A Civil War (53 page)

In the Catholic world too there were residues of anti-Risorgimento intolerance, early expressed by the preacher who in the church of Sant'Agostino in Rome, in May 1943, had remarked ironically: ‘There's never an end to our famous Risorgimento: we started from Eritrea, then Libya and then the world war; to obtain a scrap of land in the sun we went messing around in Abyssinia, then we went knocking our heads in Spain, then ended up in Russia. Where, where on earth will we end up this time!'
⁷¹

But favourite among the Catholics are the suggestions of neo-Guelphism. The new Risorgimento must be finally conducted not against the Catholics but with the Catholics, so that ‘the
patria
and the true God are circumfused
with the light of a single love'.
⁷²
Piero Malvestiti founded the Guelph Action Movement, which was then merged with the Christian Democrat party; and free rein was given to appeals regarding the ‘providential mission' assigned by God to the Italy of Girolamo Savanarola, Francesco Ferrucci and Matilde of Canossa.
⁷³
More wayward still,
Il Risveglio
, the Christian Democrat weekly of the South, refigured the history of Rome, claiming Christ, as a Roman, lumped together with St Francis of Assisi and St Catherine of Siena, the Madonna del Grappa and the Carroccio, St Nicholas of Bari, and proclaiming that the Alps were placed by God as the sacred boundary of Italy.
⁷⁴
Unfortunately the Action Party and the Group for the Defence of Women were no better when, in some of their Genoese leaflets, they tried to claim Balilla as their own.
⁷⁵
In Piedmont, the Babel of Risorgimento languages led to the assumption of the name ‘Nuovo Risorgimento Italiano' by a movement formed from the remnants of the 4
^th
Army and inspired by General Operti. After provoking tense discussions within the Piedmontese cities' military command, this movement, through the intransigence of the Communists and the regional CLN directives, ended up being identified as an enemy to fight ‘on a par with the Nazi-Fascists'.
⁷⁶

Naturally the Fascists too, though hindered by their German comrades, descended onto Risorgimento ground. They placed Mazzini's effigy on their stamps, invoked Mameli and his national anthem,
⁷⁷
pitted a truly patriotic
Garibaldi of their own against the one besmirched by the ‘bandits',
⁷⁸
and proclaimed that ‘the RSI is the heir of the Roman Republic' of 1849.
⁷⁹
One university student volunteer loftily invoked the Risorgimento virtues (which numbered among other things virility too), and reproached his wife for not wishing to read
Le confessioni di un italiano
, which would have enabled her to ‘penetrate deeply into my soul'.
⁸⁰
The Fascists for their part made no excuse about claiming for themselves the glories of the history of Italy: they too invoked St Francis and St Catherine, Francesco Ferrucci and Marcus Furius Camillus; they named one of their battalions Pontida (possibly more out of ignorance than impudence) and, naturally, brought Balilla over to their side.
⁸¹

This vying for even the distant past was not, however, an exclusively Italian phenomenon. In France Vercingetorix and the victorious defence of Gergovia against the Romans in 52 BC were subject to it. When Vichy organised a ceremony in which all the French regions had to bring a handful of their earth to Gergovia there were outcries of profanation, because Vercingetorix ‘is the hero of the Resistance.
⁸²

Irritated, the anti-Fascists replied sarcastically to what seemed to them unwarranted appropriations. ‘Why don't the Fascists quote these words of Mazzini's?' asked an Action Party youth paper, after quoting some of the Genoese's thoughts inspired by the theme of liberty.
⁸³
From the microphones of Radio London, Umberto Calosso noted that ‘
Giovanezza
[Youth], the hymn of the old men of the Fascist hierarchy was increasingly being replaced by other
hymns, including those of Garibaldi and Mameli'.
⁸⁴
Disdainful and concerned,
La Riscossa italiana
wrote that the Fascists were profaning Mazzini, Garibaldi, and the Roman Republic, and mentioned the free Comuni and Archbishop Ariberto into the bargain.
⁸⁵

When we look at the counter-evidence of the names of the clandestine newspapers and formations, and the
noms de guerre
, the impression that the neo-Risorgimento spirit was spreading assumes more modest proportions. General titles prevail in the newspapers, pivoting on words like ‘libertà', ‘liberazione', ‘lotta' (‘struggle'), ‘battaglia', ‘rinascita' (‘rebirth'), ‘riscossa' (‘recovery'), ‘combattente', ‘volontario' and the like, often associated with geographical, or else political and ideological names.
⁸⁶
On the other hand, not many newspaper names appeal to the Risorgimento:
La Giovane Italia
of the Youth Front of Tuscany, the
Fratelli d'Italia
of the Veneto CLN,
L'Italia e il secondo Risorgimento
, and only a few others, even if we consider titles inspired by patriotism of a general kind, such as a
Stella garibaldina
of the Piedmontese Garibaldi brigades (flanked, to be on the safe side, by a
Stella partigiana
),
Il Tricolore
of the Pavese Oltrepò operative sector, and
Patria
of the Lazio Christian Democrats. In acquiring, at a medium level, a firm ideological commitment, as expressed in the names of the newspapers, the Risorgimento clearly had less space, as a motivation for war against the Germans and Fascists, than that given to it in the more solemn and official writings and speeches or in the schools, where those writings and speeches turned up again. By contrast, the great Revolution figures considerably more, indeed massively, in the titles of the French underground press, where there frequently appear ‘La Révolution française', ‘Valmy', ‘Père Duchesne' (which indicates 1942 as its ‘151e Année: ô drapeau de Wagram! ô pays de Voltaire!'), ‘La Marseillaise' and the ‘Ça ira', the ‘14 Juillet' and the ‘Quatre-vingt-treize'. One of the newspapers with the latter title is specified as being ‘journal of the descendants of the French Revolution'.
⁸⁷
‘To re-make France', it states ‘we must repeat 1792 and Valmy'; or even ‘1794–1944. The youth of France greet the 150
^th
anniversary of the death of the young fighter for Liberty: Saint-Just'.
⁸⁸

Pétain, the victor at Verdun, is compared to Dumouriez, the victor at Valmy: both of them traitors.
⁸⁹
Bloch recalled that in May 1940 the
Marseillaise
had still signified ‘the cult of the
patrie
and the execration of tyrannies'.
⁹⁰
But the
Marseillaise
was a popular song, while the Risorgimento had become a bombastic and scholastic concept. Besides, there are explicit Jacobin echoes in Italy too: in a speech given in Naples on 3 September 1944, Nenni called the partisans ‘sans culottes of the French revolution', and both
Avanti!
and
L'Unità
, at least in the first few months, invoked a government of public health.
⁹¹

The Risorgimento appeared more insistently perhaps in the names of the partisan formations, above all in Veneto, but never on a large scale.
⁹²
Here, when the formation was not designated by a number alone, geographical names prevailed as well as the names of those who had died fighting in the Resistance itself – as if to underline the local roots of many formations and the preponderant bond that they felt with their own immediate past. Names indicating the political and ideological patrimony to which the formations appealed were, in turn, more numerous than the purely Risorgimental ones. There was an intermediate group of broadly patriotic inspiration – Italia, Italia Libera (the most widespread of this type), Fratelli d'Italia, Patria, Italiano, Dante, and the like.

Significant too was the dose of Risorgimento-inspired names in the different formations. Of the seven detachments making up the 2
^nd
Garibaldi (Biella) assault brigade, three had plainly Risorgimento names, in the democratic vein – Bixio, Mameli, Fratelli Bandiera; one, Pisacane, a heretical, already tendentially Socialist, Risorgimento name; one, Piave, a name from the ‘fourth war of independence'; and finally, two that were political names inspired by unity between the parties of the left – Matteotti and Gramsci.
⁹³
But the most recurrent
Risorgimento names circulating in the Garibaldi formations appear to be Mazzini (at least five times), Pisacane, Bixio, Fratelli Bandiera (three times each), Cattaneo, Nievo, Nullo, Mameli (twice), and then Anita Garibaldi, Mazzini and Garibaldi, Manin, Cairoli, Calvi, Pellico, Menotti, and also a Camicia Rossa (Red Shirt) between the Risorgimento and the workers' movement.
⁹⁴
Still rarer, perhaps surprisingly, seem to be the Risorgimento names adopted by the GL formations, even if we take into account that there were fewer of these than the Garibaldi brigades: Cattaneo and Mazzini (twice each, as if to symbolise the dual, traditional inspiration of Italian political radicalism) and, here too, Nullo. Cattaneo figured among the minor politicised formations like the Socialist Matteotti ones, while we should recall there were also some Mazzini brigades inspired by the Republican Party.

Appearing among the Lombard Liberal organisation were the Fratelli Bandiera and Goffredo Mameli, alongside San Giusto and San Fermo.
⁹⁵
The Osoppo in their turn recalled Mameli, and the Green Flames drew inspiration from Tito Speri. Among the formations of not clearly definable political leanings, again there were Mazzini, Cairoli, Mameli, the Fratelli Bandiera, as well as Silvio Pellico, Luciano Manara, Santorre di Santarosa, Cinque Giornate, Dieci Giornate, Curtatone and Montanara.

A survivor of one of the Yugoslavia formations gives a desecrating explanation of what motivated the decision to take the name Garibaldi: Mazzini was too republican, Matteotti too political, while ‘Garibaldi, let's face it, is all right for everybody and was all right for us too, and so we became the “Divisione partigiana Italia Garibaldi”.'
⁹⁶

If we descend from the names of the formations and newspapers to the
noms de guerre
chosen by, or given to, the partisans, things become trickier. Mixed with political, ideological and autobiographical motivations was a vast range of attitudes to that partial mutation of one's identity that a change of name involved.
⁹⁷
At times, ‘subtle reasons' preceded the choice of a name; and it is
not right to call them ‘Arcadia'.
⁹⁸
The panorama is vast, a veritable pattern book of popular fantasy and culture, in which patriotic remembrance seems to play only the most modest part. We find classical and mythological names (Ajax, Euclid), names from noble literature (Carducci, Alighieri),
⁹⁹
the most learned names (Bede), names from popular literature of various tongues (D'Artagnan, Gordon, Radiosa Aurora), English names (Bill, Tom) and Russian ones (Boris, Ivan); barbarians' names (Attila, Alimiro) and exotic names (Alì, Ataman), names of sports champions (Bartali, Nuvolari and the thoroughbred Nearco), cocky and violent names (Ardito, Uragano, Mitra – meaning machine-gun), defiant names (Boia – hangman; Caino – Cain), the names of animals (which were among those most often adopted: from
tordo
– thrush – to
bufalo
) and of plants (
bambù
and
grano
– wheat), names deriving from physical (Baffetti) and psychophysical features (Bestione), place names that take their cue from a Royal Army tradition, great military commanders (Scipio, Napoleon). In such varied company, the Risorgimento makes a very scanty showing.
¹⁰⁰

Evidently there was not much inclination among individual
resistenti
to recognise themselves, even ironically, in the heroes of the Risorgimento. We do find a Piedmontese Garibaldini named Garibaldi, and a Veneto who calls himself, with generous unitary sentiment, Cavour, but there is no way of telling how much of a bearing physical resemblance had in cases like these. A couple of Nullos and a Nievo are recorded (in Veneto), a Cecilia deriving from La Cecilia,
¹⁰¹
and precious little else. When forty-five Garibaldini of the Natisone division asked to enrol in the Italian Communist Party, they were asked to choose a name for
themselves: nine chose their own names; four, Slav names; three, Anglo-Saxon names; six drew inspiration from romantic war fiction; one from the novels of Salgari (Yanez); three opted for national-patriotic and almost irredentist names (Adriatico, Roma, Pisino); and one even recognised himself in Balilla.
¹⁰²

The detached, solemn, scholastic figure that the leading personalities of the Risorgimento had did not favour their adoption as partisan
noms de guerre
. The fortune enjoyed, in contrast, by the adjective
garibaldino
, ‘impetuous', must be attributed not only to the choice made by the PCI, but also to the fact that this name allowed one, without going so far as to identify with the great men of the history of the
patria
, to recognise oneself in the only phenomenon of voluntary and democratic combativeness that the Risorgimento and the post-Risorgimento had known.

The Great War of 1915–18 was an intermediary between the Risorgimento and certain motivations of the new anti-German war. This was the result not only of the version of it taught at school as the ‘fourth war of independence', but also of the vaguer and more complex sense of a sort of posthumous means by which democratic interventionism, vilified and suffocated by Fascism to the advantage of Mussolinian interventionism, got its own back. Ferruccio Parri was the symbol of this path, sometimes punctuated by self-criticism.
¹⁰³
It is above all in the Action Party that suggestions of this kind circulated. A poster addressed to the people of Cuneo began: ‘The Action Party, heir of the parties which in 1914 wanted war against the Germans, not for a limited ideal of nationalism, but solely in the name of liberty and greater Justice.'
¹⁰⁴