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The Italian Resistance: Fascists, Guerrillas and the Allies PDF

273 Pages·2009·1.91 MB·English
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The Italian Resistance BBeehhaann 0000 pprree ii 2200//44//0099 1155::0022::4400 BBeehhaann 0000 pprree iiii 2200//44//0099 1155::0022::4411 THE ITALIAN RESISTANCE Fascists, Guerrillas and the Allies Tom Behan PLUTO PRESS www.plutobooks.com BBeehhaann 0000 pprree iiiiii 2200//44//0099 1155::0022::4411 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 sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. The paper may contain up to 70 per cent post consumer waste. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Sidmouth, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton Printed and bound in the European Union by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne BBeehhaann 0000 pprree iivv 2200//44//0099 1155::0022::4422 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 BBeehhaann 0000 pprree vv 2200//44//0099 1155::0022::4422 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 BBeehhaann 0000 pprree vvii 2200//44//0099 1155::0022::4433 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 BBeehhaann 0000 pprree vviiii 2200//44//0099 1155::0022::4433 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 BBeehhaann 0000 pprree vviiiiii 2200//44//0099 1155::0022::4433 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. BBeehhaann 0000 pprree iixx 2200//44//0099 1155::0022::4433

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