A Civil War (2 page)

Aga Rossi's critique of
A Civil War
was not unusual, but it failed to recognise how distinctive Pavone's work really was.

The armed Resistance did not appear spontaneously on 8 September 1943. In fact, it had a distinguished if complex political and intellectual genealogy. And considering the involvement of the Italian volunteers in the Spanish Civil War fighting alongside the Loyalists in defending the Republic, it also had a military prehistory as well. What follows is a brief contextualisation of the Resistance for those readers who may not be familiar with the history.

Even before the Second World War came to an end in Italy, the political and intellectual battle over the ultimate meaning and significance of Fascism and the armed Resistance was joined.
¹⁴
Had Fascism been a revolution that radically
changed Italy and the Italians, or merely the violent reaction of a morally and politically bankrupt bourgeoisie threatened by socialist revolution? Was the regime a manifestation of deep-rooted historical, economic, and social problems that could be traced back to a failed Risorgimento, the movement for national unification in the nineteenth century? Had Mussolini been a buffoon, a manipulator, an opportunist? Had he been a ‘sincere' revolutionary? Had he indeed made the trains run on time and saved Italy from a Bolshevik revolution? Had he committed his ‘only' mistake in allying himself with Hitler in the mid 1930s? Was the armed Resistance an illegal movement that betrayed the nation-state, and the Armistice of 8 September 1943 a betrayal of Italy's Axis partner, Nazi Germany? Was the Resistance a second – and truly popular – Risorgimento, bringing the masses into the struggle for a democratic republic founded on the principles of social justice and individual liberty? Had the regime fostered a genuine ‘consensus', or was the populace coerced into political silence? Was Fascism an early form of totalitarianism, or was there room for artists, writers, intellectuals and individuals to think and create on their own? Were the Fascist and Nazi massacres of civilians legitimate acts of war or crimes against humanity? Was the Italian Communist Party (PCI) – the largest and most influential of the anti-Fascist forces – a patriotic organisation or the tool of Stalin's Soviet Union? Were the anti-Fascist activities of sabotage, killings and executions of Mussolini and Fascists legitimate acts of war or acts of terrorism? Had the pernicious effects of Fascism ended with 25 April 1945 (the date usually understood to mean the end of the war in Italy), or were they to infect the very foundations of the Italian Republic as it emerged after the war? Has post-war Italy come to terms with and fully acknowledged its Fascist past?

Interpretations and readings of the fascist
ventennio
and the anti-Fascist Resistance have proved extraordinarily contentious for more than half a century. The fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war in 1995 served as a catalyst for a major re-examination of the issues that bore more than a passing resemblance to the infamous
Historikerstreit
(Historians' Debate) over the nature of Nazism in Germany during the 1980s.
¹⁵

Some anti-Fascists, such as Ugo La Malfa, then a member of the Action Party and later a leading figure of the Italian Republican Party (PRI), argued that a broad coalition of anti-Fascist parties would be required to effect the necessary break with the pre-Fascist past. In May 1944, La Malfa charged that ‘Italy has never been a real democracy' and called for a ‘progressive democracy' that avoided the injustices of both the liberal and the communist state.
¹⁶
La Malfa was echoing the heretical ideas first proposed by the liberal socialist Carlo Rosselli in the 1920 and 1930s. This indictment of the status quo ante could not go unchallenged. In a radio broadcast on 1 September 1944, Pope Pius XII offered a religious justification of private property, while Alcide De Gasperi, leader of the Christian Democrats (DC), would write that ‘anti-Fascism is a contingent political phenomenon, which will at a certain moment be overturned by other political ideals more in keeping with the … feelings of Italian public life, for the good and the progress of the nation'.
¹⁷
Ada Gobetti of the Action Party spoke for many in this later recollection:

In a famous speech before the National Assembly on 26 September 1945, Prime Minister Parri shocked his audience by echoing Piero Gobetti and Carlo Rosselli: ‘I do not believe that the governments we had before Fascism can be called democratic.' For the new prime minister, the legacy of the anti-Fascist Resistance was that it was the only democratic movement in the history of Italy that the masses had supported. With the Resistance, both Fascism and the nineteenth-century liberal state based on formal law had been superseded: ‘We can say that in the history of anti-Fascism all the best traditions of the Italian spirit … are summed up and gathered together and guide it to successive liberating
stages, beginning with the first enlightenment revolution of the eighteenth century.'
¹⁹

The first militant anti-Fascist organisation (1921–22), the Arditi del Popolo, had a troubled history, but managed to cobble together diverse groups in order to combat Fascism in the field. Not averse to combating the violence of the
squadristi
with violence of their own, they were forsaken by the official organs of the state (police, military, judiciary) and even the leaders of the Italian Socialist and Communist parties; consequently, they were left to fend for themselves. With hindsight, most now recognise that the Arditi del Popolo represented a ‘lost opportunity' to confront – and perhaps defeat – Fascism in its earliest form.

Originally used by the fascists to express contempt for the anti-Fascist exiles, the term
fuorusciti
(literally: those who have gone outside, outlaws) came to encompass the entire spectrum of anti-Fascism abroad. Paris was the capital of the
fuorusciti
, but there were other centres of activity in London and New York. A major flaw of the
fuorusciti
was their insistence on continuing the old political party divisions while in exile. This problem was fully evident in the most important anti-Fascist organisation abroad, the Concentrazione Antifascista, established in April 1927 with headquarters in Paris. Led by the socialist Pietro Nenni, the Concentrazione Antifascista was composed of the revolutionary PSI and the reformist PSU (which merged in July 1930), the PRI, the Confederazione Generale del Lavoro (CGL), and Lega Internazionale dei Diritti dell'Uomo (LIDU). The CA published a weekly newspaper,
La Libertà
, from May 1927 until May 1934, and managed to gather many of the
fuorusciti
into one organisation. The PCI refused to join, and internal divisions were to cause the CA to dissolve in 1934; it was replaced by a Unity of Action Pact.
²⁰

A major development in intellectual and political anti-Fascism was the foundation of a new, left-wing movement, Giustizia e Libertà (GL). Born in Paris in the summer of 1929, GL was inspired by Carlo Rosselli, who had managed a sensational escape from
confino
on the penal island of Lipari. Rosselli (1899–1937) was born into a wealthy Jewish family with strong ties to the Risorgimento. Abandoning a promising career as a professor of political economy, he joined the anti-Fascist cause and was instrumental in publishing the first underground anti-Fascist newspaper. Arrested for his activities, he was sentenced to
confino
on the island of Lipari, off the coast of Sicily. After a daring escape, he made his way to Paris where, in August 1929, he founded GL, the largest and most influential non-Marxist leftist movement. From Paris, Rosselli wrote essays, organised the movement, and even plotted Mussolini's assassination. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Rosselli was one of the first to arrive in Barcelona in
defence of the Spanish Republic. Rosselli believed that the Spanish Civil War had to be transformed into a European-wide offensive against Fascism and Nazism. That idea, and his speech, ‘Oggi in Spagna, domani in Italia' (‘Today in Spain, Tomorrow in Italy'), given over Radio Barcelona on 13 November 1936, may have sealed his fate. An anonymous police spy wrote to Rome that Rosselli was ‘the most dangerous of the anti-Fascists in exile' and that it was necessary that he be ‘suppressed'. While recuperating in the French countryside, Rosselli was assassinated, together with his brother, the noted historian Nello, on 9 June 1937.

While on Lipari, Rosselli clandestinely wrote his major theoretical work,
Socialismo liberale
, in which he argued that twentieth-century socialism was the logical heir to nineteenth-century liberalism. Attacked from both the left and the right, Rosselli insisted on an heretical ‘liberal socialism' and was acknowledged as the
enfant terrible
of Italian anti-Fascism.
²¹
GL attracted some of the most important anti-Fascist intellectuals, and was second in influence only to the PCI.

Another factor in anti-Fascism was Italian anarchism, led by the heroic figure of Errico Malatesta (1853–1932), the tragic figure of Camillo Berneri (1897–1937), assassinated by Stalin's agents during the Spanish Civil War, and the romantic figure of Carlo Tresca (1879–1943), assassinated by still-unknown persons on New York City's Fifth Avenue.

Ignazio Silone, an important member of the PCI until he abandoned Communism and active politics, attempted an analysis of Fascism from his exile in Switzerland. For Silone, Fascism was neither accidental (‘Fascism did not fall from the heavens') nor the destiny of Italy (‘Fascism was not inevitable'). His novel,
Fontamara
(Bitter Spring), written in exile while Silone thought he was mortally ill with tuberculosis, was the most influential piece of anti-Fascist literature, translated into a dozen languages and selling millions of copies.
²²

The culture of liberal anti-Fascism was embodied in the figure of Benedetto Croce. The philosopher had acquired such international prestige by the 1920s that the regime dared not silence him. In his works of history and historiography, Croce served as a beacon for two generations under Fascism. His work was often openly read as an implicit condemnation of Fascism.

Anti-Fascists, led by the Communists, successfully organised mass strikes in March 1943 protesting against Fascist Italy's continuing participation in a losing war and the dire economic and social conditions on the home front. In the summer of 1943, Rome was bombed by the Allies as they began an invasion of Sicily. Mussolini was deposed on 25 July 1943, but confusion reigned. Marshal Pietro Badoglio was named prime minister, but his radio announcement that
‘the war continues' was more confusing than inspiring. The
confinati
were released and the
fuorusciti
returned from exile, sparking the armed Resistance.
²³
On 8 September 1943, Italy signed an Armistice with the Allies, and the next day the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (CLN) was formed. The CLN comprised five political parties, the Liberals (PLI), the DC, the Socialists (PSI), the PCI, and the Partito d'Azione (Actionists). Tensions eventually developed between the CLN and the Allied Military Government over the CLN's role in post-war Italy. Mussolini was rescued by the Nazis and installed in a puppet regime, the Republic of Salò. When Salò issued a decree calling for all able-bodied men to join its army, many fled instead into the hills, countryside and mountains, and joined the Resistance. The PCI was the largest and most influential of the anti-Fascist movements, followed by the Actionists, a movement founded on the legacy of Rosselli's GL. Women played a critical role in the Resistance, often as
staffette
, relaying written or oral communications between partisan groups, conveying arms, and gathering information. They were also permitted, not without considerable dissent and grumbling, a role in military operations. Renata Viganò's
L'Agnese va a morire
and Ada Gobetti's
Diario partigiano
represent the important contribution made by Italian women to the armed Resistance.
²⁴

Conservatives and neo-Fascists argue that Mussolini and those who joined the fascist Repubblica Sociale Italiana (RSI) were performing a patriotic duty; others see the RSI as the last gasp of a brutal regime. Indeed, one of the RSI's major duties was the repression and execution of Italian partisans. The RSI also tried and executed those Fascists who had voted for the dictator's dismissal on 25 July 1943. Mussolini's own foreign minister and son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano, was executed despite the pleas of his daughter, Edda Mussolini Ciano. On 14 November 1943 the first congress was held of the Fascist Republican Party, which issued the so-called ‘Manifesto of Verona', a confusing mix of Fascism's early radicalism and an attempt to placate the Nazis.

The Italians who rallied to the Salò Republic and their activities remain controversial to this day: Were they defending the honour of Italy from an invading foe (the so-called ‘ragazzi di Salò'), or were they fanatical Fascists determined to fight until the end? Prince Junio Valerio Borghese, from a noble Roman
family, was symbolic of this choice. He commanded the notorious Decima Mas (a torpedo boat squadron) and carried out barbaric reprisals against the anti-Fascist partisans. Sentenced to twelve years in prison after the war for his atrocities, Borghese was instead immediately released and became a prominent neo-Fascist politician. In 1971, when his role in a murky right-wing coup d'état was revealed, he fled to Spain.
²⁵
His funeral in Rome three years later was the occasion for a major neo-Fascist demonstration. Borghese's story is recounted here as an indication of how Fascism survived the immediate post-war period and became something of a force in Italian politics, even to this day.
²⁶
Others responsible for anti-Fascist reprisals included the ironically named Mario Carità, who organised the infamous Carità Band and worked with the SS and Gestapo in Florence; Pietro Koch, who committed atrocities in Rome; and Pietro Caruso, involved in the notorious Ardeatine Caves massacre.
²⁷