Italian Resistance (Resistenza)
Italy fought a civil war behind the German lines from September 1943 to April 1945. The armistice of 8 September dissolved the Italian state. The king and the government fled to Brindisi, the army was left without orders and disarmed by the Germans, and some 600,000 soldiers were deported to Germany as military internees — a legal category invented to deny them the protections of prisoners of war. Many of those who evaded capture went to the hills. The resistance grew from a few thousand that autumn to perhaps 250,000 by the spring of 1945, and it was politically plural to the point of incoherence: communist Garibaldi brigades, the socialist Matteotti units, the liberal-socialist Giustizia e Libertà, Catholic and monarchist formations, and a large number of people with no politics at all who were avoiding conscription into the Salò republic. Around 35,000 were women, who carried messages, weapons and food and were largely written out of the accounts afterwards. The German and Fascist response was reprisal against civilians: 335 shot at the Ardeatine Caves in Rome, some 770 at Marzabotto, 560 at Sant'Anna di Stazzema. Around 45,000 partisans were killed. The insurrection called for 25 April 1945 took Milan, Turin and Genoa before the Allies arrived, and the date is Italy's national holiday. The republic founded in 1946 and the constitution of 1948 were written by the parties that had fought in it, which is why the resistance is treated as a founding act. The settling of accounts after April 1945 killed between 12,000 and 20,000 people, mostly Fascist officials and militiamen, and Italy has argued about it ever since. An amnesty in 1946 covered both sides and left almost nobody prosecuted.
- Year: 1943 CE
- Category: Military
