Authors: Claudio Pavone
To give legitimacy to the new war, it seemed that the anti-Fascists needed to take the full blame for the defeat suffered first at the hands of the Anglo-Americans and the Soviets, and then of the Germans; and that it was at the same time indispensable to uncouple the difficult business of recovery from any connection with the Italian nationalist tradition, which had been exacerbated by Fascism. This was an extremely arduous task, and the attitudes taken towards it help define the positions manifested at the time among the Italians.
The most radical and at the same time fecund attitude was the one which took for granted the
finis Italiae
as an autonomous state. This position is expressed with particular lucidity in a memorandum by Giorgio Diena and Vittorio Foa, according to whom âthe responsibility for creating the new state of affairs that
may save Italy falls completely on those anti-Fascist forces which, in the absence of any authority, must themselves become the authority with autonomous initiative. Only on this condition will Italy, today a passive battlefield, cease to be a simple geographical expression.'
2
In the same spirit Ugo La Malfa wrote: âBetween 28 October 1922 and 8 September 1943 Italy, as a great national state inherited from the Risorgimento, was destroyed.'
3
Strongly Mazzinian in inspiration, both in its denunciation and in the desire to redeem things, the
Bollettino Popolo LibertÃ
stated that âthere is no longer a
patria
for the Italian people. It is right that things be so', otherwise Mussolini and Victor Emmanuel III, beating the old patriotic drum, would gull the people once again. Yet âto rise again into a nation' was âthe duty we set ourselves to seek together to accomplish'.
4
It has been justly observed that, in the Italian Resistance, the âidea of the
patria
[is] less elementary, less physical than was the case outside Italy'.
5
This was due precisely to the difficulty in reconstituting a univocal concept of the
patria
, capable of giving a human face back to the nation'.
6
Above all in the first few weeks, outbursts of individual pride, aimed at safeguarding one's own personal identity, fuse with the reaffirmation of national identity. At other times in history as well the sense of individual and collective unhappiness had been seen, in Enlightenment terms, as the generator of patriotism.
7
A demonstration of dignity in defeat was given by the old general called on to command the volunteer corps, which was one of the very first things the Americans attempted to establish in the
Mezzogiorno
, independently of the Badoglio government:
I said and repeated that I would only ever fight and serve under the Italian flag (I am not Graziani!). That I was aware that they were victors and I one of the vanquished
insofar I was not personally responsible for [the victory]. I said this to distinguish myself from all the fervent supporters of the victor, beyond a certain limit. The general was a bit surprised, then he commended me.
8
Another anti-Fascist had difficulty getting an English general to understand that he was not âdealing with adventurers'. The general was amazed that âmen of value could devote their lives, and risk those of persons dear to them, for a cause which involved as a logical consequence the defeat of their own country in war'; and the anti-Fascist, giving his explanation to the general, was grieved âto lay bare his sorrows and those of his people'.
9
A testimony of the difficult situation faced in Yugoslavia by the soldiers who, having succeeded in avoiding being captured by the Germans, joined the partisans, reads: âBut for us Italians one reason for national pride still held: we needed to redeem our name from the shame inflicted on it by the anti-men who spoke our language'.
10
A sailor who had toured the world was to recall that for a long time, âWherever we went, nobody could stand us. Oh: “Italian? 'eaven forbid!” Nobody could stand us because of this 'ere fact of the dictatorship that this 'ere Fascist party 'ad. And it was then we began to understand: “Why is it no one can stand us?” No one could stomach the sight of us'
11
After 8 September it was true that âno one could stand' the Italians because they were âbranded as treacherous by old and new allies alike', and because âone way or another, we had fought against everybody'. In the hierarchy of the concentration camps, the Italians found that they were superior only to the Jews. âMamma mia, to see the look of hate in people's eyes', a woman imprisoned at Ravensbrück recalls.
12
But consciousness of the abyss could turn into that of an unexpected rediscovery. Pietro Chiodi was struck by the revelation that had enlightened him as early as 27 July 1943:
I had never realised that the Liceo was so shining and full of light. I feel that it is a small part of my
patria
. That part in which I am called on to do my duty towards her. It is the first time that I have realised I have a
patria
as something that is my own, entrusted, in part, to me as well, to my intelligence, to my courage, to my spirit of sacrifice.
13
On 9 September Emanuele Artom noted in his diary: âHalf of Italy is German, half is English and there's no longer an Italian Italy'; and then on 16 December, with a combination of shame and clarity of conviction, he wrote that to his parents he spoke only of the practical reasons for his decision to be a partisan,
and I kept quiet about those ideals: I don't quite know why, but I'm ashamed to talk about them. Perhaps so many years of patriotic and political rhetoric inhibit one from speaking of these subjects with fresh and spontaneous simplicity. Yet here too great progress is being made. The mysticism of the last century, both the cause and effect of the Romantic and Mazzinian concept of nations that have a mission to accomplish, has by now had its day.
14
Natalia Ginzburg has effectively evoked the stupor and emotion that many anti-Fascists, or simply non-Fascists, of her generation had on rediscovering their sense of a
patria
to defend:
The streets and squares of the city, which had once been the theatre of our adolescent's boredom and the object of our haughty contempt, became the places that it was necessary to defend. The words âpatria' and âItalia', which had nauseated us between the school walls because they had always been accompanied by âfascista', because they were swollen with emptiness, suddenly appeared to us unqualified by adjectives and so transformed that we seemed to be hearing and thinking about them for the first time. All of a sudden they rang true to our ears. We were there to defend the
patria
and the
patria
was those streets and those squares, our loved ones and our childhood, and all the people passing by. So simple and obvious a truth seemed strange to us because we had grown up with the conviction that we didn't have a
patria
and that we had been born at a point swollen with emptiness. And what seemed still stranger was the fact that, for love of all those unknown people who were passing by, and for love of a future unknown to us but whose solidity and splendour we could make out in the distance, between privation and devastation, each of us was ready to lose him- or herself and his or her life.
15
Mixed with all this, perhaps, was the more or less conscious desire to free oneself of the recurrent oscillation between self-denigration, which had also acquired the guise of a defence from the stereotypes imposed by the regime,
16
and self-pity, fed by the myth of the âgoodness of the Italians', which others stubbornly refused to recognise. âSince the formation of the first groups of so-called “rebels”, we have seen the name “Italy” pronounced with a certain sense of admiration, no longer with contempt', a Garibaldi commissar was to write.
17
The âPreliminary Report on the Activity of the Partisans of the Province of Arezzo' states that the birth of the patriot formations âhad, through a psychological process that was quite comprehensible in a Fascist climate, initially to overcome the reluctance to believe that finally something essentially “Italian” was taking shape, authentic in the true sense of the word.'
18
In another document a Tuscan partisan recalls that, when his band liberated a village, âour greatest satisfaction was to speak in Italian to people who were expecting to hear other, guttural sounds. The liberated Italians understood then that even if there was a defeated Italy there was however a victorious Italy as well. And the victorious Italy was us.'
19
It is this kind of profound expectation that allowed even the regular troops of the Italian Liberation Corps to be in many cases gratified by the warm welcome they received from the populations of the liberated territories.
20
âItalia, Italia, cosa importa se si muore' (âItaly, Italy, what does it matter if one dies'), sang a wounded partisan in an SS prison, using the words of a national-Fascist song, re-utilised also by the partisans; and the same partisan, hearing the Italian SS men singing âItalian songs to German rhythms', remarked, almost as if to explain these reversals, âThey've poisoned them.'
21
The fact that Italians were fighting against Italians and that both were invoking Italy in fact made the reacquisition of a sure sense of the
patria
more difficult, but also more tormenting.
âThe spring of patriotism against the German on home soil has been released', recounted a Garibaldi partisan educated by the nuns, who was sensitive to the nationalist myths of Fascism, but after 8 September had felt the
âfascination of the rebel linked to the Italian Risorgimento in anti-Austrian terms'. And she added: âAt that moment I jettisoned not the
patria
, not what Mussolini had taught me: I jettisoned Mussolini.'
22
A Bolognese butcher tells this tale of a carabinieri marshal: âthe marshal first served the Fascist state, then as an Italian he recognised the value of the “resistance”, for which he gave his life'. In 1937 the marshal had arrested the butcher's brother, who was then sentenced to four years by the Special Tribunal.
23
In explaining his decision to join the Resistance to his family, a police chief's son wrote: âFor a long time I'd been seeking the truth in myself â¦Â it would have been a poor show if I, who have always professed the religion of the
patria
, backed out at the moment of action. Here what is involved is not heroic spirit, it's the human spirit which is on its feet and every man with it.'
24
Revelations, discoveries, reworkings of ancient cultural undercurrents, continuities going under a different name, interweave in this attempt to reconstitute an idea and a sense of the
patria
. It is hardly surprising, therefore, if in those who unambiguously and painfully had committed themselves in this enterprise â the declaration of war against Germany by the Royal Army of the South â aroused, beyond strictly politico-diplomatic evaluations, a sense of extraneousness, if not irritation or even anger. Ada Gobetti wrote in her diary:
The news has left me cold. It makes no difference to us. Perhaps it will have a certain importance for those who were awaiting orders from Badoglio (who have, however, calmly gone home by now): not certainly for our mountain folk from here, nor for the Turin workers. It's we who are fighting the war, our war â and the official benedictions of a debased authority that no one believes in any more mean little to us.
25
The same position was expressed by the Action Party's Rome newspaper:
If the king and Badoglio formally declare war on Germany now â¦Â it's a gesture that fools nobody and adds nothing to the present state of affairs. The real war against Germany has been declared by the Italian people since 9 September â¦Â And it's war declared not against Germany, but against Nazism, which is so much more inhuman and reactionary than Fascism.
26
Avanti!
in its turn stated that the war against Nazism and Fascism was being waged by the people, and the king and Badoglio had nothing to do with it.
27
More brusquely, the newspaper of the Communist Movement of Italy defined the declaration of war as âanother instance of royal buffoonery'.
28
In its poster launched for the occasion, the Communist Party stated that unity, which was indispensable for war, required trust in one's leaders, but âthis trust can't be given to men who, co-responsible for Fascism and the Fascist war, have deceived and betrayed the Italian people'.
29
In a longer and more closely argued article,
L'UnitÃ
went back to the authoritative pages of the
Storia del PC
to establish the distinction between just war and unjust war, naturally bracketing that against Nazi Germany in the former category, âof immense, unprecedented significance', but for that very reason denying that it could be directed by the Badoglio government: âHow can this government which has feared the people conduct a people's war?'
30
Even
La Democrazia del Lavoro
, the newspaper published by the bloodless party of that name, which on 20 March had called the war against the Germans a war âof redemption', on 23 March 1944 warned that, to avoid the war being fought only as a selfish Italian affair, it must not be conducted by men compromised by Fascism.
The high party ranks were to change their tune after the Salerno âturning-point' and the creation of governments of national unity whose declared aim was indeed to give priority to the war. Nevertheless, it is highly significant that in the
resistenti
's conscience the war against the Germans/Nazis needed no external legitimisation appealing to criteria of legality embodied in the institutions of
the old state. On the contrary, it was these very institutions that had to legitimise themselves by conducting the war with moral scruples. Only one newspaper of declared monarchic inspiration could write that the war had to be fought under the orders of the legitimate head of state, namely the king.
31
Most
resistenti
must also have found needlessly contorted Benedetto Croce's thesis that the laceration suffered by the soul of the Italians between one war waged by Fascism, âlegal in appearance but odious', and another, which was âdear to the heart of every true Italian' and âtenaciously pursued the spirit of the Risorgimento', had been finally healed: in fact the second war had, according to Croce, become legal âbecause it is carried out on the same priniple as that marked by the sole government legally existing now in Italy'. (The scant clarity of this argumentation may also be ascribed to the fact that Croce was inviting men to enlist for a war that had not been declared, in a volunteer corps that was not recognised by the royal government.)
32
Among the
resistenti
, even those who sought the help of legality like this saw it only as âlegal clothing' provided after the event to the âpopular declaration of war' that had already occurred.
33
Only to the Italian partisan formations in the Balkans did the declaration of war bring, within certain limits, tangible and immediate benefit, because it gave them greater legitimacy in the eyes of their former enemies. The Command of the 2
nd
corps of the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia (Montenegro) issued a communication in which, even going beyond the way things actually stood, it stated: âWith the declaration of war against Germany and the recognition of Italy â by the Anglo-Soviet-American coalition â as an ally in war, its international position has changed.'
34