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THE DARK SIDE OF ITALIAN HISTORY 1943 – 1945

in “Modern Italy”, vol. 12, n. 2, june 2007, Special Issue: Italy at War, 1935-2005 guest editors: Philip Cooke and Jonathan Dunnage

In the last days of July 1943 the fascist faithful greeted

the news of Mussolini’s expulsion with stunned silence and

absolute passivity. The demonstrations of jubilation by

antifascists and by the majority of the people were

impressive and went unopposed.

The coup had been the final step in a long process which,

from the outset of the Second World War on, had worn away

the ties between fascism and the nation.

The most glaring indicators of the regime’s difficulties

were the scarcity of staple commodities and the failure of

the food rationing policy. Since the first year of the war

the lower and the lower middle classes in the cities and in

the country had been experiencing what were quickly to

become near famine conditions. People in cities were

convinced that there was much less deprivation in the

country and that country people were speculating on

foodstuffs (as was, what is more, reported by fascist

propaganda in the search for a scapegoat). But, although

people in the country found it relatively easier to come by

food, they still had to pay higher prices for increasingly

scarce industrial goods. Small scale food producers also had

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to undergo stringent monitoring of their goods . This,

however, did not stop the spread of the black market.

Inhabitants of rural areas experienced incredible poverty.

Adult men were called up for military service, while

fertilizers and fuel for agricultural machinery were lost to

the needs of the war industry and the machinery itself could

no longer be replaced when worn out.

This shared privation, however, did not result in greater

solidarity between industrial and agricultural workers. City

and country people, at the level of the masses, exhibited a

deep mutual distrust of the other, and continued to distrust

each other even after the defeat of Fascism, even after the

end of the war.

From the outset of the war internal contradictions within

Italian society led to a general crisis which constituted

the essence of the regime’s ruin.

Not even the ruling classes were exempt. The war opened up

contradictions and rivalries between sectors of production -

those which profited from the war in terms of power and

wealth and those which saw their resources and market

shrink. The sectors producing consumer goods suffered a

gradual erosion of their profit margins. Their plants and

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machinery became old and worn and their labour force

contracted as men were called to arms.

Industry and agriculture, city and country, latent social

conflicts which were to explode in the final twenty months

of the war. Age-old contradictions in Italian society

returned to the forefront in these years, forming part of an

immense tragedy which would go on to shape the destiny of

the nation in the latter half of the century.

Against this background the factors leading to the collapse

of the regime were the war and its wounds. Fascism had

celebrated its intervention in the conflict as the final act

of its dominion, the ultimate goal of its entire history.

The war had been presented and exalted as “the Fascist war”.

And defeat would mean that all Fascism’s ambitions and

promises had tragically come to nothing. 1

Germany could not forgive its ally’s betrayal in signing the

armistice of 8 September 1943 with the enemy powers. Its

troops had been taking up positions all over the peninsula

ever since the British and U.S. landings in Sicily on the

1 Zangrandi Ruggero, 1943: 25 luglio-8 settembre, Milano Feltrinelli 1964 2;

L’Italia dei quarantacinque giorni 1943 25 luglio-8 settembre. Studio e documenti, MilanoIstituto nazionale per la storia del movimento di liberazione in Italia,1969; Bertolo G. et al, Operai e contadini nella crisi italiana del 1943-1944, MilanoFeltrinelli 1974; L’Italia nella seconda guerra mondiale e nella Resistenza, Istitutonazionale per la storia del movimento di liberazione in Italia, MilanoAngeli 1988; De Felice Renzo, Mussolini l’alleato 1940-1945, vol. I, L’Italia in guerra1940-1943, Torino Einaudi 1990; Ventura A. (cur.), Sulla crisi del regime fascista1938-1943, Istituto veneto per la storia della Resistenza, VeneziaMarsilio 1996

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pretext of fighting the allies as they advanced from the

south. Following the announcement of the armistice, German

troops occupied Italy’s key centres, preparing to take

control of the entire country. There were numerous brave and

unfortunate episodes of resistance to this occupation on the

part of Italians. The Italian army, however, fell to pieces,

as it had been left without orders or directives from that

monarchy to which it had traditionally owed its allegiance.

The Germans sent over 600.000 soldiers captured in Italy, in

the Balkans and in the Aegean islands to prison camps in

Germany. Around 90.000 men from the Blackshirt units, the

politicised formations of the army which had sprung from the

Milizia Volontaria Sicurezza Nazionale, were the exception. They

unhesitatingly sided with Germany and were absorbed into the

Wermacht, as Waffen SS.

Following occupation the decision was taken to create a

collaborationist State headed by Mussolini who had, in the

meantime, been freed from prison. Now Italians had to make a

radical choice – whether to support Mussolini’s Republic

(which, after some vacillation, took the name Repubblica Sociale

Italiana -RSI) or to prepare to fight the German invader and

its internal allies with propaganda, politics, action, and

weapons. Despite internal differences and disagreements the

antifascist front was broad and enjoyed the strong support

of the people. It immediately set about building a united

front.

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Siding with the RSI meant, first of all, siding with the

Germans. Those who did so were convinced that they were

defending Italy’s honour which had been stained by abject

betrayal. But they had the tragic sensation of being alone.

And therefore the fighters of the RSI created for themselves

the legend of the “regime of honour”. They presented

themselves as a handful of desperate heroes sacrificing

themselves in order to keep the promise given to their ally

and to realize the dreams betrayed by twenty years of

compromises. Another reason was to save this “poor Italy”

and its social order from the more appalling disaster of a

three-pronged barbaric invasion – German, British, United

States and Bolsheviks. Patriotism and political-ideological

fanaticism were often inextricably mixed together.

Italian Collaborationism

Italian collaborationism had many ambiguous faces and

disguises. Just as with other forms of European

collaborationism during the Second World War, Italian

collaborationism appealed to the need to defend vulnerable

people against the ruthless rigour, depredation and

incommensurable violence of the German occupation.

Singularly similar arguments of love for one’s country had

resounded throughout each European nation; but Italy was

unique in that its version of this argument had so great a

possibility of opening up deep contradictions in the body of

the nation, in the soul itself of each individual Italian.

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The most aggressive justification for those fighting

alongside the Germans arose from the consideration that

Italy’s occupation was due to the alliance being broken off

during a war which had cost hundreds of thousands of lives

and profoundly involved the whole country, albeit through

the mechanisms of propaganda and indoctrination. Opponents

of the dictatorship, the courageous enemies of Mussolini for

the entire period of Fascism, had denounced consent for the

war and the alliance with Nazism as artificial. They had

deduced from this finding that the entire Italian

population essentially rejected the war and the alliance and

that this rejection expressed substantial opposition to the

dictatorship. The way in which the conspiracy of July 1943

was greeted by the country bore their judgment out. 2

These arguments had deep roots and went a long way in

explaining why the regime crumbled. However, they

underestimated both past compromises between the masses and

Fascism and the complexity of an experience which in 1943

had vast swathes of the population bound to the idea of war

actually because of the pain of the sacrifices and human

losses borne. At the crucial moment, many believed that in

reneging on the alliance they were consigning to oblivion

2 Giorgio Amendola, Analisi e prospettive politiche in un documento del 1941 riveduto daTogliatti, “Critica marxista” , 1970, pp.75- 102, the quotations at pp.75, 94- 95, 91 and 102; Agli italiani, “Avanti!”, giornale del movimento diunità proletaria per la repubblica socialista, anno 47 numero 1, 1agosto 1943; Santo Peli, “Materiali per un’analisi dei comportamentioperai nella prima e nella seconda guerra mondiale”, in Stefano Musso(cur.), Tra fabbrica e società,cit., pp.197- 227

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and repudiating the dead, no matter the cause they had been

sacrificed for. The complex mechanism of indoctrination had

upended values and perspectives, revealing, as Gitta Sereny

wrote, “both the ideal tension which a tyranny is able to

create and its ability to turn to evil the natural human

propensity for good ”. 3

The contradictory and ambiguous nature of Italian-German

relations had been evident even before the tragedy of the

Russian campaign or German violence in the Balkans and in

Italy on 8 September. Admiration for the invincible allies

had always been attended by reservations and fear. All

Italian memoir writing of the alliance testifies to the

ambiguity of this love-hate relationship. Mussolini himself

distrusted Germany. The perplexity and ambiguity in

relations between the two powers, the two regimes, the two

dictators from the ‘30s right up to the war is common

knowledge. In his memoirs the ambassador Filippo Anfuso, an

RSI adherent, recounted an episode of September 1943 when

Mussolini, in front of Hitler, coarsely expressed his fear

of looking like a vassal, repeating again and again “that he

did not want to be a Quisling” 4. RSI personnel were to

repeat this, giving voice to the emulation, envy and rancour

reservation unceasingly typically expressed by the weaker

party.

3 Gitta Sereny, Germania. Il trauma di una nazione. Riflessioni 1938- 2001, tr. it.Milano Rizzoli 2002, p.94 Filippo Anfuso, Roma Berlino Salò, 1936-1945, Milano Garzanti 1950 p. 389

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However, the Republican Fascists declared that they were

hugely grateful for the extraordinary virtues of their

German ally. Press and propaganda instruments glorified

their incredible qualities, first and foremost their

generosity in still allowing Fascist Italy to take up arms

to save itself. 5 But other reasons were put forward by the

Fascists, fashioned on a reappraisal of Italy’s entire

domestic history and the meaning of 19th Century European

affairs. The liberal values of the Italian Risorgimento and

its content deriving from the tradition of enlightenment

were rejected in favour of a stronger call to traditionalism

and nationalist values. Mazzini rose up as the greatest

symbol of the new Republic not only as the antithesis of the

Savoy monarchy but above all because of the mystical nature

of his political preaching. The alliance with Germany was

backdated to the 1848 common struggle for independence, to

the 1866 alliance against the Hapsburg Empire and the

victory of Sedan, which freed Italian from the onerous

tutelage of Napoleon III and made the conquest of Rome

possible. Germany (not France or Great Britain) had been

Italy’s real loyal ally. This completely ideologised

rewriting of history was sealed by the alliance between

Nazism and Fascism, the fraternal friendship of the two

5 Pino Giani Vignali, Il perché di una fraternità d’ armi , in “Libro emoschetto”, 3 giugno 1944; Gian Luigi Gatti, L’Inghilterra contro il Risorgimentoe l’ unità d’ Italia, in “Libro e moschetto” , 5 agosto 1944; a. m. p., Italiani egermanici, in “Il Piemonte repubblicano”, 11 genn. 1944.

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leaders and the indissolubility of the alliance. Even the

obstacle of the First World War was smoothly disposed of –

Italy had fought not against Germany but against the

Hapsburg Empire. 6

Some serious difficulties had arisen with Germany’s

extension of its sovereignty to two areas which were key to

the Fascist sense of identity – the Adriatisches Kunstenland

including Friuli and Venezia Giulia, with Lubiana and all of

Istria and the Alpenvorland with the provinces of Trento,

Bolzano and Belluno – places sacred to the memory of the

Great War. Historians are all well aware of the events which

revealed Germany’s desire to seize the land of the areas of

operations from Italy for good, the strategy of

systematically destroying all Italian characteristics by

means of the pastorizzazione of peoples on the Eastern Border

(so Germans defined their policy), of eradicating the

Italian presence in the Alpenvorland valley, all signs of

revenge against the Italianisation undertaken by the regime,

the revenge of the German mother tongues against Fascist and

Italian arrogance.

Ideological solidarity seems to have played no role in this

context, where, in the final stages of the Reich, the

foolish ambition to bring the old Hapsburg Empire back to6 a. m. p., Italiani e germanici, in “Il Piemonte repubblicano”, 11 genn.1944; Pino Giani Vignali, Il perché di una fraternità d’ armi , in “Libro emoschetto”, 3 giugno 1944; Gian Luigi Gatti, L’Inghilterra contro il Risorgimentoe l’ unità d’ Italia, in “Libro e moschetto” , 5 agosto 1944; Bruno Marchi, Ildestino si compirà, in “Il regime fascista” 10 novembre 1944.

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life seemed to re-emerge, to take its place alongside the

Third Reich’s Grossraum dream. 7

Italian collaboration was, therefore, ingrained with the

awareness of a false condition, a fate of defeat of their

ideals. This feeling must not be confused with the

perception of the Axis powers’ inevitable defeat. Today, at

a distance of half a century from these tragic two years,

developments in the war in 1943-1945 appear cut and dried.

But this is an illusion of perspective, dictated by the

outcome of the conflict. We need to reappraise this

judgment, place ourselves in the perspective of that time.

The conviction that something could change quite radically

was, at least in part, justified by the upheaval in the

fortunes of all the leading players in the long conflict. A

country such as Italy, which, after believing so intensely

in the illusion of an Axis victory had had to witness Axis

7 Nino D' Aroma, Noi e i tedeschi in "Orizzonte", n. u. , 1944. AboutAdriatisches Kunstenland: Enzo Collotti, Il Litorale Adriatico nel Nuovo Ordineeuropeo 1943-1945, Vangelista Milano 1974); Galliano Fogar, Sotto l'occupazione nazista nelle province orientali, Udine Del Bianco 1961; RobertoSpazzali, Sotto la Todt. Affari, servizio obbligatorio del lavoro, deportazioni nella Zona d'Operazioni "Litorale Adriatico" (1943-1945), ed. Goriziana, Gorizia 1995; HansSchneider-Bosgard, Bandenkampf Resistenza e controguerriglia al confine orientale, A.Sema ed., Leg Pordenone 2003. About Alpenvorland cfr. Tedeschi, partigiani epopolazioni nell’Alpenvorland, Padova Marsilio 1984. It was not allowed toinhabitants of these regions to join up the RSI Army, though Mussolinitried to obtain it from Hitler: see Archivio Istituto storico belluneseper la storia della Resistenza e dell' età contemporanea, Busta R/O n.12 - Carte del Bundesarchiv- Militararchiv Freiburg (materiale raccolto da G.Padovani nel 1981). See an example of Fascist protests: Italo Sauro, L'azione controproducente del Commissario supremo germanico nella Venezia Giulia, datt. 87pp., 15 settembre 1944, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Segreteriaparticolare del Duce, Carteggio riservato Rsi b. 12 fasc.6

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defeats, also tended of course to doubt the evidence of an

imminent final disaster.

The awareness, or at least the doubt, that collaboration

with the “occupying ally” was undermined by the fate of

future defeat, sprang possibly from a sense of disparity in

relations.

For the Republican Fascists, however, acknowledgement of

inferiority and subjection was not a reason to doubt the

essential lawfulness of their choice. Continuing with the

alliance and saving national honour went hand in hand. A

prisoner from East Africa, brought home in the summer of

1943 in a ship carrying the sick and women, commented on his

landing in the Italy of Badoglio: “… upon disembarking it

was immediately clear that Italy, the real Italy, was not in

the peninsula. It had remained down there in the

inaccessible region of Ethiopia, in the sunny undergrowths;

down there where there was someone who knew how to suffer

for an Idea and die for the Motherland; where there was

still some brother holding the name of Italy aloft, not of

this Italy which calls the enemy liberators but of the real

glorious and immortal Italy… ” 8.

The fosse dividing the two Italys, one accepting Nazi

occupation and collaborating with it and one rejecting it,

was undeniably extremely deep and unbridgeable. Many

8 Fabio Roversi Monaco, Le città galleggianti, in “Civiltà fascista”, aprile1944 p. 54

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conflicting aspects and extraordinary ambiguities were

involved in the decision to collaborate.

If we closely observe the various figures involved in the

RSI, we come up with a series of types which I believe is

significant and which helps us to distinguish between those

choosing to bear arms, those participating in political and

ideological developments, those dedicating themselves to

administration and finally those attempting to put

“socializzazione” into practice. Each of these categories

understood their collaborative role in different ways – not

necessarily running contrary to each other. One thing,

however, held all their various experiences together – the

adhesion to an extremely rigid conception of the Fascist

State accompanied by a desire to create a new system which

was different to the old Fascism. 9

This is not to give credit to the thesis of “renewal”

boasted by the leaders who had had to establish their seat

of government in Salò. There were too many links with the

Fascism of the previous twenty year period to accept their

version. The thesis of “renewal ”is, however, a subjective

factor which cannot be disregarded. It is the badge of

Italian collaboration. It is all the more remarkable if

9 “The honour is on our side […] Do not mix up the Fascist doctrine andthe men of the Party, so as you do not mix up bad priests and your purereligion…”, propaganda leaflet in Archivio Istituto storico dellaResistenza e dell’età contemporanea Bergamo Fondo G.C. Pozzi, fald. 3,b. B

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viewed in relation to the desire to convert the war into a

conflict of civilizations and race, to move towards

“European” perspectives in which RSI had to fight a more

glorious challenge.

In any case we are faced with an array of cases, sentiments

and objectives, the majority of which make it difficult to

use in historiography the category of collaboration to the

full. It might be simpler and more consoling, for our

consciences as Italians and democrats, to make a clean break

with those who sided with the Reich. But this would not

resolve the problem of a nation which experienced Fascism

and came out of Fascism by means of a painful and bloody

civil war.

Who fought for the Duce

Still today, a good part of the Italians believes that the

core of adherents to the RSI was made up of young people -

fresh faced, trusting in Mussolini, possessing honour and

loyalty. These young people did, it is true, constitute the

RSI army. But the army in this Republic was not a clearly

identifiable entity.

The RSI military formation model was not that of a regular

army – as outlined by the Armed Forces Minister, Marshall

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Graziani 10 – but that of a band of volunteers, by

definition irregular and undisciplined. For months Mussolini

raved, calling for the constitution of “Companies of Death”,

bringing to light a purely “Italic ”medieval and renaissance

model, which confusedly took the shape of soldiers of

fortune. One of the leading figures in the history of the

armed forces of Salò – Junio Valerio Borghese regarded

himself and his “private” formation, the Decima Mas, as

heirs to this tradition and declared their military

independence; the “Corriere dei Piccoli” (a weekly review

for children, published by the most important Italian daily

newspaper, the “Corriere della sera”) dedicated the last of

the illustrated stories it was able to publish before

Liberation to the condottiere Giovanni dalle Bande Nere. 11

There was a volunteering and demagogic inspiration running

through the entire military culture of this “new” Fascism,

inspired by a combative model deriving from the First World

War: that of the Arditi. These Arditi were set off against the

“Royal” army, by definition a symbol of betrayal,

10 Rodolfo Graziani was called “jena di Libia” for his ruthless crueltyin the colonial war in the Twenties and in ruling Ethiopia after theconquest (1936-1940).11 The Compagnia della Morte in the medieval age was formed by citizenswho in the battle fought around the Carroccio (the wagon which carriedthe colours and the insignia of the town) having sworn to defend it evenif they should die. Giovanni dalle Bande nere (Giovanni dei Medici 1498-1526) was so called because he changed his colours (white and violet) toblack when pope Leone X de’ Medici died. German soldiers – in 1521 –also called him “the Great Devil”. He was shot to death by a falconetto.The death of Giovanni has been told in the film Il mestiere delle armidirected by Ermanno Olmi.

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bureaucracy and inefficiency. The new army was intended to

be of a completely different ilk. 12

Since the first days of the Republic, in the middle of

September 1943, the Fasci di combattimento – i.e. the local

sections of the Republican Fascist Party – resurrected the

“action squads”. These were the military formations of the

early days of Fascism, which had fought in the1919-1925

civil war, and which had made the Marcia su Roma. In the space

of a few months, and after an initial hesitation, these

troops became regular. The volunteer squads were absorbed

into an institutionalised formation, the Guardia Nazionale

Repubblicana (GNR), the jewel in the crown of the armed forces,

a corps which had strong ideological convictions. Exactly as

had happened in 1923, when “action squads” were transformed

in the Milizia Volontaria Sicurezza Nazionale. But the GNR, under the

orders of a weak ras13 of the regime, Renato Ricci, formerly

president of the Opera Nazionale Balilla, was not a formation

fighting at the front.

It was a police force and was integrated with the

Carabinieri reaching a total of as many as of 140-150

12 Gli Arditi were created in 1917 as a corps for attack in thetrenches; fascist propaganda presented them as forerunners of itsideology and its political style, a model of a new politicised soldier:see Giorgio Rochat, Gli Arditi della Grande Guerra. Origini, battaglie e miti, Gorizia1990.13 Ras were called the chiefs of the tribes of Abyssinia. The name wasused to indicate the local chief of first Fascism who by themselves werenot powerful on national level, but who could condition the policy ofthe leader in the local context.

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thousand men. The Carabinieri, however, were seen in a bad

light both by the Germans and by the Fascists themselves.

Both suspected the Carabinieri of disloyalty and were afraid

that they sympathized with Badoglio. The Germans deported

them to Germany, at first sporadically (as happened with the

Carabinieri of Rome in November 1943) and then en masse in

the summer of 1944. The remaining GNR forces – around

70.000 men in the autumn of 1944 – had to control the

territory, acting as police working together with the State

Police under the command of Prefetti (who represented the

central Government and were now called Capiprovincia). 14

However, the GNR performed poorly due to its lack of

weapons and its volunteers’ inadequate training. In mid

August 1944 it was absorbed into the army as the “first

fighting force”, taken from under the command of Renato

Ricci and placed under the direct orders of Mussolini. Its

members did not lose their police duties but continued to

perform them in competition with the State Police. This

contributed towards an interweaving of powers and illegality

which gave the authority of the republic little credibility

and rendered it problematic. GNR numbers fell progressively

from the summer of 1944 on due to the partisan guerilla war.15

14 Giampaolo Pansa, L'esercito di Salò nei rapporti riservati della Guardia nazionalerepubblicana 1943-44, Milano Insmli 196915 Report on meeting among the Capiprovincia di Piemonte, Lombardia,Veneto, Emilia 10 febbraio 1944 in Milan in Archivio Centrale delloStato, Segreteria particolare del Duce, Carteggio riservato, Rsi b.79.

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At the end of June 1944, whilst the Allies were liberating a

large part of Tuscany, another armed volunteer corps was

created - the Brigate Nere, made up of party members and

mobilizing when necessary. They were cadre-less “brigades”

under the orders of a Commander who was the PFR Local

Federal Secretary. The number of Brigate Nere multiplied. Some

were set up in ministerial departments under the command of

Ministers, as was the case in the Ministry of Finance, run

by Domenico Pellegrini Giampietro. He made a name for

himself for courageously defending Italian finances against

German depredation. In the meantime, however, he headed the

ministerial Black Brigade to root out rebels.

The Black Brigades initially sprang up in Tuscany and then

spread throughout the northern provinces. The Brigades of

Tuscany followed the Germans as they retreated. And these

bands were the most ferocious and raged through the Padana

valley, angering even the Minister of the Interior,

Buffarini Guidi, who furiously railed against the

unlawfulness and disorder generated by groups of, what were

by then, rootless armed men. They were fanatical and

factious, ruthless and cruel. Their supporters, after the

war, depicted them as desperate heroes; but a reading of the

“Historical Diaries” of their formations gives a completely

sf.4.; and Riunione dei capi delle province di Lombardia, Piemonte e Liguria presieduta dalministro Buffarini Guidi a Milano il 5 giugno 1944 a. XXII Archivio Centrale delloStato, Segreteria particolare del Duce, Carteggio riservato, Rsi b.79.sf.4 Riunione dei capi delle province di Lombardia, Piemonte e Liguria presieduta dal ministroBuffarini Guidi a Milano il 5 giugno 1944 a. XXII

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different picture. They did not include many young people.

Those who had not gone up into the mountains to join the

partisans were already part of the Guardia or training in

Germany. Only middle-aged men were left (in a period in

which people of 40 started to physically decline),

untrained, lacking equipment and efficient armaments. 16

In contrast, the Decima Mas, a crack naval corps trained by

Junio Valerio Borghese (ostentatiously addressed as “prince”

by the authorities) had weapons, money and training. It

derived from a division of the navy which had managed to

strike the British fleet with torpedoes and explosive

charges carried with temerity under the keel of the enemy’s

ships. The corps was immensely proud of this feat and still

felt part of it, but it belonged to other times, to other

fighters who were no more. A violent, domineering,

villainous and ferocious spirit pervaded the corps. It was a

further source of concern for the Republican authorities due

to its contempt for rules, its prevarication towards the

weak and all those suspected of hostility or mere

indifference. 17

16 Dianella Gagliani, Brigate nere, Torino Bollati Boringhieri 2000;Relazione circa il lavoro compiuto dal comando del corpo ausiliario delle squadre d’ azione delleCCNN dalla costituzione al 28 ottobre 1944, in ottemperanza agli ordini del duce, del ministrosegretario del PFR comandante del corpo e in perfetta armonia col comando supremo SS epolizia in Italia in Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Segreteria particolare delDuce, Carteggio riservato, Rsi b.31 fasc 238 sfasc. 7; Letter of GuidoBuffarini Guidi to Duce, 15 gennaio 1945, in Archivio Centrale delloStato, Segreteria particolare del Duce, Carteggio riservato, Rsi b. 7fasc. Buffarini Guidi

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The GNR, the Black Brigades, Decima Mas – each formation

created its own Political Investigative Office which carried

out investigations into antifascists, rebels and all

possible traitors, in fact, especially into traitors. It was

a Republic created by a conspiracy – that of Savoy and its

generals – and it seemed unable to free itself from the

nightmare.

Alongside these military forces were swarms of irregular

bands which granted themselves, for the most part with

German protection, investigative and repressive powers.

Their names are famous throughout Italy as illustrations of

cruelty and for their displays of psychopathology: the Koch

band, which operated initially in Rome and then moved to

Milan where its members were arrested in the autumn of 1944

by the Fascist authorities themselves, at the request of,

amongst others, the Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Schuster,

a Benedictine abbot well-known for his openness to the

regime during the Fascist period; the Carità band, which set

17 Cfr. The letter of admiral Ferrini (Sottosegretario di Stato allaMarina) to Borghese, 4 febbraio 1944, in Archivio Fondazione IsecMilano, fondo Fontanella b.39, f.3, which communicates the blame ofGraziani because Borghese could not face adequately “a state of deepbad mood and of lack of discipline in one of the corps he was in commandof…”. See also: Promemoria signed by Borghese, pp.8, 15 genn. 1944 inArchivio Centrale dello Stato, Roma, Segreteria particolare del Duce,Carteggio riservato, Rsi b. 73 fasc.10. Letter of SottosegretarioFerrini a Borghese, s. d., the Minister complains that X MAS “is actingby itself and is issuing announcement for calls up”. In front of GermanMarine officers, Ferrini had said about Borghese: “... it will bedifficult to make him return to military discipline, because he stronglytends to <<squadrismo>>” in Archivio Fondazione Isec, fondo Fontanellab.39, f.3,

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itself up in Florence where it seems to have exercised so

much power as to have been able to influence the

Capoprovincia himself. It then took refuge in Veneto where

it continued in its ferocity. There were also formations

which arose almost by spontaneous generation, spurred on by

the electrifying climate of political fanaticism. These

included the Legione mobile Ettore Muti (of Milan) or the Mai Morti

band (in Italian the name means never dead) – a notable

example of villainy. About its militants it was said that

they could not die because they never fought: “ninety

hotheads without any discipline (…) were the precise words

of the Duce” . 18

And finally the regular army: a hot debate rages around this

subject. Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, Defence Minister ( and

later Minister of the Armed Forces) wanted the army to be

“apolitical”, “national” and “patriotic”. In reality, the

officers – like all civil servants – had to swear an oath of

allegiance to Republican Fascism. (Only the judiciary

succeeded to be exempted). The clash on whether or not the

army was “political” was a clash of power in the course of

which Graziani tried to defend the prerogatives of his

position against the designs of politicians of the PFR

(Fascist Republican Party).19

18 Massimiliano Griner, La banda Koch, Torino Bollati Boringhieri, 2001;Riccardo Caporale, La “Banda Carità”. Storia del Reparto Servizi Speciali (1943-1945), SanMarco Litotipo 200519 The best account of this boring querelle is still Frederick WilliamDeakin, Storia della Repubblica di Salò, it. transl. 1963

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In the months immediately following September 1943,

Mussolini and Graziani tried to persuade Hitler to allow

them to form a regular army with men taken from

concentration camps. Hitler opposed this idea as there was

no guarantee that those he called “Badoglio-truppen” would

return to Italy and fight efficiently. The conditions in

which Italian soldiers were held in the German camps were

superior only to those of the Russians. They did not have

prisoner of war status and consequently could not receive

the Red Cross aid or the protection offered by international

war conventions. Despite these tragic conditions, marginally

less cruel than those of the concentration camps for Jews

and deported politicians, only a small percentage of these

men (not more than 10%) agreed to join the Republic. 20

In November 1943 the Republican government began to issue a

series of call ups which were initially relatively

successful but quickly became a great failure, as did every

subsequent recall to arms. The Republican Fascist government

therefore adopted measures providing for the death penalty

for those failing to report for military service and

persecution of their relatives. All this induced flight to

20 Gerhard Schreiber, I militari italiani internati nei campi di concentramento del TerzoReich 1943- 1945. Traditi disprezzati dimenticati, tr. it. Roma Ufficio storicodello Stato maggiore dell’esercito, 1992; Tomassini L. (ed.), Le diverseprigionie dei militari italiani nella seconda guerra mondiale, Firenze 1995; A.M. Casavolaet al., Sopravvivere liberi, Atti del Convegno, ANEI Roma 2005. See also: A.Isec, fondo Fontanella b.41, f.4 Ufficio del lavoro Relazione of ing. A.Vigone visiting camps of Italian and French Workers in the region ofSudeti, 16 - 31 marzo 1944.

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the mountains. Nevertheless conscripts and volunteers formed

four divisions (San Marco, Littorio, Monterosa and Italia);

each division from 11.000 to 16.000 men strong. These

divisions were sent to Germany for training and then sent

back to Italy from August 1944 on. They were positioned in

part on the Ligurian front under the command of Marshal

Graziani, mixed with German troops, and in part sent to the

North-Eastern border where they confronted first and

foremost the partisan insurgency. The suppression of

“banditry” (as the Nazis described guerilla warfare) was, in

fact, the major task of the RSI armed forces. The Germans

believed that this was the best way to use these troops as

it relieved the Wermacht of the task of suppressing the

guerillas. However, quite a large proportion of those troops

took advantage of the precious chance they had been given to

escape and went over to the partisans.

The commanders of the Salò army repeatedly complained that

the Wermacht or the SS were taking over the Italian armed

formations and using them as they liked, often not even to

fight but to build defences. It got to the point that in

January 1945 Graziani declared that the only real role of

the RSI army was to supply its allies with a workforce.21

21 See The German Plenipotentiary for the Work, a letter 20 aprile 1944in Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Roma, Segreteria particolare del Duce,Carteggio riservato, Rsi, b. 33; and the statement of Graziani in Verbaledella riunione tenutasi all’Ambasciata di Germania sabato 20 gennaio 1945, in ArchivioCentrale dello Stato, Roma, Segreteria particolare del Duce, Carteggioriservato, Rsi, b. 13, fasc. 13.

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There was an unbridgeable gap between the situation as it

was and ambitions to bring the Italian flags once more onto

the battle front, to have Italy rise up by the side of its

powerful ally as a protagonist in the construction of a new

Europe following Fascist and Nazi ideology. 22

Thus, the most well-known characteristic of the Fascist

republic came into being - a kind of irrepressible death

wish, the exaltation of blood and the display of ruthless

cruelty towards the enemy.

The Ideology of Death

The shadow of death hovers, in legend and common perception,

around the RSI. Creation of this image was complex and the

reflections both of the Republic’s heirs and its opponents

have played their part, albeit with different aims.

There is an element of reality which must be taken into

consideration. The specific background against which this

complex feeling arose was made up of the perception that the

Republic had been politically and militarily demoted, the

psychological consequences suffered by its adherents and

their isolation in a country which, in rejecting the war,

had rejected Fascism. Every aspect of life, both private and

public, was conditioned by this. Fascism born of the war had

22 See: Enzo Pezzato, Vittoria europea e bolscevismo, edizioni Erre VeneziaMilano 1945. Enzo Pezzato was an important journalist of the period

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offered up its works to the war, in line with its innermost

nationalist inspiration. When the Italian people had asked

for peace they had not behaved abjectly or simply recoiled

from the sufferings of war, as was claimed by RSI supporters

in calling for a revival of the national and warlike spirit.

Italians rejected the war because from that moment they

consciously rejected Fascism.

Disappointment, sorrow and contempt for this new Italy gave

rise to a desperate desire for revenge. Around this desire,

propaganda created a mystique of courage and death which

aspired to be the unmistakable mark of the RSI world. The

drumming repetition of these leitmotifs penetrated the

consciousness and influenced values and perceptions: “Die!

Know how to die! It was one of our nagging thoughts. All our

idealizing theory of courage revolved around that ability to

confront death. A man’s worth was calculated on the basis of

how well he was able to face death ”. 23

It was not simply rhetoric and ideology. There was also

ferocious suppression of opponents or, at any rate, of

fainthearted Italians who did not applaud the black flags of

the re-established dictatorship. Through death and the

display of death republican fascists intended to punish and

subdue the majority who were extraneous. The bodies of slain

partisans or opponents were displayed in public, by way of

23 Carlo Mazzantini, A cercar la bella morte, Venezia Marsilio 1995 (1986) p.169

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example to others, in the streets, in squares and at

execution sites. Sometimes the German authorities themselves

intervened to put an end to the slaughter. However, they did

not do so very often. It sometimes seemed that they

intervened not out of pity but out of a wish to keep the

right of reprisal and revenge only for themselves. 24

This ferocious practice was accompanied by widespread

ideological preaching. The RSI was marked by the publication

of a large number of daily papers, periodicals, pamphlets

and leaflets produced by the party, its mass organizations

and military formations and also by an aggressive and

original iconography. In addition to these publications and

iconography, incredibly rich if we consider the scarcity of

paper and all those resources required for all types of

printing at that time, there were the regime-controlled

daily newspapers. As had been the case in the twenty year

Fascist period, newspaper editors had to be to the liking of

the authorities and Mussolini himself.

This formidable instrument gave rise to what one Italian

scholar, Mario Isneghi, has defined as an “unreal universe”

(un universo fantasmatico), composed of illusions, nightmares and

images of death. Funereal symbols, the exaltation of a

24 One must remember that German Army slaughtered a lot of people inSouth and Central Italy in 1943- 1944; a large literature has appearedin last years: Lutz Klinkhammer, Stragi naziste in Italia, Roma Donzelli 1997;Gerhard Schreiber, La vendetta nazista, Milano Mondadori 2000; Paolo Pezzino(cur.), Crimini e memorie di guerra. Violenze contro le popolazioni e politiche del ricordo,l’ancora del Mediterraneo 2004.

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glorious death, the obsessive call to sacrifice one’s life

was a ritual connotation of Republican Fascism in the last

two years of the war, so much so as to appear almost like

rhetorical tinsel, the legacy of a decadent literature that

Gabriele D’Annunzio represented at its best. And many of the

protagonists of this affair had shared a rhetorical

education deeply influenced by D’Annunzio. 25

However, beneath this greasepaint of doubtful taste, we find

some decidedly important components. The cult of the

“magnificent death” – the glorious death on the battlefield

– tied in with a conception of the Nation as a living body

of the quick and the dead. The living had to obey the dead

in order to perpetuate the mission that the latter had died

for. 26. These were widespread themes in European

nationalism and in Nazism itself. In Italy in the last two

years of the war these themes were also mixed up with a more

domestic feeling, usual in the popular Catholic religiosity

of the time, according to which the departed in Heaven

looked down on, protected and guided their loved ones.

This symbolism of death was obsessive and accompanied by the

thrill of a kind of mysticism which professed to raise this

25 Mario Isnenghi, Autorappresentazioni dell’ ultimo fascismo nella stampa e nellaprogagansa, in La Repubblica sociale italiana, 1943-45 : atti del convegno, Brescia 4-5 ottobre198,5Pier Paolo Poggio ed., Brescia 1986, pp. 99-11226 See f. i.: Solo i più degni, in “Dovunque”, soldati italiani repubblicani (motto: ‘Morire sì: tradire, mai!’), 1 giu. 1944; Riccardo Gigante, Tenerduro in “Aquile del Carnaro”, giornale dei combattenti in Fiume d’Italia, 8 dic. 1944, a. 1, n.1

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partly profane cult of the dead and the nation to a faith

and to complement it with inviolable oaths. 27

Racism and Totalitarianism

Faith and cult of the dead, intertwined with the religiosity

of the time: was this the root of potential disagreements

with the Catholic church?

Unlike Nazism, Italian Fascism avoided clashes with the

principles preached by the Italian religious authorities. It

is true there were reasons for friction but, on the whole,

Fascism stuck to an apparent respect which satisfied

appearances and permitted mutual tolerance. In reality, the

Catholic hierarchy was no less internally divided and

anguished than the rest of the country. The Vatican ruled

out the possibility of giving diplomatic recognition to a

regime which had arisen during the conflict. From this point

of view appearances were saved. The Church applied a rule

27 . Domenico Leccisi, La <bella morte>, in “La voce repubblicana”, 13aprile 1944; Luigi Manfredi, Salmi repubblicani, in “Crociata italica”, 21agosto 1944 and Isa Vecchiotti Riolo, Fratelli in griogioverde, ibidem 29maggio 1944. “Crociata italica” was the paper of the Catholic RepublicanFascist, whose leader was don Tullio Calcagno. About the Fascist oath,see Carlo Borsani, L' ora dello spirito, “La Repubblica fascista”, 23 genn.1944. Carlo Borsani was holder of several war decorations; he was blindand was a poet; after 25 aprile 1945 he was killed by partisans

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that it had drawn up and applied for the duration of the

war. It professed neutrality. The local religious

authorities in the various dioceses, for their part, took up

positions which were or were not to the liking of party

federal secretaries, often angering that most over-excited

of Fascist leaders – Roberto Farinacci, openly philo-Nazi

and anti-Jewish.

He actually wanted the Pope himself to side with fascism, in

the name of a patriotic loyalty to fascism deriving from the

fact that the Pope was the Primate of the Italian church. In

most cases Fascists were angered by exhortations for

Christian piety, by the tolerance shown towards minor

figures – parish priests above all – who helped Jews,

persecuted politicians and partisans. Much research has

centred on the clergy’s mediating and consoling role within

society. It is not always easy to distinguish between

apologia and unprejudiced research. However, I believe what

a number of Catholic scholars claim is true, which is that

many of the clergy, above all in the local parishes in

direct contact with the people, took up a clearly different

position to that of Republican Fascism above all as regards

the latter’s intentions for racial extermination. Only a few

priests ( we could say an insignificant number) chose the

RSI, proclaiming that it was necessary to side with fascism

in the fight against Communism, Protestantism and the Jews.

The mass of Catholics were also divided and took sides in a

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similar fashion to their compatriots, some even taking up

arms in the name of “Christian anti-fascism”. 28

As in 1938 with the promulgation of the anti-Jewish “racial”

laws, in 1943-1945 one of the major points of disagreement

was Jewish persecution. I, personally, am not convinced that

in 1938 these laws had opened up that split between the

Catholic church and the State which moderate Italian

historians romance about. The racial laws were condemned

(as, for example, by Cardinal Schuster Archbishop of Milan)

not because of a wish to defend the persecuted or their

human dignity but to defend ecclesiastical law and and, in

some cases, the intangibility of marriage. In 1943–1945

things took a different turn.

The RSI was founded on virulent anti-Judaism, widely spread

by the press and carried out in collaboration with the

German forces of occupation. It was raised to an educational

canon in the Officers’ Schools of the Republican Armed

Forces. 29 In these moments anti-Judaism was able to make

itself most credible amongst the Italians and to take root

in Italian public opinion. The “conspiracy” which had

brought Mussolini down on 25 July was proof of the greater

28 The (almost) heretical position, claiming to be ultra orthodoxcatholic opinion, was represented by “Crociata Italica”, the paper of alittle movement headed by don Tullio Calcagno. As to Farinacci’ sexpressions see Gente italica, in “Regime fascista” 28 novembre 1943. 29 Cfr, Il corso di cultura politico-razziale tenuto dal marzo all' agosto XXII° presso la scuolaallievi ufficiali della Gnr di Fontanellato, in Archivio Centrale dello Stato,Segreteria particolare del Duce, Carteggio riservato, Rsi, b. 47 f. 498.

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Jewish conspiracy, directed against the peoples of the “new”

Fascist and Nazi Europe. Although there were still signs of

Catholic anti-Semitism, the ferocity of the regime had made

it unattractive to this instinctively moderate world – a

world which could accept many compromises (as it had done

for over twenty years) but could not, in all principle,

renounce its ethical foundations when they were so openly

contradicted.

In the Fascist republican world, however, there were many

kinds of anti- Judaism: the hallucinatory and fanatical

anti- Judaism of Giovanni Preziosi (a priest at the

beginning of the century, he was later defrocked and became

a racism theoretician during the regime); 30 the coldly

bureaucratic (but essentially murderous) anti- Judaism of

the Minister for the Interior, Guido Buffarini Guidi who, on

5 November 1943, ordered the internment of Jews, who had to

be handed over to the SS; and the vulgar and rapacious anti-

Judaism of an anonymous mob expressing rancour against

supposed profiteers. 31

At a different level, anti-Semitism was part of a racial

conception, boosted by the presence of black troops in

30 About Preziosi: Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Segreteria particolaredel Duce, Carteggio riservato, Rsi, b. 24, fasc. Giovanni Preziosi31 Nino Latronico Gli ebrei e la guerra, “Il Piemonte repubblicano”, 15 aprile1944; Adesso fuciliamoli! "Il popolo di Alessandria" 21 ottobre 1943; FrancoAlfonso Spinelli, Come gli ebrei conquistarono la Massoneria, "La repubblicafascista" 18 febbr. 1944.

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southern and central Italy, 32 and contributed to a plan for

a totalitarian State. In the most well-developed projects of

constitutional theoreticians, in the public speeches of all

politicians and in the requests of party rank and file, a

conception of the new Republic emerged which pretended to be

at odds with the Fascist regime of the past, but which took

its totalitarian characteristics and possibilities to their

extreme consequences. In the first years of the war new

political projects had been developed. These projects had

demonstrated that various leading exponents tended towards a

more openly totalitarian and Nazi conception.33 In the

Republic in many ways this tendency continued and

strengthened. We may intuit how developments of this kind

were implicit in the fanaticism, in the ideology of death

and in the paroxysmal exaltation of violence

Social Conflict

So they were not young people under the illusion of a great,

noble and courageous dream. Or, at least, not only these

young people and not only these feelings. The ferocious and

desperate picture I have tried to describe contradicts the

story of pure, deluded heroes. Similarly, this fable changes

32 “I negri in casa nostra? Giammai! Lotta fino alla vittoria!” (Niggers at our home?Never! Fight to the victory!) propaganda leaflet in Archivio IsrecBergamo Fondo G.C. Pozzi, fald.3, b. B33 Emilio Gentile, La via italiana la totalitarismo. Il partito e lo Stato nel regime fascista,Firenze La  Nuova Italia 1995

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dramatically if we observe how the RSI tackled the problems

and tasks of a state at war.

After the war the RSI was not recognized as a legitimate

state and all its laws were declared null. However, the

Republic had still extensively used personnel from the

previous State. These people had been formed within a

liberal State on which fascism had imposed its discipline

and culture.

This class of civil servants followed a bureaucratic praxis

which had been consolidated during the almost one hundred

years of Italian unity, as was documented in the recently

published papers of the RSI Office of the Prime Minister and

as was rendered inevitable by the large scale movement of

personnel from Rome to the North, to the uncomfortable and

mortifying offices in which the Ministries were installed

after the Germans, since the beginning of the occupation,

had denied Mussolini the right to set up his state capital

in Rome. We need to remember that the purges of the

immediate post-war period affected this army of civil

servants only marginally and at the lowest levels. 34

34 Verbali del Consiglio dei ministri della Repubblica sociale italiana, settembre 1943-aprile 1945 ed. critica a c. di Francesca Maria Scardaccione,Ministero per i Beni e le attività culturali, Direzione generaleper gli archivi, 2002, Roma 2002; Claudio Pavone, Alle origini dellaRepubblica : scritti su fascismo, antifascismo e continuità dello Stato, Torino BollatiBoringhieri 1995.

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Naturally these considerations do not mean that continuity (

which some scholars take to mean identicalness) may be

inferred between Republican Fascism and the Italian

Democratic Republic. Rather they suggest that we should

carefully observe other fields of activity of the Republican

state, first and foremost the management of resources and

relations with social groups and classes.

It might have seemed a desperate venture to re-knit the

complex weft of relations between the State – a State which

was so politicised! – and social forces following the

harrowing crisis of the regime and after Republican Fascism

had laid the blame for its economic, social and military

failure and for the “betrayal” of the alliance straight on

the whole Italy.

Nevertheless, the RSI managed to assume a role which gave it

at least an appearance of prestige and power, first of all

in the eyes of economic, business and industrial leaders.

In fact, the RSI set itself up as the mediator between these

forces and the Germans. It ensured that they behaved well

with the Germans so that the latter provided recognition and

supplies. However, it also protected them both against the

Germans and against the insubordination of workers, as long

as they recognized the RSI as mediator. Although a complex

and ambiguous game, it was one of the main justifications

for the existence of the RSI, above all in the final stages

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when it set itself up as protector of national industrial

assets against destruction by the retreating Germans.

In carrying out this task the Fascist ministers (and, in

particular, the Minister of Corporative Economy, Angelo

Tarchi) promoted forms of collaboration and participation by

representatives of industrial capitalism in the management

of the country’s political economy – in part following the

Fascist corporative tradition, in part aspiring – as was the

ambition of Angelo Tarchi – to obtain the support of the

Catholic world and the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which were

open to forms of social collaboration, and in part driven by

the incentive of having to adjust to the structures for

monitoring the Italian industrial apparatus devised by the

German administration. These forms of industrial management

were used simply to handle resource distribution during the

war. 35

In the immediate aftermath of the war, however, they were

taken up again, in a different spirit and with more

ambitious aims, by the social-democratic wing of the

burgeoning Italian democracy, with the support of trade

unions. This was proof not only of the RSI ’s ability to gain

support outside the circle of fanatics who subscribed to the

Idea but also to place itself in a perspective of state

modernization, as this was understood in the mid ‘40s. It

was, lastly, also a sign of the enduring legacy of egotistic

35 Angelo Tarchi, Teste dure, Milano Selc 1957

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corporatism with which the asphyctic history of Italian

capitalism is interweaved.

Relations with the middle classes also played an important

role in this, albeit not unswerving, alliance with the

business leaders of northern industry (the heart, let us not

forget, of the Italian industrial economy). In part, the

middle classes were industry’s technical managers,

reflecting the widespread and burgeoning ambition of these

rising social groups to play centre stage. But the middle

classes did not only operate within industry. They were made

up of composite parts and are still hard to define. However,

despite being difficult to identify clearly, these classes

played a key role both in the strategy of fascism and that

of opposing forces. As in an imaginary game of chess the

players aimed to “seize the middle ground” (like

contemporary democracies).

Fascists had a love-hate relationship with the rural and

urban lower-middle and middle classes, levelling rebukes and

threats against them for the faint-heartedness of the “grey,

slipper wearing, noses to the shutters bourgeois” (a

quotation from a Fascist paper of Milan, “il Fascio”,

November 1943); but also passionately appealing to their

traditional patriotism and love of order so that they would

wake up and cling to republican Fascism, the last bulwark in

the defence of Italian traditions. In order to obtain this

support Fascists alternated between making violent threats,

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calling up the bogey of communism and promoting local

loyalties.

Originally, at the end of the Great War, Fascism had

recruited quite a number of followers and leaders from the

ranks of the petty bourgeois. Déracinés students and former

officers at the end of the First World War made up a large

part of the movement. At its twilight, fascism seems to have

rounded with overwhelming anger on these social classes when

they expressed greatly different opinions to twenty years

previously. Fascism was suspicious, contemptuous and full of

hatred for intellectuals in particular. Investigations by

the various police forces, above all the Brigate Nere and GNR,

pointed on every occasion to the intellectual bourgeois,

professional classes and teachers as those most to blame for

the distrust displayed towards Republican Fascist

institutions. Fascists were not wrong; but their

preconception is indicative of their plebeian culture and

vulgar mentality which, in any case, did not help them to

avoid the contempt in which they – in turn – were held by

the cultured bourgeois.

The only effective instrument in their hands was a limited

version of patriotism. Their invitation to cling to local

loyalties – the municipality or other local communities –

managed to break down barriers and catalyse consent. This is

what happened in Milan in April 1944 when the Podestà and

Capoprovincia – Piero Parini, who had a long history in the

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ranks of the National Fascist Party – requested and obtained

a million lire loan from the bourgeoisie of Milan. This was

a loan, he declared, not to the Fascist regime but to the

city. The anti-Fascist capital Milan actually agreed to the

loan in the days following the extraordinary and triumphant

workers’ strike which had paralysed “the Italy of the Duce”

for almost a week (at the beginning of March 1944). There

was to be no repeat of this episode on such a grand scale;

but this card, an example of selfish and uncultured micro-

patriotism, was often played to the advantage of Republican

Fascism, of traditional order and of defence against any

subversion.

If the middle classes were fond of Mussolini no more, they

still were afraid of radical changes and social renewal: it

was a long way to democracy.

Finally there was the working class. “Italy, Republic,

Socializzazione”: until the last months – in fact, above all in

the tragic twilight of the Republic – Mussolini condensed

his political programme into these three words. For many,

principally followers from the very outset, the third part

of the programme was an impassioned and romantic return to

their socialist youth and to the youth of the duce … pure

rhetoric and trivial, second class literature if we observe

the unfolding of events.

The RSI wanted to offer itself as the realization of a

socialist state which dramatically outperformed communist

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Russia. To this end it dusted off the anti-capitalist

extremism of 1919 and stuffed it with red-hot accusations

against capitalist traitors who had boycotted both the

socialist realization of the regime and war preparations and

had then conspired with the king and the British to topple

the Duce. For the occasion, all exponents of revolutionary

trade unionism who could be exhumed were exhumed. This was

even the case with the reformed Nicola Bombacci, a former

member of the Italian Communist Party, miraculously healed

by the new Mussolini, the socializer.

Propaganda had, what is more, to tackle the explosion in

workers’ strikes. These obviously arose from the terrible

living conditions brought about by the war; but there was

also undoubtedly an ethical-political component at their

heart. Anti-fascist historians have painted a picture of a

working class which was steadfast in the face of the

enticements of the dictatorship and firmly entrenched in its

anti-fascism for the entire fascist period. The reality is

more complex. Researchers have shown an equally heroic but

more “nuanced” scenario and highlighted situations and

states of mind reflected throughout Italy as a whole.

Alongside those who rejected or detached themselves from the

regime were those who passively accepted it, sometimes lured

by financial benefit, albeit modest, but often vital for the

survival of families living below what is called today “the

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bread line”. Nor can cases of out and out acceptance of

Fascism be ruled out. 36

However, socializzazione changed colour, provoking reactions and

repulsion which left no room for ambiguity. Firstly because

of the tragic context in which it arose – the 1943-1944

strikes led to arrests, deportation to Germany and

reprisals; and secondly because of the complex values which

the Fascist project brought into play. It affected indeed

the working and personal identity of workers. Socializzazione

meant placing the management of firms in the hands of

workers through the Works Councils (an old legend of the

workers’ movement starting from the Works Councils of

Gramsci’s Turin). But this passage is placed in doubt by the

fact that the project initially struggled to take off. The

Decree was passed in February 1944 but only implemented the

following Autumn. At the crucial stage its significance

differed to the one proclaimed.

The socializers were neither Bolsheviks nor anarchists. They

did not see the change in workplace relations as the basis

for a form of workers’ power. New relations did not create

new power hierarchies. They were simply the bass drum for

36 Stefano Musso, “Gli operai nella storiografica contemporanea.Rapporti di lavoro e relazioni sociali”, in S. Musso (cur.), Tra fabbrica esocietà. Mondi operai nell’Italia del Novecento, “Annali” della Fondazione G. G.Feltrinelli, a. XXXIII 1997, Milano Feltrinelli 1999, pp. IX –XLVI;Luisa Passerini, Torino operaia e fascismo. Una storia orale, Bari Laterza 1984.

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Luigi ganapini

the totalitarian political project and the formulation of

new rights, all linked to membership of the regime union.37

The project reflected the basic contempt in which the

working classes and the proletariat as a whole were held.

This theme accompanied the entire duration of Republican

Fascism in its relations not only with social conflict but

also with those same basic values of workers’ identities.

The socializzazione project provoked primitive anti-Communist

fear among the industrial classes, disturbed members of the

German administration, worried by Mussolini’s

“revolutionary” about-turn and gave rise to disagreement

within the Fascist Republic, causing the project to be

rejected by supporters of moderate corporatism. Mussolini

counted on getting around the obstacle and maintaining the

whole advantage of his sensational project by calling on

workers to run local administrations. Of course, the regime

also intended to present a tolerant face, placing even non-

party and non-union members on local governments. But this

was still and always would be in the administrative sector.

There was no place for workers in political structures. The

great social reform had the face of a totalitarian state.

For example, municipal councils were set up which did not

even have the power to pass resolutions. However, their

councillors could only be elected by members of the General

37 Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Segreteria particolare del Duce,Carteggio riservato, Rsi, b. 34, fasc. 280: report about elections oflocal Councils in Padova, 12 febbraio 1945.

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Luigi ganapini

Confederation of Work, Technology and the Arts, the only one

organisation admitted by the regime. 38

This strategy was irreconcilable with the nature of the

working class of the large northern cities, to whom it was

mainly addressed. Workers did not necessarily and undeniably

take up anti-fascist or largely democratic positions. We

need only think of their attitudes towards the proletariat

of the countryside. Farmers and country workers were viewed

with suspicion, in some areas persecuted by means of

requisitioning “workers’ teams” which forced them to hand

over resources to be stockpiled. This was an invention of

the Fascists but it was to be adopted, albeit only partially

and for a brief period, in the immediate aftermath of the

war by the democratic government.

However, despite all their limitations, this industrial

working class had a strong sense of self, based on the value

of work as a creative act and enhancer of man. On the other

hand, Fascism and its trade unionism of nationalist

derivation viewed work as a component of the nation’s

strength, intended to boost international power on the basis

of iron discipline and hierarchical obedience.

The “socializer” delirium of the later stages of Fascism

came adrift for these reasons and Mussolini’s final dream of

posthumous vendetta came to nothing. It had been his dream

38 Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Segreteria particolare del Duce,Carteggio riservato, Rsi b.27 fasc. Socializzazione dell' impresa

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Luigi ganapini

that his last project could detonate a new unstoppable

social conflict that the anti-fascist forces advancing from

the south and their international allies would be unable to

quell.

Luigi Ganapini

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