A Civil War (64 page)
Authors: Claudio Pavone
42
On the repercussions of 25 July on the Germans and on the scant chance of analogous events occurring in Germany, see Collotti,
L'amministrazione tedesca
, pp. 44â7.
43
Risorgimento Liberale
, Rome, 15 March 1944, article entitled âPerché perderanno'.
44
Ibid., 15 April 1944, âIl punto del suicidio'. It seems one should connect to this observation the fact that, of the thirty-one letters of Germans included in
LRE
, only one, written by the Communist Cato Bontjes Van Beek, contains an explicit and impassioned profession of love for Germany (p. 379). In the others there are no expressions such as âlong live Germany' or âlong live free Germany'.
45
Proclamation by the Command of the 40
th
Garibaldi Matteotti (Lombardia) brigade, 22 July 1944 (IG,
BG
, 0515).
46
L'UnitÃ
, northern edition, 25 July 1944.
47
L'UnitÃ
, August 1944, leading article entitled âL' Armata Rossa alle porte della Germania'.
48
Ibid. The allusion refers in particular to Marshal von Paulus, the defeated commander-in-chief at Stalingrad.
49
This is what Ario wrote, in the name of the Command of the 40
th
Garibaldi-Matteotii brigade, âai compagni della Brigata', 21 July 1944 (IG,
BG
, 0512).
50
At the foot of the typescript, conserved in IG,
Archivio PCI
, is this note: âDi L. Da tradurre in tedesco e stampare, Può andare?' (âBy L. To translate into German and print? Is it OK?').
51
See, for example, in
Avanti!
, Rome edition, 30 December 1944, the article entitled âIl discorso di Smuts e il federalismo europeo'.
52
âLa situazione interna tedesca', Lombardy edition, 9 June 1944.
53
Speech to the PCI national council, 7 April 1945 (Togliatti,
Opere
, vol. V, p. 132).
54
âPer l'indipendenza nazionale, per la società nuova, guerra alla germania nazista!', in
Voce Operaia
, 22 October 1943.
55
âRelazione P. del mese luglio 1944. XXII' of the Distretto di Torino, Ufficio assistenza e propaganda (ACS,
SPD, CR, RSI
, envelope folder 165, Tombari Alberto).
56
See for example, for France, the presentation, SeptemberâOctober 1940, of
La Révolution française. Bulletin pour un mouvement national révolutionnnaire français
: âIt is not to our advantage to fall into a vengeful and sterile Germanophobia'; for Holland, the letter with which a Communist sentenced to death enjoins his son: âdo not grow up blindly hating the German people'. Gau Postma to his wife Nel, 24 July 1944, in
LRE
, p. 694.
57
Testimonies by Giovanni Aliberti, a Turin doctor and member of GL, and Augusto Cognasso, a Turin student and Actionist, in Bravo and Jalla,
La vita offesa
, pp. 262, 378.
58
Testimonies by Natalina Bianca Giai (Pasqualina), from Susa, in ibid., p. 166. On the âhostile and contemptuous' attitudes, save for ârare exceptions', of the German population towards the Italian military internees, see Rochat,
Memorialistica e storiografia sull'internamento
, pp. 46, 65.
59
Gobetti,
Diario partigiano
, p. 348.
60
On this definition see Weber,
Economia e societÃ
, vol. I, p. 221.
61
Revelli,
La guerra dei poveri
, pp. 387â8, under the date 16 January 1945. See General Patton, who, on the eve of the Normandy landings, explained to his collaborators that the problem of Fascism and Democracy âwas no more important than the electoral battles periodically fought by Republicans and Democrats in the United States' (quoted in Michel,
The Shadow War
, p. 8).
62
Article entitled âOdio', in
L'Italiano. Organo del Partito d'unione
, 26 February 1944.
63
La guerra di liberazione
, December 1943, p. 4.
64
âPromemoria dei fatti del 7 settembre 1944', written by the doctor, the prefectorial commissar and the parish priest the day after the execution, in Chiodi,
Banditi
, p. 153.
65
Michel,
The Shadow War
, p. 247.
66
Gobetti,
Diario partigiano
, pp. 116 (late March 1944) and 182 (7 August 1944).
67
Appeal by the German Command (December 1944), in ISBR, 1943â1945.
Occupazione e Resistenza in provincia di Belluno. I documenti
, Belluno 1988, p. 115. The expression about the
garbo femmineo
(âeffeminate grace') that the Germans displayed in Venice (reminiscent of
Death in Venice
?) is in an appeal by the âComitato d'azione', undated (typescript in IVSR,
Stampa antifascista
).
68
The report, dated 16 June (but in fact July) 1944, is signed by the commissar and the political vice-commissar (IG,
BG
, 011699).
69
âRelazione sulla formazione Busticchini fatta dal commissario politico Nello Ghilardetti' (ISRT,
Fondo Salvadori â PCI Castelfiorentino
, insert 59).
70
Il Partigiano
, 9 February 1944, which contains, alongside the title, âWhen it comes to liberty, one mustn't wait, one must take: Blanqui'.
71
The German translator of
Se questo è un uomo
, Heinz Riedt, fought in Veneto with the GL formations. After the war âhis political past was held against him', even if ânobody ever told him in so many words' (Levi,
The Drowned and the Saved
, London: Abacus, 1989), p. 140.
72
âInformazioni dal Piemonte', referring to September 1943. The episode is also recounted in another report of the same month, sent by Giovanni (IG,
Archivio PCI
).
73
See Zangrandi,
1943
, p. 20. After 25 July in Rome word spread that Hitler had committed suicide. See the telegram to the
questori
by Senise, the head of the police force, 28 July 1943, quoted in various authors,
L'Italia dei quarantacinque giorni
, p. 195.
74
Reports of this kind are contained, for example, in a âhighly confidential and secret' communication, signed Simon, 13 November 1944, of the inspectorate for the 1
st
Ligurian zone to the Command of the 2
nd
Garibaldi Division âFelice Cascione' (INSMLI,
Brigate Garibaldi
, envelope 3, folder 4, subfolder 2); in a report, 20 January 1945, by a prisoner, Giglioli, who had escaped from the Germans during a roundup in the province of Piacenza (IG,
BG, Emilia-Romagna
, G.IV.2.6); in a report for Switzerland, signed Ciro, 17 February 1945, by the Comando Garibaldino della Valsesia, Ossola, Cusio, Verbano (IG,
Archivio PCI
).
75
Article entitled âLa lotta partigiana in Piemonte', 12 January 1944.
76
Report by Andrea to âdear comrades', 14 March 1944, Parma area (IG,
BG, Emilia-Romagna
, G.IV.2.2).
77
Gorrieri,
La Repubblica di Montefiorino
, p. 352.
78
âRelazione su un'ispezione in Friuli dal 24 ottobre all' 11 novembre 1944', undated (
Le Brigate Garibaldi
, vol. II, p. 565). On 24 November of the same year an order of the day of the Slovene liberation army announced its decision to create an Austrian battalion (see Etnasi,
La Resistenza in Europa
, I, p. 45.
79
See Chiodi,
Banditi
, p. 181.
80
See Artom,
Diari
, p. 181.
81
Manuscript of the unpublished diary of G. Manni.
82
See paragraph 18 of the âDirettive', in
Atti CVL
, Appendix I, document P, p. 558.
83
Northern edition, 22 July 1944. On the Czechs see P. De Lazzari,
La resistenza cecoslovacca (1938â1945)
, Rome: Napoleone, 1977.
84
See the âRelazione', undated but post-Liberation, of the 7
th
detachment, 1
st
section, of the 3
rd
Garibaldi brigade (IG,
Archivio PCI
).
85
âIncorporés de force' is the name given to Alsations, Lorrainers and Luxembourgers enlisted in the German armed forces. See A. Wahl, âL'incorporé de force d'Alsace-Moselle, analyse de récits de guerre', and G. Trausch, âLe long combat des enrolés de force luxembougeois', in Centre de Recherche Histoire et Civilisation de l'Université de Metz,
La mémoire de la seconde guerre mondiale
, Metz: Centre de recherche Histoire et civilisation de l'Université de Metz, 1984, pp. 227â42, 181â99.
86
See the mention made of it in the description in the
Fondo ANPI
at the IRSFVG (
Guida agli archivi della Resistenza
, p. 542).
87
See
Saggio bibliografico
, n. 4539. See also, in the same text, the numerous appeals, bilingual or in German, registered in the index of the categories, under the entry
Wehrmacht e SS
. Compare with the titles of the newspapers in German that figure in the already cited
Catalogue des périodiques clandestins
:
Deutsche Freiheit
,
Freies Deutschland
,
Volk und Vaterland
, and others.
88
See Deakin,
The Brutal Friendship
, p. 720. On German deserters, labelled in the death camps with a red star, and the unsatisfactory state of the studies regarding them, see G. Schreiber, âLa linea gotica nella strategia tedesca: obiettivi politici e compiti militari', in Rochat, Santarelli and Sorcinelli,
Linea gotica 1944
, pp. 25â67. On the repression practised by the German war tribunals, âwhich passed more than fifty thousand death sentences on their own soldiers: a figure a hundred times higher than any other army in the Second World War (except the Red Army)', see L. Klinkhammer, âLe strategie tedesche di occupazione e la populazione civile', in M. Legnani and F. Vendramini, eds,
Guerra, guerra di liberazione, guerra civile
, Introduction by G. Quazza, Milan: Franco Angeli, 1990, p. 115. These are the proceedings of the Belluno conference of 27â29 October 1988.
The Civil War
1. A
CONTROVERSIAL DEFINITION
The interpretation of the struggle between the Resistance and the Italian Social Republic as a civil war has, until very recently at least, met with hostility and reticence on the part of the anti-Fascists â so much so that the expression has come to be used almost exclusively by the defeated Fascists, who have provocatively waved it in the face of the victors.
1
The anti-Fascists' diffidence has consequently grown, fed by the fear that talk of civil war leads to the two warring sides being confused with each other and put on a par under a common condemnation or absolution.
2
In fact, never so much as in civil war, which Concetto Marchesi
called âthe most ferocious and sincere of all wars',
3
are the differences between the belligerents so clear-cut and irreducible, and hatreds so profound. âWe're the ones they hated most of all', an old
resistente
put it recently.
4
To say that the Resistance is also civil war does not mean that we have to seek out protagonists who experienced it exclusively in these terms. On the contrary, it means doing our best to understand how the three aspects of the struggle â patriotic, civil, and class â analytically distinguishable, often coexisted in the same individuals or groups.
Immediately after the Liberation, as during the struggle itself (and this we shall see in the pages that follow), the taboo against the notion of a civil war had been less strong. In his report given on 6 August 1945 at the first CLN congress of the province of Milan, Emilio Sereni had spoken repeatedly of the âtwo years of civil war' (Sereni wanted to show that another civil war would lead the country to destruction).
5
In 1947 Carlo Galante Garrone had no qualms about stating that âa bloody civil war had been fought'.
6
Leo Valiani had denounced âthe way people's souls turn ferocious' as being âthe innermost and at the same time most profound danger that any civil war (and the struggle against the Fascists was just this) brings with it'.
7
Luigi Meneghello has also used the expression.
8
Aligi Sassu painted the picture
La guerra civile 1944
.
9
And in a series of lectures in the 1960s Francesco Scotti claimed that the Resistance had been âalso a civil war against Fascism and for the creation of a completely new, socially more advanced state';
10
and Paolo Spriano also uses the expression âguerra civile' intermingled with âguerra di liberazione', even if he does not place it at the centre of his treatise.
11
But in the volume of Palmiro Togliatti's
Opere
covering the years 1944â55,
the words âguerra civile' never once appear, so great was the Communist leader's desire to give his party national status. This need tallied with the widespread tendency to conceal the elementary fact that âthe Fascists too, despite everything, were Italians'.
12
âItaliani' does not refer only to an ethnic fact. Both sides intended to reintegrate âthe paradigm of the modern state as sovereign political unity', since both felt themselves to be representatives of the whole of Italy.
13
The first way of exorcising what is regressive and frightening in the breakdown of the unity of the national state lies in denying shared nationality to those who bring about that breakdown. The Fascists had always called their adversaries âanti-nazionale';
14
and the latter had always retorted by expelling them â at least those of the RSI â from the history of Italy, if not from humanity itself. Franco Calamandrei rightly defined as âesorcistica' (âexorcistic') the formula âuomini o no' (âmen or not-men'), which was the title Elio Vittorini gave to his bad novel about the Resistance.
15
And it is no accident that Giorgio Bocca, one of the few non-Fascist writers who have unreservedly spoken in terms of a civil war, was reviewed under the title âAnche Salò è storia nostra'.
16
Assertions like Ermanno Gorrieri's âthere was no civil war' are in fact the mechanical corollary of others, like âRepublican Fascism found no correspondence in the popular conscience'.
17
The fundamental truth of this statement does not eliminate the problem of the Fascists who, though not very numerous and largely unheeded, chose to fight alongside the Germans. The description of the Fascists as lackeys of the foreigner was not enough to cancel their being described as Italians, nor does it authorise us to evade the task of reflecting on the ties, not new but extremely close here, between external war and internal war. Nor can one overlook those Italians, far more numerous than the militant Fascists, who actually accepted the RSI government, paying it various forms of obedience, though with a greater or lesser degree of mental reservation.