An extensive historical debate has taken place in Italy
concerning the relationship between the Italian nation, World War II and the
Resistance. The drastic language of this debate – with its claims that the
nation ‘died’ in September 1943, or was ‘re-born’ at the very same time, reveal
the deep-rooted divisions created by fascism and by intervention in the war. In
many cases these divisions went right back to the bitter social struggles of
the later nineteenth century in areas as diverse as the Po Valley or the great
estates of Apulia and Sicily.
World War II was presented to the Italians as a heroic
moment, and opposition to Italy’s entry into the war (late, as with World War
I) was muted, not least because the country had been under a dictatorship for
the previous twenty years. Yet, after an initial sense of ‘victory’, defeat and
disaster came rapidly – first in Greece, then in Africa, then in Russia. The
catastrophic Russian campaign (1941–3) involved over 230,000 men. Thousands of
Italian troops were more or less abandoned (and surrounded) on the freezing
banks of the Don River without backup or proper equipment, subject to constant
bombardment from Russian tanks and planes. As with the high mountain ‘battles’
of the First World War (the so-called ‘white war’), more soldiers died from the
cold than in actual combat. Nuto Revelli’s memories reveal his own personal
odyssey, from convinced fascist to anti-fascist, via the terrible experience of
the retreat from Russia. ‘And my country?’ he writes: ‘The only country I
believed in was that of the poor beasts who paid with their lives the mistakes
of the “others”…the 8th September moved me, and my choice was immediate,
instinctive. As soon as the Germans arrived in Cuneo I ran home, gathered up my
three automatic weapons…and put them in a rucksack. Then I went to my first
partisan base.’
The war itself rapidly became unpopular at home as news
filtered back of death, imprisonment and defeat abroad, and the economic and
social effects of the conflict began to hit hard. Military hubris led to the
desperate decision by the king and the Fascist Grand Council to arrest
Mussolini, replace his administration and dissolve the Fascist Party. Wartime
defeats had brought down the regime, just as Caporetto had indirectly led to
the collapse of Liberal Italy. The forty-five days that followed have been
analysed and re-analysed by historians, politicians and others ever since. Italy
veered between its allies and the Allies, as the Pact of Steel came apart.
Finally, as the army itself was dissolving before his eyes, and the situation
was becoming ungovernable on the home front, Badoglio (a veteran of the First
World War, like Pétain – the ‘victor of Verdun’) was forced to sign an
armistice with the Allies.
This was on 8 September 1943 – a date over-loaded with
meaning which has pivotal importance for the history of modern Italy. The
Italians had changed sides, mid-conflict. Many soldiers deserted, and were
faced with a series of acute choices. Should they take to the hills, becoming
partisans and forming what was to become known as ‘the Resistance’, should they
join the Fascist armies in the Republic of Salò, or should they try to avoid
the conflict altogether? Many other ex-POWs from various armies tried to escape
into Italy, often finding help amongst peasant families. Many units were left
without orders, others were ordered not to resist the Germans. Radically
different conceptions of the nation, duties and obligations, and the state came
into play. The response to this choice cannot be reduced to simple
fascist/antifascist, nationalist/anti-nationalist or left/right dualisms. Many
monarchists (who had backed fascism) supported the Resistance, as did many
Catholics. The rhetoric of the nation and of national liberation formed a
strong part of the ideology behind the partisan groups, even those organized by
the Communist or Socialist Parties. Within the broad alliance that made up the
Resistance, there was little agreement about the shape of a future Italian
nation, and a (fragile) unity was achieved only through the common struggle
against a common enemy – the Nazis and the Italian (fascist) army.
The main effect of 8 September on the official Italian army
– another key component of certain national myths, particularly that of fascism
– was one of collapse. Official orders called on Italian troops only to respond
if attacked. Some (a small minority) disobeyed, and fought the Germans in open
battle, refusing to surrender – as in Rome or, most famously, at Cephallonia in
Greece where over 5,000 Italian soldiers were wiped out by the Nazi forces. In
short, ‘on the 8 September, everything that could have happened, happened’. The
major representatives of the state and the nation hardly provided an example of
resistance, as the king and the prime minister fled to the south, leaving the
capital in the hands of an invading army.
The events of 8 September have inspired considerable
discussion as representing a singular moment in Italian history, with
particular focus on the role of ideas of national identity before and after
that date. Galli della Loggia has interpreted the armistice and the dissolution
of the Italian army rather grandly as The Death of the Nation. The whole idea
of the nation, he argues, collapsed in the shame and collapse of the Italian
army (and state). Whilst this intelligent polemic carries a certain force in its
depiction of the extremity of the events of 1943, the argument is based on an
extremely specific idea of ‘the nation’ and on a series of hypotheses which
bear little relation to history. If the Resistance had combined with the
Italian state, if the king had resisted, etc., etc., then the nation would have
been preserved. Above all, however, such extreme conclusions rest upon a highly
controversial idea of what national identity should be and, in this specific
case, on a gross exaggeration of the ‘consent’ achieved by fascism at the
moment of entry into war.
Others have traditionally viewed this moment in positive
terms, as a moment when Italy (and the nation) was re-born through armed
resistance to the Germans and the fascists. Thus 8 September is presented in
ways that cannot be reconciled – as death and birth at the same time – as
‘symbolic of disintegration and at the same time a prelude to a revival’. The
fascists also saw 8 September as a moment of possible revival, with the origins
of the Republic of Salò and the decision to fight on with the Germans against
the Americans and the ‘Italian’ army. For nearly everyone, 8 September was a
complicated and confused moment – a time of defeat, of new allies and of
momentous choices, which were to have life-changing consequences. For the
Communists, the choice between the Red Army and Mussolini’s (or Badoglio’s)
Italian army was no choice at all. Togliatti, the leader of the PCI, was still
in Russia when it was invaded by Mussolini. Many Italian nationals simply did
not identify with the Italian army, as it was constituted. As Pavone noted in
1991, ‘even today, to look on September 8 as a tragedy or the beginning of a
liberation process is a line which separates interpretations by opposing
schools’.
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