A Civil War

by Claudio Pavone

  180 Quazza, Un diario partigiano, pp. 212 and 239 (26 September 1944 and 31 March 1945).

  181 See Tramontin, Contadini e movimento partigiano, p. 303.

  182 In the article, ‘Isolare il nemico’.

  183 Northern edition, 29 April 1945.

  184 Transcript of the 21 March 1945 meeting (IG, BG, 01933)

  185 Letter from the commissar of the 1st Gramsci Division to the commissar of the Volante Loss Brigade, Santino, 20 January 1945, and associated notes (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 254–7).

  186 Order of the day no. 2 of the Command of the 90th Elio Zampiero brigade, 25 February 1945 (IG, BG, 01023).

  187 Extract of a letter from the office of the political commissar of the unified command (Sesia Division – Ossola Division), sent to the commissar of the Volante Loss Brigade, undated but from winter 1944–45 (IG, BG, 06560).

  188 Letter from ‘C.F.’ (federal committee?) to the Spartaco Lavagnini Detachment, undated (IG, BG, 011659).

  189 See Lazagna, Ponte rotto, p. 225. Here referring to a formation operating in the Ligurian Appennines, the author of these words perhaps had in mind the lyrics of a popular song, according to which ‘there is no melancholy among the Genovese’. Whoever ‘arrived among the partisans, however tired and sad’, was lifted up again ‘in the soul and in the heart’ (‘I nuovi e i vecchi compagni. Mie impressioni’, report by Ramis on the Nino Franchi Detachment, 5 November 1944: INSMLI, CLNAI, envelope 8, folder 2, subfolder 12).

  190 Battaglia, Un uomo, pp. 218–19, 227, 231.

  191 Ibid., p. 35.

  192 Gobetti, Diario partigiano, pp. 93–100 (March 1944). He had the same impression in Val Chisone the following June (p. 140). However, after the Nazi-Fascists reoccupied, he could read ‘a stunned, disoriented sadness’ on the faces of the valley’s inhabitants (p. 104).

  193 Gorrieri, La Repubblica di Montefiorino, pp. 370–4.

  194 Portelli, Biografia di una città, pp. 273–6. See, too, the section ‘Esodo’, pp. 253–8, in Portelli’s Assolutamente niente.

  1 M. Bloch, ‘Apologie pour l’histoire ou métier d’historien’, Cahiers des Annales, Paris, 1949, and P. Abrams, ‘Rites of passage: The Conflict of Generations in Industrial Society’, in Journal of Contemporary History 5: I (1970), pp. 175–90 – the whole issue is devoted to ‘Generations in Conflict’. In its elaboration of the historical–sociological concept of ‘generation’, K. Mannheim’s ‘The Problem of Generations’ (in Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, New York: Oxford University Press, 1952) remains of fundamental significance.

  2 H. S. Hughes, Consciousness and Society, New Brunswick: Transaction, 2002 [1958], p. 18.

  3 On the first point, see D. Fossa, ‘Il Partito e le Generazioni’, and G. Pini, ‘I nostri giovani’, in Gerarchia XXI: 2 (February 1942), pp. 59–62, and XXII: 6 (June 1943), pp. 192–3. The latter piece resolved the question with a peremptory claim that ‘there is no young people’s question’. On the second point, see the 2 March 1944 Il Regime fascista.

  4 Amicucci, I seicento giorni, p. 68. From research concerning one Emilian village – too restricted in scope to allow for generalisations (there being only 2,000 inhabitants) – it emerges that it was primarily men under twenty-four or over forty years of age who signed up for the Partito Fascista Repubblicano, thus missing out the age group that had the greatest presence in the Second World War. D. Gagliani, ‘Ma chi erano i fascisti repubblicani?’, in Protagonisti X: 34 (January–March 1989), pp. 28–32.

  5 Chiaramello sarcastically remarked on ‘the revolutionary ideas our Ada has got into her head’, on account of her discussion of internees, prisoners, the homeless, schools and the families of those victimised because of their politics (Gobetti, Diario partigiano, pp. 342–3: 14 April 1945).

  6 Calamandrei, La vita indivisibile, p. 158 (24 March 1944).

  7 Letter from Marcello Frullini to Aligi Barducci, Florence, 5 July 1934. Note the preceding letter, 24 May. The formation of an example of what Mannheim terms ‘generational units’ shines through in the comments Barducci, doing his military service in Messina, made to Frullini: ‘It is with pleasure that I hear that you have discovered a counterpart of ours’ (2 August 1934; the letters are in G. and E. Varlecchi, Potente, pp. 118, 114, 123). When the present author, then a second lieutenant, reached a border guard unit in 1941, an anti-fascist officer, Carlo Martinenghi, said to this counterpart of his – even before any exchange of their secret political views – ‘One of our own has arrived’.

  8 Giovanni Contini interviewing Bruno Banchelli, a Communist cadre in the Florence Pignone plant, 29 April 1980. G. Contini, ‘Operaismo e innovazione. Militanza politica e alfabetizzazione imperfetta’, in Problemi del socialismo 2–3 (1988), pp. 212–13.

  9 Revelli, La guerra dei poveri, p. 124.

  10 D’Angiolini’s testimony, in conversation with the author.

  11 Artom, Diari, p. 176 (23 February 1944) and p. 59.

  12 ‘Ai partigiani’ editorial of Lungo il Tanaro, newssheet of the 10th GL Alpine Division, April 1945.

  13 Appeal published in Virtù e Lavoro (in the municipality of San Vito al Tagliamento). Comrade Sante’s reply is from 20 March 1945 (IZDG, envelope 272, folder IV/A).

  14 The Modena Fascist paper Valanga repubblicana, 8 October 1944, quoted in Gorrieri, La Repubblica di Montefiorino, p. 201. One issue of the paper was seized from the newsstands, and its director, the young officer Rino Lavini, relieved of his duties.

  15 ‘Umanità e cultura’, initialed ‘L.N.’ in Chiarezza (‘Notebooks of political discussion among the youth, free voice of the Associazione universitaria studentesca’), July–August 1944 (a typescript in my possession). One young woman (Franca Gronda, from Milan), though approving of the substance of the text containing this and other statements, noted in the margin ‘The style is too extravagant for any sincerity to come through!’

  16 Appeals of the ‘Comitato studentesco di agitazione’ (‘Student agitation committee’) and ‘Comitato di difesa degli insegnanti aderente al Fronte della gioventù’ (‘Committee in defence of teachers attached to the Youth Front’) – notable, here, that just like women and peasants, university professors had to be ‘defended’, and at that by students (Attività clandestina, pp. 11–12).

  17 Box ‘Ai giovani’, signed ‘faber’, Il Segno, 1 March 1944.

  18 See ‘Il nostro posto’, in Libertà (Rome), 1 May 1944. Another article, ‘Vent’anni di ineducazione’, was very critical as regards bad educators, professors, men of culture etc. L’Unione, which said it had emerged on 25 May 1943 – in memory of the Unione Goliardica born on 23 March 1924 – ‘supported the Partito liberale’.

  19 Nuova Goliardia, organ of the students of the Fronte della gioventù, Genoa, 1 October 1944 (Saggio bibliografico, n. 2839).

  20 Avanguardia, ‘Paper of the Socialist youth’, June 1944 (the article is signed by ‘a young man’).

  21 Rome edition of Avanti!, 30 December 1943, with a page devoted to the killing of Mario Fioretti by a Fascist (‘La figura del caduto’).

  22 I refer, here, to R. Zangrandi, Il lungo viaggio attraverso il fascismo, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1962 (a more succinct first edition was published in 1947).

  23 This type of passage from Fascism to anti-Fascism is judged harshly in the article ‘Peccatori contro lo spirito’, appearing in the liberal Piedmont paper L’Opinione, 14 January 1945. On the Fascist left’s early hints at a rapprochement with socialism – mainly among students – see the letter from Lucio Luzzatto to Giuseppe Faravelli, November 1936 (in Merli, La ricostruzione, pp. 743–4).

  24 One fine example is the obituary that Eugenio Colorni – soon before himself being killed – wrote of Giuseppe Lopresti, shot at the Fosse Ardeatine (copy in the author’s possession).

  25 Testimony of Teresa Cirio (Bruzzone and Farina, La Resistenza taciuta, p. 30). On the novelties in the lives of young people in the 1930s, see the food for thought given by Victoria de Grazia in her aforementioned discussion
with Luisa Passerini (p. 24), as well as the same author’s The Culture of Consent: Mass Organization and Leisure in Fascist Italy, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981). On the differences among the older and younger generations of incarcerated women, see Mariani, Quelle dell’idea.

  26 See Mosse, Masses and Man.

  27 Azione democratica, 31 January 1944.

  28 ‘Note in margin’, ibid.

  29 ‘Autorità e abulia’, Rinascita giovanile, 24 May 1944.

  30 ‘Pregi e difetti della nostra generazione’, L’Azione, 10 November 1943.

  31 See the pamphlet Orientamenti programmatici, p. 12 (Quaderni del Risorgimento liberale, 4).

  32 Avanti!, Rome edition, 12 January 1944.

  33 ‘La Generazione vittima’, article signed by ‘Stilcone’, Il Segno, 18 May 1944. Ronconi also suggests reading the differences among the upper and lower clergy in generational terms, in Note sui rapporti fra il clero toscano, la Repubblica sociale italiana e le autorità d’occupazione tedesche, p. 137.

  34 ‘I giovani parlano ai vecchi’, signed ‘Uno del ’22’ (i.e. born in 1922) in Il Popolo, Rome edition, 23 January 1944. It is probably a response to ‘Posizioni di giovani’, an article published in the 12 December 1943 edition signed ‘Uno del ’19’, which raised the alarm over the fact that ‘young people view the men of the pre-Fascist period – no use denying it – with little trust’.

  35 ‘La Democrazia Cristiana ai giovani’, poster printed in Bologna just after Liberation (MRB, Raccolta Adversi).

  36 Open letter to Piccioni, ‘Il problema dei giovani’, in Il Popolo nuovo, 14 April 1946.

  37 Demofilo, ‘La parola dei democratici cristiani’, in the 12 December 1943 issue. The article was then republished as a pamphlet in January 1944, which can now be found, under the title ‘Rinascita della Democrazia cristiana. 1.’ in A. De Gasperi, I cattolici dall’opposizione al governo, Laterza, Bari 1955, pp. 477–91. In the early post-war years, a group of young Catholic intellectuals set up the magazine Terza Generazione, their number including Gianni Baget-Bozzo, Barto Ciccardini (its director), Leopoldo Elia and Baldo Scassellati. The name ‘Third Generation’ meant the generation of the editors themselves, after the ‘first’, pre-Fascist generation and the ‘second’ generation, the anti-Fascists. See, too, G. Tassani, La terza generazione. Da Dossetti a De Gasperi, tra Stato e rivoluzione, Edizioni Lavoro, Rome 1988, in particular Chapter 10, ‘Fuori dalle parti: “Terza Generazione” ’.

  38 ‘Relazione generale’ of the 4th Daniele Manin Brigade (Piedmont), 5 November 1944 (IG, BG, 04456).

  39 ‘Relazione di Antonio su una ispezione a Monforte’, 18 December 1944 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, pp. 107–8).

  40 Extract of a letter from the office of the political commissar of the unified command (Sesia Division – Ossola Division), sent to the commissar of the Volante Loss Brigade, undated but from winter 1944–45 (IG, BG, 06560).

  41 Gambetti, ‘L’Alba’, giornale dei prigionieri italiani in URSS, p. 340.

  42 Refer back, here, to the text ‘Ai giovani’, published in the July 1944 La Rinascita, where young people – on whom ‘it is too easy to lay … blame that is not theirs’ – were called ‘victims’ and ‘made a mockery of’ by fascism (Togliatti, Opere, vol. V, pp. 52–4). See, too, the report to the cadres of the Naples Communist organisation, 11 April 1945 (ibid., p. 35).

  43 Passerini, Torino operaia, p. 19. On these movements within working-class families, see Guidetti Serra, Compagne, passim, and A voi cari compagni.

  44 See Casali, Il movimento di liberazione a Ravenna, I, p. 51 (this undated poster is probably from January 1944).

  45 ‘The kind of thing that gives you goose bumps’, the Communist who recounted the episode commented, on 21 April 1945 (quoted in Gibelli, Genova operaia, p. 294).

  46 Giovanni’s report from Turin, 22–24 August 1943; an anonymous, undated report from Brescia (December 1943?); a report by ‘comrade Silvio’ on the provinces of Terni and Perugia, 25 June 1944 (all in IG, Archivio PCI; the former is partially reproduced in Secchia, Il PCI e la guerra di liberazione, pp. 90–2, and the latter in the 23 June 1964 Rinascita). A member of the Rome military organisation of the PSIUP, a FATME worker whose thirtieth birthday had been and gone, asked the present author – being the young man that he was – how on earth he had gone along with the Socialists and not the Communists. His face bore an amazed, distressed and stern expression.

  47 Letter from the PCI federation to the PSIUP federation, 21 October 1944 (ISHR, Archivio del triumvirato insurrezionale dell’Emilia-Romagna). In 1919, the PSI had won some 60 percent of votes in Modena province, but in 1947 received 26 percent as against 44.2 percent for the PCI (see Gorrieri, La Repubblica di Montefiorino, p. 701).

  48 On 23 March 1945, in a letter to Pertini, Basso showed his pride in having been able to substitute the old members of the Party with young people (see Salvati, Il Psiup Alta Italia, p. 84). In December 1937, the Socialists’ ‘internal centre’, in correspondence with the Austrian party, described its illegal groups as being formed of ‘the young and very young’, above all intellectuals, while ‘working-class elements are generally of more advanced years’ and ‘the old guard of the Party … is not activist, with some exceptions’. See, too, the report from Erba to the national council, 3 December 1938, and the letter from Curiel to the PCI leadership of 15 May 1938, in which he displayed his respect for the tired old members (see Merli, La ricostruzione, pp. 790, 810–12, 800).

  49 Report on the meeting of 18 March 1945 (Le Brigate Garibaldi, vol. III, p. 494). In the constituent assembly votes of June 1946, the Socialists obtained 4,758,129 votes (20.72 percent) and the Communists 4,356,686 (18.6 percent). See C. Ghini, L’Italia che cambia. Il voto degli italiani 1946–1976, Rome: L’Unità – Editori Riuniti, 1976, p. 34.

  50 Motion by the Milan section, just after Liberation (ISRT, Partito d’Azione, envelope 15, folder 4, Stampa, subfolder Non Mollare). See, too, the ‘Presentazione’ in Giovani, Rome, 1 March 1944.

  51 See De Luna, Storia del Partito d’Azione, in particular p. 41. Again on 14 July 1946, Tristano Codignola, in a letter to Enzo Enriques Agnoletti, lamented the fact that the Action Party had not seized the reins of the Socialist Party, towards which it showed a blunt disrespect (ISRT, Carte Enzo Enriques Agnoletti, envelope 1, folder 13, subfolder Carteggi vari).

  1 Editorial, ‘Dopo il congresso di Bari. Il problema del potere’, in the 18 February 1944 Lombardy edition.

  2 Hughes, United States and Italy, p. 135.

  3 R. Romeo, Nazione, in Enciclopedia del Novecento, IV, 1979, p. 632.

  4 ‘Articolo primo della confederazione italiana’, Gazzetta del Nord, 5 August 1946.

  5 See Il Risorgimento Liberale, Rome edition, 15 April 1944.

  6 The quote (my italics) is taken from ‘Cattolici ed Ebrei’, Voce Operaia, 26 October 1943. Apart from what I have already cited in previous pages, see also G. Miccoli, ‘Santa Sede e Chiesa italiana di fronte alle leggi antiebraiche del 1938’, in La legislazione antiebraica in Italia e in Europa, acts of the conference held upon the fiftieth anniversary of the Racial Laws (Rome, 17–18 October 1988), pp. 163–274, and S. Zuccotti, L’Olocausto in Italia, Milan: Mondadori, 1987. Also, more generally, R. De Felice, Storia degli ebrei italiani sotto il fascismo, Turin: Einaudi, 1972.

  7 P. Togliatti, ‘I compiti del partito nella situazione attuale’, speech in Florence, 3 October 1944 (Opere, vol. V, p. 105).

  8 The interview with Scoccimarro appeared in the 10 November Avanti!. On the hostility towards Scoccimarro, above all from the quarter of the Liberal treasury minister, Soleri, and Admiral De Courten, minister of the navy, see Flores, L’epurazione, pp. 425–6. The transcript of the leadership meeting, 16–18 December 1944, is in IG, Archivio PCI. Only Grieco took Scoccimarro’s side.

  9 Four works, which could be brought together under the title ‘De antiquissima Italorum insipientia’, and which had significant distribution after Liberation, consecrate
d this viewpoint: G. Fenoaltea, Storia degli italieschi dalle origini ai giorni nostri, Florence: G. Barbèra, 1945; G. A. Borgese, Golia. Marcia del fascismo, Milan: Mondadori, 1946 (the first edition, in English, was published by Viking Press in the USA in 1937–38 as Goliath: The March of Fascism); G. Colamarino, Il fantasma liberale, Milan: Bompiani, (undated, but 1945); F. Cusin, Antistoria d’Italia, Turin: Einaudi, 1948.

  10 PENTAD, The Remaking of Italy, p. 262.

  11 Pintor, Il sangue d’Europa, pp. 245–8.

  12 ‘Scherziamo’, 8 November 1943 (no indication as to the edition).

  13 Movimento Liberale Italiano, Primi chiarimenti, 1 May 1943. The pamphlet commenting on 25 July, subsequent to this one, again the work of Carandino, toned down this haughtiness somewhat, but reminded readers that ‘a people is not redeemed in just one night’ (Realtà, 15 August 1943, p. 6). On the attribution of these Liberal pamphlets, see E. Camurani, Bibliografia del PLI, pp. 33–4.

  14 ‘Alibi’, in the 18 August 1943 Rome edition. More balanced was the judgment in the northern edition, which noted the ‘political neurasthenia’ of Italians, the same people in the same town-squares having shifted from red to black in the years 1919–22; but it deemed the behaviour of the masses ‘admirable, as a whole’. However, the paper also invited readers to ‘recognise also the courageous conduct of at least part of the ruling classes’ (‘Carattere’, in the 1 February 1944 issue).

  15 Speech of 24 September 1944 to the first assembly of the Florence section of the Liberal Party (printed in a pamphlet, ‘La Sezione di Firenze del Partito liberale italiano’, in ISRT, Archivio Medici Tornaquinci, envelope 10, 1, no. 1).

  16 B. Croce, Scritti e discorsi politici, Bari: Laterza, 1973, pp. 217–18 (under the date 2 December 1944).

  17 Report from the general Taddeo Orlando to the Ministries of the Interior and of War, 10 August 1944, ‘Notizie varie sulla capitale’ (held at the Archivio Centrale dello Stato, quoted in Aga-Rossi, La situazione politica ed economica, pp. 109–10).