A Civil War

by Claudio Pavone

  179 ‘Giustizia partigiana’, Il Partigiano alpino, Piedmont edition, August 1944 (cited in Falaschi, La Resistenza armata, p. 23).

  180 Report from the Montes organisation, December 1944, in Mautino, Guerra di popolo, p. 115. Note the episode recounted by Battaglia, Un uomo, p. 215, where a partisan killed two Germans who asked for his papers.

  181 F. Caracciolo di Castagneto, ’43–’44. Diario di Napoli, Florence: Vallecchi, 1964, p. 49 (29 September 1943 entry).

  182 Testimony of the partisan Moretto (Guido Cavalcabò), in G. and E. Varlecchi, Potente, p. 232.

  183 See the box ‘Sangue’ in Risorgimento Liberale, Rome edition, 5 May 1944.

  184 Artom, Diari, 8, 11 and 16 December 1943 (pp. 112, 115, 125).

  185 Fenoglio, I ventitré giorni, p. 9: ‘romantic, tremendous names, from Rolando to “Dynamite” ’.

  186 Ibid.

  187 ‘Istituto nazionale per la storia del movimento di liberazione in Italia’ (‘National institute for the history of the liberation movement in Italy’) was the name that Ferruccio Parri chose in 1949. The local institutes that sprang up in subsequent years, however, largely instead adopted names referring to ‘the history of the Resistance’ or similar.

  188 According to ‘Fuori dall’equivoco. Variazioni’, in La Voce del Popolo, 15 March 1944.

  189 The text was published in L’Italia Libera, Paris, 1 February 1945. Here, we read, ‘We are particularly close to the people of France, which has been able to write the heroic pages of the Resistance, a name that has now become epic, European.’

  190 ‘Al popolo italiano, agli amici, ai nemici’, La Libertà (Tuscany), 27 October 1943.

  191 The text of the agreement appears in Catalano, Storia del CLNAI, pp. 339–40.

  192 An example of the leaflet is held at the MRB.

  193 ‘Resistenza passiva’, signed by ‘the man in the street’, La Punta, 28 February 1944.

  194 See L’Unità, L’Italia Libera and Voce Operaia.

  195 ‘Non c’è tempo da perdere’ (‘No time to lose’), northern edition, 10 January 1944.

  196 IVSR, Stampa antifascista.

  197 Letter from the Command of the 40th Matteotti brigade to the ‘Delegazione Comando e al Comando regionale (unificato) lombardo’, 20 July 1944 (IG, BG, 0507).

  198 Subtitle of the article ‘La strage di Ferrara’, Rome edition, 29 November 1943.

  199 Bernardo, Il momento buono, p. 31.

  1 Letter of 8 October 1944 to the lieutenant colonel Pier Alessandro Vanni, commander of the formations deployed across the Casotto, Mongia and Tanaro valleys (INSMLI, CVL, envelope 27, folder 2, subfolder 1); I thank Gabriella Solaro for making me aware of their existence.

  2 Report from the political commissar of the Piedmont Command of the GL formations, Giorgio Agosti, 31 December 1944. Agosti refers to the ‘numerous shootings of common criminals, in some cases also our partisans’ (Formazioni GL, pp. 267–86).

  3 Revelli, La guerra dei poveri, p. 144 (16 October 1943), p. 177 (29 February 1944), and p. 184 (15 March 1944). See the comments of the partisan Gin, from the Ligurian-Emilian Appenines: ‘They want to make us live by stealing, so that tomorrow they might blackmail and slander us’ (Lazagna, Ponte rotto, p. 155).

  4 Conversation of the author with Nuto Revelli. Some Jews took refuge in Demonte, escaping the arrests of those who had been locked up in the Borgo San Dalmazzo camp after having come from Saint-Martin-Vésubie. On this affair, which speaks well of the Italian troops occupying southern France, see A. Cavaglion, Nella notte straniera. Gli Ebrei di Saint-Martin-Vésubie. 8 settembre – 21 novembre 1943, Cuneo: L’Arciere, 1991.

  5 Artom, Diari, p. 93 (28 November 1943); see also p. 141 (28 December 1943).

  6 Dellavalle, Operai, p. 84; Quazza, Un diario partigiano, pp. 154–6 (December 1943); Mautino, Guerra di popolo, p. 42; Battaglia, Un uomo, p. 130.

  7 C.’s report ‘on the first visit to the partisan formations in the Foligno zone’, 3 February 1944 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. I, p. 252).

  8 ‘Informazioni per l’Ufficio di organizzazione’, Turin, 10 October 1943 (Secchia, Il PCI e la guerra di liberazione, p. 122).

  9 Circular from the ‘Comando unificato Divisioni Valsesia Divisioni Ossola’, 6 September 1944 (IG, BG, 06274).

  10 Letter from the Command of the 40th Matteotti brigade (Valtellina) to Onit Nass, 14 July 1944 (ibid., 0490). On Onit Nass (Sandro Costantino), commander of the Gek group, see the letter from the Command of the 40th brigade to the vicar of Roncaglia, 14 July 1944 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. II, pp. 123–4 and the relevant notes).

  11 Letter from the Command of the Nanetti division to the Command of the Mazzini and Tollot brigades, 29 August 1944, and related attachments (ibid., pp. 283–9).

  12 Circular of 12 February 1945, ‘Inquadramento, disciplina, organizzazione’ (INSMLI, CVL, envelope 93, folder 5, subfolder a).

  13 Letter from the regional military command in the Veneto to the Vicenza provincial command, 15 September 1944, held at the Istituto veneto per la storia della Resistenza. Bernardo passes very severe judgment on Marozin: Il momento buono, pp. 76–8. Nor was there any succour for Marozin in the Enciclopedia dell’antifascismo e della Resistenza, insofar as he is named in the piece devoted to the Pasubio division, written by Renato Sandri.

  14 Minutes of the January 1945 and late September 1944 meetings of the Comando Piazza di Torino, in Vaccarino, Gobetti and Gobbi, L’insurrezione di Torino, pp. 116, 95. On the sense of alarm that arose among Turin’s Communists, on this score, see the warning sent to SAP companies, 25 January 1945 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 283–4) and the 15 June 1944 Grido di Spartaco’s denunciation of ‘Il nuovo Risorgimento italiano, movimento antitotalitario d’ordine e di ricostruzione’ as a ‘White Guard Movement’.

  15 See the 24 March 1945 circular from the ‘Comando Raggruppamento Brigate SAP Milano e Provincia’ (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 522–4). The birth of a ‘White army’ was referred to, with some apprehension, in the Bergamasco ‘Notiziario militare’ of December 1944 (IG, BG, 010599). On 26 February 1945, the ‘Comando della Divisione Belluno’ gave news, speaking in alarmed terms, of ‘irregular units who are taking it upon themselves to act as a police corps after the end of hostilities’, in a communication to all formations under its watch (Bernardo, Il momento buono, p. 247).

  16 ‘Le squadre di fabbrica’, L’Italia Libera, Lombardy edition, 18 February 1944.

  17 On all these points, I refer back to Eric Hobsbawm’s Bandits, New York: Delacorte Press, 1969, especially Chapter 7. See also P. Brunello, Ribelli, questuanti e banditi. Proteste contadine in Veneto e in Friuli, 1814–1866, Venice: Marsilio, 1981.

  18 P. Del Negro, ‘Garibaldi tra esercito regio e nazione armata: il problema del reclutamento’, in F. Mazzonis, ed., Garibaldi condottiero. Storia, teoria, prassi, Milan: Franco Angeli, 1984, pp. 253–310.

  19 Spinelli, Io, Ulisse, pp. 82–3. This response was praised by the organiser Giuseppe Dozza, because it was at odds with the kind of petty-bourgeois spirit that one might have suspected to lurk within the young Roman militant, given his social origin.

  20 Letter addressed to ‘caro Nagi’, undated, INSMLI, CLNAI, envelope 8, folder 2, subfolder 4.

  21 ‘Rapporto del triangolo dal settembre al dicembre 1943’, Secchia, Il PCI e la guerra di liberazione, p. 131.

  22 ‘Compagni della Delegazione’ to ‘caro Pietro’, 1 April 1945 (IG, BG, 010653).

  23 Circular from the Lombard Regional Command of the GL formations, to Provincial Command 734, 28 November 1944 (INSMLI, CVL, envelope 93, folder 5, subfolder a). ‘The watchword which is almost always respected is to take millions from the industrialist, but to pay the peasant for his hen’: according to Giorgio Agosti, in his above-cited 31 December 1944 report (Formazioni GL, p. 275).

  24 Words used in ‘Considerazioni sul lavoro della montagna e GAP’, concerning the Novara area, from late 1943 (IG, Archivio PCI).

  25 Note, for exampl
e, the case of the Basso brothers, who ultimately handed themselves in to the Fascists, and the commander Leo Vigna, who surrendered during a roundup – leaving his men at liberty – and was then shot together with two of them, having confessed to ‘violence against mountain-dwellers’. Dellavalle, Operai, p. 139. See also Giorgio Agosti’s 31 December 1944 report (Formazioni GL, pp. 267–86) and the account of Gino Pieri, Storia di partigiani, quoted in Falaschi, La Resistenza armata, p. 52.

  26 Fenoglio refers to the volunteers as ‘flowers and dregs’ in his Il partigiano Johnny, p. 154. Giovana uses the formulation ‘Neither heroes nor bandits’ in Storia di una formazione partigiana, p. 290. For the dregs who acted as flowers, but who the flowers could not vouch for, note the thieves of Rome’s San Lorenzo district, who in 1921 gave brave and disciplined support to the Arditi del Popolo in the fight against the Fascists (see L. Piccioni, San Lorenzo. Un quartiere romano durante il fascismo, Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 1984, p. 31).

  27 ‘Verbale del processo nei confronti del comandante di battaglione della 47a brigata, Juan’, 19 October 1944, in Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. II, pp. 453–5. Juan was shot.

  28 Piscitelli, Storia della Resistenza romana, pp. 230–1, and Perrone Capano, La Resistenza in Roma, vol. I, Chapter 6.

  29 Chiodi, Banditi, pp. 21–2 (20 April 1944).

  30 Mautino, Guerra di popolo, p. 62 (9 March 1944). See, in ibid., p. 86, the information on the Montes organisation, which had tried and executed partisans who had admitted their guilt in carrying out similar crimes (29 September 1944).

  31 Gorrieri, La Repubblica di Montefiorino, pp. 383–4.

  32 Portelli, Biografia di una città, p. 291.

  33 Lazagna, Ponte rotto, p. 61.

  34 Undated, printed poster, in INSMLI, CLNAI, envelope 6, folder 3, subfolder 17.

  35 Note from the Command of the 4th Piedmont zone to all formations under its watch, 24 October 1944 (IG, Archivio PCI). On the justice enforced by partisans in the Valle Germanasca, see D. Gay Rochat, La Resistenza nelle Valli Valdesi (1943–1944), Preface by L. Valiani, Claudiana, Turin: Claudiana, 1969, pp. 140–1.

  36 Communication from the ‘Comando Divisione Orobica’, 12 November 1944 (INSMLI, CVL, envelope 93, folder 5, subfolder a).

  37 Note the reports from 1 to 8 October 1944 held in IG, BG, 010202, 010203, 010205, 010206 (the first among them was published in Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. II, p. 415).

  38 Artom, Diari, pp. 174–5 (20 February 1944, when he was still with the Garibaldians).

  39 Ibid., p. 90 (27 November 1943) and p. 170 (18 February 1944).

  40 Quazza, Un diario partigiano. In the autonomous De Vitis division, hanging was also used to carry out capital sentences.

  41 Circular addressed ‘Ai Comandi dipendenti’, 1 January 1945, which adds, ‘Refusal to take responsibility clashes with the very nature of the Command’ (INSMLI, CVL, envelope 23, folder 1, subfolder 8).

  42 Chiodi, Banditi, p. 103 (29 December 1944).

  43 See Neppi Modona, ed., Giustizia penale, p. 183.

  44 See the records of the trial carried out by the Rosselli brigade No. 2, 17 July 1944 (ISRT, Carte Ramat, envelope 1, folder 2, subfolder 6).

  45 See the ‘brown report’ on the Nazi-Fascist attack of 2 July 1944, by the 1st Garibaldi division, Ossola-Valsesia zone, 4 August 1944 (IG, BG, 06202).

  46 Instructions from the Command of the 2nd Sector to the band and detachment commanders, 12 March 1944 (cited in Revelli, La guerra dei poveri, pp. 444–5); and the instructions from the head of the General Staff of the Garibaldi division ‘Natisone’, Carlino, 12 October 1944, on ‘comrades unsuitable for military service’, among them ‘the several carabinieri who are asthmatic, have rickets or coughing fits’ (ISRFVG, Fondo Rapuzzi, envelope 1, folder 1).

  47 Decreed 24 July 1944.

  48 Bianco, Guerra partigiana, pp. 56–7.

  49 Letter to the Command of the 9th Yugoslav Corps, 6 May 1944 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. I, pp. 381–2).

  50 ‘Relazione politica’, political report from the commissar Ilia and vice-commissar Boris of the Liguria Bonfante division (ibid., vol. III, p. 157).

  51 Mautino, Guerra di popolo, p. 70.

  52 Lazagna, Ponte rotto, pp. 177, 182, and a report from the Biella zone Command to the Piedmont Delegation, 7 April 1945 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, p. 586).

  53 Quoted in Tramontin, Contadini e movimento partigiano, pp. 304–5.

  54 Atti CVL, pp. 82–3.

  55 On 11 August 1944, the 1st Alpine GL division issued instructions in the same spirit as those of the CVL Command, insisting on the need to prepare regular trials, the only exception being flagrant acts of banditry (Revelli, La guerra dei poveri, pp. 460–1). Note, too, the ‘Norme per la constituzione e il funzionamento dei tribunali marziali presso le unità partigiane’, probably by the Emilia GL Command (August 1944?) (Formazioni GL, pp. 137–8).

  56 Letter from the Group Command for the Valsesia, Ossola, Cusio, and Verbano divisions, to the Command of the 1st Division, 10 December 1944 (IG, BG, 07332).

  57 Lazagna, Ponte rotto, p. 170.

  58 ‘Ordinanza del Comando della 13a zona’, 12 December 1944 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 64–7).

  59 See the sentence passed by the Special Assizes Court of Turin, 22 November 1951, quoted in Neppi Modona, Giustizia penale, pp. 179–81. On p. 64, it is noted that there do not exist full and trustworthy records of the sentences emanating from partisan tribunals.

  60 An observation suggested to me by Gabriella Solaro.

  61 Letter of 8 October 1944 to Vanni, (INSMLI, CVL, envelope 27, folder 2, subfolder 1)

  62 Weber, Economy and Society, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978, vol. I, p. 976. On the same question, seen in terms of the ‘political nature’ of a justice assumed to be impartial, see R. Canosa, ‘Un dibattito tra M. Foucault ed alcuni militanti maoisti sulla giustizia popolare’, in Critica del diritto 1: 1 (January–April 1974), pp. 33–56. My thanks to Gabriella Solaro for making me aware of this text.

  63 Quazza, Un diario partigiano, p. 154 (13 December 1943).

  64 Interview with Ildebrando Bilacchi, carried out by Luca Alessandrini on 3 March 1987, held at the IRSRER. See the testimony of Bruno Zenoni, in Portelli, Biografia di una città, p. 285.

  65 Schnur, Rivoluzione e guerra civile, p. 319, on the revolutionary tribunals operating during civil wars.

  66 Battaglia, Un uomo, p. 240.

  67 See, for example, the 24 October 1944 order of the day of the Command of the 3rd Aliotta Division (IG, BG, 01541); the draft statute of the Nanetti division, 2 December 1944 (ibid., 09448); Bianco, Guerra partigiana, pp. 53–4; Quazza, Un diario partigiano, pp. 189, 193; Revelli, La guerra dei poveri, p. 337; and Dellavalle, Operai, p. 121.

  68 See the testimony of Elsa Oliva, in Bruzzone and Farina, eds, La Resistenza taciuta, p. 133.

  69 Artom, Diari, p. 105 (4 December 1943).

  70 Testimony of Raimondo Vazon, who comments ‘Perhaps these were precisely the episodes in which one became aware that the adventure was over’ (Bravo and Jalla, La vita offesa, p. 85).

  71 ‘Resoconto di discussione sulle direttive militari e politiche del movimento’, 27 March 1945 (INSMLI, CVL, envelope 35, Folder 1).

  72 Letter from the Command of the 1st Division to the Command of the 6th Nello Brigade (Ossola), 27 October 1944 (IG, BG, 06720).

  73 Instructions of 4 December 1944 (INSMLI, CVL, envelope 20, folder 1). On expulsions from the bands, see Quazza, Un diario partigiano, pp. 194, 221.

  74 Lazagna, Ponte rotto, p. 78.

  75 Note the sentence passed by the military tribunal of the Modena division, 13 February 1945: the tribunal first sentenced the condemned man to death, then sent him out beyond the Allied lines (Gorrieri, La Repubblica di Montefiorino, p. 572).

  76 As stipulated in the CLNAI decree on the surrender of Nazi-Fascist units, 19 April 1945 (Atti CLNAI, pp. 308–9).

  77 This expression was used in the 27 March 1945 instr
uctions issued by the General Command of the CVL regarding the dissolution of enemy forces (Atti CVL, pp. 448–9).

  78 Atti CLNAI, pp. 123–4.

  79 The quotes are taken from a CUMER poster directed to the population of Bologna, of 24 November 1944 (IG, BG, 02439), and a report by the commander and commissar of a detachment of the F. Tamberi battalion of the Pisacane Brigade, to the Command of the Nanetti Division (ISBR, envelope Pisacane). My thanks to Gabriella Solaro for making me aware of this document.

  80 On 6 October 1944 the General Command of the CVL issued a five-day ultimatum, after which all those who remained in the service of the enemy would ‘be considered guilty of high treason and, as such, [would] be liable to the death penalty’ (Atti CVL, p. 206). But see also the ‘fraternal invitation’ made by the CLNAI on 6 August 1944, directed towards the officers and soldiers of divisions returning from Germany (Atti CLNAI, pp. 153–4), and the highly sympathetic appeal to young men in the RSI army who had not found ‘the not always easy path to the mountains’ even if ‘from their faces’ one could understand ‘how much their uniform weigh[ed] down on them and their suffering on account of the disgrace of enslavement’ (Sui monti, first issue, 12 July 1944, organ of the Verona CLN).

  81 Thus concluded both versions of the proclamation – by the CVL and CLNAI – from 4 and 19 April 1945 respectively (Atti CVL, pp. 467–8, and Atti CLNAI, pp. 309–11). The slogan ‘surrender or perish’ was advanced by Longo in the report he gave to the enlarged meeting of the PCI leadership for occupied Italy, held in Milan on 11 and 12 March 1945. The report was published in La nostra lotta II: 5–6 (20 March 1945), pp. 5–20; and then in Longo, Sulla via dell’insurrezione nazionale, pp. 308–40.

  82 See the decree Contro i traditori della patria (Against the traitors of the country) which the CLNAI, in assuming governing power in the occupied territories, intended to present to the government in Rome in June 1944, (Atti CLNAI, pp. 141–2). The text is similar to that proposed to the CLN by the Garibaldi Brigades, published in L’Unità, northern edition, supplement, 20 November 1943, then in Fratelli d’Italia, of the CLN in the Veneto, 15 January 1944 (See Canfora, La sentenza, pp. 195, 312–13).