A Civil War

by Claudio Pavone

  38 For the Trotskyists, see for example the ‘Lettre à un camarade communiste’, in La Vérité. Organe bolchevik-léniniste, 15 September 1940 (there are notable assonances between Stalinists and Trotskyists in this period, even if unwelcome on both parts). For the anarchists see Il Martello, edited by Carlo Tresca in the United States, quoted in L. Valentini, University of Pisa degree thesis.

  39 For the former, see for example a document of the ‘Section communiste Michelin’, published in Bibendum. Organe de défense des ouvriers et ouvrières, November 1940; for the integration, L’Avant-Garde, édité par la Fédération des jeunesses de France (Montpellier), 1 June 1941 (cyclostyled).

  40 See ‘L’ Appel de Maurice Thorez et Jacques Duclos’, in H. Noguères, Histoire de la Résistance en France de 1940 à 1945, Paris: Laffont 1967, vol. I, pp. 461–7.

  41 See the chapter, entitled ‘Il disfattismo rivoluzionario’ (‘revolutionary defeatism’), of volume IV of P. Spriano, Storia del partito comunista italiano.

  42 See T. Sala, Opinione pubblica e lotta politica a Trieste dalla ‘non belligeranza’ alla ‘guerra parallela’ (1939–1941), Trieste: Libreria Internazionale Italo Svevo, 1968, pp. 26, 50.

  43 The difference in nature of the war before and after the attack on the USSR was denied and affirmed, on different occasions, by Stalin himself. See his speech of 9 January 1946 (Spriano, Storia del Partito comunista italiano, vol. III, p. 321) and his Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR. As an example of the difficulties encountered by Soviet historiography in bringing these different evaluations into a single judgment, consider this passage from the address given by Yevgeny Boltin, in the name of the Moscow Institute for Marxism–Leninism, at the international congress held in Milan in March 1961: ‘The Second World War which broke out in the form of a collision between two imperialistic coalitions, began to change character for Germany’s adversaries when large popular masses began the anti-Fascist struggle. From that moment the conflict gradually acquired a just, liberating and anti-Fascist character, which was defining and affirmed definitively after the Soviet Union entered the war following the Nazi attack’. ‘L’Unione Sovietica e la resistenza in Europa durante la seconda guerra mondiale’, in INSMLI, La Resistenza europea e gli Alleati, p. 175.

  44 Speech given on 25 April 1985 in the main hall of the University of Pisa.

  45 See L. Passerini, Torino operaia e fascismo, Bari: Laterza 1984, p. 238, where a police report of 11 May 1939 is recorded.

  46 Report by ‘compagno André sul lavoro di Torino, marzo 1939–gennaio 1940’, quoted in Spriano, Storia del partito comunista italiano, vol. IV, p. 19.

  47 See A. Dal Pont, A. Leonetti, P. Maiello and L. Zocchi, Aula IV. Tutti i processi del Tribunale speciale fascista, Milan: La Pietra, 1978, p. 409. In the 1980 edition (A. Dal Pont and S. Carolini, eds), the motivation for the condemnation is omitted. See what was communicated by an informer from Genoa, 3 September 1936, in response to the news that was coming from Spain, where nobles, rich people and priests were being killed: ‘Papa, Re o Duce, si dice, dovranno scontare insieme questa tirannia’ (‘Pope, King or Duce, it is said, will have to pay for this tyranny together’). In A. Aquarone, ‘La guerrra di Spagna e l’opinione pubblica italiana’, in Il Cannochiale 4–6 (1966), p. 29.

  48 See G. Amendola, ‘Analisi e prospettive politiche in un documento del 1941 riveduto da Togliatti’, in Critica marxista VI: I (January–February 1968), pp. 75–102.

  49 See Il comunismo italiano nella seconda guerra mondiale, Introduction by G. Amendola, Rome: Riuniti, 1963, pp. 158–9.

  50 G. Amendola, Lettere a Milano. Ricordi e documenti, Rome: Riuniti, 1974, p. 103.

  51 Article entitled ‘Perché la guerra continua’, in Rivoluzione, supplemento de l’Unità 3 (August 1943).

  52 ‘Relazione politica’ (‘Political report’) from the Marche, which can be dated to the end of August 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI). Another part of the document is cited in E. Ragionieri, ‘I comunisti’, in Valiani, Bianchi and Ragionieri, Azionisti, cattolici e comunisti nella Resistenza, p. 338.

  53 Togliatti, Opere, vol. V, pp. 176–80. For an earlier stance in this regard, see the report to the leadership of the Neapolitan Communist organisation, 11 April 1944.

  54 Article entitled ‘Antifascisti perché italiani’. Ivanoe Bonomi, who inspired it, defines Ricostruzione. Organo del fronte unico della libertà as follows: ‘It was not the expression of a single party or a single current, but, without intransigence and without damaging particularism, it wished to unite all anti-Facism, from the Liberals to the Socialists, from the Democrats to the Catholics, as far as the Communists.’ See Bonomi, Diario, p. xxx, where the paper is presented as the counter-attraction to the Action Party’s Italia Libera.

  55 Testimony given by Giorgio Amendola in the presentation (Rome, November 1965) of Pasquale Schiano’s book, La Resistenza nel Napoletano, with a Preface by F. Parri, Naples–Foggia–Bari: CESP, 1965. On the same occasion, Gaetano Arfé recalled in his turn the advice that Croce gave to the young in 1941: Study!

  56 ‘What was particularly anguishing was the impossibility that I felt in the last stages, when there was war, of being wholly on the side of my country, because Germany’s victory would have meant Europe’s slavery under a degenerate Germany which would not have spared Italy the old German arrogance and contempt. But practically I solved this conflict by exhorting the young, who turned to me for advice, to save Italy’s military honour and to remember that the army should reserve politics for politicians.’ B. Croce, Filosofia, Poesia, Storia, Milan–Naples: Ricciardi, 1951, p. 1173. This was written in 1950.

  57 P. Melograni, Rapporti segreti della polizia fascista 1938–1940, Bari: Laterza, 1979, p. 94.

  58 Report of 23 December 1940 in L. Rizzi, Lo sguardo del potere, Milan: Rizzoli, 1984, p. 54.

  59 Reports by the prefect of Cremona, 31 October 1940, and summary of the provincial censorship committee of Gorizia, in ibid., pp. 56–7.

  60 Tarchi (G. Tolloy), Con l’armata italiana in Russia, pp. 90–1.

  61 See S. Zweig, The World of Yesterday: An Autobiography, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964, p. 436 (original edition: Die Welt von gestern. Erinnerungen eines Europäers, Stockholm: Bermann-Fischer, 1942). For ‘The spirit of 1914’, see Chapter VIII of J. Joll, The Origins of the First World War, London: Longman, 1984. Regarding the fact that in 1939 ‘there was a real effort to redo 1914 … but people’s hearts weren’t in it’, see, for France, Becker, L’Union sacrée, p. 121. A German historian has wished to trace in Germany as well a difference between the ‘enthusiasm’ and ‘the atmosphere of febrile reawakening’ of 1914 and the ‘fright and resigned acceptance of an event that seemed ineluctable’ of 1939. A. Hillgruber, Der Zweite Weltkrieg 1939–1945, Stuttgart–Berlin: Kohlhammer, 1982. For the counterpoint between the spirit of 1914 and the spirit of 1939, see P. Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behaviour in the Second World War, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

  62 This is the sense that J. J. Becker, reviewing them, draws from the two volumes of F. Bédarida, La stratégie secrète de la drôle de guerre, Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale de sciences politiques et Éditions du CNRS, 1979, and from the proceedings of the Franco-British talks of 8–12 December 1975, Français et Britanniques dans la drôle de guerre, Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1979. Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine XXIX (April–June 1982), pp. 348–50.

  63 Quoted in Sala, Opinione, p. 229.

  64 Tarchi (G. Tolloy), Con l’armata italiana in Russia, p. 110.

  65 See the accounts by O. Groehler and W. Schumann, La Germania e i suoi alleati, and by Förster, Il ruolo dell’8 armata italiana, in Istituto storico della Resistenza in Cuneo e provincia, Gli italiani sul fronte russo, pp. 121, 230, 244. The remark about ‘reaper farmhands’ (in Italian ‘braccianti mietatori’) is attributed to Hitler himself. The opinion about the officers is taken from the memoirs of Field Marshal Weichs, on whom the Italian army in Russia depen
ded.

  66 Colonel Stevens, the most popular commentator on Radio London’s Italian broadcasts, had expressed himself in this way when the moves of the various European Resistance movements appeared to be still uncertain, particularly if seen from the other side of the English Channel: ‘The true Europe is personified in the passive resistance of the Poles, the Czechs, the Norwegians, the Dutch, the Belgians and in the same sad apathy of the defeated French and the subservient Italians.’ (‘Europe looks to England’, 8 July 1941, 9.40 p.m.: Italian New Comment, no. 342; BBC Written Archives, series I, envelope 6).

  67 I take these words from an article by Giovanni Ferrara, ‘Italia vostra’ (La Repubblica, 20 November 1985) – where, however, no mention is made of the resistance experience.

  68 F. Parri, 1945–1955, in Il Ponte XI: 4–5 (April–May 1955), p. 468. See the long title of the interview granted to Antonio Spinosa for Il Punto and published also in Resistenza, December 1957: ‘Only a part of the country, territorially speaking, has been profoundly touched by the Resistance and only a part of Italian society participates in it or accepts it’. F. Parri, Scritti 1915–1975, eds E. Collotti, G. Rochat, G. Solaro Pelazza and P. Speziale, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976, pp. 232–6.

  69 See above all the overall works of F. Traniello, ‘Il mondo cattolico italiano nella seconda guerra mondiale’, in Francesca Ferratini Tosi, Gaetano Grassi, Massimo Legnani, L’Italia nella seconda guerrra mondiale e nella Resistenza, pp. 325–69, and of R. Moro, ‘I cattolici italiani di fronte alla guerra fascista’, in Pacetti, Papini and Sarcinelli, eds, La cultura della pace, pp. 75–126.

  70 See a hint in this direction by N. Gallerano, ‘Gli italiani in guerra 1940–1943. Appunti per una ricerca’, in L’Italia nella seconda guerra mondiale e nella Resistenza, p. 309.

  71 The words in quotes are from G. Andreotti, De Gasperi e il suo tempo, Milan: Mondadori 1964, p. 186. Andreotti wrote that De Gasperi ‘did not take part in the macabre glee of those who rejoiced over the adverse fates of the second war’.

  72 See F. Malgeri, La Chiesa italiana e la guerra, Rome: Studium, 1980.

  73 ‘Estranea la Chiesa alla guerra? Ma chi dice questo è in mala fede, o vive nel mondo della luna: Lettera pastorale al popolo Ambrosiano di S.E. il Cardinale Ildefonso Schuster’, 21 November 1942, with the title (an unwitting paraphrase of Marc Bloch!) Contro i propalatori di notizie false sulla guerra (published by the Compagnia di San Paolo di Milano).

  74 See in Moro, I cattolici italiani, para. 3, ‘Il dibattito sulla guerra giusta’, and the pungent final remarks, a genuine hymn to don Mazzolari’s stance.

  75 A te, universitario soldato, pamphlet signed by ‘Sac. Sergio Pignedoli, tenente cappellano’ (‘Priest Sergio Pignedoli, lieutenant chaplain’), Rome: Editrice Studium, 1941; Risposta a un aviatore (I problemi della ricostruzione cristiana), dated 10 August 1941, in P. Mazzolari, La Chiesa, il fascismo e la guerra, ed. L. Bedeschi, Florence: Vallecchi, 1966, pp. 39–88.

  76 Jemolo’s work La tragedia inavvertita, mentioned earlier, was to say that ‘to the fearsome queries raised by the war no religion, to my knowledge, arrogated to itself the fearsome privilege of replying’ (p. 10).

  77 See Moro, I cattolici italiani, p. 100.

  78 It would be useful to compare this with the subtle casuistry developed by padre Gemelli during the First World War: one went from killing with ‘punctuality and exactness’, but without hate, to the inflamed reawakening of aggressive ‘ancient spirits’. A. Gemelli, Il nostro soldato. Saggio di psicologia militare, Milan: Treves, 1917.

  79 This is the paraphrase of the plea that one reads in Calamandrei, La vita indivisibile, p. 120, beneath the date 8 December 1943.

  80 Letter of a civilian from Mantua to a second lieutenant in Russia, 16 March 1942, and letter of 12 January (with no other indications), in Rizzi, Lo sguardo del potere, pp. 103, 118.

  81 See, as an example of this position, the Catholic press of the province of Cuneo examined in Belmondo et al., La campagna di Russia, pp. 432–9. The quotation in the text is taken (p. 434, note 12) from La Gazzetta d’Alba, 26 June 1941 – that is, shortly after the attack on the USSR. On 6 July 1940 a small inter-parish paper, La Bisalta, had let fly at France, heir of 1789, ‘field of every sort of libertinism, the country where the most shady and criminal of every kind took refuge, the anarchists, the Communists, the masons, the Jews and conspirators of that ilk’.

  1 Revelli, La guerra dei poveri, pp. 18–19 (on the campaign in Russia).

  2 Sacrifice as an end in itself ‘is only the supreme expression of what Fascism aims at in all its ramifications: the annihilation of the individual self and its utter submission to a higher power. It is the perversion of true sacrifice’. E. Fromm, The Fear of Freedom, New York: Avon, 1941, p. 231. On the Fascist (and Catholic) components of ‘sacrifice to the pure state’, see an observation by M. Isnenghi, ‘Alle origini del 18 aprile. Miti, riti, mass media’, in M. Isnenghi and S. Lanaro, eds, La Democrazia cristiana dal fascismo al 18 aprile. Movimento cattolico e Democrazia cristiana nel Veneto 1945–1948, Venice: Marsilio, 1978, p. 284.

  3 Letter of August 1941 by Gustavo Fragola, of Barra (Naples), to his mother, in B. Ceva, Cinque anni di storia italiana 1940–1945. Da lettere e diari di caduti, Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1964, p. 21.

  4 Letter by Dottor Angelo Coatto, hanged in Veneto by the SS, 2 October 1944 (Bianchi, I cattolici, p. 245).

  5 ‘The best, those who have not erred, must’, in this perspective, ‘be the first to do so, conscious of their duty and right to point the way’, Tarchi (G. Tolloy), Con l’armata italiana in Russia, p. 190; compare p. 4.

  6 Letter to a friend by Alpini second lieutenant Sandro Bonicelli, born in Brescia in 1921, a law graduate. He was to be killed at Nikolaevka, 5 February 1943 (in Ceva, Cinque anni, p. 79).

  7 Letter of 6 January 1943 by Alpino engineers captain Gaetano Gabardini, born in 1900, professor at the Politecnico di Milano. He was to die in prison (ibid., p. 99).

  8 The letter of 30 October 1944 continued: ‘Don’t mourn my death … My tomb will be along a roadside or near the Don, a wooden cross, with my rank, my name, the date, the name of Milan and my helmet’. Emilio De Marchi, Milanese, born in 1913, lawyer, volunteer, second lieutenant of the Alpini who was killed in January 1943 (ibid., pp. 96–7).

  9 Letter by Gino Ferroni, of the FUCI, lieutenant of the Alpini who fell on the Russian front.

  10 Testimony by Marco Apruzzese, sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment for self-inflicted wounding (Bravo and Jalla, eds, La vita offesa, p. 77). His father was a hair-dresser and a socialist.

  11 Report by Inspector Parini, 22 February 1941 (quoted in Rizzi, Lo sguardo del potere, p. 65).

  12 Note by the censorship commission of Gorizia, 9 December 1940 (quoted in ibid., p. 223).

  13 See G. Rochat, ‘Lo sforzo bellico 1940–1943. Analisi di una sconfitta’, in Francesca Ferratini Tosi, Gaetano Grassi, Massimo Legnani, L’Italia nella seconda guerra mondiale e nella Resistenza, pp. 237–8.

  14 Letter of 4 March 1941 by second lieutenant Vincenzo Ambrosio, born in Rome in 1913, functionary of the Ministry for Italian Africa, killed in Albania, 10 March 1941 (in Ceva, Cinque anni, p. 41).

  15 Letters by tank corps lieutenant Giuseppe Locatelli, 9 October 1940, who was to die on the Egyptian front in November 1941; by Blackshirt, and volunteer, Riccardo Bedeschi, Milanese, born 1923, of 9 January 1943, killed in Tunisia; of lieutenant Alessandro Oddi Baglioni, who on 23 February 1943 recounts the episode from North Africa (ibid., pp. 161, 135, 156). The lack of popular songs was frequently noted.

  16 This is indicative because if self-censorship led to limiting and expressing in coded form critical expressions about the regime and its war, this did not happen in the case of favourable ones. On censorship, which ‘is a trap for the simple, an alarm for the crafty’, and on self-censorship, which only accentuates what is ‘for many a habit of life’, see Nuto Revelli’s observations in L’ultimo fronte, Turin: Einaudi, 1971, p. xl
ii.

  17 Episode recounted in Paolo Masera’s letter from North Africa, 13 February 1942 (in Ceva, Cinque anni, p. 150).

  18 Letter by artilleryman Gino Lanfranchi, from Omegna, February 1941 (ibid., p. 29).

  19 The first letter is quoted in B. Bellomo, Lettere censurate, Milan: Longanesi, 1975, pp. 22–3; the second, by a civilian from Gorizia to a sergeant-major, in Rizzi, Lo sguardo del potere, p. 98.

  20 See the contrast that, already during the First World War, the Germans had drawn between themselves, as a people of heroes, and the British as a people of traders and shopkeepers. See W. Sombart’s ‘war handbook’, Händler und Helden, quoted by Hirschman, Shifting Involvements, p. 6, ironically in view of the fact that it was precisely in 1914 that the British had by contrast rediscovered the figure of the ‘warrior’ (Hirschman refers to Eric J. Leed’s No Man’s Land: Combat and Identity in World War I, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979, and Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory, New York: Oxford University Press, 1975).

  21 Page written for La Tradotta Libica by engineer corps sergeant-major Carlo Biagioli, Fronte d’Egitto, 3 novembre 1942/XXI (in Ceva, Cinque anni, p. 126).

  22 See in Fondo RSI numbers 316, 365, 396, 432, 479, 601, 613, 667, 689, 690, 761, 771, 988, 989, 991. Black soldiers are often presented as rapists of women.

  23 Undated letter to his parents by Giorgio Monti, of Macerata Feltria, who was killed at Castel di Decima on 3 June 1944 (LRSI, p. 92).

  24 Letter to his family, in Mantua, by gunner Valentino Coda, 30 January 1943 (in Rizzo, Lo sguardo del potere, p.184). For the Italian combatants in North Africa see, in general, L. Ceva, ‘Gli italiani in Africa Settentrionale’, in Tosi, et al., L’Italia nella seconda guerra mondiale e nella Resistenza, pp. 185–96, and works cited in it.

  25 Letter by the tanner Carlo Rolando, 1 November 1942, who later went missing. In Albania Rolando, at Christmas 1940, had taken refuge in the idea that ‘Il Re dei Rei’ (‘The King of Kings’) wanted everything that was happening to happen ‘in order to give the world perennial justice and order. Let us therefore trust in Him and resign ourselves to His will’ (Revelli, L’ultimo fronte, pp. 39, 36–7).