40 Testimony of Marco Gatti, in ANED, Gli scioperi del marzo 1944, p. 54.
41 ‘Saluto agli operai dell’Italia occupata’, La Democrazia del Lavoro, 20 March 1944.
42 ‘Non è l’ultimo’, Italia Nuova, 20 March 1944.
43 ‘Scioperi e Resistenza’, Risorgimento Liberale, Rome edition, 15 March 1944. The Northern edition of March 1944 published article ‘Il successo dello sciopero politico’, which described the strike’s ‘unexpected’ success.
44 For an analysis of such an attitude among the medium and small industrialists in the Biellese, see Dellavalle, Operai, pp. 54–6, 68–72, 166.
45 ‘Rapporto da Torino’, signed ‘Giovanni’, 6 October 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI).
46 See ANED, Gli scioperi del marzo 1944, p. 37.
47 See E. Falck, ‘Fabbriche in Lombardia’, in Anche l’Italia ha vinto 16 (December 1945), pp. 259–63.
48 Report from the head of the Party’s political secretariat, June 1944 (cited in Deakin, Brutal Friendship, p. 702).
49 Bocca, La Repubblica di Mussolini, p. 187. Bocca gave his tenth chapter the title ‘Il partito dell’industria’ (‘The party of industry’).
50 Inverni (V. Foa), I partiti, p. 22.
51 The author in dialogue with Foa, September 1986. See Note 51 of Chapter 6.1.
52 ‘Per le bande dei volontari della libertà’, Avanti!, Rome edition, 30 December 1943.
53 Gobetti, Diario partigiano, p. 199 (entry for 20 September 1944).
54 Letter ‘Cari compagni’, 19 September 1944 (IZDG, envelope 272b, folder V/1). In AS Genova, CLN, packet 2, folder 7, there are many documents on the aid given by various firms to the CLN. A list of Pirelli’s contributions to the Resistance – the conspicuous financial support appears, here, alongside the fact that ‘a son of Doctor Alberto (Giovanni) was a partisan in Valtellina’ – appears in a 2 May 1945 memorandum ‘For the attention of His Excellency Aldobrando Medici Tornaquinci (ISRT, Archivio Medici Tornaquinci, envelope 11, 1, n. 16).
55 Francesco to Amos, 16 April 1945 (Upper Lombardy) (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 636–7).
56 Bruzzone and Farina, eds, La Resistenza taciuta, pp. 147–8.
57 See ‘Paura’, L’Italiano, 15 March 1944.
58 An explicit, provocative argument of this nature was made by the Liberal and Christian-Democrat representatives at a meeting of the Ligurian regional CLN of 6 December 1944, when the layoffs at San Giorgio were discussed (see Resistenza e ricostruzione in Liguria, pp. 162–6).
59 See, for example, the editorial ‘Sciopero generale’ in L’Unità, Northern edition, 25 January 1944.
60 These being the titles of two articles published in the 25 November 1943 Northern edition of L’Unità.
61 ‘La classe operaia non deve pagare le spese della guerra imperialista’, L’Unità, Northern edition, 12 October 1943.
62 ‘Rapporto sulla situazione nelle fabbriche’, signed ‘Giovanni’, December 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI).
63 ‘Spezzare la coalizione dei negrieri e degli affamatori’, L’Unità, Northern edition, 7 November 1943. The Todt Organisation was in charge of the work that needed to be carried out for the German armed forces. Kurt Sauckel was plenipotentiary for sourcing manpower. See, similar to the sense of the piece in the Milan edition, the 10 November Rome edition’s article ‘La disoccupazione e i piani nazisti’.
64 See INSMLI, CLNAI, envelope 8, folder 2, sub folder 10 (12 February 1945).
65 See ‘Rapporto di un organizzatore comunista sulle agitazioni operaie di fine ottobre [1944] contro le deportazioni’, cited in Gibelli, Genova operaia, p. 336.
66 See Gorrieri, La Repubblica di Montefiorino, chapter ‘Operazione ‘mano d’opera’ per la Germania’, p. 321.
67 Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. II, pp. 72–4. The directives were published in La nostra lotta, 2, 11, 10 July 1944, pp. 7–9.
68 See, for example, the 21 June 1944 Northern edition of L’Unità, and similar appeals made in the 10, 15 and 25 July and 7 August issues.
69 On this, see Collotti, L’amministrazione tedesca, pp. 162–3, 190.
70 See the letter from Valle di Susa Group Divisional Command to the Command of the Lera Brigade of the GL 5th Alpine Division, 30 December 1944 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 159–60).
71 The appeal to Biella workers – drawn up by local Communists, who signed it in the name of the CLN (the same appeal calling on them to refuse participation in the elections for the Fascist internal commissions) – was criticised by the PCI leadership on account of its weak links with shop floor reality (see, on this episode, Dellavalle, Operai, pp. 90–2).
72 ‘Operai in guardia! Gli industriali vi vendono ai tedeschi. Non un operaio né una macchina in Germania!’, L’Unità, Northern edition, 25 January 1944.
73 See, for example, the leaflet distributed among the workers of Forlì on the occasion of the March 1944 strikes (cited in Flamigni and Marzocchi, Resistenza in Romagna, p. 289).
74 ‘L’ultima piaga: il collaborazionismo’, L’Italia Libera, Lombardy edition, 18 February 1944.
75 See Dellavalle, Operai, pp. 229–33.
76 ISRT, CVL, envelope 205, folder Officine Galileo, and Carte Francesco Berti, envelope 1, folder 1, Verbali del CTLN; Contini, Memoria e storia, p. 309.
77 Archivio della Camera dei Deputati, Atti Assemblea Costituente, 3a commissione per l’esame dei disegni di legge, 24–25 January 1947. The record of the meeting is republished in R. Romboli and C. Fiumanò, Il contributo della Costituente alla legislazione ordinaria, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1980, pp. 532–6.
78 See, for example, Sandrelli’s 2 November 1943 report from Turin (‘Al Centro’, IG, Archivio PCI).
79 See the ‘Lettera agli attivisti del Partito’ and ‘Rapporto sulla situazione nelle fabbriche’, both from Turin, December 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI).
80 ‘Rapporto sul lavoro di Partito in Bergamo’, not signed, 29 December 1943 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. I, p. 191).
81 G. Diena, ‘La rivoluzione minimalista’, Quaderni dell’Italia Libera, April 1945, 16, p. 17.
82 See, on this, V. Foa, ‘Introduzione’ in P. Grifone, Il capitale finanziario in Italia, Einaudi, Turin 1971.
83 See ‘Sunto di quanto avvenuto in questo ultimo periodo che va dal 19 novembre al 24 novembre alla Viberti’, unsigned, and ‘Rapporto sulla situazione nelle fabbriche’, signed ‘Rosa’, 23 December 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI).
84 See Briguglio, Clero e contadini, p. 340.
85 Unpublished diary of G. Manni
86 Quoted in A. Scalpelli, ‘Quinta Sezione: Sciopero!’, in La Resistenza racconta, Milan: Il calendario del popolo, n.d.
87 See the article on the Turin strike in Voce Operaia, 16 December 1943.
88 See Colombi’s 13 December 1944 ‘Informazione da Torino’ (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, p. 70) and R. Gobbi, ‘Note sulla commissione d’epurazione del CLN regionale piemontese e sul caso Valletta’, in Il Movimento di liberazione in Italia, October–December 1967, No. 89, pp. 57–73.
89 Testimonies of Dante Bartolini and Comunardo Tobia, in Portelli, Biografia di una città, pp. 209, 286.
90 Interview with the Engineer Brini, in Contini, Memoria e storia, p. 209.
91 ‘Insegnamenti ed esame critico’, a PCI document cited in Ganapini, Lotte operaie: Milano, p. 168.
92 See the testimonies of Corrado Polli, Berto Guarducci and Ugo Cellini, collected in Contini, Memoria e storia, pp. 95, 159, 294.
93 Testimony of Emilio Ferri (Portelli, Biografia di una città, p. 92).
94 Testimony of Raffaele Chiavacci, PCI member, laid off from the Officine Galileo in 1954 (Contini, Memoria e storia, p. 328; see also p. 342).
95 Testimony of Corrado Polli (Contini, Memoria e storia, pp. 101–3).
96 ‘Sacrifice and organisation: … proletarian virtues’ – so commented L’Unità, Rome edition, 15 March 1944, with reference to the strikes in Northern and Central Italy.
97 Faced with this request (made on 3 Apr
il 1945), on 8 September the CLN decided not to answer (AS Genova, CLN, packet 2, folder 7). See Resistenza e ricostruzione in Liguria, p. 234.
98 See De Luna, Lotte operaie e Resistenza, pp. 508, 511.
99 From the aforementioned testimony of Angelo Raffaelli (Contini, Memoria e storia, pp. 346, 351).
100 ‘Rapporto sulla situazione nelle fabbriche’ by Giovanni, December 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI).
101 See Gibelli, Genova operaia, p. 47.
102 ‘Istruzioni del PCI di Fornaci di Barga ai suoi delegati nel CLN locale e nella commissione di epurazione interna’ (quoted in the laureate thesis of Giovanna Nannini, Università di Pisa, 1976, on the Resistance in Garfagnana).
103 See ‘Informazioni da Milano’, 22 April 1945 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, p. 671).
104 Laureate thesis of Katia Sonetti, Università di Pisa, 1980, on post-war reconstruction in Piombino.
105 Quoted from La Nuova Stampa of 3 November 1945, in Quazza, Resistenza e storia d’Italia, p. 387. Quazza noted that the phrase does not appear in the version printed in Togliatti’s Discorsi di Torino (pp. 38–62).
106 This argument was used to overcome the diffidence that Paduan workers showed towards engineering staff. See the record of the ‘Riunione dei rappresentanti di Partito’ (‘Meeting of Party representatives’), in a Padua workshop, 18 March 1945 (IG, Archivio PCI; reproduced in part in Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 490–4).
107 INSMLI, CLNAI, envelope 8, folder 12, sub folder 4 (without date, presumably from March 1944).
108 See the meeting records published in the volume edited by P. Rugafiori (Resistenza e ricostruzione in Liguria): they demonstrate frequent but far-from-conclusive discussions on this theme, referring back to the decisions of other bodies.
109 See ‘Delibera sulle commissioni di epurazione’, 26 October 1944, in Atti CLNAI, pp. 199–200.
110 See the 16 October 1944 remarks by the president of the commission, Cesare Merzagora, cited in Ganapini, Una città, la guerra, p. 178.
111 A principle enunciated, for example, in the Lombardy edition of L’Italia Libera, 9 June 1944, in the article ‘L’epurazione dell’industria’.
112 Something of this idea appears in Foa’s ‘Introduzione’ in Grifone, Il capitale finanziario in Italia, p. xvi.
113 ‘Un po’ più di dignità’, in Lavoranti chimici, Turin, 23 December 1944.
114 The story of the episode is told in an anonymous report on the November 1943 strikes in Turin, entitled ‘Cause e sviluppi dell’agitazione’ (IG, Archivio PCI).
115 Interview with Emilio Guglielmino in A voi cari compagni, edited by S. Tatò, Bari: De Donato, 1981, p. 27
116 ISRT, CTLN envelope II, folder 9 (17 September 1945); record of the 2 March 1946 meeting, featuring a discussion of a strike taking place in one Castelnuovo dei Sabbioni factory in protest against the readmittance of an engineer who had already previously been purged (ISRT, Carte Francesco Berti, envelope 1, folder 1).
117 Voce Operaia, 16 December 1943.
118 ‘Noi ferrovieri’, L’Unità, Northern edition, 10 March 1944.
119 See the use of this expression in Operai e contadini.
120 Cicchetti, Il campo giusto, pp. 17, 34.
121 See the preface to B. Guidetti Serra, Compagne, Turin: Einaudi 1977, pp. XV; and V. De Grazia and L. Passerini, ‘Alle origini della cultura di massa. Cultura popolare e fascismo in Italia’, in La Ricerca Folclorica, April 1983, 7, p. 24.
122 Interview, cited above, with the Engineer Brini, in Contini, Memoria e storia, p. 200.
123 Interview with Ugo Cellini, born 1911, in Contini, Memoria e storia, p. 296.
124 IG, Archivio PCI. Out of 14,000 workers at Mirafiori, seventy were Communists, in addition to those who entered the partisan bands, according to the ‘Rapporto sulla situazione dell’organizzazione di Torino e provincia’, 25 December 1943, signed ‘Bianchi’ (IG, Archivio PCI).
125 Testimony of Lucia Vernaccioni, in issue zero of Orsa Minore, summer 1981 (quoted in Portelli, Biografia di una città, p. 76).
126 Typewritten copy, signed ‘F.S.’, in IZDG, envelope 534, folder III/B.
127 Testimony of Cornelio Giuseppe De Taddeo (Bravo and Jalla, La vita offesa, p. 232). Of course, there also exist reports of work done badly on purpose (pp. 216–17, 256).
128 Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, p. 98.
129 ‘Vita di Partito’ in L’Unità, Northern edition, 21 June 1944.
130 Contini, Memoria e storia, p. 9.
131 Testimony of Arnaldo Menichetti, in Portelli, Biografia di una città, p. 300 and of Alfredo Mazzoni, born 1905, in Contini, Memoria e storia, p. 311.
132 ‘Festa del lavoro all’Ilva’, in the Naples La Voce of 18 May 1945, signalled that the workers had contributed in various ways to the reconstruction of Bagnoli, above all by means of offering their labour out-of-hours. A similar tale with regard to Alfa Romeo workers in Pomigliano d’Arco was published in Il Risorgimento of 12 August 1945, in the article ‘Com’ è risorta un’industria’ (I thank Gloria Chianese for having given me this information). However, this zeal was not always appreciated, even among workers who felt reconstruction to be their duty: see the testimony of Pietro Cornaglia, concerning Breda in Marghera, in A voi cari compagni, p. 97. For the other episode referred to in the text, see ‘Dichiarazione comune fatta dai cln aziendali riuniti il 1a giugno 1945 presso la sede del gruppo comunista di Busto Arsizio’ (AS Varese, CLN, envelope 10).
133 Paolino Ranieri, cited in the laureate thesis of Chiara Federici, Università di Pisa, 1976, on post-war rebuilding in La Spezia.
134 See, for example, ‘Dichiarazione’, a statement approved by the national council of the PSIUP held in Naples from 2 to 5 September 1944, with the participation of representatives of the occupied regions (Il Partito socialista e la trasformazione politica e sociale del paese, no date or location). In the first issue of L’Avanti! printed in Bari, it said that if the workers had to pay for reconstruction, this reconstruction could not but be socialist in character (‘Caos e ordine socialista’, in the October 1943 edition).
135 Testimony of Ida Rovelli, from Milan, a PCI member since 1940, in A voi cari compagni, p. 71.
136 An expression used by Portelli with reference to the years 1919–22, in his Biografia di una città, p. 146.
137 Testimony of Fioravante Zannarini, from Bologna, a Communist from 1921, in A voi cari compagni, p. 68, and that of Nelia Benissone Costa, a working woman, a Communist from 1938, in Bruzzone and Farina, eds, La Resistenza taciuta, p. 57.
138 Testimony of Silvano Consolini, in A voi cari compagni, p. 79.
139 ‘Politica e azione’, in the Northern edition of 25 July 1944, part of the ‘Vita di Partito’ series.
140 Letter ‘Cari compagni’, January 1945 (IG, BG, 01755).
141 Report ‘Caratteristiche generali della zona’, March 1944 (IG, Archivio PCI).
142 Commissar’s report on the meetings held on 31 October and 1 and 3 November 1944 (IG, BG, 010286).
143 IG, BG, Emilia-Romagna, G.IV.3.3.
144 ‘Annibale’ to ‘Buloff [sic] and Falco’, 5 December 1944, in Casali, Il movimento di liberazione a Ravenna, vol. II, p. 246.
145 ‘Estratto da un rapporto da Milano’, 15 December 1944, in Secchia, Il PCI e la guerra di liberazione, p. 708.
146 ‘Relazione sull’attività di V. in O.’, Liguria, April 1944 (?), where the ‘lively discussions’ on this point dated back to the forty-five days under Badoglio before the armistice (IG, BG, 09977).
147 ‘Avanti la gioventù socialista!’, editorial of Avanguardia. Giornale della gioventù socialista, June 1944.
148 See G. and E. Varlecchi, Potente, p. 87.
149 G. and E. Varlecchi, Potente, pp. 35, 193–5.
150 As can be deduced from many of the interviews cited in this volume.
151 Artom, Diari, p. 98 (2 December 1943).
152 ‘Notizie varie del 27 gennaio 1945’, by the Command of the 8th Asti Div
ision, which speaks of the shooting of Tom (IG, BG, 05845); the last letter of Eusebio Giambone (LRI, p. 106); Il Combattente, 3–4, January–February 1944, on the shooting of Gino Bozzi.
153 ‘It is more difficult to make it understood that this tomorrow is not in contradiction with the Party’s policy today’, continued Osvaldo Negarville’s report from Turin, 12 January 1944, cited in Dellavalle, Lotte operaie: Torino, p. 230.
154 See, for example, the article ‘Collaborazione dei lettori’ in L’Unità, Northern edition, 7 September 1944, on the responses to a questionnaire distributed by the Party’s Milan federation. See also the series of articles ‘Per la formazione ideologica dei quadri’ (‘For the ideological development of the Party’s cadre’) in the Rome edition. On the Marxist texts with the greatest circulation during the Resistance, see Ragionieri, Il partito comunista, pp. 400–1.
155 Scoccimarro to the Milan comrades, 20 December 1943, in Longo, I centri dirigenti del PCI, p. 267.
156 See M.A. and S. Timpanaro’s introduction to G. and E. Varlecchi, Potente, p. 37 (see also p. 195).
157 See the letter from the Commissariat of the Val di Susa Divisions Group to the Command of the 17th Brigade, 17 December 1944 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 102–4).
158 Unsigned letter, no date, ‘Al Comitato della zona di Faenza’ (IG, BG, Emilia-Romagna, G.IV.3.2).
159 ‘Linee programmatiche generali del Partito Comunista’, in the 15 October 1944 edition. The paper also featured a letter from ‘a woman comrade’ on the tasks of education ‘in a democratic or COMMUNIST system’.
160 Letter of 2 April 1945, in Secchia, Il PCI e la guerra di liberazione, pp. 1012–13.
161 Letter of 24 October 1944, to the Command of the 6th Langhe Division. The authors recommend an attentive reading of the article ‘Responsabilità’, published in La nostra lotta, vol. II: 17, 13 October 1944, pp. 14–15 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. II, pp. 480–2).
162 ‘Verbale riunione COM-ORGA’, Milan, 5 December 1944 (INSMLI, CLNAI, envelope 8, folder 2, subfolder 12).
163 Ibid.
164 Testimony of Anna Cinanni, in Bruzzone and Farina, eds, La Resistenza taciuta, p. 106.
165 Piergiovanni Permoli, ed., Lezioni sull’antifascismo, Bari: Laterza, 1962, p. 285.
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