Authors: Claudio Pavone
Examples of Fascist brutality against the Resistance are legion. One episode has been recounted by Guglielmo Petroni. Born in Lucca, Petroni (1911â93) became a poet and journalist in Florence. In 1943 he joined the Resistance, but was arrested on 3 May 1944. For the next thirty-three days he was interrogated and tortured by the Gestapo in various prisons in Rome. His memoir of those days,
The World is a Prison
, has been almost continuously in print since it first appeared in 1948. In it, he not only chronicles his experiences but meditates on the nature of a precarious existence in which paradox and absurdity abound:
I had the terrible sensation that seems to become more acute in such circumstances than when one is alone in the darkness of the prison; I felt a sense of infinite solitude, the impression that the whole world had forgotten me, something that even today it occurs to me must be similar to what a shipwrecked person feels when alone and lost in the middle of the ocean. But this feeling was submerged, it lay hidden at the bottom of the soul; on the level of my nerves, never had I felt so alive and secure in an unwavering mood, whatever might happen.
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In January 1952, the Turin publishing house Einaudi published a collection of letters by anti-Fascists condemned to death, thereby reigniting the debate over the Resistance. Covering a broad spectrum of Italian society, from aristocratic
military officers to workers and peasants, from conservative monarchists to liberals and communists, the letters are an eloquent testimony to the sacrifices and ideals of those who fought for the principles of liberty and justice. An excerpt from the letter of Antonio Fossati, a member of the Corpo Volontari Libertà in Milan, to his fiancé Anna:
On the 2
nd
they tortured me for the third time: they put flaming candles to my feet and I found myself tied to a chair; my hair turned all grey, but I didn't talk and it passed. On the 4
th
I was taken to a room where there was a table where I was tied with a rope by the neck and for ten minutes an electric shock passed through me; this went on for three days until the 6
th
, when at five in the afternoon they said if I was ready to talk but I refused to answered; I wanted to know what my fate was to be so I could write to my dear Anna and they told me of that terrible condemnation: death. I made them see that I was very proud. But when I was brought back to the cell I fell on my knees and wept.
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A different kind of letter was penned by Giacomo Ulivi, an anti-Fascist in hiding in Modena, charging his colleagues with the moral and political tasks still to be to addressed:
Have you ever thought that in the coming months the fate of our country and our own will be decided? What will be the decisive influence of our will if we rely on it? That if we encounter danger it will be our responsibility? There is much to do. Try to ask yourselves, each and every day, what idea you have of the true life: is it well-ordered? Inquire about the objectives. Do you believe in democratic freedom, in which, within the limits of the Constitution, you yourselves may direct public affairs, or rather wait for a new more egalitarian conception of life and property? And if you accept the first solution, do you want the power to elect to be for everyone, so that the elected body is a genuine and direct expression of our country, or do you wish to restrict it to those better prepared today to achieve a progressive programme? This and more you have to ask yourselves. You have to convince yourselves and prepare yourselves to convince others, neither to overpower others, nor to give up. Today we must fight against the oppressor. This is the first duty of us all, but it is good to be prepared to solve those problems in a sustainable manner, and to avoid their resurgence and the repetition of all that has befallen us. I end this long letter a bit confused, I know, but spontaneous, with apologies and wishing you all good luck.
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Although a High Commission for the Expurgation of Fascism was created after the war, it failed to achieve its goals and was hampered by political conservatives in Italy.
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The CNL and the Allies worked together (not without problems), and the war eventually came to an end. On 25 April 1945 Milan revolted, expelling the Fascists and Nazis, and the war soon ended. Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were captured by partisans on 27 April as they were trying to reach Switzerland, and executed the next day. Their battered bodies were hung upside-down at a petrol station in Milan's Piazzale Loreto, where anti-Fascist partisans had been executed months earlier, their bodies left hanging for days for the edification of the local population. Ferruccio Parri of the Action Party was Italy's first post-war prime minister (19 Juneâ24 November 1945). Parri had been active in anti-Fascist circles since the 1920s but was not able to manage the post-war peace. When the Liberals and Christian Democrats refused to follow his reform programme his government collapsed, initiating a four-decade monopoly of power by the Christian Democrats. On 2 June 1946, the Italian people voted 54 percent to 46 percent to abolish the monarchy and create an Italian Republic. A new Constitution, crafted by a constituent assembly, went into effect on the first day of 1948.
After the war, Fascism and anti-Fascism continued to play important roles in Italian politics, culture and society. The Action Party dissolved, and the PCI became the largest communist party in western Europe. Fascism, although outlawed, survived in the
uomo qualunque
movement and the Movimento Sociale Italiano; it survived in the guise of âpost-Fascism' in the Alleanza Nazionale, a political party dissolved in 2009. Anti-Fascism became â at least in official rhetoric and according to the Constitution â the foundation of the Italian Republic. Some have criticised the âmyth' of anti-Fascism, and the last two decades have witnessed a sustained historiographical and political attack on the ideals of the Resistance.
In some ways, Pavone's book can be seen as a reply to the work of Renzo De Felice, the dean of fascist studies in Italy. De Felice (1929â96) was considered one of the foremost historians of Fascism. Professor of contemporary history at the University of Rome, he was also director of the journal
Storia contemporanea
and editor of the
Journal of Contemporary History
. His monumental seven-volume biography of Mussolini (the last volume published posthumously) forced a reconsideration of the Italian dictator. Based on extensive archival research, De Felice claimed it was time to examine Mussolini and Fascism from an âobjective' point of view, but he was criticised by some for ârehabilitating' the dictator. De Felice argued that the Resistance had generated its own mythology
and alienated many Italians from the state. More specifically, he argued that there existed a âResistance vulgate' censoring any debate and forcing historians, intellectuals and citizens to accept a historiography based on myth. In the place of this mythologised historiography, De Felice argued for one based on a âscientific' methodology:
Anti-Fascism cannot constitute the only explanatory principle in understanding the historical significance of the Resistance. Nor does it follow that the anti-Fascist âlabel' can replace the democratic âlabel' or that the two years 1943â1945 must be interpreted exclusively in the vast riverbed of the collective crisis that conditioned the circumstances since that time and that influences those of today; or that the hierarchy of value of âanti-Fascist purity' at whose vertex the PCI immediately placed itself finds resonance anymore (if it ever did) among the majority of Italians.
Neither Fascists nor anti-Fascists, neither Communists nor anti-Communists, are legitimised to explain to the people what happened in those two years or how decisive they have been for the history of today's Italy. And, after all, the people no longer trust them anymore, and consider them sellers of myths in which it no longer believes and to whom it attributes a good part of the responsibility for the situation in which Italy finds itself today. What is even more serious, the people extend this negative judgment of the reconstruction of the past done by intellectuals to all of history. The result is that which Rosario Romeo
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feared, in a less degraded context twenty years ago: that of increasing that crisis of identity among Italians. And that today is more and more difficult to halt.
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De Felice's critique is echoed by Aga Rossi:
The Italian republic emerging from the 1946 referendum was founded on the myths that the Resistance was a popular struggle and that the population adhered to the values of anti-Fascism. To support these myths it was necessary to deny the fact that the majority of the population had accepted the Fascist regime, thus upholding a false interpretation and preventing the country from coming to terms with its Fascist past.
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But it has been argued that De Felice's historiography, and what came to be called an anti-anti-Fascism, was permeated by its own mythology. A clear critique of De Felice's historiography was offered by Nicola Tranfaglia in his book
Un passato scomodo
(An Uncomfortable Past).
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An example of what De Felice derisively called the âResistance vulgate' can be seen on the final page of Roberto Battaglia's seminal
Storia della Resistenza italiana
, first published in 1953 and awarded the Premio Viareggio. Battaglia was a partisan in the Action Party, and, after its dissolution in 1946, joined the PCI. In his conclusion he delineates the political and ethical importance of the Resistance both to Italy's domestic and its international politics:
The historic importance of the part played by the Resistance in the liberation of Italy and the overthrow of National Socialism and Fascism cannot be too strongly emphasised. Of the countless patriots who had flocked to the movement and fight in defence of national independence, many thousands acquired for the first time an understanding of the part they would be called on to play in the future of their country, and, when the war was over, these new protagonists, the workers and the peasants, entered the lists.
On the international plane, the Resistance redeemed the honour of Italy which had been so vilely besmirched by the Fascists. At home, it paved the way for the Republican Constitution which was approved, in 1947, by the Constituent Assembly in an atmosphere of harmony and unity that was due to the fraternity of the struggle for liberation. The political and social principles on which the Republican Constitution was based were those that had inspired the Resistance throughout, the principles that every Italian who cherishes the independence, liberty, and well-being of his fellow countrymen will always have at heart.
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Today, the denigration of the Resistance comes not only from Fascist, neo-Fascist or post-Fascist politicians and intellectuals. In 2002, the government of right-wing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi proposed a drastic rewriting of the country's history textbooks to purge them of âleft-wing bias'. Berlusconi argued that the nation's history textbooks tended to glorify the Resistance and denigrate those who defended the Salò Republic. In this rewriting of history, Fascists were also victims of the Second World War. A corollary to this proposal recommended the abolition of the many historical institutes dedicated to the study of the armed Resistance. Since 1995 â the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War â there has been a protracted and often bitter debate over the scale, significance and repercussions of the Resistance. Here, journalist Alexander Stille writes about recent developments in the continuing struggle to define and interpret the past:
Last summer [2002], the head of the Italian state broadcasting system (RAI), Antonio Baldassarre, addressed the national congress of the National Alliance, the right-wing party led principally by âpost-Fascists', and announced that it was time to ârewrite history' as it is presented on Italian television. âThe old RAI represented only one culture and not others', he said. âOften, they didn't tell real history, but told fables, offered one-sided interpretations.' This call to ârewrite history', before a party many of whose leaders were ardent admirers of Italian Fascism, had a very clear meaning: no more âone-sided' portrayals of anti-Fascists as noble patriots and Fascists as evil villains.
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As this introduction is being drafted, Berlusconi again finds himself in the political spotlight. Considered a dark horse in national elections, he added a new twist to the old âMussolini's only mistake was allying himself with Hitler' argument. On Holocaust Remembrance Day 2013 (27 January), he declared that, while the Racial Laws were Mussolini's âworst mistake', the Duce had done the right thing for Italy in allying with Hitler as it was obvious that Nazi Germany was on its way to victory.
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At the same time, controversy flares as a public monument in Affile (near Rome), his hometown, is dedicated to General Rodolfo Graziani, accused of war crimes.
In this current climate of anti-anti-Fascism and the denigration of the Resistance, a mysterious transformation (some might say a miracle) occurred in Rome. Over the entrance to the EUR Administration building, designed by Gaetano Minucci, a bas-relief by Publio Morbiducci depicts the history of Rome. The facade, originally constructed during the Fascist era, included an imperious Mussolini astride an impressive steed hailed by men, women and children. With the fall of the Fascist regime in July 1943, the bas-relief was attacked and the face of Mussolini chipped off. Recently, the face has been restored and the facade cleaned.
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Yet we should not throw up our hands and conclude that the debate over the political and ethical significance of the Resistance is simply and forever spinning its wheels in mud. As Claudio Pavone made clear in a recent communication, while it is true that the debate continues to this day, its physiognomy
has changed (for the better) with the change in the political and cultural climate in Italy.
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