A Civil War (73 page)

Saba forgot Cain and Abel, Eteocles and Polynices, Wagner's Fasolt and Fafner, and whoever else was to make Hannah Arendt write that the whole of human history ‘is born from fratricide, any political organisation … has its origin in murder'.
¹¹
But Saba intended to provide a profound motivation for Italians' incapacity, even at the height of the fratricidal struggle, to perform a true revolution, which is inevitably parricidal.

In fact, if we skim the most direct and spontaneous Resistance documents, hatred of the Fascists seems to prevail over that against the Germans. This may naturally depend on the way Fascist repression was viewed: for example, in December 1944 (when Graziani's divisions had already arrived) the Piedmontese command of the GL formations considered it far more severe than German repression.
¹²
In the same period the group command of the Valsesia, Ossola, Cusio and Verbana Garibaldi divisions reported that ‘the Germans opposed the conducting of roundups which the Fascists would like to conduct' – naturally, they were careful to add, without there being the least compromise between the patriots' formations and those of the German Commands.
¹³
At the same time, it might depend on the ordinary behaviour of the Germans and the Fascists: in that same period, Ada Gobetti saw the former as ‘unbelievably stolid and indifferent (at times one would even say blind, deaf and dumb)' and the latter as ‘far more curious and wide-awake'.
¹⁴
But there also emerges an intrinsic and profound loathing of those who, though Italian, had led Italy to ruin. A young man on his way to enlist in the
Stella Rossa
was asked by the commissar: ‘What do you have in mind?' ‘To kill Fascists.' ‘Enough,' said commissar Ferdi, ‘to go on with, more than enough.'
¹⁵
In Cernobbio, during the days of the Liberation, the population raised no protest against Germans being sent to Switzerland, but wanted to lynch the Fascists of the Republican National Guard (GNR) on the spot.
¹⁶
Many preferred to go with the Germans rather than the Fascists.
¹⁷
At a distance of a few years, an Actionist would state that ‘the German was fought almost solely because he was the last incarnation of Fascism, his ally and accomplice'.
¹⁸

While the Actionist did not unduly object to the tendency to see the Fascist as the main enemy, the Communist leaders often felt the need to curb
it, concerned as they were that it might lead to the national character of the struggle being blurred. The Communists, moreover, were more closely identified with the thinking of the coalition between the great powers, which had been adopted as an essential element of the new party strategy. They warned that the struggle against the Germans ought always to be considered the main one.

‘There always remains', says a Garibaldi document of winter 1944, ‘the conviction in the GAPs that those most responsible are the Fascists and that the Germans will be dealt with later. But we are doing our utmost to combat this way of thinking and reckon to have concrete results soon.'
¹⁹
From the Marche, the following June, it was reported that ‘the actions have been directed principally against the Fascists but there have also been those against the Germans, though to an insufficient extent'.
²⁰
And in Lombardy again:

This was the Solomonic and not altogether coherent conclusion.

With a view to the insurrection, a Ravenna Communist document says, a new ‘line' must be adopted, responsive to a
revolutionary
need. The ‘most feared enemy', the one most hated by the people, was no longer the Fascist but the German, and so the latter was the ‘enemy who needs to be struck at' with a ‘continuous, ruthless fight to the death … in order bring the masses ever closer to our action'.
²²

Behind the greater inclination to fight the Fascists ‘impregnated with ferocity and defeat',
²³
there might well have been, in some cases, the greater fear inspired by the German warlords; but there was also the hatred aroused by the Fascists themselves, whose subaltern position to the Germans seemed to generate, almost by way of compensation, a touch more violence.

‘I was able to ascertain', reads another Garibaldi document, ‘that while the Germans reserve the fighting for themselves, they leave the dirty work, such as that of hangman and jailer, to the
repubblichini
.'
²⁴
While the Germans, recounts a prisoner who managed to give them the slip, succeed in ‘exploiting down to the finest detail the errors committed by the partisans towards the local populations … they leave the Fascists in charge of the reprisals and acts of violence against civilians and partisans'.
²⁵
In a Ligurian band it was ruled out, incorrectly of course, that ‘the Germans got involved in such operations', namely the reprisals.
²⁶

When in Florence, in December 1943, there was the reprisal against the killing of Colonel Gino Gobbi, the Germans refused to hand over five officers they were holding.
²⁷
In this particular case it might have been a question of formalistic respect being paid to different competences; but the impression aroused was nevertheless always an increase in the odiousness of the Fascists, even when the Germans handed over to them for execution prisoners whom they had previously tortured.
²⁸

In a discussion between Veneto Garibaldini the opinion clearly emerged that what was done to shorten the war – the destruction of vehicles, for example – would undoubtedly count with the Allies and the decisions they would take about the future of Italy ‘more perhaps than the number of Fascists eliminated, although morally, for the whole partisan movement, the elimination of the Fascist lackeys is the most powerful tonic sustaining us'.
²⁹

Ferdinando Mautino (Carlino, head of the Natisone Garibaldi division General Staff, mentioned earlier) argued this irrepressible priority given to hating the Fascists with a reflection that seemed to reverse the trend: that it wasn't so much the Germans who were sustaining the Fascists but vice versa. ‘The work of local traitors, without which no foreign force would have been able to manage, was indispensable.' If, Mautino explained, the Germans were able to organise themselves rapidly, it was because they had ‘found at their feet cowardly and irresponsible officials and public functionaries, greedy and corrupt
industrialists and speculators, and the ignoble thugs of the Fascist hierarchy'.
³⁰

Recognition is given to the Germans in contrast to the Fascists even by a member of the insurrectional triumvirate for Emilia-Romagna. This Communist leader took the Modena GAP brigade command to task for having sent letters, for an exchange of prisoners, not only to the German command but to the prefect and to the Black Brigade command. He points out that

Whenever possible, the Germans were the first to speculate on the distinction they saw being made between themselves and the Fascists. A German officer said of the partisans: ‘They attack us because they want to take our weapons in order to fight the Fascists.'
³²
The Germans had general orders from above to avoid if possible entering ‘into direct contact with the Italian population, but to use the Italian authorities as executive organs'.
³³
And they even flattered themselves with the belief that the Italians would appreciate ‘their objectivity, to which they were hitherto unaccustomed'.
³⁴
The Germans thereby turned to their advantage, with how much intentional perfidy it is hard to say, the role of mediation with the population that the protagonists of the Social Republic (and its retrospective apologists) have attributed to it. On the field several German attempts were made to divert the force and anger of the partisans against the Fascists.

In the Marche, before the failed attempt to get the Macerata brigade to hand over their arms pacifically, the SS offered (again unsuccessfully) ‘to leave them
in peace, provided they undertook not to fight the German occupying troops, so [gave them] … free rein to do in the … Fascist … allies'.
³⁵
In the Pavese Oltrepò, too, the Germans showed themselves willing at certain moments to come to an agreement, ‘promising the patriots that they would leave them ample freedom in their struggle against the Fascists'.
³⁶
In the zone of Imperia a German commander ‘made pacification proposals, namely that they were not to attack the Germans and they for their part would take no measures against Italians who dissented from the Fascist regime. In the presence of the Italian SS he added: that the Italian dissidents could do what they wanted against the Fascists, that they washed their hands of them etc.'
³⁷

It was by now spring 1945, and the document I have just quoted also recalls symmetrical attempts to reach an accord on the part of the republican National Guard, the San Marco division, and the provincial head of Savona. The truth is that, out of the corner of their eye, the Fascists had always kept close watch over the Germans for fear of being ditched. ‘Throughout the zone complicity between the partisans and Germans is in the normal run of things', a bitter and frightened Fascist had written with regard to the Valtellina.
³⁸
The Germans, however, knew all too well that they had the whip-hand. The Val Pellice commander did not mince his words with the GL partisans who, earning the contempt of the Garibaldino Barbato, had sought to speculate on the disagreements between Fascists and Germans: ‘Coming to terms with us you avoid the Fascists, but coming to terms with the Fascists you don't avoid us.'
³⁹

It has always been a good tactic to divide one's adversaries, in peace as in war. The
resistenti
also tried it out, but came up against two very powerful obstacles. The first lay in the almost fatally fanciful character that the action assumed, as soon as it went beyond the mere recognition of the Germans' low regard for the frustrated Fascists. ‘Open disavowal of Fascism by the Germans' was the optimistic moral that
L'Italia Libera
believed it could draw from the way the Milan strike of December 1943 had gone.
⁴⁰
The ‘shrewd line' to pursue, suggested
by a document submitted to the Tuscan CLN, of avoiding compelling ‘Germans and Fascists to bolster, for reasons of defence, their ill-matched solidarity', was easier to preach than to practice.
⁴¹

The other and more substantial obstacle lay in the fact that the only viable form that these divisive attempts could take was to stipulate separate agreements with one enemy or the other. Here, a dual reality has to be registered. The political directorates and the central partisan commands always issued the firmest prohibitions about resorting to this kind of thing. Witness the military command for Northern Italy's ‘Direttive per la lotta armata' of February 1944 and the CLNAI's ‘Appello agli italiani' of 3 December 1944.
⁴²
There may at times have been some sign of a certain gratification in seeing the arrogant adversaries compelled to come to terms. Thus
Avanti!
informed its readers with satisfaction that, in many places in Piedmont, ‘the small Nazi garrisons are negotiating with the partisans, who have the control of that zone in their hands'.
⁴³
And
L'Unità
wrote: ‘Kesselring would like to come to terms', terms that naturally are not considered.
⁴⁴
The gratification was completely justified, seeing that Mussolini found himself compelled to complain to Ambassador Rudolf von Rahn that ‘in many places the German military local authorities have come to modus vivendi terms with the partisans; forming true and proper agreements … which has increased the power and prestige of the partisans'.
⁴⁵
This power and prestige seemed still greater for the very fact that the advances were rejected.
L'Unità
writes proudly: ‘After having sought to obtain from our commands a sort of “neutrality” at least towards the German troops, the German Command was compelled to give battle.'
⁴⁶

At the basis of this firm stance on the part of the leaders, there was not only political and moral intransigence but ‘Gobettian seriousness', as Dante Livio Bianco put it
⁴⁷
– the conviction that agreements with the Germans ultimately put the partisans in an invariably inferior position. In fact, even with the good faith of the local Germans or Fascists, it only took an order from above for them to feel obliged to violate the agreements that had been reached, and they did
just this. By contrast, a partisan could find himself plummeting into the crisis of conscience that beset comrade Ferrarini (Enzo Costa): Did you have to keep the word you had given to the Germans?
⁴⁸

At the local level, however, alongside firmly intransigent stances (‘our intentions, in keeping with the principles of our struggle, are contrary to any form of compromise', declared one Garibaldi command with reference to some German advances),
⁴⁹
several cases of agreements both with the Germans and with the Fascists need recording. Weariness, disheartenment, irresponsibility, fear, difficulty in relations with the populations who feared reprisals, scant political awareness, rivalry between bands of different political persuasions – these and other similar motivations can be traced from one case to another, apart obviously from the cases of deliberate betrayal, in the agreements struck or even just attempted. The very possibility of this behaviour would have been absent outside the framework of civil war waged in the form of a partisan war. In fact it is the high degree of autonomy that the individual partisan formations possessed that allowed them to size up contingent situations with a freedom unknown to regular armies. Those who stipulated these agreements were generally convinced that what was involved was a purely local necessity that left the fundamental principles of the struggle intact.