15 Letter of 13 December 1943, in Longo, I centri dirigenti del PCI, p. 256. The criticism related to an article entitled ‘Perché è necessario che prenda il potere il Comitato di liberazione nazionale’, which appeared 7 November in the northern edition of L’Unità.
16 Article entitled ‘Al popolo italiano, agli amici, ai nemici’, in La Libertà, 27 October 1943.
17 Undated document of the Action Party of the North, commenting on the Salerno turning-point (mutilated, in INSMLI, CLNAI, envelope 8, folder 12). Probably it concerned the ‘plan for a political declaration to submit for approval by the Central Executive in Rome’.
18 Michel, ‘Gli Alleati e la Resistenza in Europa’, p. 62.
19 Report by the Command of the 8th Asti division to the delegation for Piedmont, 14 November 1944 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. II, p. 576).
20 Leading article entitled ‘Riscossa’, in La Riscossa italiana, 20 October 1943.
21 ‘Norms of a general character for the forthcoming events’, sent to the commanders of the formations 3 May 1944 (ISRP, envelope 29, folder b). On the refusal by the Val Varaita to submit to the orders of Captain Patt, chief of the American mission, see Giovana, Storia di una formazione partigiana, p. 266.
22 Letter to the Piedmont regional military Command, 13 February 1945, in which advice is asked about how one should behave towards another captain, Chape, suspected of being an agent of British espionage (IG, BG, Piemonte, document 3). The fears displayed by this captain that the workers and the population would provoke disorder during the transition phase are mentioned in a letter that ‘the comrades’ sent Pietro and Barbato of the 1st Piedmont Garibaldi division on the eve of the Liberation (IG, BG, 04426).
23 Letter of the inspector of the CUMER delegation for North Emilia to ‘dear comrades’, 13 December 1944 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 74–6).
24 The Veneto insurrectional triumvirate to the PCI representative in the regional CLN, 19 March 1945 (ibid., p. 501).
25 This is what Vanni (G. Padoan) relates in Abbiamo lottato insieme, pp. 149–51.
26 This is what is said in the protest against the increasing interference and arrogance of the British Cherokee mission that the Biella zone Command sent on 7 April 1945 to the Piedmont delegation of the Command of the Garibaldi brigades and on 8 April to the CMRP (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 586–8). Regarding the Cherokee mission, see Poma and Perona, La Resistenza nel Biellese, pp. 386–9.
27 ‘Estratto di un rapporto da Milano’, 15 December 1944, in Secchia, Il PCI e la guerra di liberazione, p. 709.
28 See Cicchetti, Il campo giusto, p. 260.
29 Moscatelli to Livio (Paolo Scarpone), commissar of the Ossola zone single Command, 12 February 1945 (IG, BG, 07901).
30 March 1944 report by V.B., who had worked close to the front (IG, Archivio PCI).
31 See the undated (late 1944?) report on the ‘military solution’ in Carnia (IG, BG, 09332).
32 On 13 November 1944 the English General Harold Alexander, commander-in-chief in Italy, issued a proclamation in which, declaring the conclusion of the summer campaign, he invited the partisans to ‘cease operations organised on a large scale’. This proclamation has been the centre of much controversy, for a recent re-examination of the question, see E. Aga-Rossi, ‘La politica anglo-americana verso la Resistenza italiana’, in L’Italia nella seconda guerra mondiale e nella Resistenza, pp. 150–4. The proclamation had a depressing effect, but its provisions were only partly carried out, not least because of the ambiguously interpretable circular, written by Luigi Longo, that was issued on 2 December by the CVL General Command. The proclamation and the circular are published in Secchia and Frassati, La Resistenza a gli Alleati, pp. 151–9.
33 Undated report (October 1944?) by the 1st Gramsci (Ossola-Valsesia) Garibaldi division (IG, BG, 06746).
34 ‘Rapporto informativo dall’Emilia (da parte del PCI, novembre 1944)’. In the Communist federation of Modena there was a justifiably intense concern to avoid a situation of the kind that had occurred in Warsaw (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. II, pp. 666–71).
35 ‘Rapporto informativo n. 4’ of the Command of the group of Padana (Po valley), SAP brigades inferior to the delegation for Lombardy of the General Garibaldi Command, 15 December 1944 (ibid., vol. III, pp. 80–2).
36 The commissariat of the group of Valle di Susa divisions, 17 December 1944, to the Command of the 17th brigade regarding the newspaper Il Partigiano (ibid., p. 103).
37 Cecco ‘ai compagni Livio e Cyrano’, 20 December 1944 (ibid., pp. 118–20).
38 ‘Information from Milan’ on a meeting of the 4th sector, 14 April 1945 (ibid., p. 622). Compare the clumsiness of the poster put up on 9 October 1944 by the new mayor of Forlì, Franco Agosto, for the liberation of the city: ‘We salute the Allies, who made a decisive contribution in blood to the victory’, quoted in Flamigni and Marzocchi, Resistenza in Romagna, p. 316. The two authors record also the chilly welcome that the Allied troops were given in Forlì (ibid., p. 246).
39 The reactionaries were trusting in the break-up of the coalition, but would be disappointed – this was the line taken by the party and made known in a ‘circular’ of 1 January 1945 by the Command of the group of Milan city and province SAP brigades (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 180–3).
40 Article entitled ‘Parole agli impazienti’, Rome edition, 5 January 1944.
41 See 22 February 1945 reports on the ‘colloquio con la missione alleata per la Liguria’ and on the ‘incontro fra i delegati del CLN per la Liguria e la missione alleata della 6a zona’ (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 389–91 and p. 392, n. 2).
42 This, for example, is the opinion expressed by the Communist Alfredo in his ‘Impressioni generali riportate durante la mia permanenza nella zone liberata (24 January–14 March 1944)’, ibid., vol. I, pp. 308–10.
43 Testimony of a partisan recorded in Bernardo, Il momento buono, p. 171.
44 The Command of the 6th Liguria zone to the person responsible for military matters of Linguaria insurrectional triumvirate, 21 January 1945 concerning contacts that had been had with the mission in Liguria (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 270–1).
45 ‘Responsible comrades’ to ‘dear comrades’, val di Lanzo, 7 August 1944, ‘segreto’. The subjects of the verb ‘dicono’ (‘they say’) are three Italians, two of whom are Communists, who had enlisted in the American army and parachuted into the zone (ibid., vol. II, p. 214).
46 See the Informazioni da Torino, undated (IG, BG, 04031).
47 Anonymous report, undated, on the zone of Montefiorino (IG, BG, Emilia-Romagana, G.IV.3.3).
48 See Vanni (G. Padoan), Abbiamo lottato insieme, p. 140.
49 The Communist federation of Modena to the party committee for the mountains, 8 January 1945 (ISRR, Archivio del triumvirato insurrezionale Emilia-Romagna).
50 ‘Rapporto di un partigiano’, undated, on the battle of Montefiorino, which began 30 July 1944 (IG, BG, 02255-57).
51 This is what the Nanetti Garibaldi division did. See the Command’s ‘communications’ to De Luca, inspector of the Triveneta delegation (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, p. 61).
52 Mutilated letter to ‘caro Osvaldo’, 21 October 1944, Ossola zone (IG, BG, 06645).
53 See the proceedings of the conference L’altro dopoguerra, esp. part II, La gente e la guerra, ed. Paolo Sorcinelli, of the proceedings of the conference Linea gotica 1944. A lively description of the impressions aroused in ‘G.I. Joe dell’armata americana e Tommy Smith della 8a armata brittanica’ by an Italy so different from what they had imagined it to be like was given by G. Spini, ‘Alleati e Resistenza’, in Fascismo e Resistenza (1936– 1948). Lezioni e testimonianze, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1962, pp. 565–76.
54 This is the reason why Bianco, for example, does not have an enthusiastic memory of the Anglo-American ex-prisoners who joined the GL formations: little fighting spirit, and moreover they preferred Switzerland, in fact. By contrast, Bianco had an excellent
opinion of the behaviour of the French, who were evidently more highly motivated (Bianco, Guerra partigiana, p. 124).
55 See, for example, the testimony of private Edwin Hogg, protected by sharecroppers in the Prato area, in R. Absalom, ‘Ex prigionieri alleati e assistenza popolare nella zona della linea gotica 1943–44’, in Rochat, Santarelli e Sorcinelli, Linea gotica 1944, p. 471, note 28.
56 See what Battaglia writes, Un uomo, esp. pp. 76–8. There is a relatively large number of memoirs and reminiscences about Allied prisoners who, in various ways, joined the Resistance forces. Here I shall simply record S. Hood, Pebbles from My Skull, London: Hutchinson, 1963; see also P. Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943–1988, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990, pp. 2–3.
57 See Bernardo, Il momento buono, pp. 115, 177–8.
58 To be exact, Portelli refers to the city of Terni, where the bombardments actually did compel the population to engage in an almost total exodus. See the essay ‘Assolutamente niente. L’ esperienza degli sfollati a Terni’, in the proceedings of the above-mentioned conference, L’altro dopoguerra, pp. 135–44.
59 See one of the few accurate enquiries on the subject: C. Rosati, ‘La memoria dei bombardamenti. Pistoia 1943–1944’, in Rochat, Santarelli and Sorcinelli, Linea gotica 1944, pp. 409–32.
60 ‘Rapporto sulla situazione nelle fabbriche’, signed Giovanni, December 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI). The document is quoted, with the title ‘Aeronautica d’Italia’, in Dellavalle, Operai, p. 222.
61 See what Fenoglio writes, Il partigiano Johnny, p. 216 (English translation by Stuart Hood, Johnny the Partisan, London: Quartet Books, 1994).
62 For the attribution to the Fascists of responsibility for the bombing raids preceding 25 July, see Gallerano, Gli italiani in guerra, pp. 308–16.
63 A vast assortment of posters, postcards and pamphlets stigmatising the Allied bombings is contained in Fondo RSI. Italia cattolica demanded the excommunication of the bombers, in support of the thesis of the Venetian Fascist newspaper Fronte Unico, and in controversy with the bishop of Cremona, who claimed that the excommunication of non-believers was out of the question. Catholicus, Parole chiare di un cattolico 15 January 1955 (quoted in C. Scagliola, L’Italia cattolica, ‘Un foglio al servizio della RSI’, in Poggio, La Repubblica sociale italiana, p. 159). The bishop of Padua, monsignor Agostini, explicitly invoked ‘divine punishment on the enemy bombers’. See Canfora, La sentenza, p. 79.
64 See, for example, in the northern edition of L’Unità, the articles entitled ‘Lo sciopero generale a Torino contro gli industriali profittatori’, 25 November 1943 and 10 July 1944, ‘500 workers assassinated by the Nazis (at the Dalmine plant), as a consequence in fact of their failure to sound the alarm’; a leaflet distributed by the CLN of Forlì after the 19 May 1944 air-raid (‘those responsible are the Fascists’), quoted in Flamigni and Marzocchi, Resistenza in Romagna, p. 192; the article entitled ‘Umanità nazifascista’, in La voce della realtà. Giornale murale per la populazione a cura della XIX brigata d’assalto Garibaldi Eusebio Giambone (Piedmont), 13 August 1944 (‘after all’, this article explained, ‘if the Fascists hadn’t helped the Germans things wouldn’t have come to this pass’). One Fascist reply was that it had been the Gaps who had cut the wires of the alarm system (report from Cremona by Luciano, 1 and 11 July 1944, in IG, BG, 011211).
65 See in the Catholic Il Segno and the monarchic L’Italia nuova the articles entitled ‘Le opere e i giorni del nazifascismo’ and ‘Dopo 14 secoli’, both 1 March 1944.
66 See the mural newspaper La voce della realtà, quoted above.
67 See, for example, the undated poster Al popolo di Vicenza of the local CLN on the air raids of 14 May and 18 November (IVSR, Archivio, section 1, envelope 49, CLN, Stampa non periodica). A specific accusation against the Communists is contained in a poster that was put up on the orders of Grazioli, the provincial chief of Turin, 18 April 1944 (Vaccarino, Gobetti and Gobbi, L’insurrezione di Torino, p. 209).
68 See Nelia Benissone Costa’s testimony in Bruzzone and Farina, La Resistenza taciuta, p. 58. Benissone Costa relates how she refused a reward of 20,000 lire offered to her after the Liberation for having accompanied some British escapees from a concentration camp into Switzerland. The aerial bombings of Turin had in fact been carried out above all by the RAF.
69 See his article entitled ‘Condizioni di armistizio’, in Rinascita, July 1944, quoted in Canfara, La sentenza, p. 269.
70 ‘Bombardamenti’, in Aurora, 2 December 1943 (quoted in G. Bertolo, ‘Le Marche’, in Operai e contadini, p. 301).
71 ‘Qui gladio ferit gladio perit’, article that appeared in the Rome edition, 23 January 1944. See what Thomas Mann declared in April 1942 from an American radio station after a British air raid on Lubeck: ‘I think of Coventry, and I have no objections to the theory according to which we shall all pay’ (quoted in Canfora, La sentenza, p. 38).
72 And she added (8 December 1943): ‘We hate the Germans because it was they who liberated the Duce’. Her husband, a functionary in the prefecture, was as a result dismissed from his job (ACS, SPD, CR, RSI, envelope 24, folder 170, Pozzetti Giordano). See the parody that the Neapolitans had made of the popular song Oi Marì: ‘Se sente ‘na sirena / Nu brivide m’afferra / Ciurcillo ha fatta a guerra / Pe’ tante infamità. / Putisse ave’ ragione / Ma nuie che ce trasimme? / A Roma sta a sfaccimma / Iatela a bumbardà!’ ‘One hears a siren / A chill seizes me / Churchill makes war / With so much infamy / Maybe he is right / But what does it have to do with us? / The scum is in Rome / Bomb over there!’
73 Letter sent from Como: ‘Esame della correspondenza censurata al 30 giugno 1944’ (ACS, SPD, CR, RSI, envelope 9, folder 3).
74 ‘Fu necessario un manifestino’ (‘A leaflet was necessary’), explains Cri. in a report to ‘cari compagni’, late December 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI).
75 Article entitled ‘Problemi operai. L’acciaieria’, in L’Unità, organo umbro del PC, 10 January 1944 (ACS, SPD, CR, RSI, envelope 9, folder 3).
76 Article entitled ‘I bombardamenti aerei’, in Fratelli d’Italia, 5 May 1944. On 7 April 1944 Treviso had suffered a massive air raid, which the newspaper described as a ‘catastrofe’. The article said that ‘both Badoglio and the Allies have been repeatedly informed’ of the scant military results of the destruction caused.
77 See the document ‘Da parte del Comitato di Liberazione per l’Alta Italia’, 3 April 1944 (INSMLI, CLNAI, envelope 3, folder 3), brought to the notice of the Allies through the Lugano delegation (see Catalano, Storia del CLNAI, p. 152). The document gives the example of Padua. For analogous reactions in Genoa see A. Gibelli, Genova operaia nella Resistenza, Genoa: Istituto storico della Resistenza, 1968, pp. 162–3.
78 Article entitled ‘Parole agli Alleati’, 20 March 1944.
79 Article entitled ‘Bombardamenti’, August 1943. On the complaints by the members of the French Resistance against the Allied bombing see Michel, ‘Gli Alleati e la Resistenza in Europa’, p. 88. The fault of Vichy, certainly, wrote Provence Libre. Organe régional des Mouvements unis de la régionale des Mouvements unis de la résistance française, ‘mais les fautes des uns ne sauraient excuser les fautes des autres’, ‘the faults of one does not excuse the faults of the others’ (Les bombardements Anglo-Américains, 1 June 1944).
80 Voce Operaia, 19 November 1943, article entitled ‘I cannoni del Cremlino tuonano’.
81 ‘Esame della corrispondenza censurata al 30 giugno 1944’ (ACS, SPD, CR, RSI, envelope 9, folder 3).
82 It is enough to cite this testimony, which is if anything too drastic, by Altiero Spinelli, about the scant echo of the federalist manifesto of Ventotene: ‘We had in no way foreseen that, after the end of the war, Europeans would no longer be their own masters in their quest for their future, but that, having ceased to be the centre of the world, they would be heavily conditioned by extra-European powers’, Spinelli, Io Ulisse, pp. 311–12.
83 L’Osservatore Romano of
10 November 1943 reported that, on 7 November, de Gaulle, inaugurating the consultative assembly of Algiers, had complained that France had not been invited to the Moscow conference (held from 19 to 30 October 1943), and had contrasted this with what had instead occurred at the Congress of Vienna, where the new French rulers, wrote L’Osservatore, ‘were regarded as interpreters of that part of the nation which had no responsibility for the policy of the fallen regime’. A pamphlet, ‘Breve storia di cinque mesi’ (which declares itself as Actionist-inspired, though independent of the party), maintained (quoting pp. 95–6 of the Vatican paper) that this ‘is the situation of today’s Italy, which could, eadem ratione, aspire to be considered an equal’: provided, mind you, that it was not the king who would be sending his representatives to the peace talks.
84 Letter of 18 May 1945, marked as ‘secret’, and with Togliatti’s marginal note ‘parlatone con Badoglio’ (‘talk about it to Badoglio’) (IG, Archivio PCI, ‘Direzione Verbali della Delegazione PCI per l’Italia Meridionale’). Togliatti took an identical public position in the already-mentioned article ‘Condizioni di armistizio’ in Rinascita of July 1944 (quoted in Canfora, La sentenza, p. 269). In the party’s national council of 7 April 1945, he would repeat that ‘we could not expect that Italy would be treated as a country to be put on the same plane as the great Allied democratic countries’. Togliatti, Opere, vol. V, p. 115.
85 ‘Rivoluzione dall’alto?’, Rome edition, 20 May 1944.
86 See the text of the agreement of the upper Val Maira, stipulated on 30 May 1944 between D. L. Bianco and M. Juvenal (Giovana, Storia di una formazione partigiana, pp. 120–2).
87 Togliatti’s words in his speech at the Brancaccio theatre in Rome, 9 July 1944 (Togliatti, Opere, vol. V, p. 60).
88 The rumoured consignment of a third of the fleet to the USSR was considered an insult which, fortunately, London and Washington seemed to intend to spare us (leading article entitled ‘Cobelligeranza’, 20 March 1944).
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