Talk:Biscari massacre

Forthcoming Contributions

As I have done a great deal of research into this particular topic, I will attempt to add to the content of this article in the following months. My goal is to provide an objective and detailed account of the two massacres, backed by extensive and verifiable primary resources. To that end, any discussion or suggestions concerning my additions is both welcome and encouraged. Justin M. Harris (talk) 15:44, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I happened to come across this entry and agreed that it needed to be fleshed out in some places. Not seeing any changes or additions by Mr. Harris since 7 February 2011, I attempted to add what I could. I did remove a note in the "West Incident" section asking for more detail, as I think my additions met that request; I did not remove a similar note in other sections. If I am in error, or if Mr. Harris (or others) wish to add more, I am sure they will do so. D.A.Timm (talk) 21:26, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Added: Mr. Harris mentions using primary sources. If he (or any other reader) has ready access to the actual records of trial of West and Compton and is willing to go to the trouble, they can improve the footnotes in places where I cited Borch's excellent article. Mr. Borch is the Regimental Historian and Archivist for the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's Corps, and undoubtedly used those primary sources. His article is well worth reading from a legal standpoint, tracing as it does the development of the Law of Armed Conflict as it applies to such a situation. It can be found on-line at http://www.readperiodicals.com/201303/3036177751.html#b.

It might also be worth adding this link to the main Wikipedia Article; if someone knows how to accomplish that, please feel free. D.A.Timm (talk) 08:58, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Serious accusation needs a verifiable cite

While I assume that prior editors added this material believing it to be true, the lack of inline citations for such a serious accusation that Patton covered up a massacre is something that requires deletion. This is a case where verifiability is more important than to observe good faith. I will visit the library and see if this is in the published record. Any editor can do likewise. Canicattì massacre is a similar article. Sources are likely to refer to both massacres. patsw (talk) 02:48, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

• Atkinson, Rick (2007). The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy). New York: Henry Holt and Co. p. 119. ISBN 978-0805062892. (retained in the article as inline)
• Bartolone, Giovanni (2005). Le altre stragi. Le stragi alleate e tedesche nella Sicilia del 1943-1944. Bagheria : Tipografia Aiello & Provenzano.
• Botting, Douglas (1989). Hitler's Last General: The Case against Wilhelm Mohnke. London: Bantam Books. pp. 354–359. ISBN 0593017099. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Weingartner, James (November 1989). "Massacre at Biscari: Patton and An American War Crime". The Historian. LII (1): pp. 24–39. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help)

I fully agree that the entry must be fair. Both West and Compton did testify that Patton's speech was taken by them as an order and their actions were in compliance with that order. I don't think that (or the fact that he was the alleged source of the order) can be omitted, but I agree that the fact that he said he did not intend it as such, nor believe that any reasonable interpretation would suggest such a thing, and that the War Department cleared him of wrongdoing needed to be added as well.

I guess it's too bad we don't have an actual transcript of the speech, just impressions.

I hope I've been fair to the truth from both sides, but if not, I stand to be corrected.D.A.Timm (talk) 21:37, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Treatment of Snipers

Patton mentions certifying that the men executed were snipers, apparently referring to a practice of treating snipers differently. An explanation of this would be helpful.Bill (talk) 03:52, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Pointless, because no one is interested in the truth, and seemingly no one possesses moral intelligence apropos these "indelicacies"...

Every "pan-American" "Greater Space" denizen today, propagandized and conquered without arms thereby, conscience-inured, nihilistic "herd-men" or "Last Men" - who among them is either desirous, or truthfully seeking to objectively understand these things?

One philosopher said (admittedly, a European philosopher - rather presumptuous of those Europeans to interfere in American messianic redeemer-nation ideology, right?!), this philosopher stated: Americans symbolize the "Far West", the Western soul at its schizoid fringe of dissolution, ruptured and fractured; the materialist nihilist disease of soul, first spawned in Europe, infecting the "New Zion" the most virulently...

I am not going to utilize gentlemanly euphemisms here; no Anglo-American style canting moralistic rationalization of evil.

Patton, miscalled "General", fraudulent honorific hiding a personality not "macho" but DEMONIC APELIKE, appears to have BEGRUDGINGLY, in self-interest purely, admitted his true state of mind - IN NO WAY DIFFERENT FROM NAZI OR STALINIST "GENERALSHIP" (that is to say NEFARIOUS GENOCIDAL WARLORD DESPOTISM) - Patton the "ALL-AMERICAN HERO", realized or realizing at some point, subterfuge of legal pretext for premeditated mass murder might come into play, conceded a little legalistic foxiness in relation to the enormity. Thus Patton and under-officers re-oriented the issue manipulatively, or possibly originally subverted their own soldiery's minds, in the SICKENINGLY AMORAL CONFLATION, MENDACITY-BUTTERED, mind-poisoning their own troops, in the conflation of the French term for (unlawful) irregular partisan - "Francs-tireur" - with both (regular, uniformed) riflemen, snipers AND the global enemy combatants as a collective unit as a whole.

Perfected demolition of the mind by double bind of amoral illogicality.

Geneva laws contemptuously disregarded heinously. A little droplet of legalese imposture as precaution against self-incrimination, so "generous"...

Dirty tricks. Dirty tricks of pirates.

The blackest, filthiest mass murder, hierarchically ratified and commanded, forgotten, bereft of redress, bodies vaporized, now unremembered, in the flux of history.

Disproportionate, unjustifiable and felonious beyond human description, the criminality still reddens America's hands; Patton given utter impunity to officially direct the "good as apple pie" troops of the American monolith, to engage in prehistoric-level butchery - the veil finally unmasked, the creature so deceitfully masquerading and unperceived to the imperceptive eye, denuded so "painfully" to contemporaneous cognitively-dissonant neo-barbarians: HERE IS THE REALITY.

A clue, a trace of cryptic enigmatic layers of unpopular, "Top Secret" truth, left predictably apathy-doomed academically, in the America-lorded, crepuscular West.

We Sicilians, even if we become Americanized, have LONG, LONG memories - only the Jews come close to how acutely, sharply, we remember... The lack of vindication should not be mistaken for servility on the part of Sicilians - our minds work across centuries, and we DO NOT forget: no one needs to trumpet to us, NEVER FORGET: it is IN THE BONES...

Biscari, Americans, remember BISCARI - my FORCIBLY CONSCRIPTED great-grandfather was among the dehumanized victims of tyrannical malevolence here.

Fascists - can you imagine it?! - the Fascist thugs of Mussolini did not merely, in refined manners, gently ask for volunteers - solid-minded, decent, morally sane Italians and Sicilians (e.g. my "RIGHTEOUSLY SLAIN" ancestor - a peaceful, socially well-regarded,, wholesome, honest-living Sicilian fisherman of old Norman castellated lineage, yet penniless as the most vulnerable "proletarian") - these doubly victimized Italians and Sicilians were FORCIBLY CONSCRIPTED AGAINST THEIR WILL... COERCIVE and IN DURESS, utterly apolitical, punished and punished again, overkill upon overkill...

No grave, no reverence even given the possibility to express, for the "justly murdered" of Biscari.

America maintains its upper lip stiffly to this moment - how can the evangelical nation of light-bringers unto the heathens, ever partake of anything but angel-white goodness?

BISCARI. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:304:B34B:A940:983D:A2E6:21EB:614 (talk) 00:00, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

The above words belong to a relative of mine, whose night-long tears eventually got me to this page on "Wikipedia"...

The person who wrote those words is the most gentle-mannered and morally idealistic person, not only myself, but every person knowing him, would even legally, in court, attest to, as such -

I just wish to say, the sentiment is not of vengeance, this is not some Sicilian national vice or Mafia-type thing: this is only the anguish of my nephew (forgive me if I do not offer more personal information), in his mind, reconciling his sense of morality and patriotism in light of the "American justice" dispensed to his progenitor, and how the incident was officially handled or mishandled, by the American government...the government, his tears reveal, his own mind cannot accept as having acted as it acted, cannot conceive, how the American government could perpetrate and then deliberately conspire in the concealment of the crime sealing the fate of his ancestor.

My nephew has no anti-American feeling and is just emotionally gutted, really.

His grandfather - the grandfather, a boy when the incident occurred, who personally witnessed his own father being murdered by G.I.'s who only moments before, handed him chocolate, now murdering in cold blood his prostrate father and uncounted others, fleeing the bullets unsuccessfully (can one imagine the pain of heart of the child?) - the above commentator's grandfather, kept this truth from him too, largely out of embarrassed shame, until his last days and passing only hours ago - please keep that in mind all readers.

We are all good-hearted here, American Sicilians or Sicilian-Americans, point being...Americans, patriotic dutifully.

More importantly, this message of human emotional dissonance emanated from no monsters, no villains, but humanity of good intent and character - the affair is simply devastating to digest for my relative on the personal level in particular, that is all...

(The aspiration of my nephew to FBI office, is now dead; he feels no desire to participate in American socioeconomic existence or American society, utterly - his "faith in things", is leveled, in ruination. Any advice as to how to console him, feel free to offer.)

I hope his moral goodness and intelligence win out in the end, all I can say. The tears are not stopping, even early in the morning hours now.

These types of things create revolutionaries, counter-revolutionaries, frankly.

God bless America, Sicily and all of good will. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.60.216.202 (talk) 10:13, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

"bayonet shot"?

The actual sentence in the maintext is, "and his seventeen-year-old son Valerio, who was killed by a bayonet shot in his face.[2]", where the cite is to a book I did not try to get access to. The term "bayonet shot" has no standard meaning. One does not shoot bayonets. Andyvphil (talk) 01:47, 22 February 2023 (UTC)