An interesting and fruitful meeting with Maurizio Tosco, author of the book “The Immaculate Secret of 43. December 8: Roosevelt lands in Castelvetrano”, took place on Friday afternoon at the unitre headquarters in Castelvetrano.
After greetings from President Giuseppe Ancona to the large audience present and a brief presentation by the author of the book who is an architect by profession but who for decades has dedicated part of his time to researching the military events that developed in Sicily and which determined that tangle of setbacks, slip-ups and deaths whose plot we are only now able to recognise, we heard from the author’s own voice what happened on 8 December 1943.
In December 1943, American President Roosevelt landed in Castelvetrano but on a “covered” mission; the visit lasted a couple of hours and has escaped many historians as the president recommended to his secretary Lieutenant William Rigdon not to write anything down in his official diary. A historic but secret visit that gave a turning point to the Second World War and almost a final blow to the separatist movement on the island. Roosevelt landed on the concrete runway of the now former military airport of Fontanelle aboard a US Army aircraft that took off from the El Aomina airfield in Tunisia escorted by a flock of 12 fighters; Accompanying him was General Eisenhower. Episode resulting from research conducted in Italy and the United States, between libraries and museums, between interviews and exchanges of letters. The international intrigues that form the backdrop to the visit to Castelvetrano are moves and countermoves in which the Mediterranean plays a fundamental role in the midst of an intelligence war even between officially allied countries. Roosevelt’s presence in Castelvetrano is also a tangible sign to contrast with the separatist movement led by Finocchiaro Aprile, who dreamed of the establishment of a Sicilian republic; It was he who in a letter to Cordell Hull, Secretary of State, denounced the hostility of the American commands on the island, announcing “disasters” if Badoglio’s troops set foot in Sicily. To eighty-year-olds from 1943 Tosco says: “What do we care about knowing the details of those days?” He matters a lot because we know the details of those days; Stalin who wanted to mock the Americans, Roosevelt who was an idealist but not an idiot, the mafiosi who tried to enrich themselves even more. The ideologies were simple screens, the reality was another. And what do we care about? We can learn lessons from the events around us. And then the book can be a handbook for today. We must avoid the same fate for our grandchildren. True history is different from propaganda and the answer given by Tosco was absolutely definitive: the historical documents, the photographs of the meetings, the diaries of the protagonists are available to everyone. Everyone can connect the facts, recognize the plots, lament the mistakes, regret the remedies that could have been adopted and were not taken. This and much more are contained in this splendid “historical find” accompanied by original documents that attest to its authenticity.
In the end, President Ancona regretted learning that the historical museum with all the finds collected by Tosco was inaugurated in Catania and not in Castelvetrano, as the short-sightedness of some local administrator did not understand its importance and saw the need”.
