August 27, 1944: The Nazis Kill a Princess

August 27, 1944: Princess Mafalda of Savoy, daughter of the deposed King of Italy, dies at the Buchenwald concentration camp, outside Weimar. She was 41. Although her own husband had been a Nazi, Hitler believed she was working against them, and ordered her arrest.

Mafalda Maria Elisabetta Anna Romana di Savoia was born on November 19, 1902 at the Qurinal Palace in Rome. (It is now the official residence of the President of the Italian Republic, the country's head of state, but mainly a ceremonial office with little power.) Her father was King Victor Emmanuel III, and her mother was Queen Elena, a daughter of King Nicholas I of Montenegro, who was deposed in 1918, as his country was absorbed into Yugoslavia.

"Muti" had a brother, Umberto, along with 3 sisters, 1 of them older, so she was never going to become the reigning monarch of Italy. In 1925, she married Prince Philipp, Landgrave of Hesse, a grandson of Germany's Kaiser Friedrich III, and thus a nephew of the last Kaiser, Wilhelm II -- and thus also a great-grandson of Queen Victoria of Britain, and thus a 2nd cousin of King George VI. They had 4 children: Son Moritz in 1926, son Heinrich in 1927, son Otto in 1937, and daughter Elisabeth in 1940.

Philipp joined the Nazi Party in 1930, and, when they gained power with the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor in 1933, he became Oberpräsident of the Prussian Province of Hesse-Nassau.

However, he began to fall out of favor with Hitler in the Spring of 1943, after delivering an honest assessment of the military situation in Italy. He provided passports for Jews, to allow them to flee to the Netherlands. Whether Mafalda was involved in this is not clear. He was arrested on September 8, 1943, the day Italy surrendered to the western Allies, dismissed in the following year, and was sent to 2 different concentration camps -- neither the same as his wife.

Hitler believed Princess Mafalda was working against the war effort, calling her the "blackest carrion in the Italian royal house." Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, called her "the biggest bitch in the entire Italian royal house."

On September 23, she received a phone call from the German High Command, saying that they had an important message from her husband. When she arrived at the German Embassy in Rome, she was arrested. She was taken to Buchenwald. The Italian prisoners there recognized her, and later told Allied soldiers that she shared her food with other prisoners.

You'll notice that I have titled this entry "The Nazis Kill a Princess." For the most part, that's true. They arrested her, questioned her, and imprisoned her without trial, possibly on false charges. Ultimately, they were responsible for her death.

But they were not the biggest cause of it. On August 24, 1944, the Allies bombed an ammunition factory inside Buchenwald. Some 400 prisoners were killed, and Princess Mafalda was seriously wounded. She had been housed in a unit adjacent to the bombed factory, and when the attack occurred, she was buried up to her neck in debris. and suffered severe burns to her left arm. She said, "I’m dying. Remember me not as a princess, but as your Italian sister."

Her arm became infected, and the medical staff at the facility amputated it. She bled profusely during the operation, and never regained consciousness. It is possible that, given her prisoner status, they didn't try all that hard to save her. She died overnight on August 27. Her body was reburied after the war at the seat of her husband's family, Kronberg Castle in Hesse, outside Frankfurt.

To this day, some people think President Franklin D. Roosevelt should have bombed the camps as soon as he found out what was really happening there. This incident shows why they were wrong: It would have killed far more innocent people than guilty ones, and killed far more innocent than it would have saved.

Philipp was arrested by U.S. forces on May 4, 1945, and was interned until 1947. He returned to Rome, and died in 1980.

Moritz married another German royal, survived The War, had 4 children, naming his eldest daughter Mafalda after his mother, and lived until 2013. His son, Donatus, is now Landgrave of Hesse.

Henrich never married or had children, survived The War, and lived until 1999. Otto married a German General's daughter, divorced her, married another German women, had children with neither wife, survived The War, and lived until 1994. Elisabeth married a German Count, and had 2 sons. As of August 27, 2022, she is still alive, approaching her 82nd birthday.

Mafalda's father, King Victor Emmanuel III, abdicated his throne on May 9, 1946, and died in exile in Alexandria, Egypt on December 28, 1947. Mafalda's brother, King Umberto II, became known as "The May King" (Re di Maggio), and reigned from May 9 to June 12, 1946, when a national referendum abolished the Italian monarchy. He lived in exile on the Portuguese Riviera, and died in 1983.

His son, Mafalda's nephew, never got to be King Victor Emmanuel IV, but he was named Prince of Naples, although the title of Duke of Savoy has been disputed by a cousin. He has been accused of murder, racketeering, and other charges, but never convicted.

UPDATE: Victor Emmanuel died in 2024, in Geneva, Switzerland, at the age of 84. His son, Emanuele Filiberto, Prince of Venice, now claims the leadership of the House of Savoy and the nonexistent throne of Italy.

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August 27, 1944 was a Sunday. Actor G.W. Bailey, known for his roles on the TV shows M*A*S*H and Criminal Minds, and in the Police Academy movies, was born.

Due to it being a Sunday, and wartime travel restrictions being in place, most baseball matchups on this day were doubleheaders:

* The New York Yankees split with the Washington Senators at Griffith Stadium in Washington. The Yankees won the opener, 4-2. The Senators won the nightcap, 5-4. Bill LeFebvre singled Joe Kuhel home with the winning run in the bottom of the 9th inning.

* The New York Giants swept their arch-rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers, 8-1 and 4-2 at the Polo Grounds.

* A doubleheader was split at Braves Field in Boston. The Philadelphia Phillies won the 1st game, 8-5. The Boston Braves won the 2nd game, 5-4. Whitey Wietelmann singled Frank Drews home with the winning run in the bottom of the 10th inning.

* The Boston Red Sox swept the Philadelphia Athletics, 8-5 and 7-2 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia.

* The Cleveland Indians swept the Chicago White Sox, 4-3 and 1-0 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Steve Gromek pitched a 7-hit shutout in the 2nd game.

* A doubleheader was split at Briggs Stadium (later Tiger Stadium) in Detroit. The Detroit Tigers won the 1st game, 5-3. The St. Louis Browns won the 2nd game, 17-2. Despite the onslaught, only 1 of the Browns' 17 hits was a home run, by Mark Christman. Nels Potter went the distance for the win, and helped his own cause by going 2-for-5.

Over the 2 games, Christman went 3-for-10 with a homer, a walk, and 4 RBIs; George McQuinn went 6-for-9 with a walk and 3 RBI; Mike Kreevich went 5-for-10 with a walk and an RBI; and Vern Stephens went 4-for-9 with 3 RBIs.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 14-6 in the 1st game of a doubleheader at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. The 2nd game was tied, 1-1 after 10 innings, when it was called due to a Sunday curfew. Stan Musial, one of the few baseball stars not yet serving in The War (he would miss the entire 1945 season), went 2-for-6 with 3 walks and an RBI in the twinbill.

* And the Chicago Cubs and the Cincinnati Reds were rained out at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader on September 13. The Reds swept, 4-1 and 3-2.