Caracciolo began his military career as an artillery
Second Lieutenant in 1899, attending the War School of the
Royal Italian Army and serving as a staff officer at the command of the General Staff Officer Corps, then at the command of the "Novara" Infantry Brigade and later at the command of the IX Corps. He participated in the
Italo-Turkish War with the rank of
Captain and later fought in the
First World War as commander of a siege artillery group. After promotion to
Colonel he commanded the 13th Artillery Regiment for six years. Caracciolo was still in command of the Fifth Army when the
Armistice of Cassibile was announced on 8 September 1943. He tried to organize a resistance against German attacks during
Operation Achse, but his army gradually disintegrated as several of his subordinates, such as the garrison commanders in Florence,
Massa and
Arezzo, handed over their cities to the Germans without resistance. On 12 September Caracciolo, who had been personally involved in the fighting, formally dissolved his Army and then went into hiding in
Rome, where he made contact with the Fronte Militare Clandestino, a
Resistance network composed of former Army officers. The Germans placed a bounty of 20,000 lire on his head, and in January 1944 he was arrested by the Special Police Detachment of
Pietro Koch, handed over to the
SS, and imprisoned in
Verona,
Venice and
Brescia, where he was tried by the
Italian Social Republic’s Special Tribunal and sentenced to death. The sentence was however reduced to a fifteen-year prison term as Caracciolo was a war invalid. He was liberated by the partisans on 25 April 1945. After the war he published several books (
E poi? La tragedia dell’Esercito, in 1945;
Tradimento italiano o tedesco?, in 1946;
Le sette carceri di un generale, in 1948; ''L'ultima vicenda della V Armata'', posthumous) and died in Rome in 1954. ==References==