A Civil War (66 page)

‘This epigraph', remarked the Duce ‘necessarily takes us back to present times.'
¹⁶
Fundamental to positions of this kind is the idea that it was not Fascism that ruined Italy, which was unworthy of it. Julius Evola would write:

Even Hitler, for that matter, in the last months manifested an ingratitude towards the German people that they can scarcely be said to have deserved. His ‘ill humour' drove him ‘to speak more and more frequently and angrily to the effect that if Germans were not ready to follow him to victory they must perish'.
¹⁸
In a conversation with Albert Speer, Hitler was still more vindictive and apocalyptic: the German people had shown themselves to be too weak and the future belonged ‘exclusively to the stronger eastern people. What was left after the battle was only inferior beings; the good ones have been killed.' In line with this, in the same days, the Führer ordered the destruction of vital German structures.
¹⁹

A disturbing aspect of the path which led to republican Fascism, felt not only as a continuer of the war but as the driving force of vengeance, is given by those who, though lukewarm Fascists before 25 July, discovered the flame of militancy in themselves after 8 September. In certain respects these itineraries are more interesting than those pursued by front-ranking figures who, having wholly or half changed sides after 25 July, changed yet again after 8 September. The most illustrious case of the latter is unquestionably Giovanni Gentile; but equally exemplary is Renato Ricci.
²⁰
There were, instead, humble folk who
committed themselves specifically to the Social Republic – like the elementary school teacher Franco Rubbio Nosso, who participated in the Fascist occupation of the Quirinale after the Via Rasella attack,
²¹
or the pharmacist Oreste Millone, who had become commissar of the republican
fascio
and was shot by partisans, but previously ‘had never distinguished himself in special manifestations of Fascist faith, though he proudly described himself as a
squadrista
'.
²²
Franco Calamandrei notes in his diary that, ‘During the German occupation of Florence, N., kind-hearted, cordial N., to all appearances the mildest of men, was killed by the GAPs together with his father as a systematic denouncer of Jews to the SS.'
²³
This path was pursued also by some fairly important personalities, like Professor Goffredo Coppola, like the former nationalist Giotto Dainelli, who on 25 July did not follow his old chief Luigi Federzoni and then became
podestà
of Florence and Giovanni Gentile's successor as president of the Accademia d'Italia,
²⁴
or like the director of Pirelli, Count Franco Grottanelli, who ended up in the RSI because, he said, ‘I can't stand betrayal'.
²⁵
These are not the only cases on record.
²⁶
Beppe Fenoglio sums them up in the figure of Lieutenant X, brother of the partisan Kyra, who ‘had not been particularly enthusiastic during the whole of the war … But after 8 September the elder one changed, he was ablaze, he erupted, he was among the first and most determined and bloodthirsty Fascists.'
²⁷

Even in a distant and isolated universe like that of Italian POWs in Allied hands, there were similar reactions to those recorded above. One need only mention the testimony of General Umberto Cappuzzo, a prisoner in India at the time: ‘There were those very extreme Fascists who claimed to have always been anti-Fascist; and those who had been ‘only a soldier' and for moral reasons suddenly felt closer to the defeated regime.'
²⁸

It should come as no surprise, then, if immediately after 8 September the
Fascists reappeared here and there spontaneously, without awaiting the resurrection of Mussolini and the establishment of the RSI government. Some, as we have seen, went directly over to serving the Germans, in Italy and the Balkans.
²⁹
Some federations of the republican Fascist party were formed before the arrival of the provincial chief (
capo della provincia
),
³⁰
the figure in which the RSI, in an attempt to supersede the old dualism, wished to bring together the prefect and the federal secretary (the
capi delle province
were summoned to Milan by Minister of the Interior Guido Buffarini Guidi only on 25 November 1943).
³¹

It has by now been brought to light how the German leaders were in two minds as to the advisability of giving life to a neo-Fascist government, its seeming to many of them more rational, for the better conduct of military operations and a more intense exploitation of the economic resources in the Po Valley, to have a regime of direct occupation.
³²
It was Hitler who, judging the disastrous political effect that the reduction of the ‘senior partner' of the Axis to a conquered land would have, above all on his minor satellites, gave the go-ahead to the creation of the Social Republic, though naturally taking the due precautions. The Führer, who in the past had had some difficulty justifying his excessive faith in Fascist Italy to high-ranking German officials, once said to Ambassador Rudolf von Rahn: ‘On no account be taken in by the Italian heart.'
³³

The Fascists, for their part, have always attempted to legitimise their republic as a providential shock-absorber placed between the Italian people and their enraged German comrades. Only somewhat paradoxically, Victor Emmanuel III himself was to adopt this thesis, which facilitated the reconciliation between monarchic Fascists and republican Fascists. The RSI government, the king once said in his Egyptian exile, ‘prevented the establishment of an extremely harsh, ruthless German government in Northern Italy'.
³⁴

The fact of the matter is that the RSI would not have lasted a single day without German support. All the same, this obvious reflection does not make it
a useless exercise to seek the intrinsically Fascist motivations that led to the birth of the Social Republic and thrust it along the path of civil war in a more intense way than that of mere collaborationism.

We have seen how the need to show that one was still alive manifested itself above all as a desire for vengeance. We now have to add that, in the first few weeks, genuine desires for pacification were also revealed, desires which are not to be confused with the opportunistic ones of the last months of the war, let alone the clumsy attempts to divide adversaries made above all on the Socialists.
³⁵
Several incidents can be cited as occurring in Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, the two regions where the memory of the
biennio rosso
and the Fascist action squads were most powerful and where the civil war was to be particularly bitter. Many years later a Communist from Montelupo Fiorentino recalled: ‘The first Fascists to reappear on the scene initially proved to be submissive and to have sized up the new situation; in fact they vainly tried to make an approach to some anti-Fascists to seek their collaboration; then, as time went by, when with German support the RSI was founded, they reverted to their old methods.'
³⁶

Sergio Flamigni and Luciano Marzocchi have written of the initial tendency to conciliation and moderation displayed by the province of Forlì, and have recalled the case of a Fascist who pulled out, saying: ‘I've given blows, I've taken blows, we're even and I don't care anymore.'
³⁷
In Umbria, in the first few weeks the militia was ‘quiet and subdued'.
³⁸
In Alessandria and Asti the Fascists attempted talks with the CLN and the anti-Fascist representatives, and a Communist chief who had agreed to a meeting with them and with the
carabinieri
was dismissed from the federal committee.
³⁹

Some of this behaviour on the part of the Fascists assumes the tone of a generational appeal against the old men who had ruined Italy: the king and Badoglio headed the list, but they were not the only ones. In this regard, they would survive the failure of the bids for conciliation of the first few weeks, and rather than seeking pacification they would aim at shifting the clash between the generations, thus attempting to revive another of the Fascist myths. A leaflet distributed by the Aldo Resega Black Brigade in Milan was to set the young
against the ‘old, oft-foundered wrecks of the past', who (and here even Pavolini and Farinacci figure) ‘are diabolically attempting to submerge the purest Italic youth'. Lest there should be any misunderstanding, the following were held up to this
giovinezza
as models: Ettore Muti, Gino Pallotta, Niccolò Giani and Berto Ricci. This particular case, quite clearly, was a call to battle; and in fact in the leaflet there was the invocation: ‘Borsani, the youth of the trenches is with you!'
⁴⁰
Smacking less of battlefield memories (but we are already in October 1944) is the appeal that the Modena paper
Valanga repubblicana
addressed to ‘noi giovani' (‘we young men') who ‘tomorrow, come what may, shall have to impose our will on the country. Old men and old systems continue to dominate more or less everywhere: and it is from this old ruling garbage that we must make a clean break so as to present ourselves as free and rejuvenated for the post-war fray.'
⁴¹

Other appeals to the young could slip into a patriotic and leftish populism different both from the cloying and manipulative declarations in favour of ‘socialisation' promoted by the RSI, and Fascist ‘sinistrismo', which was interpreted above all in terms of the cudgel and of violence. A leaflet addressed to the ‘giovani' of the province of Forlì began like this:

Similar positions expressed in a more refined way, with Mazzini in place of Garibaldi, appear in a neo-Fascist rag,
Patria
, published, it seems, under the editorship of a philosophy teacher at the Liceo of Fano with a programme to ‘build bridges between people's minds and not dig abysses'.
⁴³

A far cry also from the intrigues in high places appear clumsy advances such as that attempted at Castelfiorentino immediately after 8 September, when some
Fascists requested the ‘approval' of the local Communists, on condition ‘that they informed them of their every movement and of all the orders that were imparted to them by the federation'. The author of the report is careful to point out, ‘our refusal was always disdainful', even if he has to recognise that, with the arrival in Florence of lieutenant colonel Bartali with fifty militiamen, and his having requested ‘collaboration with our men (for the good of the people:
sic
!)', there was some ‘sidestepping' (‘scantonamento') in the neighbouring villages, though this was short-lived: ‘From then our illegal activity recommenced.'
⁴⁴
‘Serenades' to Communists and Socialists is the name Gorrieri gives to those that appeared in October 1943 in the
Gazetta dell'Emilia
;
⁴⁵
and, in the moderate underground press, there were those who did not fail to sound the alarm about this, or pretended to do so, with a tacit but clear anti-Communist polemic.
⁴⁶

The moves towards reconciliation of the first few weeks produced some agreement in certain places. At Sant'Arcangelo di Romagna a document of mutual commitment not to attack one another was signed in September by the Fascists and the Rimini CLN (the five Communists who participated in the initiative were duly expelled from the party); and a similar attempt occurred at Forlì.
⁴⁷
In Ancona immediately after 8 September Fascists and anti-Fascists signed a pact for the maintenance of order, while in Venice various anti-Fascist representatives (excluding the Actionists) replied to the appeal addressed to them by the
federale
(the provincial party secretary), Montesi ‘with a pure heart, transcending party egoism and passions', and participated in a meeting of reconciliation. Other meetings and other appeals are recorded elsewhere.
⁴⁸
Even Concetto Marchesi, who subsequently, at the inauguration of the academic year at Padua, would address a message to the students which has become a classic of Resistance literature, but of which the ambiguities and multiple readings have recently been highlighted, needed to be taken to task by the Communist Party before disentangling himself from polluting relations with the Fascist education minister, Carlo Alberto Biggini.
⁴⁹

Some of the documents recorded above mention the moment at which attempts at reconciliation cease and there prevail, inexorably by now, drives
towards civil war. We shall have occasion to return to the anti-Fascist responses to ‘the tremulous attempts at reconciliation', as the central CLN called them.
⁵⁰
As for the Fascists, on 15 October Fernando Mezzasoma, the minister of popular culture, decreed: ‘The newspapers are to desist from publishing appeals for the reconciliation of souls, for the concord of spirits, for the fraternity of Italians. After forty-five days of poisoning of public opinion, scandal-mongering, preaching hate and man-hunting, certain pietistic manifestations represent an indication of pusillanimity and half-heartedness.'
⁵¹