A Civil War

by Claudio Pavone

  26 See Gorrieri, La Repubblica di Montefiorino, pp. 579–81.

  27 See Catalano, Storia del CLNAI, p. 227, which refers back to E. Sogno, Guerra senza bandiera. Cronache della Franchi nella Resistenza, Milan: Rizzoli, 1950.

  28 See the exchange of letters between Giovana and Valiani, published in Il Movimento di liberazione in Italia 89 (October–December 1967), pp. 125–9. Valiani told the version of events in the text above to Bianca Ceva, who related it to me in an 11 February 1968 meeting.

  29 On the value of fire and flames as a political symbol, see Mosse, L’uomo e le masse, pp. 101–3. The Saggio bibliografico includes three papers whose title included the word fiamma (flame): one was specified as being a ‘green flame’ (La voce delle Fiamme Verdi, of the Sciatori Adamello), another as a flame ‘of freedom’ (the Garibaldians), and the third, without adjectives, as the ‘organ of the Comitato di coordinamento femminile’, presumably from Genoa (records 3419, 3528 and 4533). We can add a further fiamma, without adjectives and with no indications of provenance except the generic label ‘CLN’ (from Mantua).

  30 Such was the reproach levelled against the Milan and provincial SAP by the document (no signature or date) ‘I militanti di partito nelle SAP’ (IG, BG, 011016). In Turin, ‘SAP shock squads and manoeuvres brigades’ were created, the former carrying out the same actions as did the GAP (Vaccarino, Gobetti and Gobbi, L’insurrezione di Torino, p. 177); the latter were reminded that they must not ‘be some national guard from the last century, to be made fools of’ (Turin SAP Divisional Command to all SAP brigades in the province, 10 November 1944, Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. II, p. 560).

  31 ‘Rapporto sul lavoro GAP’ by the Turin SAP Divisional Command, 30 October 1944 (IG, BG, 06051).

  32 Padoan (Vanni), Abbiamo lottato insieme, pp. 60–1.

  33 Revelli, La guerra dei poveri, p. 236 (4 May 1944) and p. 329 (2 September 1944).

  34 Bianco, Guerra partigiana, pp. 95, 131 (on the political and human significance of the choice between the city and the mountains, see p. 28).

  35 Bernardo, Il momento buono, p. 63.

  36 Bloch, Strange Defeat, p. 104.

  37 Circular on the ‘functions of the political commissar’, from the Command of the 28th Mario Gordini GAP Brigade, 15 July 1944 (IG, BG, 02311–12).

  38 Scotti, La nascita delle formazioni, p. 71.

  39 Letter from the Milan GAP commander, Visone, to the detachment commanders and commissars, 17 July 1944 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. II, p. 140).

  40 Letter from Sandrelli, responsible for military work in Piedmont, 3 November 1943 (ibid., vol. I, pp. 116–17).

  41 See his ‘Appello agli italiani’, in Togliatti, Opere, vol. IV, 2, pp. 479–83.

  42 Letter from ‘comrades’ to the ‘comrade responsible for Val di Susa’, Valerio (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. II, p. 216). Just before, the comrades had written, ‘The partisan did well to take the opportunity and kill the two Germans. If he had had to await the authorisation of the Command, the two Germans would have escaped.’ Giulio Nicoletta was the commander of the autonomous De Vitis formation.

  43 Mautino, Guerra di popolo, p. 55. For mountain partisans, however, liberation from the mindset of being hunted could come through defending a single location (see Giovana, Storia di una formazione partigiana, pp. 136–7).

  44 Testimony of Irene Candera (Ines), in Vaccarino, Gobetti and Gobbi, L’insurrezione di Torino, pp. 48–9.

  45 Cicchetti, Il campo giusto, esp. p. 169.

  46 Pesce, Senza tregua, pp. 8, 35, 36, 72, 99, 146, 147, 45, 35.

  47 Ibid., pp. 166–7, 213.

  48 Calamandrei, La vita indivisibile, pp. 156, 177, 171–3, 189–90, 144–5, 125, 132. Giorgio Labò was responsible for the Rome GAP’s weaponry and bomb-making; he was captured by the Germans and shot on 7 March 1944 (Enciclopedia dell’antifascismo e della Resistenza, vol. III, Milan 1976).

  49 Report to the CUMER from the Command of the 28th Mario Gordini GAP brigade (Ravenna), 29 August 1944 (Casali, Il movimento di liberazione a Ravenna, vol. II, p. 277); Pesce, Senza tregua, p. 90. In the former of the two documents, we read ‘Our Gappista does not live amid a heroic, military environment like the mountain partisan, but rather is immersed among the masses, and feels their moods and influence.’

  50 Botti (C. Dionisotti), Giovanni Gentile. Dionisotti’s view was fully shared by the Action Party in the North (according to the testimony of Vittorio Foa).

  51 E. Enriques Agnoletti, ‘Ancora sul caso Gentile’, in L’Indice dei libri del mese II: 10 (December 1985), p. 17. On the Florence Action Party’s disapproval with regard to the attack, see Francovich, La Resistenza a Firenze, pp. 187–90, 295–6.

  52 A comment made to his son-in-law, Raimondo Craveri (Craveri, La campagna d’Italia, p. 56).

  53 From this point of view, the most detailed account is that of Luciano Canfora, La sentenza, cited above. It is a long and precise study of the ‘instigators’ who passed the ‘sentence’ against the philosopher; but his use of categories of little historiographical merit, the judicial terms ‘sentence’ and ‘instigators’, means the result of all this diligent scholarly effort is itself similar to an ‘order of enquiry’ (a hypothesis) in an evidence-based trial. Canfora replied to the observations I made on this point in ‘Il mandante non fa storia’, L’Indice dei libri del mese, III: 7 (July 1986) with a polemical vim not matched by the force of his argumentation, first in the Naples Il Mattino, then in ‘Il punto non è questo’, Quaderni di storia XII: 24 (July–December 1986), pp. 99–101.

  54 ‘Storia di una vita: Giovanni Gentile’, in La nostra lotta II: 9 (May 1944), pp. 14–16 (the words cited in the text are from p. 16). A briefer version of this article had already appeared in the 10 May 1944 northern edition of L’Unità, under the title ‘Giovanni Gentile raggiunto dalla giustizia popolare’. On its attribution to Banfi, see Canfora, La sentenza, pp. 251–2, n. 14.

  55 See, on this problematic, Todorov’s considerations on Spinoza’s Tractatus theologico-politicus (‘La tolleranza e l’intollerabile’, pp. 94ff).

  56 An account of the identification between the cudgel and the sermon is at the heart of the piece ‘Commemorazione di Giovanni Gentile’, published in the 25 May 1944 issue of Bandiera Rossa, the Milan newspaper animated by Lelio Basso.

  57 The plaudits for Hitler were expressed during the commemoration of Vico in front of the Accademia d’Italia on 19 March 1944; the attack against the partisans appeared in the article ‘Ricostruire’, Corriere della Sera, 28 December 1943 (see Canfora, La sentenza, pp. 172, 309–11).

  58 Bollettino Popolo e Libertà 2 (July 1943).

  59 ‘La tragica fine di Giovanni Gentile’, Rome edition, 20 May 1944.

  1 See the preamble to the stipulations on justice, issued 28 September 1944 (Vaccarino, Gobetti and Gobbi, L’insurrezione di Torino, p. 98).

  2 Letter to the regional and provincial Party committees, undated but probably early 1945 (INSMLI, CLNAI, envelope 8, folder 12).

  3 Vaccarino, Gobetti and Gobbi, L’insurrezione di Torino, minutes of the 24th session (December 1944–January 1945), p. 114.

  4 ISRT, Archivio Medici Tornaquinci, envelope 4, IV, 1, no. 13 (29 March 1945).

  5 See the note made by Sogno on 1 March 1945 in the San Vittore prison, which got through to the PLI delegation for upper Italy and, with its endorsement, the minister of war, Casati, in Rome (ACS, Carte Casati, folder H); and the letter from the General Command of the Garibaldi Brigades to the Command of the Valsesia, Ossola, Cusio, and Verbano divisions-group, 3 March 1945 (INSMLI, old cataloguing, envelope 148, folder 2).

  6 See Atti CLNAI, pp. 316–21, 323–8.

  7 Minutes of the session of the second half of September 1944 (Vaccarino, Gobetti and Gobbi, L’insurrezione di Torino, p. 82). The establishment of citizens’ and people’s guards, primarily composed of partisans, was proposed in many documents relating to various different localities. The article ‘I partigiani forza di ordine pubblico’, published in the 2
0 October 1944 L’Italia Libera, expressed the Action Party’s demand to this effect.

  8 Session of late October/early November 1944 (Vaccarino, Gobetti and Gobbi, L’insurrezione di Torino, pp. 107–8).

  9 Transcript, ibid., pp. 339–51.

  10 See the letter from the PCI leadership for occupied Italy to the insurrectionary triumvirate for Liguria, and sent to all triumvirates for their information, 22 April 1945, (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 662–5).

  11 Bernardo, Il momento buono, p. 165. Note this account of the moment of liberation of two extermination camp survivors: ‘That day they began to get their just desserts; I say just desserts, others would say vendettas, and perhaps in some cases it was also a vendetta’; ‘The Americans let us do it … they saw us, and they let us torture them a bit, and then they took them away’ (testimonies of Benito Puiatti and Eraldo Franza, in Bravo and Jalla, La vita offesa, pp. 306–7).

  12 INSMLI, CLNAI, envelope 8, folder 2, subfolder 2.

  13 Iacopini’s testimony, related in the degree thesis of Chiara Federici, cited above. The La Spezia questura counted seventeen summary executions of a political character in May, nineteen in June and five in July.

  14 Quoted in ibid.

  15 Revelli, La guerra dei poveri, p. 427 (27 April). On 28 April he repeated: ‘The important thing, I tell myself, is that each man shoots as well as he can’ (p. 430).

  16 Chiodi, Banditi, p. 144 (28 April).

  17 Vaccarino, Gobetti and Gobbi, (L’insurrezione di Torino, pp. 107–8).

  18 ‘Relazione personale sulla situazione generale politico-militare della zona della divisione Garibaldi Nanetti’, written by commander Francesco Pesce (Milo) in Rome, 31 May 1945 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, p. 719).

  19 Chiodi, Banditi, pp. 149–50 (30 April).

  20 Ibid., p. 152. Solaro was hanged from a tree on 30 April.

  21 Revelli, La guerra dei poveri, pp. 431–2 (28 April).

  22 Testimony of Biagio Benzi, in Bravo and Jalla, La vita offesa, p. 345.

  23 Testimony of Raimondo Vazon, in ibid.

  24 Testimony of Dachau survivor Elidio Miola, in ibid., p. 338.

  25 Bruzzone and Farina, La Resistenza taciuta, pp. 28–30. Rolando and the two partisans were later sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment.

  26 Testimony of Elsa Oliva (ibid., p. 141).

  27 Letter to the CLN questore of La Spezia, May 1945, from the commander of the 4th operations zone, who invoked ‘the moral imperative to defend law and freedom, which was principally conquered by us ourselves’ (quoted in Chiara Federici, degree thesis).

  28 Calamandrei, La vita indivisibile, p. 232.

  29 Testimony of the partisan Renato Fracassi, a survivor of Mauthausen and Gusen I, in Bravo and Jalla, La vita offesa, p. 375.

  30 Testimony of Attilio Armando, partisan, survivor of Flossenburg and Zwickau, ibid., pp. 345–6.

  31 Renato Castaldi, a worker at Galileo in Florence, spoke of the many people for whom it was not important to ram home their triumph, once they believed that victory was theirs (Contini, Memoria e storia, p. 128). A popular poet from Terni later sang ‘And dear comrade I want to tell you / It was a mistake to pardon those people’ (Portelli, Biografia di una città, p. 300).

  32 The ordinance was published in La Libertà, Milan paper of the PLI, 1 May.

  33 Bocca, La Repubblica di Mussolini, p. 339, featuring a brief examination of the various different estimates made. See also Isnenghi, La guerra civile nella pubblicistica di destra, pp. 104–6.

  34 See Atti CLNAI, p. 295.

  35 See the 29 April 1945 declaration, ibid., pp. 334–5.

  36 These words appear in Foa, La Gerusalemme rimandata, p. 268.

  37 This expression is used by G. Carocci in Storia del fascismo, Milan: Garzanti, 1972, p. 151

  38 On the symbolic significance of their being dangled upside-down in Piazzale Loreto, see Passerini, Torino operaia, p. 120 and n. 90, and her ‘L’immagine di Mussolini: specchio dell’immaginario e promessa di identità’, in Rivista di storia contemporanea XIV (1986), pp. 322–3.

  39 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 56. Fascist Party secretary Achille Starace suffered the blowback from his own lack of mercy: the man who had made the gerarchi jump through rings of fire was himself shot and hanged by his feet, dressed in sporting gear.

  40 ‘We also have the Duce and Petacci here’, said the widow of Leo Lanfranco – killed by Fascists – when a spy and his lover ‘who had gone along with him’ were shot in Turin (testimony of Rosanna Rolando, in Bruzzone and Farina, La Resistenza taciuta, p. 29).

  41 ‘Technically, the Duce was not lynched, but just killed. The lynching part happened after, posthumously’ (Meneghello, Bau-sète, p. 39). The other quotes are from Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 20.

  42 Gallerano, Gli italiani in guerra, p. 321.

  43 Meneghello, Bau-sète, pp. 38, 40.

  44 ‘Anonimo romagnolo’, 1943–45, p. 471.

  45 Delfino Insolera to his brother Italo, ‘late April 1945’ (my thanks to Italo for allowing me to quote this).

  46 Mazzantini, A cercar la bella morte, p. 290.

  47 My own recollection.

  48 ‘L’ animo di Milano torna a vibrare nel nuovo clima della libertà’, signed ‘gius. gor’, on the second page of the 30 April edition.

  49 ‘Giustizia è fatta’, 30 April 1945 editorial.

  50 Title across the whole front page, 30 April: ‘The shooting of Mussolini and his accomplices is the necessary conclusion of a historical phase’. On the Piazzale Loreto events, see M. Isnenghi, ‘Il corpo del duce’, in S. Bertelli and C. Grottanelli, eds, Gli occhi di Alessandro. Potere sovrano e sacralità del corpo da Alessandro Magno a Ceausescu, Laboratorio di Storia, 2, Florence: Ponte alle Grazie, 1990, pp. 170–93, and M. Dondi, ‘Piazzale Loreto 29 aprile: aspetti di una pubblica esposizione’, in Rivista di storia contemporanea XIX (1990), pp. 219–48.

  CHAPTER 8

  Politics and Future Expectations

  1. POLITICS AND MORALITY

  The resistenti’s relationship with politics did not end with their tie with the parties and their coalition in the CLNs.1 The Resistance was in fact one of those moments in which politics figured as a tendentially all-engaging commitment – not in the sense that everything was seen, essentially, as being political, but in that many important needs aspired, in the eagerness to fulfil them, to take a political form and at the same time to go beyond politics in the name of the profound significance attributed to a future intensely desired. This attitude, which met with some resistance, bore with it many ambiguities; but, to use the language of current debate, it was the opposite both of the ‘autonomy of politics’ and of ‘political exchange’: in no way did political action occupy a separate sphere; nor did it figure only in the column of costs and sacrifices, but already in the credit column of benefits.2 In the Resistance the relationship between politics, seen as a choice of ends and values and the means of practising them, and morality, was thus central, because the widening of the field open to moral judgment could not but involve politics first and foremost.

  A partisan concentration camp survivor gratefully recalls a comrade because ‘he was a man who without saying a word taught you the ABC of life. That was called political activity.’3

  The technique and exercise of power were not therefore seen as the be-all and end-all of political action. Politics acquired once again a utopian function contemporaneously with its fundamental commitment to the here and now. It was precisely those who most aspired to concreteness to whom an only apparently backward passage from science to utopia seemed indispensable.4 Reticence about instrumental politicisation, which even Ferruccio Parri had displayed initially,5 and the desire to give pride of place to the armed struggle in order to avoid being accused of indulging in party politics,6 could both lead to a reductive vision of politics. But there existed, as both the basis and development of the initial decision to resist, a way of being political in which the de
ep convictions and inclinations of individuals and the contexts in which they operated found expression. A perfect example of this is the episode recounted in the form of a fable by Roberto Battaglia. It had to be decided whether to arrest a collaborationist industrialist, and if so whether to condemn him to death. On the first point the Communist was of the view that, as far as possible, the individual should be blackmailed and exploited for information, and only then arrested. The Christian Democrat agreed, but added that collaborationism was rife in Italy and that it would be unjust to make one person pay for everyone – and that, in any case, if arrested, the individual would have to be sent behind the lines to be given a regular trial by the Allied or Italian authorities. The Actionist considered that it would be a moral wrong exceeding other considerations to let an arms profiteer go free, and thus that one should proceed with his immediate arrest. When this occurred, the Communist claimed that the ransom offered by the family should be accepted, though without taking any account of it at the trial to which the industrialist had in any case to be subjected: that way he would simply have been made to give back ‘at least in part, what he had stolen’. The Christian Democrat declared himself unqualified to speak, but asked the others to bear in mind the family conditions of the accused: ‘There is already quite enough grief in Italy without adding to it with a ruthless act of repression.’ The Actionist expressed the conviction that there was grave and clear proof justifying the death sentence, and objected to the Communist that ‘the task of partisans is to see that justice is done; but in no way can one exploit the grief of an innocent family’. Battaglia’s comment (and he should be identified with the Actionist) is that the views expressed on that occasion ‘can throw more light on the nature of the Italian parties than any statement … of their programmes’.7

  These basic character studies did not necessarily coincide with formal adhesion to parties, given that in situations like that of the Resistance ‘the very concept of adhesion to a party represents … something infinitely more demanding but, at the same time, more elastic from the merely formal point of view than any sort of regular “membership” ’.8