SS LT . Colonel Herbert Kappler , who admitted he had carried out the ten to one reprisal massacre which took place on March 24 , 1944 , in the Ardeatine Caves , some five miles out of Rome . Kappler is one of the chief witnesses in the trial now being held by a British court in Rome in which German Generals , Mackensen and Maeltzer , are charged with responsibility for the mass murder of 335 Italians in reprisal for a bomb attack in which 32 German troops were killed in Rome . 25 November 1946