Still Up in the Hills After April '45: Italian Partisan Revolts 1945-1947

25 April 1945, regarded and feted as the anniversary of the Liberation, is still wreathed in lots of equivocation and argument, on account of the blatant political spinning of history. From the historical point of view, the main bamboozlement relates to the very date of 25 April itself; some would have that date stand for the start and finish of the people’s uprising against fascism and Nazi occupation, denying that that particular civil and social war had its “before” and, above all, that there came an “after” that was anything but a rallying and reconciliation under the colours of some supposed national peace plan.

One of the things that blatantly contradicts this comforting reconstruction of the past is the experience shared by thousands of partisans who, repeatedly and in lots of places, returned to the hills from which they had emerged in April ‘45. Leading to widespread armed rebellion against a government made up of parties which had served on the National Liberation Committee during the resistance.

The motives behind these revolts were varied: from the failure to purge fascists to the amnesty granted the fascists by Justice minister Togliatti (the presidential order of 22 June 1946), from the criminalisation of returning partisans and antifascists to their exclusion from society, from the lack of legal provision made for former camp inmates to the disappointing climate of capitalistic restoration effected, as ever, at the expense of the working class.

The first and most significant incident erupted in the Asti district when Captain Carlo Lavagnino, former partisan commander serving with the police reserve was dismissed. In fact, in an effort to normalise a situation that was in many regards out of control, from early May ‘45 onwards, a decree had been issued for almost 8,000 partisans to be drafted into the police force but this had swiftly been cancelled by the Christian Democrat minister of the Interior, Mario Scelba.

In response to the victimisation of Lavagnino, around thirty of his ex-comrades from the “Garibaldi” partisan units, disinclined to take orders from a former officer of the fascist police, joined with another two hundred like-minded partisans in an armed take-over of the Santa Libera district in the Santo Stefano Belbo township on the borders of the provinces of Cuneo and Asti.

A few weeks earlier in Asti a leaflet had been circulated bearing the signature of the No 1 GAP Command; it captured the mind-set of large numbers of partisans: “If the people’s rights, the sacrosanct rights of those who have always suffered and who have never asked for anything more than the right to work and live in a setting of justice, equality and freedom are not recognised immediately, we shall take up arms again for a second war of liberation.”

Barely five days after 20 August, when the group led by Armando Valpreda, erstwhile ‘Giustizia e Libertá’ partisan, had settled into Santa Libera, the revolt spread like wildfire. At least 400 partisans flooded into the hills above Asti whilst other groups were unearthing the weaponry they had never handed up to the authorities; this was happening in Piedmont (in Val Pellice, Bagnolo, San Secondo, Pinerolo, Monastrero di Lanzo) and in Liguria, Lombardy and the Venice region.

In La Spezia, the revolt was headed by Paolo Castagnino, a reserve officer of the carabinieri and would last until 3 September. In Brallo, on the margins of the provinces of Alessandria and Pavia, a team of nearly 130 men equipped with heavy weaponry and indeed with an armoured car that seems to have finished its days at the bottom of the river Po took up its positions.

Demonstrations of support took place in the streets of Cuneo, Alessandria, Turin, Aosta, Sondrio, Genoa and Pavia.

According to the socialist Pietro Nenni, there were clashes and incidents recorded in Dozza Imolese, Piacenza and Mantua where 200 partisans had taken up arms again and taken to the hills. In Genoa a unit of the railway militia, made up largely of partisans, had seized weapons whilst trucks filled with armed partisans were spotted in Milano Lambrate.

According to the police authorities, as of 29 August, almost 1,300 partisans had taken up arms again in a number of Northern provinces (Asti, Cuneo, Turin, Pavia, Sondrio and Verona): but that figure seems to fall far short of the reality, given that subsequently reports refer to further armed bands in previously unmentioned provinces (Alessandria, Brescia, Massa Carrara, Modena, Varese and Vercelli).

Greatly alarmed, the De Gasperi government drafted police into the rebel districts, ordering the arrest of the partisan leaders on charges of “armed insurrection”. The Italian Communist Party through its press condemned the agitation as an attempted right wing subversion driven by “unknown provocateurs”, although the communist leader Scoccimarro was forced to argue that the revolt was led by “Trotskyists and Spartakists”. Meanwhile, the most highly regarded communists and socialists - including Nenni, Pietro Secchia and Davide Lajolo - were drafted into to negotiate with the rebels. On 27 August  the commanders of 77 partisan units gathered in Milan in a show of solidarity with the rebellion and to repudiate the compliant conciliatory policy being followed by the ANPI (Partisans of Italy National Association). At the suggestion of militants from the Italian Libertarian Federation (a short-lived group spawned as a breakway from the Italian Anarchist Federation) and the Spartacus Union (a Rome-based independent socialist grouping led by Carlo Andreoni) an alternative to the ANPI, the MRP (Partisan Resistance Movement) was launched.

That done, some 28 units positioned themselves in the foothills of the Alps, defying the carabinieri and the authorities’ efforts to repress them, whilst the National Ex-Service and Death Camp Survivors’ Federation declared its support for the movement.

At a 28 August meeting, the government was therefore obliged to take steps in favour of the partisans - among these steps was temporary release for antifascists arrested following armed operations mounted prior to July ‘45 and the incorporation of former resistance members into the police. The executive dispatched Defence minister Facchinetti to Milan to tell the partisan movement of these measures. But the enthusiasm was short-lived for both of these concessions were soon being reneged upon: only a few of the demands made in favour of ex-fighters, survivors and dependents of the fallen were honoured:  but the more political demands such as the contested amnesty for fascists, the elimination of the ‘Uomo Qualunque’ movement (which had become a front for lots of fascists) and monitoring from below of the handiwork of the prefects remained a dead letter, just as the unemployment issue was also left untackled.

The last remaining groups of resisters only demobilised in September and among these was one group in the Viarreggio district under Antonio Canova who had taken to the hills rather late in the day. But that was not the end of it: sometime around 18 October, at the instigation of the MRP, about forty ex-partisans from the Cesare Battisti Division mustered in San Bononio, a mountain village in Curino (Vercelli province) to issue yet another challenge to the Togliatti amnesty and to the marginalisation of antifascist fighters. Officially the venture was intended to make a start on the reconstruction of a local road and carry out reforestation work in the area. Their protest was broken up a week later: on 24 October, the police shut down the editorial offices of the MRP whilst a motorised column raided Curino, arresting Carlo Andreoni and other alleged ringleaders of the movement on charges of “revolt against the State”. After ten days or so, they were set free in order to pre-empt ructions.

The Italian CP’s attitude to the organisers of this last venture and to the partisans who had taken part in it was entirely hostile: it even levelled foul charges that they were “neofascists” or “provocateurs” or “highwaymen” or “agents of the monarchy” (See articles carried in L’Unitá around this time), so much so that Sandro Pertini spoke up publicly in defence of the credentials of the rebels, many of them partisans of socialist leanings. The Italian CP’s hostility even led to its brazenly colluding with the carabinieri in the crackdown on dissident partisan groups in the provinces of Bologna, Modena and Reggio Emilia. The communist and one-time partisan commander in the Reggio area, Osvaldo Salvarani encapsulated the party’s support for repression with these words: “There must be an end of compromise. These partisans-black brigaders must be arrested and tossed into prison!”

Similar examples of rebellion, albeit on a smaller scale, were recorded in May and October of 1947 in the provinces of Novara and Biella, when hundreds of ex-partisans mobilised for a return to the hills. These flare-ups of rebellion, disowned at the time by the ANPI and Italian CP, were isolated by the state forces of repression and Resistance doomed to live on in the realm of myth only.

MR

Umanitá Nova,  No 13,  22 April, 2007

Translated by: Paul Sharkey.