The Italian Resistance

The story

8 September 1943

In the summer of 1943 Italy had been at war for three years, and the situation was disastrous: cities were being bombed, there was a shortage of food, many soldiers had died on distant fronts, and the Allies had landed in Sicily. On 25 July the king, Victor Emmanuel III, had Mussolini arrested and gave the government to Marshal Pietro Badoglio. But the war went on, while the government secretly negotiated a surrender.

On 8 September, on the radio, Badoglio announced that Italy had signed an armistice with the Allies. He gave the army no clear instructions, and the king and the government fled to the south, to Brindisi. The Italian soldiers, scattered across Italy, France, the Balkans and Greece, were left without orders, and the German army, a former ally, took advantage: it quickly occupied the whole centre and north of the country and disarmed the Italian soldiers. Over six hundred thousand of them, who refused to go on fighting alongside the Nazis, were deported to prisoner-of-war camps in Germany, where many suffered hunger and cold. On the Greek island of Cephalonia the Germans killed thousands of Italian soldiers who had tried to resist.

The choice

On 12 September the Germans freed Mussolini, who was being held prisoner on the Gran Sasso, and put him at the head of a new Fascist state in the north, the Italian Social Republic, also known as the Republic of Salò. In reality it depended on Germany. The country was split in two, with a front line running across the peninsula, and every Italian faced a choice: to join, to wait, to hide or to resist.

Many young men, to avoid being drafted into the army of the Social Republic or sent to work in Germany, chose to go up into the mountains and join the groups that were forming, the partisans. Others joined up in the cities, in the factories, in the countryside. Within a few weeks bands were formed of former soldiers, workers, students, peasants, priests and teachers. On 9 September in Rome the anti-Fascist parties had formed the National Liberation Committee (CLN), to coordinate the struggle.

How they fought

Fighting in the woods and mountains was hard. The partisans had few weapons, often old ones, few shoes and little food, and they lived in huts and hidden shelters, with the help of the peasants. They carried out quick actions and then vanished: they sabotaged bridges and railways, attacked patrols, passed information to the Allies, freed prisoners. They fought in different groups, inspired by Communist, Catholic, Liberal, Socialist, Action Party or monarchist ideas, but united in the fight against Nazi-Fascism.

A decisive part was played by women: the “relay girls” (staffette) carried messages, weapons, medicine and food, often by bicycle, through checkpoints, and many women fought, nursed the wounded, and hid fugitives and Jews. “Civil” resistance was important too: strikes in factories, help for the persecuted, priests and nuns who hid Jews and wanted people.

The reaction of the Germans and the Fascists was extremely harsh. After an attack in Rome, on 24 March 1944, they killed three hundred and thirty-five civilians and prisoners at the Ardeatine Caves. In August 1944 at Sant'Anna di Stazzema, in Tuscany, and between September and October at Marzabotto, in Emilia, hundreds of inhabitants were massacred, mostly women, children and old people. These are wounds that Italy still remembers.

Liberation

In the spring of 1945 the Allies broke through the German line and the Committee for the Liberation of Northern Italy ordered a general uprising. On 25 April the partisans liberated Milan and Turin, while Genoa had freed itself in the same days, before the Allies arrived. Mussolini, who was trying to escape towards Switzerland, was captured by the partisans at Dongo, on Lake Como, and was killed on 28 April. On 2 May the Germans in Italy surrendered.