The Italian Resistance Fascists, Guerrillas and the Allies

by Behan, Tom

• ISBN13: 9780745326948
• ISBN10: 0745326943
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-07-15
• Publisher: UCP

Summary

One of the enduring myths about World War Two is that only the Allies liberated occupied Europe. Many countries had Resistance movements, and Italy's was one of the biggest and most politically radical - yet it is relatively unknown outside homeland. Within Italy many plaques and streets commemorate the actions of the partisans - a spontaneous movement from below grow once Mussolini's dictatorship started to unravel. Led by radical left forces, the Resistance trod an uneasy line fascism and their Nazi allies who had occupied the country, keeping political unity across a broad front, and maintaining alliance with the Allies. Using unpublished archival material and interviews with surviving partisans, Tom Behan tells the inspiring story of then Florence and many other cities were liberated by anti-fascists. This book also takes issue with 'revisionism', the decades to rewrite history, a process helped by 'post-fascists' now becoming a stable feature of Italian governments.

Author Biography

Tom Behan is Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies at the University of Kent. His books include The Camorra (1996); The Long Awaited Moment: The Working Class and the Italian Communist Party in Milan, 1943-48  (1997); Dario Fo: Revolutionary Theatre  (Pluto, 2000); See Naples and Die: The Camorra and Organized Crime (2002); The Resistible Rise of Benito Mussolini (2003) and Defiance: The Untold Story of One Man Who Stood Up To The Sicilian Mafia (2007).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. vii
Abbreviations	p. x
Acknowledgements	p. xi
Chronology	p. xii
Introduction	p. 1
The meaning of the Resistance
How this book is structured
Midnight in the Century	p. 9
Italian colonialism, racism and the Second World War
The ice melts
The Mafia and Street Kids: How Fascism Fell in the South	p. 22
The liberation of Sicily
25 July 1943: the fall of Mussolini and ‘the end of the beginning’
8 September 1943: the fall of fascism
Four days in Naples
People, Parties and Partisans	p. 40
The March 1943 strikes
The birth of a national unified movement
The Socialist Part
The Action Party
The Communist Party
The CLN
Anti-fascism on the ground
The three wars
Resistance in the Mountains	p. 61
A new kind of army
Why the partisans were successful
Resistance in the Cities	p. 77
Strike action in the cities
The liberation of Florence
‘Aldo says 26 for one’	p. 93
Spring comes in many colours
All that glitters is not gold
Postwar Partisan Activity	p. 107
Why partisans were angry
Political violence after liberation
Legal attacks against partisans
Partisan rebellions
The non-monolithic Communist Party
Occupation and Insurrection, 1947–48
The end of the Resistance?
The Long Liberation	p. 138
Italian fascism: down but not out
The Tambroni affair
Attempted coups
The strategy of tension
The political defrosting of the MSI
The undermining of the Resistance
Female Fighters	p. 161
Non-military activities
Military activities
Military versus women's liberation
The Partisan Republics	p. 175
The Montefiorino republic
The republic of Carnia
The Ossola republic
Organising ‘Terrorism’	p. 190
A tale of two cities
An Uneasy Alliance: The Resistance and the Allies	p. 208
An alliance for military needs
Between a rock and a hard place: the Resistance and the Rome protocols
The Allies' political strategy
Conclusion	p. 224
Notes	p. 229
Index	p. 253
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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