A Civil War (19 page)

47
B. Fenoglio,
Il partigiano Johnny
, Turin: Einaudi, 1968, p. 40.

48
N. Ginzburg, Preface to
La letteratura partigiana in Italia 1943–1945
, anthology, ed. G. Falaschi, Rome: Riuniti, 1984, p. 8.

49
Testimony by the Piedmontese Domenico Adriano, who later became a Garibaldino (
CU
).

50
L. Meghello,
I piccoli maestri
, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1964, pp. 58–9.

51
F. Mautino,
Guerra di popolo. Storia delle formazione garibaldine friulane
, Preface by E. Collotti, Padua: Libreria Feltrinelli, 1981, p. 31.

52
Calamandrei,
La vita indivisibile
, p. 130 (February 1944).

53
B. Parri (Spartaco), ‘Otto mesi coi partigiani di Tito', in Bilenchi,
Cronache degli anni neri
, pp. 87–8.

54
C. V. Bianchi,
Un'isola che si chiama Sardegna
, Rome: L'Arnia, 1951, quoted in M. Di Giovanni's degree thesis.

55
Chiodi recalls as a decisive moment the sight, when he was arrested by the Italian SS, of ‘a street full of blood and a cart with four corpses', while the railway inspector said ‘better to die than tolerate this' (Chiodi,
Banditi
, p. 41 [18 August 1944]).

56
Testimony by Renato Fracassi, from a Genoese family of longshoremen (Bravo and Jalla,
La vita offesa
, p. 74).

57
See the case of the fifty-year-old father who was to join a band with the machine gun of his son who had been killed. Chiodi,
Banditi
, p. 32 (5 August 1944).

58
See, for example, Mario Filipponi's testimony (Portelli,
Biografia di una città
, p. 266). See also the ‘bel giovane' who possessed ‘molte di quelle doti che possono fare un avventuriero o un eroe' (‘many of those qualities that can make an adventurer or a hero'), described by Gobetti,
Diario partigiano
, p. 66 (27 November 1943).

59
‘When you're twenty you don't take much account of things', testimony by Giuseppe Seriucano, farmer (Bravo and Jalla,
La vita offesa
, p. 81).

60
See the example of motivation shown in Bianco,
Guerra partigiana
, pp. 11–12.

61
Letter transcribed in ‘Sintesi delle relazioni degli uffici militari censura di guerra del mese di settembre 1944'. The document, preserved in ACS, is published in E. Aga-Rossi, ‘La situazione politica ed economica nell'Italia nel periodo 1944–45. I governi Bonomi, in
Quaderni dell'Istituto romano per la storia d'Italia del fascismo alla Resistenza
, Rome 1971, vol. 2, p. 129.

62
See G. Neppi Modona, ed.,
Giustizia penale e guerra di liberazione
, Milan: Franco Angeli, 1984, pp. 37, 189.

63
La casa in collina
(The House on the Hill) is the symbolic title that Cesare Pavese gave to his novel, published in 1949, but the first idea for which came in 1943.

64
For the whole incident see Chiesura,
Sicilia 1943
, pp. 96ff. It is worth remembering the film
Tutti a casa
[1960], in which the father (Eduardo De Filippo) urges his son (Alberto Sordi) to present himself.

65
See Reineri,
Per uno studio comparato
, p. 273, which publishes a page from Scotti's diary. On the ‘partito dei contadini', see G. De Luna,
Alessandro Scotti e il partito dei contadini (1889–1974)
, Milan: Franco Angeli, 1985.

66
‘La crisi morale dei giovani italiani', speech made at the PCI youth conference, Rome, 24 May 1947, now in P. Togliatti,
Opera
, V, ed. L. Gruppi, Rome: Riuniti, 1984, p. 301.

67
I. Calvino,
Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno
, Turin: Einaudi, 1946, p. 146.

68
This fine expression occurs in an article, ‘Pacta sunt servanda',
Azione
, organ of the Christian Socialists, 20 October 1943.

69
Artom,
Diari
, p. 57 (28 July 1943).

70
Revelli,
La guerra dei poveri
, pp. 143, 168. On 26 July in Cuneo, finding himself in front of a drunken black-marketeer wrapped in the tricolore flag, Revelli had not been able to restrain himself and had shouted: ‘Pagiacci!' (‘Buffoons!'). An ‘ometto' (‘little man') behind him had immediately shouted in his turn: ‘They are patriots, not buffoons. You are a Fascist, there's a Fascist here. I'm an evacuee from Genoa, I've lost my house in Genoa. He's a Fascist, he's a Fascist' (ibid., p. 125).

71
See Gorrieri,
La Repubblica di Montefiorino
, pp. 696–8.

72
To be found in ‘Chiarezza. Quaderni di discussione politica tra giovani', July– August 1944 (typescript).

73
The episode is recorded in M. Di Giovanni's degree thesis. In units gifted with a strong
esprit de corps
like the paratroopers, the choice made by the commanders in favour of the Germans or in favour of the Allies carried great, but not absolute, weight.

74
See M. Di Giovanni's degree thesis. For other cases see G. Pisanò,
Storia della guerra civile in Italia (1943–1945)
, 3 vols, Milan: Edizioni FPE, 1965–66, vol. I, 1965, pp. 68–70.

75
Episodes of this kind are reported, for the province of Belluno, by S. Tramontin, ‘Contadini e movimento partigiano nelle relazioni di parroci bellunesi, in
Società rurale
, p. 285.

76
See D. Lajolo,
Il ‘voltagabbana'
, Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1963, Chapter X (the words quoted are on p. 198).

77
‘Divagazioni sulla viltà', in
Il Giornale dell'Emilia
, 21 December 1944, quoted in T. M. Mazzotosta, ‘Educazione e scuola nella Repubblica Sociale Italiana', in
Storia contemporanea
IX (1978), p. 64.

78
Emanuele Frezza's letter to his parents, 20 November 1943 (
LRSI
, p. 44).

79
Letter written by Massimo Moratti, 25 October 1943 (
LRSI
, p. 271).

80
This was Mario Merlini (
LRSI
, pp. 210–11).

81
The episode I am referring to is recounted by N. Della Santa, ‘Oggi più che mai no', in ANEI,
Resistenza senz'armi. Un capitolo di storia italiana (1943–45) dalle testimonianze di militari toscani internati nei Lager nazisti
, Florence: Le Monnier, 1984, quoted in G. Rochat, ‘Memorialistica e storiografia sull'internamento', in N. Della Santa, ed.,
I militari italiani internati dai tedeschi dopo l'8 settembre 1943
, Florence: Giunti, 1986, p. 34. On the internees in Germany, indispensable reading is Vittorio Emanuele Giuntella's civil and historiographical work; see in particular
Il nazismo e i Lager
, Rome: Studium, 1979. See also C. Schminck-Gustavus,
L'attesa. Cronaca di una prigonia al tempo dei Lager
, Rome: Riuniti, 1989; and A. Bendotti, G. Bertacchi, M. Pelliccioli and E. Valtulina, eds,
Prigionieri in Germania
, Bergamo: Il filo di Arianna, 1990.

82
See the paraphrase of a page of Elis given in M. Eve, ‘L' opera storica di Norbert Elias', in
Rivista di storia contemporanea
XII (1983), p. 400.

83
See Lucien Febvre, ‘How to Reconstruct the Emotional Life of the Past', in
A New Kind of History and Other Essays
, New York: Harper & Row, 1973, esp. p. 15.

84
For the theory of groups in fusion see J.-P. Sartre,
Critique of Dialectical Reason
, London: Verso, 2004, above all in the section ‘The Fused Group. The group – the equivalence of freedom as necessity and of necessity as freedom' (original edition:
Critique de la raison dialectique
, Paris: Gallimard, 1960).

85
Mazzantini,
A cercar la bella morte
, p. 42.

86
See for example A. Del Noce's article, ‘La tragedia dell'8 settembre', published by
Il Tempo
, 26 November 1988, with the significant subtitle ‘L'inizio di una revisione nell' opera di Bartoli' (the reference being to D. Bartoli,
L'Italia si arrende. La tragedia dell'8 settembre 1943
, Milan: Editoriale Nuova, 1988).

87
Captain Alberto Tombari's letter to Mussolini, 25 October 1944 (ACS,
SPD, CR, RSI
, envelope 24, folder 167).

88
Memorial letter written to a friend, 18 October 1943, a copy of which was then sent to Mussolini by Rizzati.

89
See for example the essence that G. Pansa drew from the GNR reports in ‘L' esercito di Salò nei rapporti riservati alla Guardia nazionale repubblica 1943–44',
Quaderni del Movimento di Liberazione in Italia
, Milan 1969, vol. 3, p. 142. See also G. Pansa,
Il gladio e l'alloro. L'esercito di Salò
, Milan: Mondadori, 1991. This reality is intuited by a Communist leaflet, n.d., which, urging the soldiers of the RSI to desert with their weapons and kit, exhorts them not to allow ‘a repetition of 8 September' (ISRT,
Raccolta volantini, PCI Firenze
, clandestini 1943–1944).

90
P. Vidal-Naquet,
Flavius Josèphe ou du bon usage de la trahison
, Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1977.

91
Mazzantini,
A cercar la bella morte
, pp. 20, 22, 200, 112. The decision to join the RSI by a disbanded Belluno soldier who had wandered for three days around the hills above Salò was motivated by the rediscovery of ‘that security and that role that he had missed after the armistice'. A. Lotto, ‘Obbedienza a rivolta: motivazioni, forme, esiti 1919–1945', in
Protagonisti
IX: 32 (July–September 1988), p. 13.

92
See the file cited in Rizzatti. Another paratrooper stationed in Sardinia has recounted that ‘the idea of jumping up into one of the German trucks presented itself with the fascination of rebellion', a fascination to which however he did not yield himself (Bianchi,
Un'isola
, pp. 28–9, quoted in M. Di Giovanni's degree thesis).

93
See C. Dellavalle,
Operai, industriali e partito comunista nel Biellese, 1940–1945
, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1978, p. 98.

94
See M. Di Giovanni's degree thesis, as well as O. Barbieri,
Ponti sull' Arno. La Resistenza a Firenze
, Preface by F. Parri, Rome: Riuniti, 1975, and G. Pisanò,
Gli ultimi in grigioverde. Storia delle forze armate della Repubblica sociale italiana
, Milan: FPG, 1967.

95
See S. Setta,
Renato Ricci. Dallo squadrismo alla Repubblica sociale italiana
, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1986.

96
Memorandum to Giovanni Dolfin, Mussolini's secretary, 27 December 1943, cited in M. Di Giovanni's degree thesis.

97
Pesce,
Senza tregua
, p. 139. The navy would number Di Nanni among its gold medal recipients (I thank Giorgio Rochat for this information).

98
See L. Casali,
Il movimento di liberazione a Ravenna
, Ravenna: Istituto Storico della Resistenza, vol. I, n.d., p. 91.

99
Report to the CUMER by the command of the Mario Gordini 28
^th
GAP brigade, 29 August 1944, sent after two punishing Nazi-Fascist reprisals that month (published in Casali,
Il movimento di liberazione a Ravenna
II [1965], pp. 276–8).

100
Letter by a Milanese engineer, Umberto Fogagnolo, a socialist, to his wife, 31 July 1943, when he had begun the political activity that he pursued after 8 September (
LRI
, pp. 87–8).

101
The article was published in January 1945 in
Giustizia e Libertà. Notiziario dei patrioti delle Alpi Cozie
; it is reproduced in Giovana,
Storia di una formazione partigiana
, p. 202.

102
Mutilated, anonymous document of the northern Italian Action Party, n.d., sent to the party's regional and provincial committees (INSMLI,
CLNAI
, envelope 8, folder 12).

103
Bini (Giovanni Serbandini) spoke in these terms in Lazagna,
Ponte rotto
, p. 50.

104
‘There were the bands: to go, or not to go … and I decided'; ‘When that moment [the call-up for Germany] came you had to choose which road to follow'; ‘They almost obliged us to decide to go'. Testimony by Achille Vignolini, furnace-workman, Giovanni Carretta, Fiat worker, Silvestro Silvio Tedeschi, carpenter, in Bravo and Jalla,
La vita offesa
, pp. 84, 83, 82. It should be borne in mind that deportations from Piedmont reached their peak in the first six months of 1944 (40 percent of the total). Ibid., pp. 55–6. A public draft notice for those born in 1925, and for shares of those born in 1923 and 1924, were issued by Graziani, the defence minister, on 4 November 1943. See E. Piscitelli, ‘I bandi tedeschi e fascisti',
Quaderni della Resistenza laziale
, Rome n.d., but 1975, vol. 4, pp. 14–43. See also Pansa,
L'esercito di Salò
, pp. 22–5ff. In Rome notices for officers to present themselves had already been appearing since 29 September (Piscitelli,
I bandi
, p. 133). The proliferation of notices of this kind was to be a characteristic of the RSI.

105
Here I can recall the case of Colonel Giovanni Duca. Commander of the camp of the Military academy of Modena, on 8 September 1943, the best he managed to do was disband the units, though these were in the Modenese Apennines that were to become an epicentre of the partisan struggle. Then Colonel Duca, in another region of the North, participated in the Resistance and was captured, tortured and killed by the SS; one of his sons died in Mauthausen (see Gorrieri,
La Repubblica di Montefiorino
, pp. 24–6).

106
One of the very few sociological research projects devoted to the Resistance makes this process rigid by defining as full-fledged ‘innovators' only those who opted for the Resistance in the first months (by 31 December, to be precise). All the others are placed in the categories of ‘primi adottanti' (‘first adopters'), ‘prima maggioranza' (‘first majority'), ‘ultima maggioranza' (‘last majority') and ‘marginali', according to the scheme devised by E. M. Rogers (see Ardigò,
L'insorgenza partigiana
, esp. pp. 88–9). For a criticism of this scheme see G. Quazza, ‘Fra sociologia e storia: una ricerca sulla Resistenza', in
Rivista di storia contemporanea
X (1981), pp. 619–25.