The Resistenza 1943–1945: Structures, History, and Memory
Author: Milan Spindler
At present the term Resistenza refers to a wide range of opposition to the German occupation and its allies in the fascist Italian Social Republic (Repubblica Sociale Italiana, RSI), which responded to this opposition with severe repressive measures. The forms it took and its participants varied according to time and place. The term is often seen as synonymous with, and is often reduced to, the 1943–45 armed partisan struggle in Italy. For following Tito’s partisan army in the area of later Yugoslavia, the nearly 140,000 men and women officially recognized by Italy’s postwar state as part of the Resistenza constituted the second largest such movement in Europe’s south and west. The following contributions offer an overview of the different organisations and central groups of actors in the Resistenza. They also illuminate the contradictions and conflicts characterizing this complex phenomenon. The Resistenza theme continues to be marked by controversy, which underscores the need for its differentiated historical consideration.
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Sources
The heterogeneity and regional differentiation of the Resistenza phenomenon is reflected in the relevant sources. In Italy, there are numerous local and regional historical institutes that focus on modern national history and the Resistenza in particular. Crucial in this respect is the Istituto Nazionale Ferruccio Parri in Milan, the central facility in a network of over sixty institutes devoted to the theme. This institute was founded in 1949 by Ferruccio Parri to collect, preserve, and research the documentary inheritance of the Corpo Volontari della Libertà and the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale Alta Italia. The institute’s holdings comprise archival documents and material such as contemporary newspapers and magazines.
These holdings also included the photo-archives of the partisan movement; many of the photographs used on this website stem from the Istituto Parri collection. It is here important to note that many of the photographs were only restaged after the liberation, due to the lack of technical possibilities beforehand and the now-absent risk of repression.
Many of the network’s institutes furthermore contain collections of imaginative literature, cinematography, and music tied to the Resistenza, and surveys of relevant material, mainly in a regional or local context.
These sources are supplemented by many memoirs, autobiographical texts, witness accounts, and recorded speeches by former Resistenza members. The historical institutes in northern and central Italy here serve a vital function, publishing their own material as well as collecting it externally for cataloguing and archiving. In addition, there are now some video interview with former partisans, for instance on the Resistance Archive website.
In Rome, the Fondazione Gramsci has served since 1950 as a documentary center for research on political resistance to Italian Fascism. The collection extends past the political thinking and impact of Antonio Gramsci to take in the history of the Italian labor movement, the archives of the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI), and the estates of prominent partisans. Because of the important role played by the PCI in the Resistenza, the Fondazione Gramsci also houses documents related not only to the armed anti-fascist and anti-Nazi struggle between 1943 and 1945 but also to resistance and exile during Italy’s fascist period before the German occupation.
Many of the photographs shown on this website originate from the holdings of the United States Army Signal Corps at the National Archives of the United States. During the Second World War, the Signal Corps was responsible not only for the military communications of the US Army, but also for its official photographic and film documentation. Throughout the Italian campaign, Signal Corps units accompanied the Allied forces and visually recorded the course of the war, from combat operations and logistical processes to moments of cooperation with Italian formations of the Resistenza. Particularly revealing are numerous images from the spring of 1945, which document the joint struggle north of the Apennines, in which American units and the Resistenza fought together against the German occupation forces.
Documents preserved in German archives offer a different perspective on the Italian resistance movement. Numerous files on the actions taken by German troops against the resistance are held in the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv in Freiburg im Breisgau. Particularly revealing are the records of the Ic sections within military staffs, which were responsible, among other tasks, for reconnaissance, surveillance, and the suppression of resistance activities. Complementing this, the R 70-Italien collection at the Federal Archives in Berlin-Lichterfelde contains extensive material on operations carried out by SS and police units, especially in the rear areas of the front in central and northern Italy. The German archival material primarily sheds light on the military dimension of the partisan war, its political and social aspects, by contrast, are usually only marginally documented. Further information on these sources can be found here.
Moreover, members of the Italian resistance were frequently deported to Concentration camps. The archives and libraries of memorial sites such as Mauthausen and Buchenwald contain information on their persecution in these and other camps.
Literature
Roberto Battaglia, The History of the Italian Resistance, London, Odhams Press, 1957.
Tom Behan, The Italian Resistance. Fascists, Guerillas and the Allies, New York, Pluto Press, 2009.
Nicola Cacciatore, Italian Partisans and British Forces in the Second World War. Working with the Enemy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.
Philip Cooke, The Legacy of the Italian Resistance, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Maria de Blasio Wilhelm, The Other Italy. The Italian Resistance in World War II, New York, WW Norton & Company, 1988.
Patrick Gallo, For Love and Country. The Italian Resistance, Lanham, University Press of America, 2003.
Mark Gilbert, Italy Reborn. From Fascism to Democracy, London, Penguin Books, 2024.
Claudio Pavone, A Civil War. A History of the Italian Resistance, London, Verso Books, 2014.
Ben Shepherd, Philip Cooke, European Resistance in the Second World War, Barnsley, Pen and Sword Books, 2013.