A Civil War (86 page)

58
On this review, under the direction of Giovanni Vettori, which appeared between December 1943 and February 1945, see Scagliola,
L'Italia cattolica
. The 20 February 1944 Rome edition of
Il Popolo
commented in a brief section of its ‘Osservatorio' column that
L'Italia cattolica
had ‘a different tone from that of
Civiltà italica
, though with the same desire to adhere to republican Fascism as a means of professing religious faith' – words marked by irony more than bitterness.

59
On the chaplains of the partisan formations, see the sample offered by Tramontin in
Il clero italiano e la Resistenza
, p. 43, n. 38. See also Miccoli,
Problemi di ricerca
, p. 253, and Tramontin,
Contadini e movimento partigiano
, p. 291, n. 63.

60
Fappani and Molinari,
Chiesa e Repubblica di Salò
, p. 42.

61
Mussolini made this self-definition, based on his theory of the ‘Catholicpaganisation of Christianity', on 8 August 1938, in conjunction with the publication of the Racial Laws (See G. Ciano,
1937–38. Diario
, Bologna: Cappelli, 1948, p. 217).

62
Cited in Gorrieri,
La Repubblica di Montefiorino
, pp. 226–7 (30 October 1943).

63
See the cases cited by Malgeri,
La Chiesa di fronte alla RSI
, p. 319 and n. 28.

64
Report to the
Duce
of 6 August 1944 by the naval lieutenant Ernesto Vercesi, who had witnessed the liberation of Rome and then slipped back into the RSI (ACS, cited in Malgeri,
La Chiesa di fronte alla RSI
, p. 318, n. 23).

65
‘
L' equivoco continua
',
Il Regime fascista
, 11 April 1944, and the circular from monsignor Casonato, fulfilling the role of a castrensial vicar for the RSI. Both cited in Tramontin,
Il clero e la RSI
, pp. 344–6.

66
Tramontin,
Il clero e la RSI
, p. 344.

67
Tramontin,
Il clero italiano e la Resistenza
, p. 36. The first words cited are those of Tramontin himself: those that follow are taken from the responses the bishop of Padua made to the Consistorial Congregation's circular of 10 April 1944, requesting news on what was happening to the diocese under the German occupation.

68
‘Patriottismo dei nostri sacerdoti', 31 March 1944, cited in Scagliola,
L'Italia cattolica
, p. 160.

69
See Chiodi,
Banditi
, p. 42 (18 August 1944).

70
See Malgeri,
La Chiesa di fronte alla RSI
, p. 321.

71
Malgeri,
La Chiesa di fronte alla RSI
, p. 322, which, however, seems to underestimate the political content of this last motivation.

72
Tramontin,
Il clero italiano e la Resistenza
, p. 20.

73
Chabod,
L'Italia contemporanea
, pp. 125–6.

74
On this point, we can refer back to the aforementioned work of Andrea Riccardi,
Roma ‘città sacra'?
, Chapter 6, ‘La Chiesa e la guerra a Roma'.

75
‘Il Clero',
Il Popolo
, 20 August 1944.

76
‘Retrovie',
Il Popolo
, 20 February 1944.

77
F. Camon,
La vita eterna
, Milan: Garzanti, 1972, pp. 151–80 (cited in Lanaro,
Società civile
, p. 25).

78
Testimony taken from Lanaro,
Società civile
.

79
Such an initiative was taken on 14 July 1944 with the appeal to the ‘parish priest' of Roncaglia (Valtellina) by the Command of the 40
^th
Garibaldian Brigade Matteotti (
Le Brigate Garibaldi
, vol. II, pp. 123–4).

80
See the text of the motion in
Atti CLNAI
, p. 240. On the prior discussions, see Catalano,
Storia del CLNAI
, pp. 316–20.

81
See Tramontin,
Contadini e movimento partigiano
, pp. 310–11; Bianchi,
I cattolici
, pp. 271ff, p. 215; Traniello,
Il mondo cattolico italiano
, pp. 353–8; and Malgeri,
La Chiesa di fronte alla RSI
, pp. 330–3.

82
See, for example, the response from the Florence diocese to the already mentioned Consistorial Congregation circular. The archbishop had done everything possible to push events in this direction, and been somewhat successful (See Tramontin,
Il clero italiano e la Resistenza
, p. 40, n. 12).

83
See Gobetti,
Diario partigiano
, p. 283.

84
A. C. Federici, ‘Il passaggio del fronte (giugno-agosto 1944) attraverso le relazioni dei parroci della diocesi di Fano', in Rochat, Santarelli e Sorcinelli,
Linea gotica 1944
, pp. 335–80.

85
Words that don Damiani, a parish priest in the Brescia mountains, sympathetic to the RSI, wrote in his diary, where he also defined the partisan phenomenon as ‘the most poisonous mushroom of the War' (Fappani and Molinari,
Chiesa e Repubblica di Salò
, p. 137).

86
See M. Cassin, ‘Quelques facteurs historiques et sociaux de la diffusion du protestantisme en Italie méridionale',
Archives de sociologie des religions
, July–December 1956, 2, pp. 55–72.

87
Quoted in Reineri,
Per uno studio comparato
, p. 268.

88
Ibid.

89
The organisation was led by the priests Andrea Ghetti, Aurelio Giussani, Giovanni Barbareschi and Natale Motta (see Enrico Mattei's report to the Christian-Democratic National Congress, Rome, 24 April 1946; the duplicate copy of the text is in INSMLI, old classification,
CLNAI
, envelope 8, folder 9). See G. Barbareschi, ed.,
Memoria di sacerdoti ‘ribelli per amore'
, Milan: Grafiche Boniardi, 1986, p. 44.

90
See, for example, Absalom,
Ex prigionieri alleati
, pp. 453–73.

91
See ‘La criminosa aggressione di San Paolo',
Il Popolo
Rome edition, 20 February 1944.

92
‘Miracoli di carità e banda Calcagno',
Il Popolo
, Rome edition, 20 February 1944.

93
See the testimonies recorded in the Istituto Romano per la Storia d'Italia dal Fascismo alla Resistenza, the Comunità israelitica di Roma and the Comune's Prima Circoscrizione, which can be consulted at the Archivio Storico Audiovisivo del Movimento Operaio in Rome.

94
‘Carità cristiana',
L'Osservatore Romano
, 30 December 1943.

95
‘Il povero Don Aldo Mei' (‘Poor Don Aldo Mei'), as he signed, had, among other things, sheltered a young Jew, ‘whose soul he wish[ed] to save' (
LRI
, pp. 142–5).

96
See L. Zuliani's Introduction, ‘Eroismo e carità del clero nel secondo Risorgimento: testimonianze e documentazioni', Rome 1946 (cited in Tramontin,
Il clero italiano e la Resistenza
, p. 39).

97
See Rovero,
Il clero piemontese nella Resistenza
, p. 55.

98
Ibid., p. 66.

99
See Tramontin,
Contadini e movimento partigiano
, pp. 284, 298.

100
Report by don Calcagno on a colloquy of 25 January 1944, sent to Mussolini by Farinacci, including comments damaging to the bishop (kept in ACS, SPD, CR, RSI, quoted in Bocca,
La Repubblica di Mussolini
, p. 230).

101
Letter by the parish priest Joseph Peeters, shot on 31 August 1943, addressed to ‘my dear Vicars, my dear Congregation' (
LRE
, pp. 92–3).

102
‘I lived to restore Belgium to Christ': letter from the priest Emmanuel de Neckere to his father, 31 October 1942; another priest, Jules Gengler, in a letter to his parents of 9 November 1942, promised to shout out ‘Long live Christ the King!' when he faced the firing squad (
LRE
, pp. 87, 81). The letter cited in the previous note concludes with the words, ‘Long live God and the Holy Virgin, Long live the Catholic Church, Long live Belgium and Long live Comblain au Pont [his parish]'.

103
Cited in Tramontin,
Il clero italiano e la Resistenza
, p. 41, n. 23.

104
P. Polesana,
Eroismo e martirio di Anno distrutta dal fuoco
, Feltre, 1947 (paraphrased by Tramontin,
Il clero italiano e la Resistenza
, p. 39, n. 5).

105
See ‘Lettera di un cattolico',
L'Unità
, Rome edition, 5 October 1943.

106
See Tramontin,
Il clero italiano e la Resistenza
, p. 28.

107
See Rovero,
Il clero piemontese nella Resistenza
, p. 57.

108
See ‘Per I fascisti che si confessano',
L'Unità
, Rome edition, 28 October 1943.

109
‘Esempio',
Voce Operaia
, 26 October 1943.

110
‘Pastorali politiche',
Voce Operaia
, 15 January 1944.

111
Padoan (Vanni),
Abbiamo lottato insieme
, pp. 173–4. As he handed the flag to the standard-bearer, Vanni said that it was blessed with the tears of mothers.

112
Malgeri,
La Chiesa di fronte alla RSI
, pp. 329, 325–7; Briguglio,
Clero e contadini
, pp. 323–4.

113
See the article ‘Serriamo le fila: la lotta per la liberazione è incominciata', signed ‘Pittaluga',
La voce d'Italia
, organ of the Ligurian CLN, 21 November 1943 (cited in Bianchi,
I cattolici
p. 277).

114
Caracciolo,
Teresio Olivelli

115
Bianchi,
I cattolici
, p. 275.

116
See Bianchi,
I cattolici
, p. 178, and Gorrieri,
La Repubblica di Montefiorino
, pp. 80–1.

117
As Gorrieri wrote (
La Repubblica di Montefiorino
, p. 282) with regard to the Modena youth group he headed.

118
Meneghello,
I piccoli maestri
, p. 291.

119
‘Informazioni da Milano', 14 April 1945 (
Le Brigate Garibaldi
, vol. III, p. 621).

1
G. Barraclough,
An Introduction to Contemporary History
, London: Penguin, 1967, p. 30. The English historian argues that ‘for most European historians' the ‘great civil war' in Europe had begun in 1905. On the ‘1914–45 Thirty Years' War', I refer back to the intervention I made at the Brescia conference mentioned above (for its proceedings, see
L'Italia in guerra 1940–43
, Brescia: Fondazione Luigi Micheletti, 1992).

2
Benedetto Croce, in an autobiographical note referring to 29 August 1941, spoke of a war of religion. See B. Croce,
Etica e politica
, Bari: Laterza, 1981, p. 373. Mussolini spoke of this theme in a speech to the Italian divisions stationed in Germany. The
Corriere della Sera
of 25 July 1944 even gave the title ‘war of religion' to one of the sections of the report on his speech. On the contemporary interlinking of civil war and war of religion, see R. Koselleck,
Futuro passato. Per una semantica dei tempi storici
, Genoa: Marietti, 1986 (original edition:
Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten
, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979). On the religious aspects of the Spanish Civil War, see G. Ranzato, ‘Dies irae. La persecuzione religiosa nella zona repubblicana durante la guerra civile spagnola (1936–1939)',
Movimento operaio e socialista
, XI (1988), pp. 195–220.

3
Hillgruber,
Storia della seconda guerra mondiale
, pp. 131–2.

4
This being the well-known thesis of Ernst Nolte's
Der Europäische Bürgerkrieg. Nationalsozialismus und Bolschewismus
, Berlin: Propylaen, 1987.

5
Arendt,
Sulla rivoluzione
, p. 10.

6
As one Italian observer, O. Blatto, remarked in ‘Strategia classica e tecnica rivoluzionaria',
Nuova Antologia
of 1 June 1940 (LXXV, 1637), pp. 216–20. See also the lucid prediction of these events by a German author, according to which it was necessary to encourage the ‘disaggregation of the organs of state and of government authority, and the destruction of any state order' (L. Schuttel,
Fall schrintruppen und Luftinfanterie
, 1940, cited in W. Hahlweg,
Guerrilla. Krieg ohne Fronten
, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1968).

7
It would have been difficult to devote a volume such as that entitled
Spie per la libertà
(Spies for Freedom) by Franco Fucci, Milan: Mursia, 1983, to any other type of war: indeed, it deals with the secret services of the Italian Resistance. A hint of the importance, in this field, of the
réseaux
formed by ‘dilettanti', appears in Michel,
Les courants
, p. 305.

8
According to Schnur (
Rivoluzione e guerra civile
, esp. p. 59) the first world civil war took place in 1791–92, this marking a lasting rupture of the
jus publicum europaeum
. See also the Introduction to this volume, edited by P. P. Portinaro, pp. 35–6.

9
Conference staged by A. Philip in London in 1943 (cited in Michel,
Les courants
, p. 187).

10
See Hillgruber,
Storia della seconda guerra mondiale
, pp. 131–2, 144–7.

11
Provence Libre. Organe régional des Mouvements unis de la résistance française
, 1 June 1944.

12
The article was published in its May 1942 issue (11), and is quoted in Laura Valentini's laureate thesis from the University of Pisa, cited above.