Books & artsJul 14th 2007 edition

Italy during the war
The cruellest years

ERNEST RENAN, a 19th-century French philosopher, once famously observed that national identity requires a collective work of amnesia. In “The Fall of Mussolini”, Philip Morgan suggests that the Italians have more reasons than most to want to forget their modern history, especially the dog days of fascism. He provides a panoramic account of social and emotional life in 1940s Italy, with a stress on trauma, dislocation and brutishness.

Roger Viollet

Il Duce rescued by the Führer in 1943

By the end of the war mass political support for fascism had haemorrhaged. Diehards remained and some “ultras” longed for the apocalypse, or at least for taking the fight against the Allies to a redoubt in the Alps, there to die in a final courageous shoot-out. Many more experienced exhaustion, rage and despair. The once bombastic orator had himself lapsed into silence; in fact Benito Mussolini made only four public speeches during the entire course of the war.

Gaffes are rare in Mr Morgan's sober and balanced account, although a few slip through, such as the claim that myths (flat earth included, presumably) always have some basis in reality. In fact, much of the book is devoted to debunking Italian legend. Most of the people never became out-and-out partisans, but in large areas of the country there was ferocious strife, even tantamount to civil war. After Italy's armistice with the Allies in 1943, the invading German army was widely hated and sometimes severely undermined by opponents, communist or otherwise, although a number of fascist sympathisers bitterly complained about their country's disgraceful “betrayal” of the Führer.

Mr Morgan describes the Nazis' appalling crimes during their occupation of the peninsula and retreat north, but he is careful to present his history of Italian collusion, resistance and negotiation in a dozen shades of grey. Whether in the cities or the countryside, opinions and circumstances varied wildly. Desperate citizens, hunting food or patronage as the regime crumbled, often had to walk a dangerous path.

For many post-war families retrospection meant, at best, raw feeling and rancorous dispute, at worst, intolerable exposure to guilt. The author speculates as to whether there could have been an Italian version of the Nuremberg trials, and what difference it might have made. Instead, ad hoc settling of scores and summary executions of fascists were the order of the day after hostilities officially ended; the precise number who died in this way is disputed, but ran into thousands.

Many things set Mussolini apart from Hitler, not least the fact that he enjoyed a second coming. His first exit was in July 1943: a palace coup saw him arrested with surprisingly little fuss and spirited away in an ambulance. Even his closest associates believed that was the end of him. In fact, thanks to Hitler, he was brought back, but this time as a puppet.

The final curtain came in April 1945. He tried to slip the country but was hauled back by a partisan band. He, his mistress, Clara Petacci, and a couple of associates were executed before being left to swing together, upside down, in a Milan square for the edification of the crowd. With commendable attention to detail, Mr Morgan points out how Petacci's skirt had been carefully secured to her body to avoid any semblance of impropriety.

This article appeared in the Books & arts section of the print edition under the headline "The cruellest years"

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