A Civil War

by Claudio Pavone

  In the final parade in Turin the Garibaldi formations decreed that the women were not to participate in the march-pasts, to avoid unpleasant reactions, including the risk of their being called whores. Tersilla Fenoglio Oppedisano, who recounts the episode, recalls the disappointment and anger that she and her companions felt at seeing that in the autonomous formations the women paraded with the men as equals, but then adds that she recognises the justness of the ban.169 Evidently ‘Mauri’ (Ilario Tabarri) and his men, who were bourgeoisly open-minded, felt free not to give a damn whether their women were called whores; not so with the Communists, both because their policy of alliance with the petit-bourgeois classes and the Catholics led them to cultivate their prejudices, and because several of the Garibaldi women at least were themselves sensitive to that risk.

  In fact, at times the partisans themselves mirrored this tendency by calling Fascist women auxiliaries whores. On both sides, this was the most rapid way of avoiding the conflict between political and military commitment, regulated by new and uncertain codes, and sexual morality, regulated by ancient and solid codes.170

  The protective attitude towards women and the limited function assigned to them are borne out in the name given to the unitary women’s organisation sponsored above all by the Communists: ‘Gruppi di difesa della donna per l’assistenza ai combattenti della libertà’ (‘Groups for the defence of women for the assistance of the freedom fighters’). On the one hand, women were seen here as beings to defend – on a par, it should be noted, with the peasants; on the other hand, the only active role they were assigned was that of assistance. Because of this, many women did not like the formula, Ada Gobetti included.171 The Italian name followed the French one: ‘marraines des francs-tireurs et partisans’. The still fresh memory of the grey Fascist invention madrine di guerra (godmothers of war) probably advised against using an identical formula. In France, however, the madrine declared themselves ready to fight, thereby vindicating their descent from the women of the great Revolution.172

  Perhaps the only people comparable to the women in their two-sided attitude to the armed struggle are those priests who chose to become chaplains with the partisan formations, and who therefore saw the contradictions of the Catholics at first hand.

  In 1946 a periodical vindicating the clergy’s contribution to the Resistance wrote: ‘It’s true: no priest took up arms, even if he was a chaplain of bands, because his pacific mission of love prevented him from using violent instruments of hate.’173 When he went over from the Di Dio174 to the Garibaldi formations, Don Sisto Bighiani, caressing his machine-gun, said to Moscatelli ‘that he had prayed and was praying to the Lord never to be compelled to use it with his hands’.175 By contrast, a chaplain to the Osoppo brigades, which took their inspiration from Don Aldo Moretti (a Resistance priest), fired and the next day said Mass, leaving a British major who witnessed the scene somewhat perplexed; and another priest had no qualms about shooting but did not want the political commissar in the band.176

  Commitment for a good cause never completely cancelled the defensive character in Resistance violence. The decision to kill came later; it was a consequence of the fundamental decision to oppose the violence of the other side. Resistance violence could therefore be placed, broadly, in the category of legitimate defence, which involved the possibility of being killed oneself.177

  Rousseau had written: ‘Every man has the right to risk his life in order to preserve it … He who wills the end wills the means also, and the means must involve some risks, and even some losses. He who wishes to preserve his life at others’ expense should also, when it is necessary, be ready to give it up for their sake.’178

  Many Resistance documents insist on the need to resort to violence. ‘When we are compelled to kill one of our fellow men, one of our fellow countrymen, at times even an old friend, our hand does not tremble because we know we have had to act to defend ourselves, in that he wanted our death’, says a GL newspaper – and adds immediately, almost as if it fears that a purely defensive vision might risk taking the colour out of the ultimate ends of the struggle: ‘When, moreover, we remember again the sanctity of the cause for which our comrades are dying, we feel all the more that we are performing an act of true justice.’179

  A Garibaldi unit’s report expresses almost in the form of a fable this theme of defence that cannot help becoming offence: ‘Two comrades were stopped by two militia-men of the Black Brigade, but on hearing their threat raised their pistols and shot them dead. In their enthusiasm at having captured them the Fascists had shouted: Partisan dogs, we’ll kill you. And they were killed.’180

  ‘Resentment at man-hunting’ is indicated as one of the causes that led to the ‘Four Days of Naples’.181 Killing as a necessity helped to preserve one, at least as far as one’s intentions were concerned, from taking pleasure in it, and from cruelty, that is from that di più (surplus) which was, by contrast, so greatly vaunted by the Fascists. ‘We are not fighting to kill and exterminate’, declared a Tuscan Garibaldino.182 A Liberal newspaper wrote – and it is no easy business distinguishing the affirmation of how one should be from the statement of how things really are – that when one of the enemy dies there is no exultation, as there is with the sadistic Fascists: killing is always a grievous thing, even if today it is necessary.183

  In Emanuele Artom’s diary three subtly linked passages occur at a close distance from each other:

  The militiaman from Bagnolo who was a spy has been sentenced to death and then killed suddenly, without being aware of it until the last minute: this is the Soviet method, and if, at least in war, the death penalty is deemed necessary, this is the most human method: the anguish of the inevitable end is avoided, and never mind if the condemned man has no way of preparing himself and expressing his last wishes.

  Three days later Artom explained the reasons why he had not wanted to set a mousetrap and concluded: ‘Last reason – last or first? – the desire to put this subtle examination of my conscience down in my diary’. Finally, Artom takes satisfaction in recalling a speech by his commander who, quoting D’Annunzio’s motto ‘I dare, I don’t scheme’, had recommended his men to ‘dare as little as possible, in order to achieve the end, but not to make daring an end in itself ’.184

  The insistence on the defensive character of the struggle – in itself neither original nor significant, given that the aggressors too were in the habit of resorting to it brazenly – was therefore valuable for the resistenti above all as a moral guarantee, which was all the more necessary for the fact that the exercise of violence was the result of a personal choice. In many cases, direct and indirect, but always clear, manifestations of this conviction are identifiable; while in other cases the reasons for defence interwove in various ways, to the point of becoming almost invisible, with the active ‘motivations’ that sustained the struggle and that encountered the ‘technical’ reasons according to which the best defence is attack, above all in guerrilla warfare. Recalling our earlier examination of the noms de guerres with patriotic and class references, we can now underline that violent and truculent names appear only rarely, that they are best interpreted, as Fenoglio interpreted them, as ‘formidable’,185 and that, when they do appear, they can often be taken as being ironical. For example, Fenoglio describes the crowd in Alba ‘reading as one reads the numbers on the backs of cyclists’ the noms de guerre that the partisans wore embroidered on their scarves, red and light blue alike, wrapped around their shoulders.186 Names bearing the mark of real or feigned violence, self-attributed or attributed by others, include for example: ‘Mitra’ (‘Machine-gun’), ‘Mauser’, ‘Tritolo’ (‘TNT’), ‘Bestione’ (‘Beast’), ‘Boia’ (‘Hangman’), ‘Caino’ (‘Cain’); and also the bad taste of ‘Menefrego’ (‘I don’t give a damn’), ‘Ras’, ‘Ardito’, ‘Bastanaro’. For similar reasons, it is hard to say whether a partisan called Gandhi was a pacifist or a skinny lad with lightweight spectacles.

  It has been repeated many times t
hat the name ‘Resistenza’ is French in origin, and that in Italy it was taken up only after the event. This is true if one is referring to the canonised use of the formula ‘movimento di liberazione’.187 But if one looks at the press and at contemporary documents, one notices the frequent occurrence of the word, almost always with a small r, in the literal sense, implicitly and at times also explicitly ‘defensive’,188 even if there is no lack of more solemn adoptions. It is telling that these should appear in a ‘message from the CLNAI’ to the CLN of emigrants to France,189 that previously an Action Party newspaper had praised De Gaulle ‘for strengthening French resistance against Nazi domination’,190 and that the expression ‘movimento della resistenza’ figures in the agreement of 7 December 1944 between the CLNAI delegation and Allied Command, which clearly had experience of French affairs.191

  A leaflet dropped by British planes on the night of 22 October 1943 already reminded the ‘Italians of the resistance’ of the ‘armed or passive resistance’ taking place in the other occupied countries.192 Passive resistance still fell short of even defensive violence, and the newspaper of young Roman Christian Democrats defended the latter, arguing that already during the Fascist ventennio it had been an authentic Italian masterpiece.193 The newspapers of the more committed movements tended rather to use qualifying adjectives such as attiva, organizzata, or armata.194 At times L’Unità speaks of resistance as simply a first step;195 and the same concept recurs, for example, in an unsigned leaflet of November 1943 addressed to the young men of Arcugnano: ‘Let us find ourselves again as soldiers even if in civilian dress and let us begin our battle of resistance at once, for the time being: let us not yield.’196

  The principle of self-defence gave rise to complex developments. Mere individual self-defence was not feasible unless one lay low in isolation. Getting together in groups immediately posed the problem of the use of weapons. A Communist document severely criticises a professore who ordered his men to remain hidden in the village, the result being that they were all arrested in the taverns and houses. This episode demonstrates, the document concludes, that ‘only with weapons in our hands and with a perfect military organisation can we save ourselves and at the same time inflict heavy blows on the enemy’.197 Earlier, L’Unità had written: ‘We mustn’t let ourselves be butchered. We must arm and defend ourselves.’198

  More calmly, but no less forcefully, a Garibaldi commander later wrote: ‘It made no sense having abandoned civilian life to take ourselves off to live wretchedly in the mountains without starting that guerrilla warfare which would justify our daily privations and provide experience for future developments.’199

  3. SELF-DISCIPLINE AND THE ORGANISATION OF VIOLENCE: THE PUNITIVE SYSTEM

  The steady growth of the network of CLNs, culminating in the CLNAI and the coming to the fore as a military and unitary organism of the Corpo dei Volontari della Libertà (Corps of Volunteers for Liberty) headed by the General Command, may be regarded as signalling a growing political and institutional legitimisation of violence. It was not so much general and top-level legitimisation – relations with the monarchy, the government in Rome and the Allies – as the process of organisation springing from the very heart of the movement that saw the establishment of a series of guarantees against an indiscriminate and blind use of violence. It is this normalisation with the nascent state, to which attention has already been drawn, that distinguishes the immediate context within which single acts of violence took place.

  Naturally a system of norms, however approximate, and organisation, born again in the name of liberty, recreated authority as well. The norms within which Resistance violence sought to discipline itself did not correspond to those that the enemy followed, or claimed to follow. The upshot of this was that the expression ‘fuori legge’ (‘outlaw’) mirrored the conflict between two different ‘laws’. At the same time the resistenti tended, within certain limits, to revert to customary practices, such as the adoption of a uniform, which, according to even the most labile international law relating to war, should have guaranteed their status as combatants. One of the most noticeable differences between the ‘political’ bands (above all the Garibaldi and GL) and the ‘autonomous’ ones was that the latter were more inclined to adopt norms and styles belonging to military tradition. Indeed, in the conditions of complete autonomy in which he found himself operating, as prestigious a commander as Mauri (the major on permanent active service Enrico Martini) could give free rein to the militaristic concept that he had of his men as cavaliers and defenders of order. In his capacity as commander of the 1st Group of the Alpini divisions, Mauri thus reprimanded a lieutenant colonel under him – and this in itself was quite a departure from the traditional hierarchy – for his behaviour towards the men in his charge:

  Permit me to say, signor Colonello, that I do not approve of your excessive goodness. In the war we are waging, and from knowledge of Italians, being good is a defect and we must not and cannot be so in the interest of our patria and of the Cause for which we are fighting. Every so often it is necessary to shoot men, if only to try out weapons.1

  Not, of course, that this drastic and cynical policy was carried out to the letter; but the very fact of declaring it is a sign of the presence of a hyper-militaristic cultural structure, seen as the only alternative to the laxity which was in turn so much a part of the Italian military tradition.

  The most pressing problem that had to be faced was that of distinguishing oneself from the robbers and plunderers who got busy on the wave of dissolution of the Royal Army and the pillaging of military stores that had followed it. The phenomena of the days immediately following the Armistice still lie this side of the distinction between robberies and plundering, on the one hand, and acts committed by the bands in order to sustain themselves, on the other. Little by little, the CLN, CVL and party organisations would, at least to some extent, take charge of this aspect of the struggle too. A late Action Party report which announced that ‘the demarcation line’ between partisan activity and banditry ‘is often highly uncertain’, said that the prestige of the Commands and of the CLNs greatly depended on the regularity of the financing they received.2 But the first bands had had to fend for themselves.

  Intent on distinguishing between criminality and politics wholly within the practice of killing, Nuto Revelli wrote in his diary with his customary frankness:

  The phenomenon of banditry is spreading. Disbanded ex-servicemen of the 4th Army and local delinquents, passing themselves off as partisans, are terrorising the population. All it takes to muddy the waters is an Alpino cap, a grey-green tunic. As we catch them we’ll shoot them. If we want to ensure that the Germans and Fascists don’t lump things together, cashing in on them so as to defame us, we must show no pardon.

  Consequently, adds Revelli, the bandits ‘are more scared of the partisans than they are of the carabinieri: the partisans shoot them … To close the circle around these delinquents our squads are also operating in collaboration with the carabinieri of the valley’ – i.e. with the carabinieri in the service of the RSI. But elsewhere Revelli also distinguished between rigour and inhumanity when, about the proceedings instituted against six false partisans, he wrote:

  8 September has broken a false and confused world; it has thrown men’s consciences in at the deep end. It’s a painful business being hard with people like this. Mild sentences because they are not real bandits. These mountain folk who live in poverty, who do not want to and cannot come down from the mountains to look for a job, at times risk the firing squad because they interpret ribellismo [rebelliousness] in their own fashion.3

  Revelli also recalls having vainly hunted the robbers of a group of Jews at Demonte in order to shoot them, but of having given a ‘suspended’ death sentence to some youths on their way to commit a robbery almost as an act of bravado, granting them the opportunity to rehabilitate themselves by fighting – which was what in fact happened.4

  A Piedmontese band took the initiative of puttin
g up posters asking for the collaboration of the population in repressing ‘bandits outside the army’.5 Phenomena of this kind were reported in many areas, from western Piedmont to the province of Biella and Friuli. In Friuli there was the execution of ‘elements who, passing themselves off as partisans, were harassing the populations’, while in the Apuan Alps ‘three brothers [were shot], the first for having stolen and the other two for having tried to avenge his death’.6 There are youths who ‘say that they want to fight the enemy and not to be burglars in order to fatten up those of the Command’, quite clearly a Command lacking in any prestige.7 Others seem to suggest that banditry descended from the art of fending for oneself, which was a cornerstone of the ethics of the Royal Army.8 Still others distinguish between the requisitioning from civilians by means of coupons, ‘recovery’ – ‘total or partial removal of foodstuffs and material belonging to the partisan movement, entrusted to civilians’ – and ‘confiscation’ – ‘compulsory removal of material and foodstuffs from organisations or persons who used them for purposes contrary to our ends’.9 In other documents any expeditious appropriation of useful articles is vaguely defined as an ‘act of recovery’, possibly with an unintentional reminiscence of the aspiration to expropriate the expropriators.

  One consequence of the tendential re-monopolising of violence in the hands of the ‘third government’ of the Resistance was that the formations that refused to recognise the authority of the CLNs and the CVLs – especially when the latter became formally unified – were to be looked on with distrust: lacking the official blessing of the new legitimacy, they would always seem to be on the point of falling into street banditry. The Command of a Garibaldi brigade reminded a commander who was stubbornly resisting the unification of the forces that those who remained outside would be treated as ‘bandits’ and ‘saboteurs of liberty’ and be given the death penalty.10 Another Garibaldi formation warned that those who used ration coupons without supporting the CLN, but usurping its name, would have to answer before a people’s tribunal, while if they did not even use the name, they would certainly be shot.11 No less severe was the GL Lombard Command with its reminder that only membership of the CVL legitimates a formation, ‘which otherwise would at present, and still more so after the Liberation, be considered altogether differently’; and which, to make things still clearer, added that uncontrolled initiatives led to damaging actions and useless losses, even ‘when they do not degenerate into more or less open forms of banditry’.12