A Civil War (135 page)

71
G. Gentile and A. Omodeo,
Carteggio
, ed. S. Giannantoni, Florence: Sansoni, 1974, p. 167. Remember, here, the contrary position of Croce, according to which war was a merely practical matter that should not interrupt the conversations between erudite types on the opposing sides. There was thus something of a division of the two greatest idealist philosophers into different camps: but the real war was not fully reducible to either of their two positions.

72
Ugo Machieraldo, from Vercelli, shot by the Germans in Ivrea on 2 February 1945, and Pedro Ferreira, from Genoa, shot by the Fascists in Turin on 23 January 1945. See the letters to the wife of the former and Action Party comrades of the latter (
LRI
, pp. 123, 83).

73
However, in the Risorgimento-era song inspired by the flag given to the departing soldier by his weeping loved one, red was ‘all the fire of my love'.

74
Bernardo,
Il momento buono
, p. 126.

75
Letter from Vito Severgnini, born 1904, later an RSI combatant, shot on 30 April 1945 (
LRSI
, p. 6).

76
On the persistence of this theme, see Revelli,
Panorama editoriale e temi culturali
.

77
LRSI
, p. 48. On Resega's ‘moderate' role, see Ganapini,
Una città, la guerra
, pp. 109–11.

78
Letter by the Milanese Lorenzo Malingher, an officer in permanent active service and a combatant in Spain, to his wife, 29 April 1945, written when his ultimate execution was still in the balance (
LRSI
, p. 233).

79
Letter by the Turin engineer Lorenzo Viale, shot by the Fascists in Turin on 11 February 1945, to his loved ones (
LRI
, p. 239).

80
Letter by the Turin teacher Renzo Scognamiglio, GL, to his mother. Shot by Folgore parachutists at Rivarolo Canava on 22 March 1945 (
LRI
, p. 206).

81
Letter from Rovigo mechanic Amerigo Duò to his Action Party comrades. Shot by the Fascists in Turin on 23 January 1945 (
LRI
, p. 75).

82
See the Bataille quotes and associated comments by C. Ginzburg in his ‘Mitologia germanica e nazismo. Su un vecchio libro di Georges Dumézil', in
Quaderni storici
57 (December 1984), pp. 857–82; and his
Miti, emblemi, spie
, Turin: Einaudi, 1986, pp. 210–38 (see, in particular, p. 230).

83
Portelli,
Biografia di una città
, p. 212.

84
Fussell,
La grande guerra
, pp. 345ff, draws our attention to the words ‘assault', ‘impact', ‘push', and ‘penetration'.

85
Editors' presentation, with the title ‘Vita!' in
L'Avanguardia fascista
, ‘Paper of the Bologna vanguard', 7 May 1921; P. Giudici,
Reparti d'assalto
, Milan: Alpes, 1928, p. 23, cited in Rochat,
Gli arditi della grande guerra
, p. 15.

86
Letters published in the paper
Folgore
, the second one on 15 January 1945 (cited in M. Di Giovanni, laureate thesis).

87
Mazzantini,
A cercar la bella morte
, pp. 52, 97.

88
For example, A. Tamaro,
Due anni di storia 1943–1945
, 3 vols, Rome: Tosi, 1948– 50, vol. III, 1950, p. 49, supplies figures on the number of Fascists fallen in the battle over Rome in early June 1944 that it is difficult to consider anything other than excessive: according to his claims, out of 980 Folgore parachutists, ‘only thirty were still alive' after four days.

89
I recall the lucidity with which this argument was developed by Giuseppe Lopresti, later shot at the Fosse Ardeatine.

90
Mazzantini,
A cercar la bella morte
, p. 136. ‘I went for the sake of experience … to know what I would have to endure … to make myself a man', said another Fascist, volunteer in a firing squad (p. 93).

91
Letter from Primo Pata, 17 November 1942, to his mother. He would later fall on the Nettuno front, on 16 February 1944 (
LRSI
, p. 7).

92
I take this information from the laureate thesis of M. Di Giovanni, cited above, in which he speaks of the first jump as symbolic of a challenge to death, itself victorious even before the fight has begun. Not for nothing did a chaplain of the Tarquinia college say to the parachutist cadets: ‘You are already heroes!'

93
Undated poster in Piscitelli,
I bandi
, p. 191.

94
Letter from the Sicilian Oscar Lo Surdo to his mother, ‘17.VI.XXII' (17 June 1944, as rendered in the Fascist calendar starting from the 1922 March on Rome). Enlisted in the Italia Division, he fell at Pontremoli on 23 April 1945 (
LRSI
, p. 127).

95
‘Spiritual testament' of Crisostomo Ceragioli, a.k.a. ‘friar Wolf', shot near Montepulciano on 24 May 1944 (
LRSI
, p. 117).

96
Siena's Fernando Mugnaini, in a letter to his mother of 9 August 1944. He fell on 18 April 1945 in Mirandola, fighting against partisans. In the letter he wrote: ‘Now for the first, and perhaps for the last time, I at least feel that I am a somebody' (
LRSI
, p. 140).

97
Letter by Sara Corsellini, 14 March 1945, quoted in Fraddosio,
Donne nell'esercito di Salo'
, p. 73.

98
INSMLI,
CLNAI
, envelope 8, folder 12 (March 1944?).

99
See the article ‘Fiaccola di vita', which took up this theme, quoted in Gorrieri,
La Repubblica di Montefiorino
, p. 306.

100
Laqueur,
On Terrorism
, p. 73.

101
Simmel,
La moda
, p. 41.

102
A letter to his wife on 23 September 1945 (
LRSI
, p. 301). Vezzalini had a Garibaldian grandfather, and his father was a volunteer in the First World War.

103
The phone call was intercepted by the information office of the regional military command of the CVL: reported in Vaccarino, Gobetti and Gobbi,
L'insurrezione di Torino
, p. 215.

104
Twenty-four-year-old Dante Corti in a letter to his mother, dated 2 April XXII (1944). A Lombard, later killed by partisans, he tried to finish his letter on a positive note – ‘one consolation is left to me' – invoking the fatherland and Fascism (
LRSI
, p. 91).

105
Mazzantini,
A cercar la bella morte
, pp. 168, 172. Life is defined as ‘something great and trivial' on p. 95.

106
Gobetti,
Diario partigiano
, p. 125 (6 April 1944).

107
Chiodi,
Banditi
, pp. 137–8 (17 April 1945).

108
Ibid., p. 108 (12 January 1945).

109
Letter from an unknown man to his father, and from the priest Aldo Mei to his parents (
LRI
, pp. 35, 143).

110
Letter from captain Franco Balbis to his father, and from the worker Quinto Bevilacqua to his parents (
LRI
, pp. 41, 48).

111
Letters from the student Achille Barilatti to his fiancée; from the trader Arturo Cappettini to his mother; from the student Bruno Frittaion to his fiancée; and from the accountant Fabrizio Vassalli to his parents, adding ‘When you can, put a notice in the papers. Viva l'Italia!' (
LRI
, pp. 44, 63, 92, 236).

112
Letter from Vittorio Tassi to his wife (
LRI
, p. 218).

113
T. Mann, in the Preface to
LRE
, p. xii.

114
As it was described, with rather overwrought stress, in ‘Né a destra né a sinistra',
Risorgimento Liberale
, Rome edition, 15 April 1944.

115
Lyttelton,
Fascismo e violenza
, p. 983.

116
Canfora,
La sentenza
, pp. 150–4, and as an appendix (pp. 315–18), the text by Marchesi, in the form of an ‘open letter' to Gentile, appearing in the Lugano Socialist daily
Libera Stampa
on 24 February 1944. Spriano's interpretation of this in his
Storia del Partito comunista italiano
, vol. V, p. 209, seems rather reductive, defining it as a ‘paean to the GAP militant'.

117
See, among many others, Chiodi,
Banditi
, p. 101 (17 December 1944) and the letter from an officer of the 12
^th
GNR legion, based in Moncalieri, reported in the ‘Esame della corrispondenza censurata al 30 giugno 1944' (ACS,
SPD, CR, RSI
, envelope 9, folder 3).

118
‘See, now, I am satisfied, and even if I must die, I die contented': letter from a
carabiniere
from Aidussina (Gorizia) in the service of the RSI (ibid.).

119
Unpublished diary of G. Mauni, c. 39 (August 1944) and the testimony of Elsa Oliva (Bruzzone and Farina,
La Resistenza taciuta
, p. 134).

120
Testimony given to the author by Nuto Revelli.

121
‘I also learned how to pretend to faint, giving me a few moments of peace, because these sirs no longer enjoyed striking me when they saw that I was not suffering' (Bolis,
Il mio granello di sabbia
, p. 21), where this ferocity is counterposed to the guards, who ‘it must be said, looked after me well' (p. 27).

122
Such was the behaviour of a chaplain ‘a sorry sell-out figure', in the Carceri Nuove in Turin: ‘Relazione del garibaldino Oscar sulla prigionia del commissario politico Emanuele [Artom], 15 aprile 1944', quoted in an appendix to Artom's
Diari
, p. 180.

123
Letter from the Tagliamento militiaman Francesco D'Ambrosio, 27 April 1944 (not using ‘XXII'), who was in turn shot by partisans on 12 March 1945 (
LRSI
, pp. 146–7).

124
See, for example, the letter of protest addressed to Mussolini by the patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Adeodato Piazza, of 24 January 1945 (cited in Malgeri,
La Chiesa di fronte alla RSI
, p. 329, n. 73).

125
See Pavone,
La continuità dello Stato
, p. 252.

126
Letter from Umberto Ricci to his parents and friends, 23 August 1944 (
LRI
, p. 193). See M. Mafai,
Pane nero
.
Donne e vita quotidiana nella Seconda guerra mondiale
, Milan: Mondadori, 1987, pp. 226–52, which describes some cases of corpses being exhibited.

127
M. Foucault,
Surveiller et punir
, Paris: Gallimard, 1975, p. 38.

128
E. P. Thompson, ‘Folklore, Anthropology and Social History,' in
The Indian Historical Review
III (1978), p. 2.

129
INSMLI,
Manifesti e volantini
. See the account of the public display of the barefooted corpses of partisans, ‘heaped on the pavement' in Turin's Via Cibrario, as described by Angiolina Fenoglietto (Guidetti Serra,
Compagne
, vol. I, p. 16).

130
Instructions from the Command of the Vittorio Veneto brigades group, 1 April 1945 (
Le Brigate Garibaldi
, vol. III, p. 565). See also the communication from the Command of the 1
^st
Gramsci division to the Command of the Valsesia, Ossola, Cusio, and Verbano group, 29 November 1944 (IG,
BG
, 07163).

131
Letter from the Command of the 6
^th
Bixio brigade (Liguria) to the detachment commands, 7 October 1944 (
Le Brigate Garibaldi
, vol. II, p. 415).

132
Testimony of the canonical Francesco Raspino, who was present at the executions, in Rovero,
Il clero piemontese nella Resistenza
, pp. 73–5.

133
Bocci,
Ricordi di un allievo ufficiale
, p. 47.

134
Testimony of Diego Verardo, in Bravo and Jalla,
La vita offesa
, p. 112.

135
Bocci,
Ricordi di un allievo ufficiale
, pp. 48–51.

136
Chiodi,
Banditi
, p. 57 (25 August 1944). These are the words of Leonardo Cocito, later hanged.

137
Legislative decree no. 5, 29 April 1945. The two men hanged from the trees were the
federale
Giuseppe Solaro and Giovanni Cabras (Vaccarino, Gobetti and Gobbi,
L'insurrezione di Torino
, pp. 318–19).

138
Referring to the Uarieu Pass in Ethiopia.

139
Mazzantini,
A cercar la bella morte
, pp. 160–1.

140
Chiodi,
Banditi
, p. 36 (16 August 1944).

141
Gobetti,
Diario partigiano
, p. 196 (2 September 1944).

142
Calamandrei,
La vita indivisibile
, p. 124 (20 December 1943).

143
Testimony of the Communist Ambrogio Filipponi, in Portelli,
Biografia di una città
, pp. 287–8.

144
Bernardo,
Il momento buono
, p. 178.

145
On the women auxiliaries, see Fraddosio,
Donne nell' esercito di Salò
, and, by the same author,
La mobilitazione femminile: i Gruppi fascisti repubblicani femminili e il SAF
, in Poggio, ed.,
La Repubblica sociale italiana
, pp. 257–74.

146
Letter from Laura Giolo to her family (
LRSI
, p. 241).

147
Letter from Imola sixteen-year-old Luciana Minardi, 17 March 1945, later shot (
LRSI
, pp. 197–8). Compare with the similar way in which a parachutist expressed himself: ‘Marvellous, these cannonades, machine-gun fire etc. etc. Finally, I am in my element!' (Luciano Dal Soglio, 26 May 1944,
LRSI
, p. 119).

148
‘Esame della corrispondenza censurata al 30 giugno 1944' (ACS,
SPD
,
CR
,
RSI
, envelope 9, folder 3).