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The Dark Side of Italian History1943–1945Luigi GanapiniPublished online: 02 Jul 2007.

To cite this article: Luigi Ganapini (2007) The Dark Side of Italian History 1943–1945, Modern Italy,12:2, 205-223

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Modern Italy,

Vol. 12, No. 2, June 2007, pp. 205–223

The Dark Side of ItalianHistory 1943–1945

Luigi Ganapini

A study of the history of the Italian Social Republic (1943–1945) reveals the importance of theexperience of Fascist Syndicalism and above all National Syndicalism. During the preceding20 years of Fascist rule, Fascist Syndicalism had faced notable difficulties, divided as it wasbetween the need to defend workers and that of obeying the dictatorship; but following the fall ofMussolini and the military defeat of Fascist Italy, new opportunities appeared to presentthemselves. In 1943 Mussolini had called for ‘socialization’ as a means of fighting the anti-Fascistdemocratic forces. In this context, the ideology of National Syndicalism became the key featureof a project for the construction of a totalitarian state. In spite of the inevitability of defeat, thefinal phase of Fascism thus involved an attempt to win over the working classes in the industrialcentres of northern Italy in order to establish them as the basis for a possible revival.

Introduction

In the last days of July 1943 the Fascist faithful greeted the news of Mussolini’sexpulsion with stunned silence and absolute passivity. The demonstrations ofjubilation by anti-Fascists and by the majority of the people were impressive andwent unopposed. The coup had been the final step in a long process which, from theoutset of the Second World War, had worn away the ties between Fascism andthe nation.

The most glaring indicators of the regime’s difficulties were the scarcity of staplecommodities and the failure of the food rationing policy. Since the first year of thewar the proletariat and the lower-middle classes in the cities and in the country hadbeen experiencing what were quickly to become near-famine conditions. People incities were convinced that there was much less deprivation in the country and thatcountry people were speculating in foodstuffs (this was indeed reported by Fascistpropaganda in search of a scapegoat). But although people in the country found itrelatively easier to come by food, they still had to pay higher prices for increasinglyscarce industrial goods. Small-scale food producers also had to undergo stringent

Correspondence to: Luigi Ganapini, Fondazione Istituto per la Storia dell’Eta Contemporarea,

Fondazione ISEC, 1.go La Marmora 17, 20099 Sesto San Giovanni, Milaro. Email: luigi.ganapini@

unibo.it

1353-2944 Print/1469-9877 Online/07/020205–223 � 2007 Association for the Study of Modern Italy

DOI: 10.1080/13532940701362730

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monitoring of their goods. This, nevertheless, did not stop the spread of the blackmarket.

Inhabitants of rural areas experienced incredible poverty. Adult males were calledup for military service, fertilizers and fuel for agricultural machinery were lost to theneeds of the war industry and the machinery itself could no longer be replaced whenworn out.

This shared privation, however, did not result in greater solidarity betweenindustrial and agricultural workers. City and country people, at the level of themasses, exhibited a deep mutual distrust of each other, and continued to do so evenafter the defeat of Fascism and the end of the war. From the outset of the warinternal contradictions within Italian society led to a general crisis which constitutedthe essence of the regime’s ruin.

Not even the ruling classes were exempt. The war opened up contradictions andrivalries between sectors of production: those which profited from the war in termsof power and wealth and those which saw their resources and markets shrink. Thesectors producing consumer goods suffered a gradual erosion of their profit margins.Their plant and machinery became old and worn and their labour force contracted asmen were called to arms. The divisions between industry and agriculture andbetween the cities and the countryside were an indication of latent social conflictswhich were to explode in the final 20 months of the war. Age-old contradictionsin Italian society returned to the fore in these years, forming part of an immensetragedy which would go on to shape the destiny of the nation in the latter half ofthe century.

Against this background the factors leading to the collapse of the regime were thewar and its wounds. Fascism had celebrated its intervention in the conflict as thefinal act of its dominion, the ultimate goal of its entire history. The war had beenpresented and exalted as ‘the Fascist war’. And defeat would mean that all Fascism’sambitions and promises had tragically come to nothing (Zangrandi 1964; Bertoloet al. 1974; Istituto nazionale per la storia del movimento di liberazione in Italia1969, 1988; De Felice 1990; Ventura 1996).

Germany could not forgive its ally’s betrayal in signing the armistice proclaimedon 8 September 1943 with the enemy powers. Its troops had been taking up positionsall over the peninsula ever since the British and US landings in Sicily, on the pretextof fighting the Allies as they advanced from the south. Following the announcementof the armistice, German troops occupied Italy’s key centres, preparing to takecontrol of the entire country. There were numerous brave and unfortunate episodesof 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 the monarchy,to which it had traditionally owed its allegiance. The Germans sent over 600,000soldiers captured in Italy, in the Balkans and in the Aegean islands to prison campsin Germany. Around 90,000 men from the Blackshirt units, the politicizedformations of the army which had developed from the Milizia VolontariaSicurezza Nazionale, were the exception. They unhesitatingly sided with Germanyand were absorbed into the Wehrmacht as Waffen SS troops.

Following occupation, the decision was taken to create a collaborationist stateheaded by Mussolini, who had in the meantime been freed from prison. Now Italianshad to make a radical choice: whether to support Mussolini’s Republic (which, after

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some vacillation, took the name ‘Repubblica Sociale Italiana’ or 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 anti-Fascist frontwas broad and enjoyed the strong support of the people. It immediately set about

building a united front.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 thefighters of the RSI created for themselves the myth 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 fulfil dreams which had been betrayed

by 20 years of compromises. Another reason was to save this ‘poor Italy’ and its

social order from the more appalling disaster of a barbaric three-pronged invasion bythe Germans, the Anglo-Americans and the Bolsheviks. Patriotism and political

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

ruthlessness, 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 very soul of each individual Italian.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 alliancewith Nazism as artificially constructed. They went on to argue 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

(Amendola 1970, pp. 75–102; Peli 1999, pp. 197–227).1

These arguments had deep roots and went a long way in explaining why the regimecrumbled. 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 because of the pain of the sacrifices and

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

on the alliance they were consigning to oblivion and repudiating the dead, no matterwhat cause they had been sacrificed for. The complex mechanism of indoctrination

had upended values and perspectives, revealing, as Gitta Sereny (2002, p. 9) writes,

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‘both the ideal tension which a tyranny is able to create and its ability to turn to evil

the natural human propensity for good’.The contradictory and ambiguous nature of Italo-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 accompanied by reservation and fear. All Italian memoirs of the alliance testify

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 and the two dictators from the 1930s 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 Hitler’s presence,

coarsely expressed his fear of looking like a vassal, repeating again and again ‘that he

did not want to be a Quisling’ (Anfuso 1950, p. 389). RSI personnel were to

continually reiterate these reservations, giving voice to the mixture of emulation,

envy and bitterness characterizing their attitude to their German camerati.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. But other reasons were put forward by the

Fascists, based on a reappraisal of Italy’s entire domestic history and its place in

the development of 19th-century European history. 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

was hailed 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 1848 and the common

struggle for independence to the 1866 alliance against the Hapsburg Empire and the

victory of Sedan, which freed Italians from the onerous tutelage of Napoleon III and

made the conquest of Rome possible. Germany (not France or Britain) had been

Italy’s real loyal ally. This completely ideologized rewriting of history was sealed by

the alliance between Nazism and Fascism, the fraternal friendship of the two 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.2

Some serious difficulties had arisen with Germany’s extension of its sovereignty to

two areas which were crucial to the Fascist sense of identity—the Adriatisches

Kustenland, including Friuli and Venezia Giulia, with Ljubljana 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 well aware of the events which

revealed Germany’s desire to seize the eastern lands from Italy for good, of

the strategy of systematically destroying all Italian characteristics by means of the

pastorizzazione (pasteurization) of peoples—as the Germans defined their policy—in

the Operationszone Adriatisches Kustenland, and of eradicating the Italian

presence in the Alpenvorland valleys. These strategies all amounted to acts of

vendetta for the Italianization previously undertaken by the Fascist regime,

the revenge of native German-speakers against Fascist and Italian arrogance

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(Fogar 1961; Collotti 1974; Istituto veneto per la storia della Resistenza 1984;Spazzali 1995; Schneider-Bosgard 2003).

Ideological solidarity seems to have played no role in this context, where, in thefinal stages of the Reich, the foolish ambition to bring the old Hapsburg Empireback to life seemed to re-emerge and take its place alongside the Third Reich’sGrossraum dream.3 Italian collaboration was, therefore, dominated by an awarenessof a false condition, a sense of defeat of ideals. This feeling must not be confusedwith the perception of the Axis powers’ inevitable defeat. Today, at a distance of halfa century from these tragic two years, developments in the war in 1943–1945 appearcut and dried. But this is an illusion of perspective, dictated by the outcome of theconflict. We need to reappraise this judgment and place ourselves in the perspectiveof that time. The conviction that something could change quite radically was, at leastin part, justified by the upheaval in the fortunes of all the leading players in thelengthy conflict. A country such as Italy, which after believing so intensely in theillusion of an Axis victory had had to witness Axis defeats, also tended of course totreat with caution any evidence of an imminent final disaster. The awareness, or atleast the suspicion, that collaboration with the ‘occupying ally’ was undermined bythe fate of future defeat sprang possibly from a sense of disparity in relations.

For the Republican Fascists, however, acknowledgement of inferiority andsubjection was not a reason to doubt the essential legitimacy of their choice.Continuing with the alliance and saving the national honour went hand in hand.A prisoner from East Africa, brought home in the summer of 1943 in a ship carryingwomen and the sick, commented on his landing in Italy in Badoglio:

upon disembarking it was immediately clear that Italy, the real Italy, was not inthe peninsula. It had remained down there in the inaccessible region ofEthiopia, in the sunny undergrowths; down there where there was someonewho knew how to suffer for an ideal and die for the Motherland; where therewas still some brother holding the name of Italy aloft, not of this Italy whichcalls the enemy liberators but of the real glorious and immortal Italy.4

The chasm dividing the two Italys, one accepting Nazi occupation andcollaborating with it and one rejecting it, was undeniably extremely deep andunbridgeable. Many conflicting factors and extraordinary ambiguities were involvedin the decision to collaborate. If we observe closely the various figures involved in theRSI, we come up with a series of types which I believe is significant and which helpsus to distinguish between those choosing to bear arms, those participating in politicaland ideological developments, those who chose to work in administration and finallythose attempting to put socializzazione into practice. Each of these categoriesunderstood their collaborative role in different ways, without necessarily being inconflict with each other. One thing, however, held all their various experiencestogether: the adhesion to an extremely rigid conception of the Fascist state,accompanied by a desire to create a new system which was different from theold Fascism.5

This is not to give credit to the thesis of renewal boasted by the leaders who hadhad to establish their seat of government in Salo. There were too many links with theFascism of the previous 20-year period to accept their version. The thesis of ‘renewal’

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is, however, a subjective factor which cannot be disregarded. It is the badge of Italian

collaboration. It is all the more remarkable if viewed in relation to the desire to

convert the war into a conflict of civilizations and races, to move towards ‘European’

perspectives in which the RSI had to fight a more glorious challenge.Nevertheless, we are faced with an array of cases, sentiments and objectives,

the majority of which make it difficult to apply the category of collaboration in

historiography 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?

Even today, a good number of Italians believe 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 armyin 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 Graziani6—but that of a band of volunteers,

by definition irregular and undisciplined. For months Mussolini ranted, 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 Salo, Junio ValerioBorghese, 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 the Liberation to the warrior Giovanni dalle Bande Nere.7

There was a voluntaristic and demagogic spirit running through the entire militaryculture of this ‘new’ Fascism, inspired by a combative model formed during the First

World War: that of the Arditi. These Arditi were contrasted with the ‘Royal’ army,

by definition a symbol of betrayal, bureaucracy and inefficiency. The new army was

intended to be of a completely different ilk.8

From 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 during the violent years of 1919–25, and which had been at the

forefront of the March on Rome. In the space of a few months, and after an initial

hesitation, these troops became regular. The volunteer squads were absorbed into an

institutionalized 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 into the

Milizia Volontaria Sicurezza Nazionale. But the GNR, under the orders of a weakras of the regime, Renato Ricci, formerly president of the Opera Nazionale Balilla,

was not a formation fighting at the front.9

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The GNR was amalgamated with the carabinieri, reaching a total of as many as140–150,000 men. The carabinieri, however, were seen in a bad light both by theGermans and by the Fascists themselves. Both suspected the carabinieri of disloyaltyand were afraid that they sympathized with Badoglio. The Germans deported themto Germany, at first sporadically (as happened with the carabinieri of Rome inNovember 1943) and then en masse in the summer of 1944. The remaining GNRforces—around 70,000 men in the autumn of 1944—had to control the territory,acting as a police force working together with the state police under the command ofprefetti (who represented the central government and were now called capiprovincia)(Pansa, 1969).

However, the GNR performed poorly due to its lack of weapons and itsvolunteers’ inadequate training. In mid-August 1944 it was absorbed into the armyas the ‘first fighting force’, taken from under the command of Renato Ricci andplaced under the direct orders of Mussolini. Its members did not lose their policingfunction but continued to perform them in competition with the state police.This contributed towards an interweaving of powers and illegality which gave theauthority of the Republic little credibility and rendered it problematic. GNRnumbers fell progressively from the summer of 1944, due to partisan guerilla war.10

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 partymembers, mobilized as and when necessary. They were cadre-less ‘brigades’ underthe orders of a commander who was the local federal secretary. The number ofBrigate Nere multiplied. Some were set up in ministerial departments under thecommand of ministers, as was the case in the Ministry of Finance, run by DomenicoPellegrini Giampietro. He made a name for himself for courageously defendingItalian finances against German depredation. In the meantime, however, he headedthe ministerial Black Brigade, rooting out rebels.

The Black Brigades initially sprang up in Tuscany and then spread throughoutthe northern provinces. The brigades of Tuscany followed the Germans as theyretreated. These bands were the most ferocious and rampaged through the northernplains, angering even the Minister of the Interior, Buffarini Guidi, who railed againstthe lawlessness and disorder generated by groups of what were by then rootlessarmed men. They were fanatical and factious, ruthless and cruel. Their supporters,after the war, depicted them as desperate heroes, but a reading of the Diari storici oftheir formations gives a completely different picture. They did not include manyyoung people; those who had not gone up into the mountains to join the partisanswere already part of the Guardia or training in Germany. Only middle-aged menwere left (at a time in which people aged 40 started to physically decline), untrainedand lacking equipment and efficient armaments (Gagliani 2000).11

By contrast, the Decima Mas, a crack naval corps trained by Junio ValerioBorghese (ostentatiously addressed as ‘prince’ by the authorities), had weapons,money and training. It derived from a division of the navy which had managed tostrike the British fleet with torpedoes and explosive charges daringly placed underthe keel of the enemy’s ships. The corps was immensely proud of this feat and still feltconnected to 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 afurther source of concern for the Republican authorities due to its contempt for rules

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and its prevarication towards the weak and all those suspected of hostility or mereindifference.12

The GNR, the Black Brigades and the Decima Mas each created their ownpolitical investigative office, which carried out investigations into anti-Fascists,rebels and particularly all possible traitors. The RSI was a republic haunted byconspiracy—that of Savoy and its generals—and it seemed unable to free itself fromthe nightmare.

Alongside these military forces were swarms of irregular bands which grantedthemselves, for the most part with German protection, investigative and repressivepowers. Their names are famous throughout Italy as illustrations of cruelty.The Koch band operated initially in Rome and then moved to Milan, where itsmembers were arrested in the autumn of 1944 by the Fascist authorities themselvesat the request of, amongst others, the Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Schuster, aBenedictine abbot well-known for his openness to the regime during the Fascistperiod. The Carita band set itself up in Florence, where it seems to have exercised somuch power that it could influence the capoprovincia himself. It then took refugein the Veneto, where it continued in its ferocity. There were also formations whicharose almost by spontaneous generation, spurred on by the electrifying climate ofpolitical fanaticism. These included the Legione mobile Ettore Muti (of Milan) andthe Mai Morti band (Griner 2001; Caporale 2005).

And finally, there was the regular army; a heated debate raged around this subject.Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, the Defence Minister (later Minister of the ArmedForces), wanted the army to be ‘apolitical’, ‘national’ and ‘patriotic’. In reality, theofficers, like all civil servants, had to swear an oath of allegiance to RepublicanFascism (only the judiciary succeeded in being exempted). The clash over whether ornot the army was ‘political’ was a clash of power, in the course of which Grazianitried to defend the prerogatives of his position against the designs of politicians ofthe PFR (Partito Fascista Repubblicano, Republican Fascist Party).13

In the months immediately following September 1943, Mussolini and Grazianitried to persuade Hitler to allow them to form a regular army with men taken fromconcentration camps. Hitler opposed this idea since there was no guarantee thatthose he called ‘Badoglio-truppen’ would return to Italy and fight efficiently.The conditions in which Italian soldiers were held in the German camps weresuperior only to those of the Russians. They did not have prisoner-of-war status andconsequently could not receive Red Cross aid or the protection offered byinternational war conventions. Despite these tragic conditions, marginally lesscruel than those of the concentration camps for Jews and deported politicians, only asmall percentage of these men (not more than 10%) agreed to join the Republic(Schreiber 1992; Tomassini 1995; Casavola et al. 2005).14

In November 1943 the Republican government began to issue a series of call-upswhich were initially relatively successful but quickly became a great failure, as didevery subsequent recall to arms. The Republican Fascist government thereforeadopted measures prescribing the death penalty for those failing to report formilitary service, and the threat of persecution of their relatives. All this induced flightto the mountains. Nevertheless conscripts and volunteers formed four divisions (SanMarco, Littorio, Monterosa and Italia); each division was from 11,000 to 16,000 menstrong. These divisions were sent to Germany for training and then sent back to Italy

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from August 1944. They were positioned in part on the Ligurian front under thecommand of Marshal Graziani, mixed with German troops, and in part sent to thenorth-eastern border where they confronted first and foremost the partisaninsurgency. 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 thiswas the best way to use these troops as it relieved the Wehrmacht of the task ofsuppressing the guerillas. However, quite a large proportion of these troops tookadvantage of the unique opportunity they had been given to escape and went over tothe partisans.

The commanders of the Salo army repeatedly complained that the Wehrmacht orthe 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 where in January1945 Graziani declared that the only real role of the RSI army was to supply its allieswith a workforce.15

There was an unbridgeable gap between the situation as it was and the ambitionto bring the Italian flags once more onto the battle front and have Italy rise up by theside of its powerful ally as a protagonist in the construction of a new Europefollowing Fascist and Nazi ideology.16 Thus, the best-known characteristic of theFascist Republic came into being: a kind of irrepressible death wish, the exaltation ofblood-letting and the display of ruthless cruelty towards the enemy.

The Ideology of Death

The shadow of death hovers, in legend and common perception, around theRSI. The creation of this image was complex and the reflections both of theRepublic’s heirs and its opponents have played their part, albeit with different aims.The specific background against which this complex feeling arose was made up ofseveral elements. The most important was probably the perception that the Republichad been politically and militarily demoted. To this we should add the psychologicalconsequences suffered by its adherents and their isolation in a country which, inrejecting the war, had rejected Fascism. Every aspect of life, both private and public,was conditioned by these feelings.

Fascism, born of the First World War, had shaped its policies for the purposes ofwar, in line with its innermost nationalist inspiration. When the Italian people hadasked for peace, they had not behaved abjectly or simply recoiled from the sufferingsof war, as was claimed by RSI supporters in calling for a revival of the national andwarlike spirit. Italians rejected the war because from that moment they consciouslyrejected Fascism.

Disappointment, sorrow and contempt for this new Italy gave rise to a desperatedesire for revenge. Around this desire, propaganda created a mystique of courageand death which aspired to be the unmistakable mark of the RSI’s world.The endless repetition of these leitmotifs penetrated consciousness and influencedvalues 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’(Mazzantini 1995, p. 169)

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It was not simply rhetoric and ideology. There was also ferocious suppression ofopponents or, at any rate, of faint-hearted Italians who did not applaud the blackflags of the re-established dictatorship. Through death and the display of death,Republican Fascists intended to punish and subdue the majority who were alien tothese objectives. The bodies of slain partisans or opponents were displayed in public,by way of example to others, in the streets, in squares and at execution sites.Sometimes the German authorities themselves intervened to put an end to theslaughter. However, they did not do so very often. It sometimes seemed that theyintervened not out of pity but out of a wish to keep the right of reprisal and revengeonly for themselves.17

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 andmilitary formations, and also by an aggressive and highly imaginative iconography.In addition to these publications and iconography, which are incredibly rich if weconsider the scarcity of paper and the resources required for all types of printing atthat time, there were the regime-controlled daily newspapers. As had been the casein the 20-year Fascist period, newspaper editors had to be to the liking of theauthorities and Mussolini himself.

This formidable instrument gave rise to what one Italian scholar, Mario Isnenghi,has defined as an ‘unreal universe’ (un universo fantasmatico), composed of illusions,nightmares and images of death. Funereal symbols, the exaltation of a glorious deathand the obsessive call to sacrifice one’s life was a ritual refrain of Republican Fascismin 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 phenomenon had shared a rhetorical educationdeeply influenced by D’Annunzio (Isnenghi 1986).

However, beneath this veneer of doubtful taste, we find some decidedlyimportant components. The cult of the ‘magnificent death’—glorious death on thebattlefield—tied in with a conception of the nation as a body made up of the livingand the dead. The living had to obey the dead in order to perpetuate the mission thatthe latter had died for.18 These were widespread themes in European nationalism andin Nazism itself. In Italy in the last two years of the war these themes were alsointermingled with a more domestic feeling, usual in the popular Catholic religiosityof the time, according to which the departed in Heaven looked down on, protectedand guided their loved ones.

This symbolism of death was obsessive and accompanied by the thrill of a kind ofmysticism, which professed to raise this partly profane cult of the dead and thenation to a faith and to complement it with inviolable oaths.19

Racism and Totalitarianism

Faith and the cult of the dead, intertwined with the religiosity of the time: was thisthe root of potential disagreements with the Catholic Church? Unlike Nazism,Italian Fascism avoided clashes with the principles preached by the Italian religiousauthorities. It is true there were reasons for friction but, on the whole, Fascism stuck

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to an apparent respect which satisfied appearances and permitted mutual tolerance.In reality, the Catholic hierarchy was no less internally divided and anguished thanthe rest of the country. The Vatican ruled out the possibility of giving diplomaticrecognition to a regime which had arisen during the conflict. From this point of viewappearances were saved. The church applied a rule that it had drawn up and appliedfor the duration of the war. It professed neutrality. The local religious authorities inthe various dioceses, for their part, took up positions which were or were not to theliking of party federal secretaries, often angering that most over-excited of Fascistleaders Roberto Farinacci, openly philo-Nazi and anti-Jewish.20

Farinacci actually wanted the Pope himself to side with Fascism, in the name of apatriotic loyalty to Fascism deriving from the fact that the Pope was the Primate ofthe Italian church. In most cases Fascists were angered by exhortations forChristian piety and by the tolerance shown towards minor figures—parish priestsabove all—who helped Jews, persecuted politicians and partisans. Much research hascentred on the clergy’s mediating and consoling role within society. It is not alwayseasy to distinguish between apologia and unprejudiced research. However, I believethat what a number of Catholic scholars claim is true, which is that many of theclergy, above all in the local parishes in direct contact with the people, took up aclearly different position to that of Republican Fascism, especially regarding thelatter’s intentions for racial extermination (Vecchio 2005). Only a few priests (wecould say an insignificant number) chose the RSI, proclaiming that it was necessaryto side with Fascism in the fight against Communism, Protestantism and the Jews.The mass of Catholics were also divided and took sides in a similar fashion to theircompatriots, some even taking up arms in the name of ‘Christian anti-Fascism’.

As in 1938, with the promulgation of the anti-Jewish ‘racial’ laws, in 1943–45 oneof the major points of disagreement was Jewish persecution. I, personally, am notconvinced that in 1938 these laws had opened up that split between the CatholicChurch and the state which some Italian historians fantasize about. The racial lawswere condemned (as, for example, by Cardinal Schuster, Archbishop of Milan), notbecause of a wish to defend the persecuted or their human dignity, but to defendecclesiastical law and, in some cases, the inviolability of marriage. In 1943–45 thingstook a different turn.

The RSI was founded on virulent anti-Semitism, widely spread by the press andcarried out in collaboration with the German forces of occupation. It was raised toan educational canon in the officers’ schools of the Republican Armed Forces.21

In moments such as these, anti-Semitism was able to make itself credible amongst theItalians and to take root in Italian public opinion. The ‘conspiracy’ which hadbrought Mussolini down on 25 July was proof of the greater Jewish conspiracydirected against the peoples of the ‘new’ Fascist and Nazi Europe. Although therewere still signs of Catholic anti-Semitism, the ferocity of the regime had made itunattractive to this instinctively moderate world—a world which could accept manycompromises (as it had done for over 20 years) but could not, in all principle,renounce its ethical foundations when they were so openly contradicted.

In the Republican Fascist world, however, there were many kinds of anti-Semitism: the hallucinatory and fanatical anti-Semitism of Giovanni Preziosi(a priest at the beginning of the century, he was later defrocked and becamea theoretician of racism during the regime);22 the coldly bureaucratic (but essentially

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murderous) anti-Semitism of the Minister for the Interior, Guido Buffarini Guidi,who on 5 November 1943 ordered the internment of Jews, who had to be handedover to the SS; and the vulgar and rapacious anti-Semitism of an anonymous mobexpressing rancour against supposed profiteers.23

At a different level, anti-Semitism was part of a racial conception boosted by thepresence of black troops in southern and central Italy,24 and it contributed to a planfor a totalitarian State. In the most well-developed projects of constitutionaltheoreticians, in the public speeches of all politicians and in the requests of partyrank and file, a conception of the new Republic emerged which pretended to be atodds with the Fascist regime of the past, but which took its totalitariancharacteristics and possibilities to their extreme consequences. In the first years ofthe war new political projects had been developed. These projects had demonstratedthat various leading exponents tended towards a more openly totalitarian and Naziconcept (Gentile 1995). In the Republic in many ways this tendency continued andwas strengthened. We can imagine how developments of this kind were implicit inthe fanaticism, in the ideology of death and in the grotesque exaltation of violence.

Social Conflict

So the protagonists were not young people under the illusion of a great, noble andcourageous dream, or at least not only these young people, with not only thesefeelings. The ferocious and desperate picture I have tried to describe contradicts thestory of pure, deluded heroes. Similarly, this story changes dramatically if we observehow the RSI tackled the problems and tasks of a state at war.

The Fascist Republic forced a good number of civil servants to move from Rometo the north because the Germans, since the beginning of the occupation, had deniedMussolini the right to set up his state capital in Rome. After the war the RSI was notrecognized as a legitimate state and all its laws were declared null. However, theRepublic had still extensively used personnel from the previous state. These peoplehad been formed within a liberal state, on which Fascism had imposed its disciplineand culture. This class of civil servants followed a bureaucratic praxis which hadbeen consolidated during almost 100 years of Italian unity. In the post-war years thepurges affected this army of civil servants only marginally and at the lowest levels(Pavone 1995; Borghi 2001; Scardaccione 2002).

These considerations do not mean that one can confer a sort of legitimacy on theRSI on the basis of the continuity of procedures (which some scholars take to meanan exact replica) between Republican Fascism and the Italian Democratic Republic(Zanni Rosiello 2004, pp. 531–551). Rather, they must suggest that we shouldcarefully observe other fields of activity of the Republican state, first and foremostthe management of resources and relations with social groups and classes.

It might have seemed a desperate venture to rebuild the complex fabric of relationsbetween the state and social forces following the harrowing crisis of the regime.Republican Fascism had laid on the whole of Italy the blame for its economic, socialand military failure and for the ‘betrayal’ of the alliance. Nevertheless, the RSImanaged 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.

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In fact, the RSI set itself up as the mediator between these forces and the Germans.It ensured that they behaved well to the Germans so that the latter providedrecognition and supplies. However, it also protected them both against the Germansand against the insubordination of workers, as long as they recognized the RSI asmediator. Although a complex and ambiguous game, it was one of the mainjustifications for the existence of the RSI, above all in the final stages, when it setitself up as protector of national industrial assets against destruction by theretreating Germans.

In carrying out this task the Fascist ministers, and in particular the CorporationsMinister Angelo Tarchi, promoted forms of collaboration and participation byrepresentatives of industrial capitalism in the management of the country’s politicaleconomy, in part following the Fascist corporative tradition, in part aspiring—aswas the ambition of Angelo Tarchi—to obtain the support of the Catholic world andthe ecclesiastical hierarchy, which were open to forms of social collaboration, andin part driven by the incentive of having to adjust to the structures for monitoring theItalian industrial apparatus devised by the German administration. These forms ofindustrial management were used simply to handle resource distribution during thewar (Tarchi 1967).

In the immediate aftermath of the war, however, they were taken up again, in adifferent spirit and with more ambitious aims, by the social democratic wing of theburgeoning Italian democracy, with the support of trade unions. This was proof notonly of the RSI’s ability to gain support outside the circle of fanatics who subscribedto its ideas but also to place itself in a perspective of state modernization, as this wasunderstood in the mid-1940s. It was, lastly, also a sign of the enduring legacy ofegotistic corporatism with which the stifling history of Italian capitalism isinterwoven.

Relations with the middle classes also played an important role in this, albeit notunswerving, alliance with the business leaders of northern industry (the heart, let usnot forget, of the Italian industrial economy). In part, the middle classes wereindustry’s technical managers, reflecting the widespread and burgeoning ambition ofthese rising social groups to play centre stage. But the middle classes did not onlyoperate within industry. They consisted of composite groupings and are still hard todefine. However, despite being difficult to identify clearly, these classes played a keyrole both in the strategy of Fascism and that of the opposing forces. As in animaginary game of chess, the players aimed to ‘seize the middle ground’ (likecontemporary democracies).

Fascists had a love–hate relationship with the rural and urban lower-middle andmiddle classes, levelling rebukes and threats against them for the faint-heartedness ofthe ‘grey, slipper-wearing, noses-to-the-shutters bourgeois’ (a quotation from aFascist paper of Milan, Il Fascio, November 1943), but also passionately appealingto their traditional patriotism and love of order so that they would wake up andcling to Republican Fascism, the last bulwark in the defence of Italian traditions.In order to obtain this support Fascists alternated between making violent threats,calling up the bogey of communism and promoting local loyalties.

Originally, at the end of the Great War, Fascism had recruited quite a number offollowers and leaders from the ranks of the petty bourgeois. Deracines studentsand former officers at the end of the First World War made up a large part of

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the movement. At its twilight, Fascism seems to have rounded with over-whelming anger on these social classes when they expressed greatly different opinionsto 20 years previously. Fascism was suspicious, contemptuous and full of hatred forintellectuals in particular. Investigations by the various police forces, above all theBrigate Nere and GNR, pointed on every occasion to the intellectual bourgeois,professional classes and teachers as those most to blame for the distrust displayedtowards Republican Fascist institutions. Fascists were not wrong; but such prejudiceis indicative of their plebeian culture and vulgar mentality, which in any case didnot help them to avoid the contempt in which they in turn were held by the culturedbourgeois.

The only effective instrument in Fascist hands was a limited version of patriotism.Their invitation to cling to local loyalties—to the municipality or other localcommunities—managed to break down barriers and catalyse consent. This is whathappened in Milan in April 1944, when the podesta and capoprovincia—Piero Parini,who had a long history in the ranks of the National Fascist Party—requested andobtained a million-lira loan from the bourgeoisie of Milan. This was a loan, hedeclared, not to the Fascist regime but to the city. The anti-Fascist capital Milanactually agreed to the loan in the days following the extraordinary and triumphantworkers’ strike which had paralysed ‘the Italy of the Duce’ for almost a week (at thebeginning of March 1944). There was to be no repeat of this episode on such a grandscale, but this card, of traditional order and of defence against any subversion,an example of selfish and uncultured micro-patriotism, was often played to theadvantage of Republican Fascism. If the middle classes were no longer fond ofMussolini, they still were afraid of radical changes and social renewal.

Finally, there was the working class. ‘Italy, Republic, Socializzazione’: until thelast months—in fact, above all in the tragic twilight of the Republic—Mussolinicondensed his political programme into these three words. For many, principallyfollowers from the very outset, the third part of the programme was an impassionedand romantic return to their socialist youth and to the youth of the Duce. But it waspure rhetoric if we observe the unfolding of events.

The RSI wanted to offer itself as the realization of a socialist state which woulddramatically outperform Communist Russia. To this end it dusted off the anti-capitalist extremism of 1919 and stuffed it with red-hot accusations against capitalisttraitors who had boycotted both the socialist realization of the regime and the warpreparations and had then conspired with the king and the British to topple theDuce. For the occasion, all exponents of revolutionary trade unionism who could beexhumed were exhumed. This was even the case with the reformed Nicola Bombacci,a former member of the Italian Communist Party, miraculously healed by the newMussolini, the ‘socializer’.

Propaganda had, what is more, to tackle the explosion in workers’ strikes. Theseobviously arose from the terrible living conditions brought about by the war, butthere was also undoubtedly an ethical and political component at their heart. Anti-Fascist historians have painted a picture of a working class which was steadfast inthe 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 haveshown an equally heroic but more nuanced scenario and highlighted situations andstates of mind reflected throughout Italy as a whole. Alongside those who rejected or

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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 the breadline. Nor can cases of out-and-out acceptance of

Fascism be ruled out (Passerini 1984; Musso 1999).However, socializzazione changed colour, provoking reactions and rejection which

left no room for ambiguity: first, because of the tragic context in which it arose (the

1943–44 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 Workers’ Councils

(a key feature of the mythology of the workers’ movement which originated in the

Factory Councils of Gramsci’s Turin). But this transformation 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 banging the drum

of the totalitarian political project and the formulation of new rights, all linked to

membership of the regime’s trade unions (Manunta 1947).25

In reality, 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 in local government. 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 Confederation of Work, Technology and the Arts.26

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 rural

workers were viewed with suspicion and in some areas persecuted by means of

requisitioning ‘workers’ teams’ (created by the RSI), which forced them to hand over

resources to be stockpiled. The workers’ teams were an invention of the Fascists but

they were to be adopted, albeit only partially and for a brief period, in the immediate

aftermath of the war by the democratic government.

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However, despite all their limitations, this industrial working class had a strongsense of self, based on the value of labour as a creative and enhancing humanactivity. On the other hand, Fascism and its trade unionism of nationalist derivationviewed work as a component of the nation’s strength, intended to boost internationalpower on the basis of iron discipline and hierarchical obedience.

The ‘socializing’ delirium of the later stages of Fascism came adrift for thesereasons and Mussolini’s final dream of a posthumous vendetta came to nothing.It had been his dream that his last project could detonate a new unstoppable socialconflict that the anti-Fascist forces advancing from the south and their internationalallies would be unable to quell.

Notes

[1] See also the appeal of the Socialist Party ‘agli italiani’: Avanti! Giornale del movimento di unita

proletaria per la repubblica socialista, anno 47, no. 1, 1 August 1943.

[2] P. G. Vignali, ‘Il perche di una fraternita d’ armi’, Libro e moschetto, 3 June 1944; G. L. Gatti,

‘L’Inghilterra contro il Risorgimento e l’ unita d’Italia’, Libro e moschetto, 5 August 1944; a. m. p.,

‘Italiani e germanici’, Il Piemonte repubblicano, 11 January 1944; B. Marchi, ‘Il destino si compira’,

Il regime fascista, 10 November 1944.

[3] Inhabitants of these regions were not permitted to join the RSI army, in spite of Mussolini’s

representations to Hitler; see AISB, CBMF, b. R/O, no. 12 (Materiale raccolto da G. Padovani nel

1981). For an example of Fascist protests see I. Sauro, L’ azione controproducente del Commissario

supremo germanico nella Venezia Giulia, typescript, 87 pp., 15 September 1944, ACS, SPD, RSI,

b. 12, fasc. 6.

[4] F. R. Monaco, ‘Le citta galleggianti’, in Civilta fascista, April 1944, p. 54.

[5] ‘Honour is on our side . . .Do not confuse Fascist doctrine and the men of the Party, just as you do

not confuse bad priests and your pure religion’, propaganda leaflet in AISBG, FP, fald. 3, b. B.

[6] Rodolfo Graziani was called ‘the Libyan hyena’ for his ruthless cruelty in the colonial war in the

1920s, and for his conduct in ruling Ethiopia after the conquest (1936–40).

[7] The Compagnia della Morte was formed in medieval times by citizens who, in battle, fought around

the Carroccio (the wagon which carried the colours and the insignia of the town), having sworn to

defend it to death. Giovanni dalle Bande Nere (Giovanni dei Medici, 1498–1526) was so called

because he changed his colours (white and violet) to black when Pope Leone X de’Medici died.

German soldiers in 1521 also called him ‘theGreat Devil’. He was killed by a shot from a falconet. The

death of Giovanni has been recounted in the film Il mestiere delle armi, directed by Ermanno Olmi.

[8] Gli Arditi were created in 1917 as an attack corps in the trenches; Fascist propaganda presented

them as forerunners of its ideology and its political style, a model of a new politicized soldier

(Rochat 1990).

[9] A ras was the chief of an Abyssinian tribe. The term was used to indicate the local chiefs of the

Fascist movement, who as individuals lacked power on a national level, but who could condition the

policy of the national leader in the local context.

[10] Report on meeting among the capiprovincia of Piemonte, Lombardia, Veneto and Emilia, 10

February 1944 in Milan, in ACS, SPD, RSI, b. 79, sfasc. 4; and Riunione dei capi delle province di

Lombardia, Piemonte e Liguria presieduta dal ministro Buffarini Guidi a Milano il 5 giugno 1944 a.

XXII, in ACS, SPD, RSI, b. 79, sfasc. 4.

[11] Relazione circa il lavoro compiuto dal comando del corpo ausiliario delle squadre d’ azione delle CCNN

dalla costituzione al 28 ottobre 1944, in ottemperanza agli ordini del duce, del ministro segretario del

PFR comandante del corpo e in perfetta armonia col comando supremo SS e polizia in Italia, in ACS,

SPD, RSI, b. 31, fasc. 238, sfasc. 7; letter of Guido Buffarini Guidi to Duce, 15 January 1945, in

ACS, SPD, RSI, b. 7, fasc. Buffarini Guidi.

[12] See the letter of Admiral Ferrini (Sottosegretario di Stato alla Marina) to Borghese, 4 February

1944, in AFI, FF, b. 39, fasc. 3, which cites Graziani blaming Borghese for not adequately dealing

with the ‘severely low morale and lack of discipline in one of the corps he was in command of’.

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See also Promemoria, signed by Borghese, 15 January 1944, pp. 8, in ACS, SPD, RSI, b. 73, fasc. 10

(undated letter of Sottosegretario Ferrini to Borghese), in which the Minister complains that the

Decima Mas ‘is acting by itself and is issuing announcements of call-ups’. In front of German naval

officers, Ferrini had said of Borghese that ‘it will be difficult to make him return to military

discipline, because he strongly tends towards squadrismo’, in AFI, FF, b. 39, fasc. 3.

[13] The best account of this tedious debate is still by Deakin (1963).

[14] See also AFI, FF, b. 41, fasc. 4, Ufficio del lavoro, Relazione of A. Vigone following his visit to

camps of Italian and French workers in the Sudetenland, 16–31 March 1944.

[15] See German Plenipotentiary for Work, letter of 20 April 1944, in ACS, SPD, RSI, b. 33; also the

statement of Graziani in Verbale della riunione tenutasi all’Ambasciata di Germania sabato 20

gennaio 1945, in ACS, SPD, RSI, b. 13, fasc. 13.

[16] See Pezzato (1945). Enzo Pezzato was an important journalist of the period.

[17] One must remember that the German army slaughtered many people in southern and central Italy in

1943–44. In recent years historians have produced a significant body of literature about these tragic

events; see, above all, Klinkhammer (1997), Schreiber (2000), Pezzino (2004), and Pezzino’s article

in this journal.

[18] ‘Solo i piu degni’, in Dovunque, soldati italiani repubblicani (motto: ‘Morire sı: tradire, mai!), 1 June

1944; R. Gigante, ‘Tener duro’, in Aquile del Carnaro, giornale dei combattenti in Fiume d’ Italia,

8 December 1944, a. 1, no. 1.

[19] D. Leccisi, ‘La bella morte’, in La voce repubblicana, 13 April 1944; L. Manfredi, ‘Salmi

repubblicani’, in Crociata italica, 21 August 1944; and I. V. Riolo, ‘Fratelli in grigioverde’,

in Crociata italica, 29 May 1944. Crociata italica was the paper of the Catholic Republican Fascists,

an almost heretical movement which claimed to represent ultra-orthodox Catholic opinion and

whose leader was Don Tullio Calcagno. On the Fascist oath, see C. Borsani, ‘L’ ora dello spirito’,

in La Repubblica fascista, 23 January 1944. Carlo Borsani was awarded several war decorations;

he was blind and a poet; after 25 April 1945 he was killed by partisans.

[20] On Farinacci’s position see ‘Gente italica’, in Regime fascista, 28 November 1943.

[21] See Il corso di cultura politico-razziale tenuto dal marzo all’agosto XXII� presso la scuola allievi

ufficiali della Gnr di Fontanellato, in ACS, SPD, RSI, b. 47, fasc. 498.

[22] On Preziosi see ACS, SPD, RSI, b. 24, fasc. Giovanni Preziosi.

[23] N. Latronico, ‘Gli ebrei e la guerra’, Il Piemonte repubblicano, 15 April 1944; ‘Adesso fuciliamoli!’,

Il popolo di Alessandria, 21 October 1943; F. A. Spinelli, ‘Come gli ebrei conquistarono la

Massoneria’, La repubblica fascista, 18 February 1944.

[24] I negri in casa nostra? Giammai! Lotta fino alla vittoria! Propaganda leaflet in AISBG, FP, fald. 3, b. B.

[25] ACS, SPD, RSI, b. 31, fasc. 652, sfasc. Ministero del Lavoro; ACS, CP, b. 2; on the conflicting

strategies of Fascist leaders see ACS, SPD, RSI, b. 85, fasc. 657, sfasc. 3, 26 March 1945.

[26] ACS, SPD, RSI, b. 34, fasc. 280, report about elections of local councils in Padova, 12 February

1945; ACS, SPD, RSI, b. 28, fasc. 1487, Promemoria per il duce, undated (but July 1944),

accompanied by a letter of Nazareno Bonfatti to Mussolini, 8 July 1944.

Archival Sources

ACS, CP (Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Carte Pisenti).ACS, SPD, RSI (Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Segreteria particolare del Duce, Carteggio

riservato RSI).AFI, FF (Archivio Fondazione Isec, Milan, Fondo Fontanella).AISB, CBMF (Archivio Istituto storico bellunese per la storia della Resistenza e dell’eta’ contemporanea,

Carte del Bundesarchiv-Militararchiv Freiburg).AISBG, FP (Archivio Istituto storico della Resistenza e dell’eta’ contemporanea, Bergamo, Fondo G. C.

Pozzi).

References

Amendola, G. (1970) ‘Analisi e prospettive politiche in un documento del 1941 riveduto da Togliatti’,Critica Marxista, vol. 1, pp. 75–102.

Anfuso, F. (1950) Roma Berlino Salo, 1936–1945, Garzanti, Milan.

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