Historical Controversies

Burgwyn, H. James

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-76189-3_20

H. James Burgwyn⁴

Part of the book series: Italian and Italian American Studies ((IIAS))

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Abstract

Historical controversies over the RSI have raged in Italy since the end of the war to the present day. Leading writers, such as Claudio Pavone, Renzo De Felice, and Giampaolo Pansa, who have different perspectives of the RSI, weigh in with their take on the Salò regime.

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Notes

1.
Cited in R.J.B. Bosworth, The Italian Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of Mussolini and Fascism (London, New York, Sydney, Auckland: Arnold, 1998), p. 186.
2.
Roberto Battaglia, Storia della Resistenza in Italia (Turin: Einaudi, 1964), pp. 147–52.
3.
Guido Quazza, “Introduction,” in Massimo Legnani and Vendramini Ferruccio, eds., Guerra, guerra di liberazione, guerra civile. Atti del convegno di Belluno, 26–30 October 1988 (Milan: Angeli, 1990), pp. 13–22.
4.
Guri Schwarz, “The Moral Conundrums of the Historian: Claudio Pavone’s A Civil War and its legacy,” Modern Italy 20, 4 (2015), p. 430.
5.
Angelo Del Boca, La scelta (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1963), p. 41.
6.
Giorgio Pisanò, an RSI veteran who had been an officer in the Decima Mas, describes RSI soldiers as “the boys of Salò,” normal easy-going regular guys who fought the good fight. Angelo D’Orsi, “Dal revisionismo al rovescismo,” in Angelo Del Boca, ed., La storia negata: Il revisionismo e il suo uso politico (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 2009), pp. 341–42. Luciano Violante, a former member of the Communist Party, utilized the term “the boys of Salò” to extend the values of the resistance to the nation as a whole in order to repair the lacerations of the past. Philip Cooke, The Legacy of the Italian Resistance (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 174.
7.
Luigi Ganapini , La repubblica delle camicie nere (Milan: Garzanti, 1999).
8.
Dianella Gagliani , Brigate nere: Mussolini e la militarizzazione del Partito fascista repubblicano (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1999).
9.
The Salò press in autumn 1943 had already started to propagate the theme of the republic as a “shield” against the “furor teutonicus.” After the war, the ex-hierarchs of the RSI, and in particular, many journalists, vied with each other in justifying the republic’s positive contribution to Italian history by employing the argument of the “shield.” Bruno Spampanato (the director of the Rome daily Il Messaggero, and then official newspaper head of the X Flottiglia Mas), and Piero Pisenti, minister of justice, who entitled his memoir Una Repubblica necessaria, stand out as primary examples.
10.
Processo Graziani, I: 213.
11.
Canevari, Graziani mi ha detto, p. 102.
12.
Turchi, Prefetto con Mussolini, p. 72.
13.
Pettinato , Tutto da rifare, p. 226.
14.
This thesis has been rehashed on numerous occasions by neo-Fascist publications. An example can be found in Pierangelo Maurizio, Roma ‘44. I signori del terrore (Rome: Maurizio, 1997), p. 11.
15.
Tarchi , Teste dure, p. 48. Tarchi insisted that he had refused the villa formerly belonging to the Jew Jarach and claimed to have helped several persecuted Jews.
16.
Costa , L’ultimo federale, p. 158.
17.
Edmondo Cione , Storia della Repubblica Sociale Italiana (Caserta: Il Cenacolo, 1948); Ernesto Amicucci, I 600 giorni di Mussolini (Rome: Faro, 1948); Vincenzo Costa , L’Ultimo federale (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2006.)
18.
Cione , Storia della Repubblica Sociale Italiana.
19.
Pini , Itinerario tragico.
20.
Bruno Spampanato , Contromemoriale (Rome: “Illustrato,” s.d.).
21.
Amicucci , I 600 giorni di Mussolini.
22.
Pettinato , Tutto da rifare.
23.
Bolla, Perché a Salò, p. 74.
24.
Ibid., p. 59.
25.
Ibid., p. 190.
26.
Ibid., pp. 213–14.
27.
Pini and Susmel , Mussolini, L’uomo e l’opera, IV: Dall’Impero alla Repubblica; Dolfin, Con Mussolini nella tragedia.
28.
Philip Morgan, The Fall of Mussolini: Italy, the Italians, and the Second World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 218.
29.
Lowe, Savage Continent, p. 159.
30.
Osti Guerrazzi has organized and catalogued these “Audiences” in a data-base located in the German Historical Institute in Rome. They can be obtained on line.
31.
De Felice , Rosso e Nero, pp. 114–15.
32.
Ibid., pp. 55–56.
33.
Giampaolo Pansa, Il revisionista (Milan: Rizzoli, 2009).
34.
Giampaolo Pansa, La guerra sporca dei partigiani e dei fascisti (Milan: RCS, 2012).
35.
Giampaolo Pansa, Il sangue dei vinti (Milan: Sperling & Kupfer, 2003).
36.
The historian Ilenia Rossini, having subjected Pansa’s books to profound scrutiny, has demonstrated a far-reaching misuse of source materials. See her “il sangue dei vinti e il caso Vezalini. Omissioni, distorsioni e uso pubblico della storia,” Giornale di storia contemporanea XI: 2 (dicembre 2008).
37.
Giorgio Pisanò, Gli ultimi in grigio verde: Storia delle forze armate della Repubblica Sociale Italiana (Milan: FPE, 1967–69). To the end, Pisanò proudly proclaimed his Fascism. See his Io fascista (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1997) and La generazione che non si è arresa (Milan: Pidola, 1964). Other writers who fit the revisionist mold include Carlo Mazzantini, A cercar la bella morte (Milan: Mondadori, 1986). For further discussion on this theme, see Simonetta Bartolini, “La memoria rimossa: voci e atmosfere della RSI,” in S. Bartolini, L. Ganapini , A. Giannuli, G. Parlato, A. G. Ricci, M. Tarchi, eds., Le fonti per la storia della RSI (Venezia: Marsilio Editori, 2005), pp. 53–66.
38.
Mario Avagliano and Marco Palmieri, L’Italia di Salò (Bologna: il Mulino, 2017).
39.
Cited in Giampaolo Pansa, La grande bugia: Le sinistre italiane e il sangue dei vinti (Milan: Sperling Paperback, 2006), p. 363.
40.
Cited in Roberto Vivarelli , Fascismo e storia d’Italia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008), p. 213, n. 3.
41.
Roberto Vivarelli , La fine di una stagione: Memoria 1943–1945 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000).
42.
Ibid., pp. 18–19.
43.
Vivarelli , Fascismo e storia d’Italia, pp. 283–84.
44.
Cited in Alexander Stille, “The Battle over the Past,” in Stanislao G. Pugliese, ed., Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and the Resistance in Italy: 1919 to the Present (London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004), p. 300.
45.
https://en/wikipedia.org/wiki/Gianfranco_Fini.
46.
Alexander Stille, “The Battle over the Past,” in Stanislao G. Pugliese, ed., Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and the Resistance in Italy: 1919 to the Present (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), p. 297.
47.
Cited in Guglielmo Epifani, “Prefazione,” in La RSI: La Repubbica voluta da Hitler, p. 11.
48.
Cited in Moseley, Mussolini, p. 360.
49.
Cited in Stanislao G Pugliese’ introduction to Pavone’s book, A Civil War, pp. xxiii.

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Department of History, West Chester University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
H. James Burgwyn

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Burgwyn, H.J. (2018). Historical Controversies. In: Mussolini and the Salò Republic, 1943–1945. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76189-3_20

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76189-3_20
Published: 01 June 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-76188-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-76189-3
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