionale per sottolineare lo spirito che animava l’idea. E dopo la Manica tutti guardavano alla traversata dell Alpi, ben più difficile. La meta sembrò adeguata. In cinque si presentarono alla sfida, ma solo Geo Chavez partì superando le vette. La sua conquista, purtroppo, si concluse in tragedia schiantandosi con il suo aereo sui prati di Domodossola dove era previsto un atterraggio prima di raggiungere Milano.