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Military in the Resistance, Resistances by the Military: the Italian case

p. 167-178

Résumé

The article aims to identify the most important features of military participation into the Italian resistance. It highlights some Italian peculiarities, primarily related to the way Fascist Italy lost its war in the Summer 1943, and to the way in which a complex and large Resistance movement developed then.
The article presents at least six forms of this military participation in national Resistance: 1. The immediate resistance of the military who reacted on September 8, 1943; 2. The resistance of units, officers, and soldiers who were abroad on September 8, especially in the Balkans, and who decided to fight together with Tito’s partisans; 3. The contribution of military units of the “Kingdom of the South” to combat and support activities under the authority of the Anglo-American Command; 4. The network of resistance units dropped in the north by the “Kingdom of the South”; 5. The resistance of officers and soldiers taken prisoners by the Reich who refused to rally the neo-fascist “Repubblica Sociale Italiana”; 6. Finally, and most significantly, the resistance of those tens of thousands of Italian soldiers who, within their own country, chose to join anti-fascist activists in the mountains.
Given the plural nature of this participation, not due to a single order and not obeying a single commander, the article suggests that it should be better to speak about (plural) “Military Resistances” (insisting on the plural) than about “military Resistance” or “Military in the Resistance”.


Extrait

1Along together with the Anglo-American Allied forces, in April 1945 the Italian Resistance movement saw its contribution to the war against Fascism and Nazism realized. After the Liberation of its country, the Italian military was well aware of the contribution of anti-fascist political parties to this victory and proclaimed that the Italian conquest of freedom and independence was the result of a common action, an international and national, civilian and military one.

2A few years later, in the new atmosphere of the Cold War, the reality of a former unity of action between civilian and military forces was relegated to the past. Moderate conservatives preferred to consider the war of liberation from Nazi-fascism as a war of independence1. Communists and left-wing civilians strongly criticized the military and its role in the Resistance2. The military itself kept silent on the irregular warfare with which it had in fact fought and won to focus on the new, regular, Cold war and i

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