Bombardment of Trento
The first bombs on Trento fell on September 2, 1943. The population and the authorities were unprepared because it was believed that Trento would not be hit and that the Anglo-American planes would only hit Germany and the largest Italian cities. Bombs were dropped by 91 planes belonging to the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces; 218 tons of ordnance fell on Trento.
The epicenter that day was the Portéla neighborhood, south of the train station. There were 229 victims and almost all of the buildings surrounding the ancient Torre Vanga, miraculously still standing, were destroyed.
From September 2, 1943 until April 1945, the inhabitants of Trento experienced first-hand the fear of dying under the rubble, a well as from hunger. Another particularly harsh day was May 13, 1944, when carpet bombing aimed to damage the entire city. That day, about 130 people died and 52 houses were destroyed – where 475 people lived. A further five homes were almost demolished with 124 seriously damaged. In the city, four churches were badly damaged; the church in Via San Martino was almost completely destroyed. The “area bombing” strategy razed entire cities in Germany and was approved by the English Government in February 1942 to speed up the end of the conflict and because, at that time, it seemed the only opportunity to intervene significantly against Nazi-fascism. Carpet bombing made it possible to open a mobile front across the entire enemy territory.
During those months, various air raid shelters opened across the city. A report sent in January 1945 to the prefectural commissioner, however, reports that the most basic equipment was missing and that, despite the planners’ expectations, shelters, rather that places to take refuge for a few hours, had started to permanently house people who have lost their homes or who were terrorized. The report states that they were “permanent primitive homes, unhealthy, infested with parasites, where people, especially the lower classes of the population, bivouac, spend the night on beds of any kind and always filthy, in shameful promiscuity, in the dark, damp and cold”.
Bombs fell almost every day, shattering windows far from the places where the explosions occured, and damaging infrastructure such as the aqueduct and bridges over the Adige River.
Elena Tonezzer
Further reading:
Diego Leoni, Patrizia Marchesoni (edd.), Le ali maligne, le meridiane di morte. Trento 1943-1945: i bombardamenti, Trento, Museo storico in Trento, 1995
Michela Dalprà, Anna Maragno, Giovanna A. Massari, Studi e proposte progettuali sui rifugi antiaerei di Trento: la galleria ipogea “Alla Busa”, in Annali del Museo Storico Italiano della Guerra, 27 (2019), pp. 169-185
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