The Italian Resistance: Fascists, Guerrillas and the Allies

273 Pages·2009·1.91 MB·English

by  Tom Behan

The Italian Resistance
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THE ITALIAN RESISTANCE
Fascists, Guerrillas and the Allies
Tom Behan
PLUTO PRESS
www.plutobooks.com
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First published 2009 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by
Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Tom Behan 2009
The right of Tom Behan to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 2695 5 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 2694 8 Paperback
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and
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Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Abbreviations x
Acknowledgements xi
Chronology xii
Introduction 1
The meaning of the Resistance – How this book is structured
PART I
1 Midnight in the Century 9
Italian colonialism, racism and the Second World War –
The ice melts
2 The Mafi a and Street Kids: How Fascism Fell in the South 22
The liberation of Sicily – 25 July 1943: the fall of Mussolini
and ‘the end of the beginning’ – 8 September 1943: the fall
of fascism – Four days in Naples
3 People, Parties and Partisans 40
The March 1943 strikes – The birth of a national unifi ed
movement – The Socialist Party – The Action Party –
The Communist Party – The CLN – Anti-fascism on the
ground – The three wars
4 Resistance in the Mountains 61
A new kind of army – Why the partisans were successful
5 Resistance in the Cities 77
Strike action in the cities – The liberation of Florence
6 ‘Aldo says 26 for one’ 93
Spring comes in many colours – All that glitters is not gold
7 Postwar Partisan Activity 107
Why partisans were angry – Political violence after
liberation – Legal attacks against partisans – Partisan
rebellions – The non-monolithic Communist Party –
Occupation and Insurrection, 1947–48 – The end of the
Resistance?
8 The Long Liberation 138
Italian fascism: down but not out – The Tambroni affair –
Attempted coups – The strategy of tension – The political
defrosting of the MSI – The undermining of the Resistance
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vi CONTENTS
PART II
9 Female Fighters 161
Non-military activities – Military activities – Military versus
women’s liberation
10 The Partisan Republics 175
The Montefi orino republic – The republic of Carnia –
The Ossola republic
11 Organising ‘Terrorism’ 190
A tale of two cities
12 An Uneasy Alliance: The Resistance and the Allies 208
An alliance for military needs – Between a rock and a
hard place: the Resistance and the Rome protocols –
The Allies’ political strategy
Conclusion 224
Notes 229
Index 253
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List of Illustrations
1.1 Trieste 1942: ‘Closed forever – Jewish shop’. 19
4.1 Members of the 53rd Garibaldi brigade near Bergamo,
Lombardy. 63
4.2 Promissory note given by partisans to people in exchange
for goods or services, which were then repaid after the war.
The lower part of the note reads: ‘Accepting this note means
having faith in an Italy independent from the Germans and
free of fascism.’ 66
4.3 Partisans and local people build a road-block together in a
Piedmont town. 68
4.4 Members of the 36th Garibaldi brigade help with the harvest
south-east of Bologna. 76
5.1 Sabotage of a tram during a strike. 80
5.2 Partisans liberating Florence. 91
6.1 The fi ght to defend and liberate FIAT’s Ferriere factory in
Turin, where fi ve workers died. 99
6.2 The liberation of Genoa. A partisan lorry drives down the
city’s main street. 106
7.1 Mussolini, his mistress and other fascist leaders were executed
near the Swiss border on 28 April 1945 and their bodies were
taken to piazzale Loreto in Milan. Claretta Petacci can be
identifi ed by her skirt, Mussolini is to her left. 112
7.2 Fifteen prisoners were killed and left in a main square of
Milan, piazzale Loreto, for a whole day in August 1944. 113
9.1 Female partisan. 170
11.1 Partisans being tortured by the infamous Muti squad in Milan. 192
11.2 ‘335 victims cry out for justice. Bentivegna/Priebke up against
the wall!’ Contemporary graffi ti (both men are still alive)
arguing over the responsibilities of Rosario Bentivegna, leader
of the attack on an SS column in Rome, and SS Captain Erich
Priebke, one of the key offi cers in the massacre of 335 prisoners
as reprisal. 201
12.1 Partisans tending a fi re guiding in an Allied supply drop. 214
12.2 Liberation of a town in central Italy. The fi rst armoured car
has a sticker reading ‘Long live the Communist Party’;
all the other vehicles are from the US army. 221
12.3 A look-out. 223
vii
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viii THE ITALIAN RESISTANCE
Front COVER (paperback edition) – The partisan column that liberated
Milan enters the city’s main square, piazza del Duomo, on 28 April 1945.
Key as follows:
Cino Moscatelli (centre of the car saluting), born 1908, lathe worker, joins
Communist youth wing and Communist Party in the early 1920s, spends three
years in Moscow 1927–30. He then moves to France, from where the party
sends him into fascist Italy in 1930, where he is arrested after a few months.
He spends most of the next 13 years in jail, and like many other activists is
released in the late summer of 1943. He is commanding the column entering
the city, which has just come down from the mountains after two years of
guerrilla warfare.
Teresa Mondini, ‘Maruska’ (to Moscatelli’s right), a female radio operator,
member of Moscatelli’s division up in the mountains. She has a Russian
nickname because she was born in the Soviet Union, the daughter of two
anti-fascists living in exile. When the Resistance began she fi rst asked to be
parachuted into Yugoslavia, and then crossed the border into Italy.
Don Sisto Bighiani (behind Teresa Mondini), born 1920, a young priest who
immediately joined the Resistance, taking part in many military actions. A
political commissar of Moscatelli’s 82nd ‘Osella’ brigade, famous for the
phrase ‘On your knees to pray, on your feet to fi ght!’
Pietro Secchia (the silhouette of the top of his head is just visible, slightly
behind both Bighiani and Moscatelli), born 1903, joins the Socialist Party
youth federation in 1919 and is a founder member of the Italian Communist
Party in 1921. Receives his fi rst jail sentence at the end of 1922. He spends
most of the 1920s in France and Russia, and is arrested in Italy in January
1931, and held in prison until July 1943. He is the overall political commissar
of all the communist-inspired Garibaldi brigades in occupied Italy, and is the
party’s main military organiser.
Luigi Longo (the right profi le of his face is visible, behind Moscatelli’s left
shoulder) born 1900, he joins the Socialist Party in Turin as a teenager, and
is a founder member of the Communist Party in 1921. In 1926 he is forced
to emigrate to France, and then to Russia. In 1936 he joins the Spanish
Civil War, quickly becoming Inspector General of the International Brigades.
Returning to France, in 1940 the authorities deport him to Italy when the
Second World War began and he is imprisoned until the summer of 1943,
when he quickly becomes the Communist Party leader in occupied Italy. He
becomes the commander of the PCI-inspired Garibaldi brigades, and deputy
commander of the CVL, the overall military structure of the Resistance. Later,
from 1964 to 1972, he was the leader of the Communist Party.
Alessandro Vaia (in front of Longo and to Moscatelli’s lower left) born 1907,
organiser of the Communist Youth wing in the early 1920s, arrested and
given a four-and-a-half year sentence in 1927. Released in 1932, he fi rst
moves to France, then the USSR, then to Spain in 1937 and became Garibaldi
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix
Brigade commander. In the Italian Resistance he was initially commander in
the Marche region, and then commissar for the whole of Milan.
Giovanni Pesce (dressed in a raincoat, in front row, with a machine gun cradled
over his left arm) born 1918. From an anti-fascist family, which was forced to
migrate to France when he was fi ve. At 11 he was herding cows, at 14 he starts
work in a coal mine in southern France. He joins the International Brigades
in the Spanish Civil War aged just 18, where he was wounded three times.
As with Luigi Longo, he was deported back to Italy from France in 1940 and
imprisoned for three years. Released in August 1943, he began organising
urban ‘terrorist’ groups in Turin, where he was again wounded. Because his
face was known, he moved to Milan where he rebuilt clandestine resistance
groups, personally assassinating dozens of fascists and Nazis.
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