Occupation, Resistance and civil war
After the armistice of 8 September 1943 Germany occupies Italy, Mussolini heads a puppet republic in the north, Jews are deported, and partisans fight Germans and Fascists until liberation.
- A Civil War: A History of the Italian Resistance — Claudio Pavone, Verso (2013)
- Italy's Divided Memory — John Foot, Palgrave Macmillan (2009)
- Italy — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
- If This Is a Man (Se questo è un uomo) — Primo Levi, De Silva (1947)
- A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988 — Paul Ginsborg, Penguin (1990)
8 September
On 8 September 1943 the government of Marshal Badoglio announced an armistice with the Allies. The king and government fled south, leaving the army without orders. Germany seized the north and centre within days, disarmed Italian troops and sent some 600,000 of them to camps in Germany as “military internees”. On the Greek island of Cephalonia, German troops massacred thousands of Italian soldiers of the Acqui division who had resisted.
- A Civil War: A History of the Italian Resistance — Claudio Pavone, Verso (2013)
- A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988 — Paul Ginsborg, Penguin (1990)
German paratroopers freed Mussolini, who was installed at the head of the Italian Social Republic, based at Salò on Lake Garda, a German puppet state. For twenty months Italy was split, with the Allies fighting their way slowly up the peninsula, through Monte Cassino, Anzio and the Gothic Line.
- A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988 — Paul Ginsborg, Penguin (1990)
- The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy since 1796 — Christopher Duggan, Allen Lane (2007)
The persecution of Jews
Until 1943 Jews in Italy, though persecuted under the racial laws, had not been deported, and the Italian army had often protected Jews in occupied zones of France and Yugoslavia. Under German occupation, with help from Salò’s police and militia, deportations began. On 16 October 1943 the Germans rounded up more than a thousand Jews in Rome; of those sent to Auschwitz, only sixteen returned. In all, the Germans deported 8,564 Jews from Italy and Italian-held territories such as Rhodes, most to Auschwitz, and few survived. Primo Levi was among those who did.
- Italy — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
- If This Is a Man (Se questo è un uomo) — Primo Levi, De Silva (1947)
The partisans
Resistance bands formed in the mountains of the north and centre, organised by the Committees of National Liberation and led mainly by Communists, the Action Party, socialists and Catholics. By spring 1945 there were well over 100,000 partisans. German reprisals were terrible: 335 men were shot in the Fosse Ardeatine in Rome in March 1944, and hundreds of civilians each were massacred at Sant’Anna di Stazzema and Marzabotto in 1944.
- A Civil War: A History of the Italian Resistance — Claudio Pavone, Verso (2013)
- Italy's Divided Memory — John Foot, Palgrave Macmillan (2009)
Liberation
A general insurrection in the northern cities in late April 1945 freed Milan, Turin and Genoa before the Allies arrived; 25 April became Liberation Day. On 28 April partisans shot Mussolini and his lover Clara Petacci near Lake Como, and their bodies were hung upside down in Milan’s Piazzale Loreto. In the weeks that followed, partisans killed thousands of Fascists and suspected collaborators, a “settling of accounts” whose scale and justice remain disputed.
- A Civil War: A History of the Italian Resistance — Claudio Pavone, Verso (2013)
- Italy's Divided Memory — John Foot, Palgrave Macmillan (2009)
- A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988 — Paul Ginsborg, Penguin (1990)
The partisans, communists, Catholics, liberals and socialists together, redeemed Italy's honour, fought for freedom and laid the foundations of the democratic Republic and its anti-fascist constitution.
- A Civil War: A History of the Italian Resistance — Claudio Pavone, Verso (2013)
- A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988 — Paul Ginsborg, Penguin (1990)
Many Italians, especially on the right, stress the violence of some partisan units after the war, and the killings of Italians by Yugoslav partisans in the foibe (karst pits) and the exodus of about 250,000–350,000 Italians from Istria and Dalmatia. Since 2004, 10 February is the Day of Remembrance for these victims. Critics warn that this memory is sometimes used to equate the two sides.
- Italy's Divided Memory — John Foot, Palgrave Macmillan (2009)
Claudio Pavone, himself a former partisan, argued in 1991 that the Resistance was at once a patriotic war against the Germans, a civil war between Italians and, for some, a class war. The phrase "civil war", once used only by the right, has become widely accepted among historians.
- A Civil War: A History of the Italian Resistance — Claudio Pavone, Verso (2013)
Why it matters today
25 April, Liberation Day, is a national holiday and the founding memory of the Republic; partisan songs such as "Bella ciao" are sung at rallies (and have travelled round the world). But this was also a civil war between Italians, and memory is divided: the left has long claimed the Resistance as its own, the right has pushed for recognition of victims of partisan and Yugoslav violence, and every 25 April brings arguments about who should celebrate and how.