Gruppo Ordini Speciali
| Gruppo Ordini Speciali | |
 Emblem and shoulder patch of the GOS. | |
| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | 20 May 1960 |
| Dissolved | 1 July 1984 |
| Jurisdiction | Etruria |
| Headquarters | Atillio Farinacci Army Base |
| Motto | "Senza Paura Nella Morte" "Fearless in Death" |
| Minister responsible |
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| Agency executives |
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| Parent agency | Organisation for Internal Vigilance and Security |
The Gruppo Ordini Speciali (Special Orders Group) was an elite unit of the Etrurian Army established by the Etrurian military dictatorship on 20 May 1960 to capture or kill high value targets in numerous separatist and left-wing armed groups during the Western Emergency. It existed from 1960 until 1984 and is believed to responsible for the deaths or disappearance of over 900 individuals. The GOS' numbers rarely exceeded 550 strong and drew its members from across multiple divisions and units of the regular army and were reportedly selected on the basis of their "loyalty, beastiality in combat and capabilities under pressure."
The group took the form of a long-endurance reconaissance unit with its attack groups deployed into hostile areas of Carinthia and Novalia. They were supported by other GOS elements who infiltrated separatist groups to gain intelligence and information on high value targets. Other elements of the GOS included an airborne rapid response unit that was regularly flown by helicopter to conduct decapitation raids, including the operation that killed the founder and leader of the Novalian People's Liberation Front, Zlatko Juran in early 1966. Another and more infamous group was the Predoni Urbani ("Urban Raiders"), which operated in towns and cities sympathetic to separatism and would regularly stage assassinations against targets, or in some cases, ordinary citizens to sow "terror and fear." Critics of the military regime decried the Predoni Urbani as an indiscriminate death squad.
The GOS was disbanded in 1984 following the restoration of democracy and all records of the group were destroyed by the Etrurian Army command, efforts by victims' families to take the GOS to court over its killings have repeatedly failed. Freedom of Information requests against the unit have also been repeatedly rejected by the Etrurian government since 1984.
Establishment
Calls for a specialist unit tasked with decapitation of the left-wing separatist groups was made by Etrurian Army officers as early as 1955 but were rejected by the government. The proposal found opposition on the basis that such a group would violate the constitution and its objectives would break the law regarding extra-judicial detention or killing. The GOS was the brainchild of General Augusto Galtieri, who also alongside Admiral Giovanni Paolo Bonnino produced the Emergency Constitution for National Security in wake of the coup. The Emergency Constitution for National Security adopted following the 1960 coup d’état provided legal justification for the use of extra-judicial detention and killing.
On 20 May, the military government ordered the establishment of a “Special Orders Group” and handed responsibility to General Galtieri. The foundations of the GOS were laid with the appointment of units from OTUA (Operazioni Tattiche e Unità d'Assalto; Tactical Operations and Assault Unit) special forces, who took part in the coup. The GOS itself would be commanded by Colonel Alessandro D’Giacomo, the officer who first entered the bedroom of President Massimo Bartolucci to remove him from office. The GOS was granted a command centre at a small army base near San Alessandro, where it established a detention centre, intelligence unit and a training ground. Col. D’Giacomo was then tasked with expanding the GOS, hand picking soldiers from the regular and special forces of the Etrurian Army. The GOS then set up direct lines of communication with the Western Operation Command Centre in Novalia and the Organisation for Internal Vigilance and Security. Over the course of its operational life, the GOS would set up its own network of informants across separatist territory, while the GOS was granted a blank cheque by the military government to facilitate this network.
Operations
The first documented operation by the GOS took place on the 13 November 1960, when 18 members of the unit were flown by helicopter to the Novalian-Piraean border. Arriving at night, the elite unit then proceeded on foot to a farm 5km south of the village of Kuna Konavoska. Shortly after 3am, the unit stormed the farmhouse killing 12 members of the NPLF and the primary target of Bruno Marjanović, a prominent figure in the movement and the principal go-between for the NPLF and Piraean based weapons traffickers. The farmhouse was then torched, and the unit evacuated by helicopter.
The success of the Kuna Konavoska raid established the operational standard of the GOS. In a speech by General Galtieri on 15 November, he described the duty of the GOS to “identificare, localizzare, distruggere” (“Identify, locate, destroy”). The GOS would conduct three more such raids in November and December, neutralising four prominent members of the NPLF, but none were considered essential to the organisation. The military government by January 1961 had recognised the potential of the GOS and granted the unit resources and manpower to establish its own intelligence department and network of informants, in the hope of locating the senior leadership of the NPLF.
On 15 February 1961, the GOS launched a raid on a former hunting lodge in the forests of southern Novalia. 20 elite GOS troopers, flown in by helicopter attacked the Sveti Boris Lodge, killing eight NPLF members and Slavko Lenic, the Front Secretary for Propaganda and Agitation, the first member of the NPLF Central Committee. While, the raid failed to kill or capture NPLF leader, Zlatko Juran, the loss of Lenic and the seizure of invaluable intelligence proved the Sveti Boris raid to be a significant success. The intelligence captured proved vital in the subsequent Operation Zodiaco, the first Etrurian Army offensive against NPLF strongholds.
In the spring of 1961, the GOS established the Selective Operations Unit (Unità operazioni Selettive), also known pejoratively as the Twins of Death (Gemelli della Morte), owing to this unit being comprised of individual pairs of GOS operatives. The UOS was tasked with eliminating individual targets of “serious security concern.” The plainclothes UOS pairs would shadow their target, gathering intelligence on their pattern and routines before killing their target either in a secluded location or in their homes. From its establishment until the disbanding of the GOS in 1984, the UOS is believed to be responsible for the deaths of 103 individuals, including Novalian and Carinthian writers, playwrights, singers, poets, politicians and business people who were suspected of separatist sympathies by the Etrurian military government. In one case, the popular Carinthian singer, Alenka Kozina was murdered a week after she released a song condemning the conflict, which was viewed as a defence of separatism by the military. In 1963, two UOS operatives kidnapped and murdered Gašper Predin, the deputy leader of the Carinthian Worker’s Party for Independence, his body was found near the burnt ruins of a nunnery, destroyed by the CFCL. This was followed by the murder of Marko Mlakar, a Carinthian businessman who was laundering significant amounts of money for the CFCL. He was shot dead by two UOS operatives at a popular bar in Praproče.
Throughout 1961 and 1962, the GOS conducted forty raids against the NPLF and CFCL, notably these raids were not restricted to the primary task of decapitating the two-armed groups’ leadership, but also included conventional raids against their infrastructure. On 10-11 September, the GOS staged four simultaneously raids on suspected NPLF command centres in the western Tarantine mountains, killing 54 NPLF fighters and suffering one killed and two injured. These attacks preceded Operation Virgo, which would evict the NPLF from the Praporčan Valley.
In early March 1963, the GOS interdicted a major arms shipment from Amathia to the CFLC. The helicopter borne troopers ambushed the sale, killing 6 fighters and capturing ten others, including an Amathian operative of its intelligence agency. The capture of over 1,200 rifles and thousands of bullets was heralded as a major success by the military government and was used as a major propaganda coup against socialist Amathia.
1963 also saw the inclusion of ethnic Piraean targets in northern Tarpeia, following Etruria’s annexation of the region in wake of Operation Lexicon. Utilising its own informant network, the GOS raided a meeting between the Piraean Army for Reunification with the Motherland (PSEP) and the NPLF on 9 May. The raid resulted in the capture of PSEP leader, Traianos Dellas and the killing of NPLF Deputy General-Secretary Ivo Bukovac, the highest profile NPLF leader to be neutralised since 1960. In response, the NPLF launched a Novalia-wide manhunt for informants, this led to 1963 being the deadliest year for separatist killings of the entire Western Emergency, with over 320 people killed between May and December.
In October the same year, the GOS was expanded and its numbers grew to 900 strong. The primary recipient of this new intake of personnel was the newly formed Urban Operations Unit (Unità Operazioni Urbane), which be commonly known as the Urban Raiders (Predoni Urbani). The UOU would find itself to be the most controversial element of the GOS and its program of ILD (Identify, Locate, Destroy). In November 1963, the GOS raided a safehouse in the Novalian town of Slavkovec, killing all inside, notably including the wife and two teenage children of NPLF leader, Zlatko Juran. Among the wife’s possessions was a letter written by Juran informing her that he would be rallying the “comrade fighters on the northern front.” This letter was analysed by Etrurian military intelligence and was cross referenced to other sources to confirm that Juran would be visiting NPLF cells in the northern city of Savudrija.
On January 3 1964, the GOS launched its largest raid consisting of over 150 elite operators against NPLF safehouses in Savudrija. At a hilltop villa east of the city, GOS operators stormed the residence to find Juran and six other prominent NPLF figures. In the firefight, four of the leaders were killed and Juran was shot twice in the chest but survived. However, he would die of his wounds while travelling to the GOS base at Atillio Farinacci. The death of Juran was broadcasted by the military government later that evening and was proclaimed as the “first major strike against socialist separatism.” The loss of Juran would prove devastating for the NPLF in the long term as his successors rushed to extremist actions, while failing to confront endemic infighting and factionalism.
Post-Savudrija escalation
Following the killing of Zlatko Juran, the NPLF underwent a series of internal power struggles that destabilised the group long enough for its operational capacity to collapse. Noting the marked decrease in NPLF attacks on federal forces and loyalist militia groups in Novalia, the GNUS reoriented the GOS to targeting the CFCL. This preceded the Palazzo dei Cazzerini Bombing, which killed 22 people at the headquarters of the Banca delle Tre Nazioni on the 3 March 1964. The bombing though initially blamed on the NPLF as a revenge attack for Juran’s death was discovered to be the work of the Red Brigades of a United Worker’s Etruria, a Vespasia based group that had emerged out of underground left-wing student groups repressed by the military government.
On the 20 March, the GOS was ordered to confront the RBUWE in Vespasia, marking the first time its operational scope had expanded to the rest of the country. On the 23 March, UOS operatives shot dead 24-year old Maria Ciano, a former economics student inside her family’s home in Volterra. Ciano was believed to be the leader of the RBUWE following the disclosure of wire tapping recordings to the GOS command.
On the 11 June, the CFCL bombed a train travelling from Praproče to San Alessandro killing 9 people and injuring 50 others. In response, the GOS stepped up its efforts against the Carinthian group, staging four major raids against safehouses and rural strongholds through June to July. On 5 August, the GOS raided a forest hideout housing Jože Grohar, the leader of the smaller and more extremist Carinthian Red Army. This was followed by the capture of Božidar Kuhar, the deputy commander of the CFCL on August 19. Kuhar was subsequently executed by firing squad by personal order of Chief of State Francesco Augusto Sciarri.
The loss of Kuhar did little to deter the CFCL, which staged a series of attacks that resulted in the capture of territory south of the Tratto Settentrionale region of Carinthia, in October-November. This period also saw a rising inability of the GOS to draw out the CFCL leadership. This was further worsened by successful efforts of the CFCL to hunt down informants within its own ranks, this led to a circulated edict from the GNUS ordering the GOS to adopt the tactic of “Mortelutto”, a colloquial compound term meaning “death by mourning.” Mortelutto was constructed around the idea that specific targeting of the families of separatist leaders, would be draw them out of hiding, as well as inflicting serious emotional and psychological tolls.
In a speech to GOS operatives on November 19, 1964, Colonel Alessandro D’Giacomo said, “for each bombing they need to suffer a loss so great, their grief brings them out. With each attack on our homes in Carinthia, Novalia and Vespasia, we need to slap them so hard they die of broken spirits.” On December 3, the GOS attacked the family home of Marko Rozman, a senior cell commander of the CFCL. Inside at the time was his wife, Polona and his sons, Ivo and Damjan and were shot dead by GOS troopers. The Rozman raid was followed by two more such operations, however, in these cases the relatives were captured and detained at the GOS facility at Atillio Farinacci and held hostage, forcing the two targets into surrender. On December 29, the GOS tactic of Mortelutto was amended, with the primary objective being the detention of wives and children rather their killing. Despite, the new orders, the GOS would assassinate the family members of CFLC and NPLF figures a further 22 times. The failure to capture relatives went undetterred, as many in the Etrurian military government saw the loss of relatives as further price for separatism and terrorism.
Between January and April 1965, the UOS became the primary unit in conducting "Mortelutto" operations. Using their plainclothed pairs, the GOS kidnapped 11 wives and children of senior CFLC cell commanders and transferred them to military detention centres in Vespasia. Several notable cases include the murder of Gianna Grgić, the daughter-in-law of NPLF Deputy General-Secretary, Zoltan Grgić, she was found tied to a tree near Vilanja with a single bullet wound to the head. She was four months pregnant at the time. The death of Grgić forced her husband, Mladen Grgić to stage an attack on the state legislature of Novalia, killing 4 state lawmakers. Mladen and his six accomplices were killed by Etrurian soldiers in the aftermath.
The GOS however, would find its operational capabilities greatly constrained following the success of the Etrurian Army in Operation Taurus II, which crippled both the NPLF and CFCL’s ability to gain and hold territory. Despite its successes, Taurus II forced the NPLF and CFCL into adopting urban and rural guerrilla warfare, ending their original strategy of holding geographically imposing areas and launching attacks to expand the areas under their direct control. The transition to hiding among civilians exclusively in towns and villages denied the GOS the plausible deniability Mortelutto offered, the risk of killing innocent civilians and enticing membership of separatist groups as a result was seen as too great a risk by the military government.
Marginilisation
The transition of the separatist groups to outright insurgency denied the GOS the space to conduct its previously successful strategy of helicopter borne and in-theatre special forces raids on static targets. As a result, the plainclothed UOS group was elevated to the principle tool of the GOS. In 1966, the military government reorganised the GOS into three distinct elements, the UOS, the UOU (Predoni Urbani) and the newly formed Frontier Operations Group (Gruppo Operazioni di Frontiera; GOF). The GOF would field the special forces and be focused on interdicting the trafficking of arms, materiel and people between Etruria, Piraea and Amathia, denying the separatist groups their much-needed supply lines. The GOS’ informant network would prove invaluable from 1966 to 1975, as many informants in exchange for both immunity and financial reward would provide the names and locations of weapons sales and deliveries. The use of fast-moving helicopter borne special forces over entrenched regular forces enabled the GOS to retain the element of surprise when intercepting these meetings and deliveries.
The marginalisation and decline of the GOS began in 1967, as the military government opted to rely on propaganda, limited police actions and loyalist Carinthian and Novalian militias to confront the urban insurgency. The often brutal and violent treatment of the rural population by the separatist groups proved self-defeating as by the late 1960s, the Etrurian state boasted its most loyal subjects in the countryside. The military government's dramatic increases in funding for the two states and the army-led reconstruction of rural regions from both the Solarian War and the Western Emergency allowed the central government to ingratiate itself with the rural populations. As the conflict became ever more exclusively urban in nature, the role of the Predoni Urbani grew. The GOF would be all but disbanded in 1970 following the overt and public threats by the Etrurian government, that if neighbouring states failed to halt the supply of weapons to the separatists, it would invade those neighbours and establish "quarantine zones" along the shared borders. Fearing a repeat of the 1961 Aprocorona and Lexicon operations, Piraea launch crackdown on traffickers and smugglers, denying the rebels a source of much needed materiel.
The GOS would stage several prominent operations between 1970 and 1975. On 10 July 1970, the GOS raided a small former convent in rural Novalia, killing 14 NPLF fighters and Krsto Rogoz, the mastermind of the 1969 Aventino Express Bombing. In 1971, six simaltaneous raids captured the entire leadership of the Etrurian Division of the Revolutionary Front (EDRF), which had staged the Piazza Corsini Bombing in January, killing 36 people in Faulia. On 11 November 1971, GOS operatives shot and killed three members of the General Revolutionary Command for Carinthia (GRCC), who were planning on assassinating the Co-Prefect of Carinthia, General Korado Janko. In 1972, it captured several senior members of the NPLF, including Josip Juran, the youngest son of Zlatko Juran, they were publicly tried as the Novalian Nine and were found guilty of treason and terrorism. The nine defendants were sentenced to death by hanging on October 7 1972. In 1973, the Etrurian government entered into negotiations with the CFCL, securing their disbandment and disarming in early 1974, this led to a redirecting of the GOS against Novalian and Vespasian based left-wing groups.
In late 1974, the GOS staged a raid capturing or killing the entire Politburo of the Novalian People's Liberation Front at Kuća Ivan, the operation stands as the GOS' greatest success. The General-Secretary of the NPLF at the time Marin Rakić survived the raid and was put on trial. His trial saw him be charged for the crimes of the entire Novalian separatist movement, while his sentence was determined by his willingnes to cooperate with the regime in securing the NPLF's disbandment. In exchange for avoiding the death penalty, Rakić secured the surrender of the NPLF, he received fifty conseceutive life sentences and would die in prison in 1983. The Kuća Ivan raid effectively ended the Western Emergency, though violence would continue until the early 1980s, it was sporadic and limited to small and disorganised separatist groups, or Vespasia based far-left movements.
In 1977, Colonel Alessandro D'Giacomo was transferred to another special forces unit, his successor Colonel Miha Lipuš was tasked with dismantling the GOS and its network of informants and safehouses in former separatist strongholds. By 1978, the GOS had only 150 personnel and had disbanded in all but name.
Predoni Urbani
Established in 1963, the primary objective of the Predoni Urbani was to “identify, locate, destroy” targets hiding in major urban centres. However, the PU’s target list was significantly wider than that handed to the GOS special forces or the plainclothes “Twins of Deaths” (Gemelli della Morte) and in many ways constituted an urban terror campaign devised to deter support for separatist groups. The PUs were initially confined to select Etrurian military personnel, however, Captain Amadeo Gianelli who headed the Urban Operations Unit soon expanded it to include numerous loyalist Carinthian and Novalian militias and even employed petty criminals and street thugs.
Captain Gianelli divided the strategy of the PUs into two distinct themes, the first was the “official action” and the second was “unofficial action.” The former were operations ordered by the GOS command or higher and would be conducted by the enlisted Etrurian soldiers and officers who formed the core of the PUs. The “unofficial action” was centred around the use of non-military individuals to sow terror among urban districts most sympathetic to separatism. Also included under the Unofficial Action strategy were false-flag operations aiming to turn supporters away from the separatist groups. Under the Unofficial Action strategy, Gianelli openly advocated for the military government to co-opt the various loyalist militias operating in Tarpeia, Novalia and Carinthia, rather than repress them. The government acquiesced impressed by the organisational skills of the National Volunteer Defence Front, which was led by Solarian War veteran, Darko Ladan. Ladan was a major in the Etrurian National Army during the Solarian War was long accused of perpetrating the Metaxades Massacre in Piraea, which left over 200 civilians dead. Ladan saw the answer to the separatist crisis as a unrelenting assault upon those who supported separatism. Using a pseudonym, he told the Telegrafo Nazionale in 1980, “our strategy was to inflict such pain on those who backed separatism and socialism, that the choice for those in the middle was loyalty to the country, or going the way of socialist traitors.”
With the assistance of the NVDF, the Predoni Urbani launched their first operations in Vilanja in mid-1963. In May, the PUs backed by the NVDF attacked and torched six businesses and two restaurants in the pro-separatist district of Sveti Petar. Whilst no one was harmed, the incident provoked a retaliatory response from the NPLF which bombed a taverna popular with loyalist football supporters. The bombing killed 18 people and injured 40 others; this only served the military government which condemned the NPLF as “vicious dogs dedicated to the spilling of blood.”
In June, the PUs and NDVF launched a series of gun attacks on pro-NPLF districts in Vilanja, targeting local leaders and prominent left-wing activists, killing 11 people. This was followed by the car bomb attack that killed the former Mayor, Nikola Vida, who was the leader of the former Novalian People’s Social Democratic Party and a known advocate for the NPLF. One advantage the PUs held over the NPLF in Vilanja was access to the GOS’ informant network, which they used to track down and murder individual supporters of the NPLF. In the first notable case of this tactic, was the murder of Doris Kovač, a single mother of three who was kidnapped from her workplace and killed. Kovač had used her job at a cannery to raise money from co-workers for the NPLF. In August, the PUs with the assistance of the NVDF attacked a meeting of the Young Red Novalians, a left-wing student movement, at a disused warehouse. In the ensuing violence, three students were killed and a further 36 seriously injured. Within minutes of the brutal attack, the YRNs were arrested by the Etrurian Army and sentenced by a State Security Tribunal. In October 1963, the PUs raided the underground publishing house used by the NPLF to spread word of the military regime’s actions. As the entirety of the Etrurian press had been shuttered by the military government, bar a few right-wing newspapers, information on the situation in the West was highly censored and controlled. The PUs entered the publishers, beating the workers and set fire to the building, only to flee before the arrival of the Etrurian Army to detain the workers.
Between 1963 and 1967, the PUs and NVDF, alongside the Republican Defence Association, formed in 1965 in Carinthia were the prominent forces fuelling political violence in the cities of the western states. Over 4,500 people would be killed during this period as a result of PU-paramilitary gun and bomb attacks, while the PUs assassinations of pro-separatist individuals continued unabated. The worst incident during this period was the Travno Massacre in 1966, when over 300 NVDF and PU members entered the Travno district in the early hours of the 30 July and shot dead over 100 inhabitants. Travno was known as the birthplace of the NPLF, owing to its predominately working-class population.
From 1967 until the collapse of the separatist groups in 1975, the Western Emergency transitioned solely toward urban insurgency. This enhanced the role the Predoni Urbani would play within the GOS but also gave way to some of the most egregious massacres of the Western Emergency, perpetrated by the GOS.
Sveti Pavel massacre
In late September 1968, the Etrurian government discovered that the success of Operation Libera III was skin-deep with the return of CFCL fighters to the recently recaptured town of Sveti Pavel in eastern Carinthia. From the town, CFLC fighters ambushed Etrurian Army patrols and convoys, while the town was suspected of housing a bomb making factory. When Etrurian Army units staged a sweep of the town they failed to find any CFCL presence and withdrew.
On the 3 November, 30 PU troopers backed by 200 armed members of the NVDF entered the town using Etrurian Army vehicles and proceeded to roundup over 400 inhabitants at random. During this time, they ransacked the homes of civilians, torched several homes and businesses and left anti-separatist graffiti sprawled over the streets. These individuals were then transported by truck to a secluded forest 11km west of Sveti Pavel and proceeded to execute the 400 civilians and buried them in an unmarked mass grave in the forest.
The massacre is believed to have been ordered by the military government as a means of instilling fear into a town that refused to accept its authority despite the success of the armed forces in destroying the CFCL. However, documents discovered in 1992 threw this initial view onto the wayside, with these documents indicating that the massacre was proposed by the NVDF leadership in the area. Other documents from the late 1960s indicated a “rogue element” to the activities of the Predoni Urbani, while other sources close to the senior GOS command, especially Colonel D’Giacomo, saw the over-reliance on groups like the NVDF as a detriment to the original purpose of the PUs.
NDWU raid
On 13 April 1969, a meeting of the Novalian Democratic Worker’s Union was held in Dubovica to discuss the proposed strike in support of the left-wing groups and to oppose the authoritarian military national government. The meeting was held at a large social club on Avenija Radoslava Dedića. At approximately 8.40pm, two vehicles driving down the road opened fire on the social club using military grade assault rifles, over 200 bullets were fired through the large glass windows fronting the club. The attack killed 16 union members and injured a further 30, the vehicles fled the scene before the Etrurian Army and police arrived.
When the survivors informed the authorities of what they were voting on before the attack, the leadership was arrested, and the union was banned. The Etrurian authorities blamed the NPLF for the attack, citing its previous criticisms of the NDWU’s opposition to violence instigated in the name of independence. This was accepted by wider society until late 1999, when documents were declassified by the Etrurian government, indicting the GOS and specifically the Predoni Urbani, who dispatched eight operatives to conduct the drive-by shooting, ostensibly to disrupt the vote.
Sveta Marija Seminary raid
On January 19 1973, the GOS through the Predoni Urbani staged a raid on the Sveta Marija Seminary, an Episemalist institution in the Carinthian city of Kuštanovci. The attack came in wake of Operation Capricorn III, which had cleared most of the town's industrial districts of CFCL and Carinthian Red Army hideouts and safehouses. Shortly after dawn, 35 PU operatives entered the seminary following reports that it was offering sanctuary to injured separatist rebels. Having been denied entry by the Rector, the group forced their way into the seminary and proceeded to search the rooms for the supposed separatist rebels in hiding there. In the process of searching, the PU operatives destroyed or damaged property and after a scuffle brokeout between an operative and a seminarian, gunfire erupted, killing 5 students and an Episemalist priest. The rebels were soon discovered after being treated for injuries in the cellar. The Predoni Urbani then proceeded to shoot dead the 10 rebels and handcuffed the Rector and remaining staff and seminarians, handing them to the authorities under charges of habouring terrorists shortly after. The seminary was unlocked and left in a state of ruin for several weeks, while eye-witnesses reported finding the bodies of the rebels in the cellar, where they remained until the Army occupied the building and buried the corpses in unmarked graves outside the town. Upon recommendation of the GOS, the seminary was shut down by the state government and in 1974 was repurposed as a seminary for Solarian Catholics. The seminary was shut down by order of the Papacy in 1999 owing to its bloody past.
1973 Violence
In the year 1973, the political violence between the Carinthian separatist factions and loyalist forces in the towns and cities reached its bloodiest peak, with over 3,500 people killed. However, the losses suffered by the CFCL specifically pushed it into negotiations with the Etrurian military government and it surrendered the following year. The violence in Carinthia during 1973, was long believed to be due to initiatives taken by the NVDF and RDA against the separatist factions, however, documents released in 2001 revealed that much of the loyalist violence was directed by the Predoni Urbani.
Throughout January and March, the violence in Carinthia was confined to tit-for-tat murders of pro-separatists and loyalists in the streets or in the victims' homes. On 18 March, the CFCL shot dead a Catholic Priest, Fr. Željko Smolar outside his church in Praproče in view of departing congregants. The next day, 11 men and women travelling on a bus to the pro-separatist district of Trnovo were gunned down after having been ordered off their bus by an armed RDA gang, the bus driver who's identity card showed he lived in a loyalist district of the Carinthian capital was spared, he was handed a note declaring the killing of the passengers to be the "heavenly vengence for our martyr Father Smolar." On April 21, the PUs launched a night raid on a hostel in the second Carinthian city of Galižana which was housing CFCL fighters, killing 29 people. In response, the CFCL bombed the Galižana police headquarters killing 36 police officers and civilians. The NVDF under PU command staged a night raid into the Trnovo district, killing 40 civilians and CFCL members, including the faction's leader for Praproče, this was followed by 22 individual assassinations of CFCL figures by Predoni Urbani units in drive-by shooting attacks.
On 18 July, the PUs were accused of using the NVDF to stage the Pertoča Massacre, when the entire village's population of 189 were gunned down and buried in a mass grave. However, it was later revealed in 1997 to have been conducted by the regular Etrurian Army in response to a series of devastating ambushes on Etrurian Army convoys weeks prior. On 19 July, however, the PUs assassinated the prominent author, Milan Dolar, the widely recognised "philosophical father" of Carinthian nationalism. The death of Dolar coupled with the severe losses of its leading commanders since the start of 1973, the collapse of supply routes from Piraea and Amathia ultimately drove the CFCL leadership to enter negotiations with the Etrurian government. To apply pressure on the Carinthian factions, the PUs with the aid of the NVDF entered predominately pro-separatist districts of Praproče and occupied them for three days, displaying Etrurian flags, propaganda posters and burning CFLC literature and icons in the streets before the Etrurian Army evicted them peacefully.
As negotiations between the CFCL and Etrurian government showed signs of positive progress, the PUs and loyalist militias markedly decreased their presence in Carinthia. On the otherhand, the PUs and militias stepped up their actions in Novalia, launching hundreds of attacks and raids on Novalian separatist factions. From July until December 1973, over 2,100 people were killed in Novalia, a majority as a result of loyalist actions. A common tactic of Etrurian Army sweeps of urban districts followed by deployments of NVDF and RDA fighters led by PU operatives into those districts usually resulte in a subdued separatist presence. Once occupied, these districts would suffer sporadic bouts of violence, with four families in a pro-separatist district of Vilanja being killed by NVDF gunmen in late November after they had joined together to demand justice for their sons killed during the prior Etrurian Army operation.
The violence dropped with the turn of 1974 as the pressure on the NPLF had grown to such a degree, its central command was struggling to organise any meaningful action or operation against the Etrurian state. The Etrurian Army backed by the Predoni Urbani and militias continued the 1973 tactic of sweeping urban areas and leaving the PUs and militias to occupy the streets to deter revenge attacks, while the sporadic acts of murder by loyalist militias did continue. The 16 November Kuća Ivan Raid that killed or captured the entire politburo of the Novalian People's Liberation Front effectively neutralised the faction and would lead to an end of the Western Emergency in 1975.
Disbandment
With the Etrurian military dictatorship declaring victory in 1975 following the surrender of the Combatant Front for Carinthian Liberation and the Novalian People's Liberation Front, many expected a swift demobilisation of Etrurian military forces in Carinthia and Novalia and a liberalisation of the authoritarian and draconian rule of the military junta, however, this would not take place until late 1979. The GOS and the PUs for their part were effectively disbanded, as formal units of the Etrurian Army, however, a limited presence was maintained alongside the GOS intelligence unit to continue counter-separatist efforts against the smaller and more disorganised holdout factions. The loyalist militias were fostered by the Predoni Urbani would continue to operate until the Etrurian government ordered the disarmament of all loyalist factions in late 1979, this belated move effectively permitted the loyalist groups to transition toward organised crime, with many operating racketerring and Protection racket operations, usually at the expense of former separatist stronghold areas of western cities. The Republican Defence Association for its part was shut down forcibly by Etrurian law enforcement in 1977, when it was discovered the group had come to dominate the drugs trade in Praproče.
The formal disbandment of the GOS came in 1984, with the restoration of democracy and the establishment of the Etrurian Fourth Republic. However, part of the negotiations between the democracy movement and the junta saw a demand for all records and documents relating to the activities of the GOS to be preserved. The democracy movement sought to eventually declassify and release these documents as part of the Truth and Reconciliation Process relating to certain aspects of the Western Emergency. The military was keen to protect itself from prosecution or controversy, especially over incidents that could pertain to war crimes. The military did succeed in protecting its personnel records for the GOS, essentially protecting the identities of GOS operatives of its various units, including the UOU and Predoni Urbani. Another key concession to the military was the "Onore e Rispetto" agreement, which became an official act of government in 1985, which protects Etrurian military personnel both historic and present from prosecution.
In 1983, the GOS' headquarters and primary operating base at Atillio Farinacci was shut down by the Etrurian Army and demolished. This included the destruction of numerous GOS black sites located across Etruria, which were used to interrogate and detain suspected seperatists and their leftist allies Vespasia. According to statements made by self-confessed members of the GOS, its senior leaders were ordered to sign specialist versions of the National Secrets Act, prohibiting them from speaking of GOS operations for the remainder of their lives. Many incidents acredited to the GOS were done so through either eye-witness testimony or the study of the limited information declassified by successive Etrurian governments after 1984. Numerous academic investigations into the GOS have taken place but consistently been resisted by the Etrurian Armed Forces to this day, while several GOS figures came out and disclosed their activities later in life, either through written memoirs or interviews with researchers or journalists.
Legacy
The Gruppo Ordini Speciali has drawn much condemnation and adulation since 1984, which often falls along Etruria's political divide. To many, the GOS was the "most egregious excess of the dictatorship" and nothing more than an over-zealous death squad, while to dictatorship's defenders, it was the most successful tool against the separatist factions. Emilio D'Argentis, Etruria's leading historian on the Western Emergency and Junta described the GOS as a "military unit dedicated to crossing every line of warfare against an enemy that was perceived to be beyond repproach. It was a death squad, but only against individuals who had equally zero qualms with bombing a bus or train station at rush hour." In his 1993-1994 volumes studying reasons for the separatist failure, he lists the GOS as one of the top reasons saying, "if the 1960 coup had never happened, Etruria's leaders would have been civilians who would taken to fighting the insurgency with the extensive moral guidelines of civil society, but since it was the military that governed and fought in equal measure, they took to fighting as a zero-sum arrangement, there was no grey area to provide quarter or mercy, it was black and white. Without a moral restraint, the military pursued its enemies and their children through Mortelutto with abandon. The separatists who were in turn, civilians turned fighters, were faced with an enemey that would go further than them in pursuing their objectives."
However, D'Argentis concedes the role the Predoni Urbani and loyalist militias play in tarnishing the reputation or legacy of the more regular elements of the GOS. In his 1994 volume he described the NVDF, RDA and the PUs as "vicious thugs, who's violent delights were unleashed under the cover of national security or patriotism. The NVDF was and remains the most blood thirsty organised criminal enterprise in Etrurian history." While the tactic of Mortelutto and the systematic targeting of the families of senior separatist leaders is subject to much derision, the role the Predoni Urbani played in the Western Emergency's atrocities is condemned in equal measure by Carinthians, Novalians and Vespasians.
One lasting aspect of the GOS' legacy is the role it plays among the Etrurian right-wing movements. Many on the Etrurian right see the GOS as the "true saviours of the Etrurian fatherland" through their ruthless attacks on the socialist separatist groups. The Tribune Movement, which entered national government in 2016 as part of its National Dignity Act in 2018, prohibited the naming of GOS personnel following a book by former operative, Ludovico Grabi, who named 16 fellow GOS operatives. The Tribune Movement branch in Carinthia, which entered state government in 2013 legalised the annual "Day of Victory over Socialism", held each year on 21 September to mark the surrender of the CFCL. In September 2019, Carinthia's Prefect of State, Janez Hribar told supporters, "much is said about the GOS, but I only say what heroes they are. Truly, they did what no one else would and saved Carinthia from socialism."
In 2017, a Tribune Movement State Councillor told supporters, "one day we may get the Special Orders Group back up and running, so we can go after those abortion loving socialists in the Social Democratic Party and those homosexuals in the Citizens' Alliance."
In a 2019 study, researchers from the Etrurian Peace Institute, which also investigates the mass graves of Etruria, ran a series of polls asking respondents "do you agree with that the Special Orders Group was necessary during the Western Emergency?", with 52% of respondents agreeing, against the 44% who disagreed. In 1999, polls conducted asking the same question resulted in 68% of respondents disagreeing and only 20% agreeing. In its research paper, the institute wrote, "we are witnessing a troubling development in many Etrurians now viewing the GOS more positively, or at minimum a necessary evil during the Western Emergency, this comes in opposition to the frank and truthful education of Etrurians at school of the dictatorship's excesses during the conflict."
Death squad and links to militias
The GOS has been consistently viewed as a death squad by the Etrurian left and those who held sympathies for the separatist cause during the conflict. The United Association for Justice and Respect, a civil society group representing the families of separatist supporters has regularly called for criminal investigations into the GOS and for the names of its personnel to be released. Avgust Kopitar, the leader of the UAJR and who's parents were murdered in a Predoni Urbani raid said in 2004, "the GOS is a death squad, it was given lists of people to murder, whether they ever held a gun or grenade, or merely spoke in support of young men going up against a neo-functionalist military regime. They murdered, shot and executed men, women and children. And we are told to forget about it because its all over now? I won't forget. I will never forget or forgive until the victims of the GOS get justice."
The GOS' links to the loyalist militia movement has been subjected to repeated study and debate. In 2002, the EPI wrote, "without the Predoni Urbani, the role of groups like the National Volunteer Defence Front would have been considerably constrained. However, the Predoni Urbani's preference for using nationalist thugs to attack, kill and maim supporters of the separatist movement was the lifeblood of these groups. It is fair therefore, to argue that without the Predoni Urbani and GOS, the worst atrocities of the Western Emergency would have been avoided." This view was reinforced by comments made by Arminio Nicolazzo, a Vespasian based commander of the NVDF in 2006, who said, "if it wasn't for the GOS, I don't think we would have gotten the money or weapons from the military government to fight the socialists. We owe them so much, we owe them our victory."