A Civil War

by Claudio Pavone

  101 See Borrini, Mignemi and Muratore, Parlare, p. 21, and the testimonies of Bruno Simioli and Felice Perosino in Bravo and Jalla, La vita offesa, pp. 80, 128. On the role played by the railway workers and the Germans’ distrust of them, see E. Vallini, Guerra sulle rotaie: contributo ad una storia della Resistenza, Milan: Lerici, 1964.

  102 This is how it was to be recalled in the article entitled, ‘I contadini e la guerra di liberazione’, in L’Italia Libera, 30 May 1944 (Roman edition).

  103 Testimony by Carlo Rameri, in D. Borioli and R. Botta, I giorni della montagna. Otto saggi sui partigiani della Pinan Cichero, Alessandria: WR Edizioni, 1990, p. 80.

  104 Testimony by Luigi Airaldi.

  105 See Artom, Diari, p. 74 (9 September).

  106 See G. Pesce, Senza tregua, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1974, pp. 15–16.

  107 Ibid., p. 19.

  108 These are Calvino’s words in Angoscia in caserma, p. 105.

  109 A Garibaldini report reads: ‘We went along to the barracks of the 88th infantry and tried to persuade the soldiers not to abandon their posts, or at least to come and swell our ranks. We found a great incomprehension in them, and correspondingly a great yearning to go home, and so we made them give up their weapons. As the days went by the collapse of our army became more and more accentuated’ (report on the ‘squadra d’azione di Castiglioncello’ [Castiglioncello action squad] of the 3rd Garibaldi brigade, signed by the detachment commander, Francesco Pandolfi). The author of the report recalls the ‘moral depression’ which this behaviour on the part of soldiers generated in his men (IG, BG, 012056).

  110 ‘The National Front is warned through the assemblies; it protests (the representatives of the various parties are all infatuated by legality) saying that assemblies should not be held because the prefect does not authorise them, that they could cause incidents, that by doing so the Communist Party breaks with the National Front, et cetera. Only the Action Party representative agrees with us’: this is what Giovanni (Remo Scappini) wrote in a ‘report from Turin’ of 15 September (IG, Archivio PCI).

  111 E. Forcella, ‘L’arte della fuga: il black-out dell’informazione nella crisi italiana dell’8 settembre 1943’, in Movimento operaio e socialista, n.s., VI, 1983, pp. 481–97. See also Zangrandi, 1943, pp. 130–1.

  112 See Il Lavoro (formerly Il lavoro fascista, which became the organ of the confederation of workers during the Badoglian period). This title and the entire contents of the newspaper, particularly an article by Mario Alicata, should be considered among the first explicit incitements to armed struggle.

  113 Editorial in Giustizia e Libertà. Notiziario dei patrioti delle Alpi Cozie, October 1944, quoted in M. Giovana, Storia di una formazione partigiana, Turin: Einaudi, 1964, pp. 199–200.

  114 M. Fioravanti, ‘Stato (Diritto intermedio)’, in Enciclopedia del diritto, Milan: Giuffré, 1987, p. 41 of the extract.

  115 ‘Relazione sull’attività del CTLN’, presented to the Allies, 9 August 1944 (ISRT, Carte Francesco Berti, envelope I, folder 3, subfolder CTLN verbali).

  116 Testimony by Alberto Petrini regarding the abandonment of the city after the bombings that followed 8 September (Portelli, Biografia di una città, p. 255).

  117 C. Inverni (V. Foa), ‘I partiti e la nuova realtà italiana (la politica del CLN)’, Quaderni dell’Italia Libera, n.s., I, p. 17 (written in Turin in March 1944).

  118 Speech made in Cuneo on 18 September 1948, in the presence of the president of the republic, Luigi Einaudi, at the award ceremony for valour for seven partisans (see Bianco, Guerra partigiana, Appendix, p. 149).

  119 Saggio bibliografico, no. 2698. Cf. the testimony of the partisan Luigi Gandolfo: ‘So, if there is no army, if no government exists, who are we?’ (Borioli e Botta, I giorni della montagna, p. 73).

  120 C. Mortati, Istituzioni di diritto pubblico I, Padua: Cedam, 1975, p. 88.

  121 H. Rousso, ‘Vichy, il grande fossato’, with an Introduction by C. Pavone in Rivista di storia contemporanea XIV (1985), p. 593 (original edition, ‘Vichy, le grand fossé’, in Vingtième siècle [January–March 1985], 5).

  122 On this point see C. Pavone, ‘La continuità dello Stato’, in R. Paci, ed., Scritti storici in onore di Enzo Piscitelli, Padua: Antenore, 1982, pp. 537–68, and C. Pavone, ‘Tre governi e due occupazioni’, in L’Italia nella seconda guerra mondiale e nella Resistenza, pp. 423–52.

  123 This is what Mauro Scoccimarro wrote from Rome to the Milan headquarters, 5 October 1943 (in L. Longo, I Centri dirigenti del PCI nella Resistenza, Rome: Riuniti, 1974, p. 58). See also ‘Per l’unità del popolo italiano nella lotta contro il nazismo e il fascismo’, in L’Unità, Roman edition, 29 September 1943. This article speaks of the ‘profound marks’ left ‘in the mind of the Italians’ by the period 25 July–10 September and by the collapse of the ruling class.

  124 On 27 September the Milan edition of L’Avanti! published an article entitled ‘Coraggio’, which read: ‘A whole civilisation is being wiped out, a whole capitalistic order with its economically costly and morally absurd contradictions is falling and will not raise itself again.’ The influence of the ex-members of the Movimento di Unità Proletaria [Movement of Proletarian Unity] (Lelio Basso) on this kind of judgment is stressed by F. Taddei, Il socialismo italiano del dopoguerra. Correnti ideologiche e scelte politiche (1943–1947), Milan: Franco Angeli, 1984, p. 49.

  125 Article entitled ‘Ribelli’, in Il Ribelle, 24 March 1944.

  126 G. Pintor, ‘Il colpo di Stato del 25 luglio’, written in Naples in October 1943 and published in New York’s Quaderni Italiani, IV, 1944; now in G. Pintor, Il sangue d’Europa (1939-1943), collected writings, ed. V. Gerratana, Turin: Einaudi, 1950, pp. 225–41 (the extract quoted is on p. 241).

  127 Articles in L’Italia Libera, Roman edition, ‘I volontari della libertà’ (27 January 1944), and ‘Responsibilità (11 November 1943 – then reprinted in Turin as well).

  128 Artom, Diari, p. 75 (Turin, 9 September).

  129 Testimony by Settimio Piemonti, in Portelli, Biografia di una città, p. 18.

  130 Minutes of the ‘meeting of the party representatives’ of some Padua factories, 18 March 1945. The episode in the text is recalled by a worker of Breda (IG, Archivio PCI; the document is partly published, though excluding the part cited above, in C. Pavone, Le Brigate Garibaldi III, pp. 490–4).

  131 Testimony by Teresa Cirio, Bruzzone and Farina, eds, La Resistenza taciuta, pp. 79–80.

  132 See N. Paruta (F. Venturi), ‘La crisi italiana (25 luglio–8 settembre)’, Quaderni dell’Italia Libera (September 4, 1943).

  133 ‘Rapporto sulla situazione nelle fabbriche’, by Giovanni (IG, Archivio PCI).

  1 R. Schnur, Rivoluzione e guerra civile, Milan: Giuffrè, 1986, p. 143 (original edition: Revolution und Weltbürger Krieg, Berlin: Dunker & Humblot, 1983).

  2 I take this concept from a seminar held at the Department of Modern and Contemporary History of the University of Pisa by Pietro Costa, author of Lo Stato immaginario, Milan: Giuffrè, 1986.

  3 T. Hobbes, Leviathan, XXI, ed. C. B. MacPherson, London: Penguin, 1985, p. 272.

  4 R. Craveri, La campagna d’Italia e i servizi segreti. La storia dell’ORI, Milan: La Pietra, 1980, pp. 38–9.

  5 Testimony by Achille Alberani (CU).

  6 Testimony by A. S., in A. Portelli, ‘Assolutamente niente. L’esperienza degli sfollati a Terni’, in Gallerano, ed., L’altro dopoguerra, p. 137. Regarding this, Portelli speaks of ‘the restoration of elementary solidaristic communities’, and makes a comparison with some pages from 1930s American literature on the effects of the Great Depression. A comparison could also be made with the description of the effect of feeling liberated from the mutual distrust that several anarchic communities had during the Spanish Civil War. See for example the testimonies collected by A. M. Merlo, ‘Gli anarchici e l’esperienza collettivistica durante la guerra civile spagnola’, in Rivista di storia contemporanea X (1981), pp. 505–47.

  7 Battaglia, Un
uomo, p. 26.

  8 A. Ardigò, ‘L’insorgenza partigiana come forma di partecipazione sociale nella società civile’, in Ardigò, ed., Società civile e insorgenza partigiana: indagine sociologica sulla diffusione dell’insorgenza partigiana nella provincia di Bologna, Bologna: Cappelli, 1979, p. 19.

  9 J.-P. Sartre, ‘La République du silence’, Les Lettres Françaises, 9 April 1944, p. 1.

  10 Bibliothèque nationale, Catalogue des pèriodiques clandestins (1939–1945), Paris, 1954, pp. xiii–xiv. ‘One could almost argue that the difficult conditions equalized opportunities and promoted the most resolute, never was the press freer than when it was banned’.

  11 Quoted by M. Rigoni Stern in the introductory note to P. Iuso, ed., Soldati italiani dopo il settembre 1943, Rome: FIAP, 1988, p. vi.

  12 Franco Venturi held a seminar around this principle in 1988 at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa (see also p. 658, n. 7).

  13 On this point see P. Levi’s reflections in I sommersi e i salvati, Turin: Einaudi, 1986, pp. 15, 44.

  14 See Sartre, ‘La République du silence’. An analogous observation can be found in G. Falaschi, La Resistenza armata nella narrativa italiana, Turin: Einaudi, 1976, p. 41. For Sartre, see also the character Mathieu in La mort dans l’âme, Paris: Gallimard, 1949.

  15 See G. Baget- Bozzo, Il partito cristiano al potere, Florence: Vallechi, 1974, p. 52. The author writes that ‘Christian anti-Fascism was a widespread position among Catholics, but was not a position of the Church’. Compare what has been observed about the scant number of Catholics from the Catholic youth formations who joined the Resistance (M. Reineri, ‘Per uno studio comparato del movimento cattolico durante la Resistenza: l’esperienza piemontese’, in Società rurale e Resistenza nelle Venezie, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1978, p. 269).

  16 And he went on: ‘What will all those who go into hiding do in the approaching season? Will they become bands of thieves and brigands?’ (quoted in G. Bianchi, ‘I cattolici’, in Valiani, Bianchi and Ragionieri, Azionisti, cattolici e comunisti nella Resistenza, p. 178).

  17 ‘In this common atmosphere there couldn’t help being the inevitable fear that everybody in one way or another must be either accomplices or persecuted’ (Battaglia, Un uomo, pp. 48–9).

  18 Cited in H. Michel, The Shadow War, London: Deutsch, 1972, p. 102.

  19 Bruno Kreisky in an interview given to Vanna Vannuccini, ‘Kreisky accusa Waldheim’, in La Repubblica, 1 March 1988.

  20 Gobetti, Diario partigiano, p. 363.

  21 Letter of the nineteen-year-old lathe-operator, Vito Salmi, a Garibaldino, shot at Bardi on 4 May 1944 (LRI, pp. 197–8).

  22 Quoted in S. Flamigni and L. Marzocchi, Resistenza in Romagna, Milan: La Pietra, 1969, p. 113.

  23 Letter written by Franz Mittendorfer, Communist, 10 November 1942 (LRE, p. 23).

  24 Rousso, Vichy, p. 593.

  25 V. Foa, ‘La crisi della Resistenza prima della liberazione’, in Il Ponte III: (November–December 1947), 11-12; and Per una storia del movimento operaio, pp. 13–24.

  26 Jemolo, in a similar spirit to Baget-Bozzzo’s in the page quoted above, criticised the evasive behaviour of all the religions before the terrible problems posed by the war, while the Catholic Church continued, for its part, to concern itself with questions like ‘how many caresses are permissible between fiancés’. A. C. Jemolo, ‘La Tragedia inavvertita’, in Il Ponte I (1945); then in Nuova Antologia CXX: 2153 (January–March 1985), pp. 7–12.

  27 Battaglia, Un uomo, p. 20.

  28 Preface to the 1946 edition of D. L. Bianco’s book, cited several times (cited in G. Carocci, La Resistenza italiana, Milan: Garzanti, 1963, p. 149).

  29 Gobetti, Diario partigiano, p. 122 (2 April 1944).

  30 T. Ruoti, La lotta per la libertà, p. 4. It is an Actionist-inspired pamphlet, written in October 1943.

  31 M. Mila, ‘Bilancio della guerra partigiana in Piemonte’, in Risorgimento. Rivista mensile, I, 25 August 1945, 5, pp. 412–19.

  32 These words occur in the article ‘Dovere di combattere’, which appeared in Risorgimento Liberale (Roman edition), 23 November 1943, and is built around the theme of 8 September as the reconquest of liberty.

  33 Schnur, Rivoluzione e guerra civile, pp. 48, 143. Consider, by contrast, this passage by Schmitt: ‘In war the adversaries most often confront each other openly: normally they are identifiable by a uniform, and the distinction between friend and enemy is therefore no longer a political problem which the fighting soldier has to solve.’ C. Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996, p. 34.

  34 A. O. Hirschman, Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982, p. 101. The same author has written elsewhere: ‘Creativity always comes as a surprise’ (Exit, Voice and Loyalty, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970, p. 80).

  35 Battaglia, Un uomo, pp. 50, 104.

  36 Testimony by Vittorio Foa to the author.

  37 Gobetti, Diario partigiano, p. 258 (30 September 1944) and p. 57 (November 1943).

  38 Testimony by Antonio Bellina, worker, who had earlier emigrated to France (Bravo and Jalla, La vita offesa, p. 84). For ‘il divertimento’ (‘enjoyment’) in another emergency situation, see the censored letter quoted by L. Briguglio, ‘Clero e contadini nella provincia di Padova dal Fascismo alla Resistenza’, in Società rurale, p. 334.

  39 ‘Esperienza di un partigiano cattolico’, in Voce Operaia, newspaper of the Communist Catholics of Rome, 16 December 1943.

  40 Report by Del Gaudio on the events at the ‘Casone dei ferrovieri’ (‘Railway workers’ house’) during the battle for the liberation of Florence (ISRT, ANPI Firenze, envelope 3, XXII bis brigata Garibaldi Sinigaglia).

  41 The report, signed ‘Stella’, is preserved in ISRT, CVL, Comando militare toscano, envelope 5, folder 7. Stella was Alessandro Pieri, a carpenter and long-standing Communist militant, condemned during the regime (see C. Francovich, La Resistenza a Firenze, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1961, p. 369).

  42 The English text has the words ‘near everything’ (p. 39). R. Katz, Morte a Roma, Rome: Riuniti, 1973, p. 56 (original edition Death in Rome, New York: Macmillan, 1967). The American writer follows with this comment: ‘If there was a lack of unity in action and methods, there was nevertheless an intensely felt camaraderie and a naïve faith in the goodness of the coming post-war world. No one, given the circumstances, would fight for anything less’ (English edition, p. 39).

  43 See Bruzzone and Farina, eds, La Resistenza taciuta, pp. 44, 81–2, 85. The testimonies are those of Nelia Benissone Costa and Teresa Cirio.

  44 E. P. Thompson, in Henry Abelove, ed., Visions of History, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983, p. 11.

  45 Calamandrei, La vita indivisibile, pp. 114, 116, 118, 129 (12 September, October, Autumn 1943, beginning of 1944). On p. 114 Calamandrei quotes these verses from The Spoon River Anthology: ‘To put meaning to one’s life may end in madness / But a life without meaning is the torture / Of restlessness and vague desire / It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid’.

  46 La Nuova Realtà. Organo del Movimento femminile ‘Giustizia e Libertà’, Piedmontese edition, n.d. (but 1945), I, 2, article entitled ‘Chi siamo’. Compare the dry, tragic tone of this letter by a member of the Greek resistance, tortured and shot by the Italians on 24 February 1943: ‘Since because of my age I didn’t go to Albania, I too was obliged to risk my life for the patria’: letter written by the thirty-eight-year-old lawyer Spiros Giavellas (LRE, p. 454).

  47 B. Fenoglio, Il partigiano Johnny, Turin: Einaudi, 1968, p. 40.

  48 N. Ginzburg, Preface to La letteratura partigiana in Italia 1943–1945, anthology, ed. G. Falaschi, Rome: Riuniti, 1984, p. 8.

  49 Testimony by the Piedmontese Domenico Adriano, who later became a Garibaldino (CU).

  50 L. Meghello, I piccoli maestri, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1964, pp. 58–9.

  51 F. Mautino, Guerra di popolo. Storia delle f
ormazione garibaldine friulane, Preface by E. Collotti, Padua: Libreria Feltrinelli, 1981, p. 31.

  52 Calamandrei, La vita indivisibile, p. 130 (February 1944).

  53 B. Parri (Spartaco), ‘Otto mesi coi partigiani di Tito’, in Bilenchi, Cronache degli anni neri, pp. 87–8.

  54 C. V. Bianchi, Un’isola che si chiama Sardegna, Rome: L’Arnia, 1951, quoted in M. Di Giovanni’s degree thesis.

  55 Chiodi recalls as a decisive moment the sight, when he was arrested by the Italian SS, of ‘a street full of blood and a cart with four corpses’, while the railway inspector said ‘better to die than tolerate this’ (Chiodi, Banditi, p. 41 [18 August 1944]).

  56 Testimony by Renato Fracassi, from a Genoese family of longshoremen (Bravo and Jalla, La vita offesa, p. 74).

  57 See the case of the fifty-year-old father who was to join a band with the machine gun of his son who had been killed. Chiodi, Banditi, p. 32 (5 August 1944).

  58 See, for example, Mario Filipponi’s testimony (Portelli, Biografia di una città, p. 266). See also the ‘bel giovane’ who possessed ‘molte di quelle doti che possono fare un avventuriero o un eroe’ (‘many of those qualities that can make an adventurer or a hero’), described by Gobetti, Diario partigiano, p. 66 (27 November 1943).

  59 ‘When you’re twenty you don’t take much account of things’, testimony by Giuseppe Seriucano, farmer (Bravo and Jalla, La vita offesa, p. 81).

  60 See the example of motivation shown in Bianco, Guerra partigiana, pp. 11–12.

  61 Letter transcribed in ‘Sintesi delle relazioni degli uffici militari censura di guerra del mese di settembre 1944’. The document, preserved in ACS, is published in E. Aga-Rossi, ‘La situazione politica ed economica nell’Italia nel periodo 1944–45. I governi Bonomi, in Quaderni dell’Istituto romano per la storia d’Italia del fascismo alla Resistenza, Rome 1971, vol. 2, p. 129.