A Civil War (160 page)

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, consecrated 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).

18
For
La Voce Repubblicana
, the one man responsible, even more than the Duce, was the king. See ‘Come si imbroglia il popolo', 30 January 1944.

19
‘La parola dei democratici cristiani', signed ‘Demofilo', in the 12 December 1943 Rome edition of
Il Popolo
. See too Lanaro,
Società civile
, p. 34, which brings to light the more advanced positions of a document produced by the Venetian Christian Democrats.

20
‘Rinnovamento', in the 23 October 1943 issue.

21
Note the campaign in favour of Franco waged by the Italian Catholic press during the Civil War. See the collection in
La guerra di Spagna
.

22
‘Carattere degli italiani', 31 December 1943. Demofilo had even spoken of civilisation in the third millennium, etc.

23
‘Libertà cosciente', in
La Punta
, 2 February 1944. A group of young secular anti-Fascists had termed ‘youth and the people' not yet ‘led astray, lost', however ‘stunned and aggrieved' (‘Ai migliori degli Italiani', August 1942, an appeal published in the
Bollettino Popolo e Libertà
, 1 June 1943, pp. 5–7).

24
‘Posizione', in
Il Segno
, 1 March 1944.

25
L'Italia
, August 1943 (cited in Webster,
The Fasces and the Cross
, p. 202).

26
‘Fascismo e cattolicesimo', initialed ‘e.m.g.' in
La Punta
, 23 February 1944.

27
See the text of the pact in the Rome edition of
Avanti!
, 19 October 1943.

28
‘In Corsica, Venezia Giulia, a Napoli gli italiani sono al posto di combattimento a fianco dei popoli liberi', in the 12 October 1943 Northern edition.

29
Letter from the commander of the 1
^st
Zone of Liguria, Simon, to the commissar of the 2
^nd
Cascione Division, 23 November 1944. The critique concerned a 3 November circular (
Le Brigate Garibaldi
, vol. II, pp. 624–8).

30
The critique of the (former?) comrade Sante, 20 March 1945, is directed against the article ‘Formare la coscienza', 20 February 1945 (IZDG, envelope 272b, folder IV/A).

31
It is enough to recall here Togliatti's
Lezioni sul fascismo
(1936), a 1970 reprint of which was edited by E. Ragionieri, Rome: Riuniti.

32
See the article ‘La nostra guerra' (which was ‘not an opportunistic improvisation') in
L'Azione
, 1 November 1943, and, on the MURI, which ‘declare[d] itself in full harmony with Catholicism', the pamphlet ‘Laws and History of the Movement', published in Genoa immediately after Liberation (held at the INSMLI): the Italian people could ‘not be mixed up in the blame for this war, which is, rather, limited to a usurper class' (p. 12).

33
‘Maturità politica',
La Punta
, 29 March 1944.

34
‘La Prova', in the 10 October 1943 Rome edition.

35
‘Orientamenti', in
Bollettino Popolo e Libertà
, July 1943, 2, p. 38, and the ‘Dichiarazione fondamentale' of the Italian Labour Party, paragraph 2.

36
See for example the editorial ‘Responsibilità' in the Rome edition of
L'Italia Libera
, 11 November 1943, reproduced ‘from the Turin organ of the Action Party'.

37
See Morandi's unpublished response to an article by Magrini (Aldo Garosci), written for a magazine produced among German Socialist émigrés in Prague (undated, but after 1934, thus after the end of the Concentrazione antifascista) in Merli,
La ricostruzione
, pp. 615–17.

38
Spinelli,
Io, Ulisse
, p. 268.

39
The persistence of the
spirito azionista
is one of the polemical targets of Catholic neo-fundamentalism: I refer in particular to the theses advanced by Augusto Del Noce, which appear in different forms in both historiography and political debate.

40
Think of the analogous ambitions of German émigrés, as expressed by Thomas Mann in a letter to René Schickele: that they ‘must do our jobs very well; then some day people will say that during this period we were the real Germany' (
Letters of Thomas Mann, 1889–1955
, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975, p. 188).

41
This theme was developed in many of the reports written after Liberation on the CLNs, partisan formations, and local situations. See, for example, the report ‘on the partisan and conspiratorial movement in Ostiglia', authored by the Socialist Paride Mantovani (INSMLI,
CLNAI
, envelope 6, folder 2, subfolder 4, old cataloguing).

42
Lussu,
La ricostruzione dello Stato
, p. 4.

43
Deakin,
Brutal Friendship
, p. 241, defined thusly the survivals of the Liberals, Populars and Socialists like Romita, re-emerging in Spring 1943.

44
Serini,
Orientamenti programmatici
, p. 3.

45
‘Libertà sociale',
Risorgimento liberale
, Rome edition, 5 May 1944.

46
‘Saldezza del fronte antifascista', editorial in
La Riscossa italiana
, January– February 1944.

47
‘Direttive politiche per l'insurrezione nazionale, n. 11', 25 October 1944 (
Le Brigate Garibaldi
, vol. II, p. 489).

48
Letter of 4 June 1935 from Angelo Tasca to Giuseppe Faravelli, in Merli,
La ricostruzione
, p. 677.

49
Declaration of the central committee, announcing the fusion of the PSI, MUP and Unione Proletaria Italiana, in the 22 August 1943
Avanti!
. In the Northern edition of
Avanti!
, 10 January 1944, the editorial ‘Timori in sagrestia' read: ‘The 1915–18 war heralded the crisis of the capitalist system, and this war now concluding marks its end. Truly, another history is beginning … The socialist revolution appears out of irreparable necessity' for both the victors and the defeated.

50
See the essays in the collection
Fascismo e antifascismo negli anni della Repubblica
(
Problemi del socialismo
, January–April 1986, new series no. 7).

51
See, above all, Inverni (V. Foa),
I partiti
, pp. 68–71. Many years later, Foa would write with reference to the 1933–35 period, ‘Perhaps so as not to be dependent on fascism, not even in rejecting it, we refused to call ourselves anti-Fascists' (P. Marcenaro and V. Foa,
Riprendere tempo
, Turin: Einaudi, 1982, p. 102).

52
A. Capitini,
Prime idee di orientamento
, Perugia: Centro di Orientamento Sociale, 1944, p. 9.

53
Pintor,
Doppio diario
, p. 115. In writing ‘we', Pintor was referring to the young people who had adopted the point of view that ‘to absent oneself, from birth, is little less than suicide, and thus we all found ourselves mixed up – some more than others – in contemporary life, and were ready to reap its fruits. This position, though very dangerous in that it could easily confuse the weakest souls, was, however, the most productive one: it meant the definitive overcoming of the Fascism/anti-Fascism antithesis, and, with the outbreak of the war, posed us with a praxis that we instinctively felt to be more urgent and wider in scope than that for a long time … sought by those planning an eventual restoration. They were incapable of finding the
point d'issue
; we, and perhaps not through our own merit, were already stronger, because we showed ourselves at the right moment' (pp. 118–19).

54
Anonymous, undated note in CSPG,
Fondo Calosso
, no. 4. Musatti, having recently fled Italy, had written an article in the January issue of
Mondo
entitled ‘Lotta, non rivincita', which aroused ‘animated discussions' among anti-Fascists. In the June issue, Musatti had published another article, ‘Crepuscolo dei tamburi', from which this note cited the words quoted in the text above. It was probably referring to
Il Mondo (The World)
, ‘A Monthly Forum for Unfettered Italian Opinion on World Events', edited by Umberto Gualtieri, published in New York from 1938 (but the January 1939 issue, the only one it was possible to consult did not include the article referred to in the note). My thanks to Luciano Boccalatte for giving me this information.

55
‘Projet de programme pour la Révolution Nationale' – a national revolution different from that of the Vichy régime – in
La Révolution Française. Bulletin pour un mouvement national révolutionnaire français
, September–October 1940, 1.

56
Inverni (V. Foa),
I partiti
, pp. 45–7. On the Action Party's perspective of an anti-totalitarian socialism, see De Luna,
Storia del Partito d'Azione
, p. 201.

57
See the articles collected in G. Calogero,
Difesa del liberalsocialismo
, Rome: Atlantica, 1945. Calogero distinguished the ‘third way' from the ‘third force': for a discussion on this point, see C. Pavone, ‘Terza forza e terza via', in
La Cittadella
III: 5–6 (15–30 March 1948), p. 4.

58
I refer here to the studies of Gaetano Arfé and Stefano Merli, already quoted in part above. On the ‘fusionism' which sought to make two parties into one new body, ‘without however leaving out dissident minorities', see in particular Arfé,
La politica del gruppo dirigente socialista
, p. 27.

59
‘Economia del lavoro'.

60
Apart from the abundant degree of corporativism in the
Idee ricostruttive della Democrazia cristiana
, see, among others, the defence of corporativism against the way it had been mystified by Fascism, in the article ‘La liquidazione del sindacalismo fascista', signed ‘Il sindacalista',
Il Popolo
, Rome edition, 28 November 1943; the section ‘Tornare al corporativismo genuino' of the programme expounded in
Il Lavoratore
, organ of the Friuli Christian Democrat union movement, in September 1944; and the definition of the Fascist corporations as ‘pseudo-corporations' in the undated poster directed by the Movimento guelfo d'azioni, ‘To Italians Worthy of Freedom' (‘Agli italiani degni della libertà', INSMLI,
CLNAI
, envelope 8, folder 9).