With Liberty and Justice For All
"Per il pane, per il lavoro, per la terra, per la pace, per la liberta!"- "For bread, for work, for land, for peace, for freedom"-Italian Communist Party Slogan, 1921.
"Man is the end. Not the state"-Carlo Rosselli
If you were in Rome on October 3, 1931, and looked up, you would have seen a sign of how desperate some were for freedom. For almost half an hour an antifascist dissident, Lauro DeBosis, risked his life to drop fliers above the city's streets from a plane he flew from France. Readers would pick up fliers that warned that "Italians are suffering as a servile herd," and Lauro flew so low that some thought he was going to land in the Piazza Venezia. It was a heroic act. It was a futile one. Lauro's plane would crash mysteriously off the coast of Corsica, and no one in Rome cared about what some damn kid thought. [1] Heroes Italy had aplenty.
This is not their story. This is the story of the Fascists who cut a deal to save their skins; of liberal professors who stayed behind rather than toss aside their careers; and of revolutionaries who plotted with a king. And it begins with the man who inspired a youth to drop garbage onto Rome, Carlo Rosselli.
Rosselli was born to a liberal Tuscan Jewish family who were active in Republican politics. After fighting in the Great War, Rosselli, like so many rich young liberals, joined the Socialist movement and witnessed the destruction of Italian democracy at Mussolini's hands. Rosselli began writing for opposition journals, helped the liberal academic Filippo Turati escape, and, after he was himself arrested, escaped on a yacht a friend purchased from an Egyptian prince in the Riviera. [2] Disillusioned with the Socialist Party in exile, he founded, Justice and Liberty. In true Italian fashion, it promptly began quarreling with the other opposition movements in exile.
Guistizia e Liberta (Justice and Liberty) had two benefits over the other groups. First, he was a charismatic writer, persuading many emigres to join his group. Secondly, he was rich, which gave him resources other parties lacked. Under Rosselli, Giustizia Giustizia e Liberta's platform was a vague blend of republicanism, anarchism, and socialism. To Rosselli, the way to take down Mussolini was through drastic action; a democratic march on Rome, or an emulation of Garibaldi's red shirts. In July 1930 Giustizia e Liberta conducted a daring flight over Milan, dropping pamphlets on the city. [3]
After the Spanish Revolution of 1931, Rosselli met with Spanish leaders, such as Manuel Azana, to discuss the possibility of using Spanish airports for propaganda flights over Italy. The use of propaganda flights reached a peak on October 3, 1931, when a Giustizia e Liberta follower flew over Rome, dropping leaflets which urged the people to revolt. Although the plane was shot down off Corsica, Rosselli's urge for dramatic action would only grow after the Spanish Civil war.
When the civil War broke out, Mussolini dispatched 44,000 "volunteers," investing his nation's resources and prestige in overthrowing the Spanish Republic. Yet Mussolini was not the only Italian to intervene. In June of 1936, Justice and Liberty marched south. Giustizia e Liberta proceeded to Catalonia, where he organized troops to act as his Redshirts for the "coming Italian Revolution." Rosselli's initial force was ptitiful, some 130 men who he led from the Ford automobile he drove down from Paris. While they were the first troops in the field, they were few in number, and the wave of Communist resources soon gave them control over the Garibaldi Battalion, as the Italian Republican volunteers were known. Even Rosselli's unit had a Communist commissar[4]. In France, meanwhile, the Italian Communists made every effort to gain control of Italian emigrants in Europe, and dispatched them to Spain as well, to serve in the Garibaldi Brigade.
But the Garibaldi Battalion was not composed solely of communists; its members included old-fashioned liberals, anarchists, and Rosselli, with his belief in Giustizia e Liberta. In late 1936, Rosselli hit upon the idea of reshaping his column into a "motorized revolutionary force," with the aim of blitzing behind enemy lines. [5] Rosselli copied the Communist system of political commissars, and installed one in his own unit, who spent most of his time arguing with the Communist commisar. Rosselli also became the voice of Free Italy, broadcasting from Madrid.
"Just as in the darkest stages of the risorgimento when no one hoped, there came from abroad the example of initiative, so today awe are convinced that from this modest but virile force of Italian volunteers a powerful will to achieve redemption will find its source. Today in Spain, tomorrow in Italy!"
-Carlo Rosselli, broadcasting from Madrid, 1936
Banner of Justice and Liberty in Spain
Yet Rosselli's experience in the Spain would influence not just his own political views, but the European left and the struggle for power in post-Fascist Italy.
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It was the tastes that got to you. Coffee, fresh from Brazil when the front line made do with chicory. Flaky pastries made with chocolate and sugar. Ham, eggs, and chopped liver. Rosselli had been raised Jewish, but his mouth still watered as he sat at in Gaylord's with "Alfredo," as the leader of the Italian Communist Party was known here. Madrid was under strict rationing, but you would never tell by the food the Russians ate. [6]
"Alfredo" was, of course, Palmiro Togliatti, the leader of the Italian Communist Party, and a member of the Comintern with the ear of Stalin. So surely he would be able to help Rosselli. "Comrade Togliatti," he asked, "might I ask what has happened to Comrade Balducci?"
In all the time Rosselli had known Togliatti, and they had debated, sparred, and quarreled for years, he had never seen him smile. Too much time among the Russians, probably. And so it wasn't out of the ordinary for Togliatti to keep his voice flat as he said, "he was a traitor to the Republic."
"Balducci? No! A bit naïve politically, but he had been fighting since the first days of the war."
Togliatti spread his hands. "He had anarchist literature, he wrote letters to friends in France and Germany criticizing the war, and he confessed to far worse."
And that ended that. "I see." Rosselli had heard about the confessions. Who hadn't, by this point? The Republic's secret police had been taught by the NKVD, many who'd been kept on as advisors. Rosselli had been imprisoned in Mussolini's Italy. What happened in Spain was far worse.
It was not even worth asking how they'd found out. . Best to change the subject, and ask about getting more artillery for his brigade.
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Rosselli's own writings from this period are circumspect, and the letters he sent home were often seemingly random, discussing classical history instead of the affairs in Spain. While his initial letters had discussed the exuberance and joy of the revolution, this vanished and Rosselli restricted his observations to describing the sun-bleached plains of Castille, where Republican tanks slowly ground the Nationalists to a powder of blood and bone. The fraternal atmosphere that characterized the soldiers' in the first weeks of the war, where both sides took a siesta and wine around noon, was replaced with descriptions of bloated corpses that stank so bad that the soldiers donned gas masks.
Vanished too was the revolutionary fervor that had greeted the Revolution.
Rosselli noted that usted had come back into fashion, replacing comrade; the black markets that catered to those with connection; and occassional mentions to the purge in Barcelona. All in the name of discipline, of course.
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The Nationalists had holed up in a church. Maybe they thought God would protect them. The fallen roof and wounded coming out, hands above their heads, proved them wrong. "Are there more inside?" he asked one of the soldiers on the scene, a Belgian kid who'd joined his unit. The kid had blonde hair and blue eyes, and when he smiled seemed fourteen. He spoke Spanish fluently. There was a story there, he knew. But it wasn't his business.
The kid carried a rifle, now. He'd shot a prisoner two weeks ago, and been given a pat on the back by his officer for it.
"Yes, those who can't walk." The kid lit a cigarette, offered one to Rosselli. As he shook his head, he noted the pack was in Russian. "And we found a few of the Blue Shirts."
"Of course we had." Everyone knew what that meant. "Where are they?"
"The Commissar's with them, in that house, sir." No Comrade. Rosselli hadn't heard Comrade on the front for over a year now. Maybe it belonged to the mayor, or a doctor, before the war. If they were here now they'd know better to complain.
Rosselli entered, and spoke briefly to the Commissar, a Catalan who'd become fiercely devoted to the Republic. When he found out they wouldn't confess to any wrongdoing, he merely gave the orders and went in to see them.
One of them had a bandage covering his eye, dark red from blood, but still alert. "What are you going to do with us?'
"You are enemies of the Republic, and not soldiers in arms but rather defenders of the Fascists. And so, death."
"When?"
"Now. Here and now, so the town can see Revolutionary Justice." Somehow the words seemed capitalized, even when spoken. "Have you anything to say?"
"Nothing, but this is an ugly thing."
The Belgian kid spoke up. "You're an ugly thing, oppressor of the peasants. You'd shoot your own mother if a don asked you to."
The bandaged fascist laughed. "I never shot anyone's mother, you little prick. And at least I know who my father was."
The scary thing was the kid didn't even reply. His anarchists, when this began, would have punched a fascist who said that. Somehow the discipline unnerved Rosselli more.
It didn't matter, really. He'd seen enough towns fall across Spain to see what would happen. After seeing nuns get shot while praying, or a fascist horse dealer beaten to death by the town because he'd been a supporter of Franco, what was two more deaths? These men were at least guilty.
If the kid was thinking along the same lines, he didn't show it. "And so the Republic advances, Sir. Tomorrow in Italy, no?"
Rosselli looked up. "Oh, yes. Tomorrow in Italy."
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"There is a monster in the contemporary world, the state, which is in the process of devouring the society. The contemporary dictator state has deeply changed all human relationships…has replaced freedom with arbitrariness and equality with military camp discipline… In the modern dictator state, the logical consequence of statism, there is no longer a place for the human being."
Rosselli's own writing during this period marks what some have called the "Death of Marxism" in European socialist thought. As early as 1934, Rosselli's own writing moved away from Communist totalitarianism and towards what some classified as anarchism, but, as his post-Civil War writings would indicate, reflected an affirmation of classical liberalism and a fear of ‘religione pagana di Stato’: the religion of the state.
Rosselli's writing during the Civil War years was strangely subdued, but when he returned from Spain in 1938, as the Republican victory seemed assured, he began to write a scathing critique of trends in the European left, and suggesting that it was time for an "explicit break with Marxism."[7]
Rosselli's vision of a post-fascist Italy entailed capitalism bound by regulation; ending the "absurd monopoly on patriotism held by the so-called nationalist parties"; and a commitment to a society based on liberty and justice for all, not just the "negative outdated Marxist fetish for class warfare."
With the declassification of Comintern archives, we know that Rosselli left Spain only shortly he was scheduled to be "purged," and there is no denying that the Popular Front formed between Justice and Liberty and the Communist Party broke down in the aftermath of his departure, although the two parties remained committed to "working with all antifascist movements for the reconstruction of Italy."
But the tensions were manifest, and things came to a breaking point in March of 1942. Italy's Fascist Grand Council oversaw an economy that had sputtered to a halt, and the Yugoslavian morass had only further dented the regime's prestige. When the wave of strikes began to spread, and the Red Flag was raised over Fiat's factory in Turin, it was clear to all that it was time to act. But how?
[1] This happened in OTL actually.
[2] This also happened. Rosselli would later claim that the prison's guards were eating ice cream and were so not around when he tried to escape. I'd make some comment about the banality of evil, but I can't blame a man for wanting ice cream.
[3] It was cool, even if nobody noticed.
[4] This happened in OTL. Rosselli ended up being killed while on leave in France in OTL 1936, but in the ATL the 4th Republic is not a place for antifascist Italian emigres, and so he ends up in England on leave instead.
[5] Rosselli came up with this idea in OTL as well.
[6] Soviet troops were kept isolated in Madrid, but they did end up eating better than everyone else in the city.
[7] Actually Rosselli called for this before the Civil War, but I am presuming the trend becomes more significant.
And as proof that there's a game going along with this, a preview from Rosselli's next stop:
But otherwise; good update, although Schumacher seems too bigoted, for my taste.
