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ITALIAN AND ITALIAN AMERICAN STUDIES
Italian Partisans
and British
Forces in the
Second World War
Working with the Enemy
Nicola Cacciatore
Italian and Italian American Studies
Series Editor
Stanislao G. Pugliese
Hofstra University
Hempstead, NY, USA
This series brings the latest scholarship in Italian and Italian American
history, literature, cinema, and cultural studies to a large audience of
specialists, general readers, and students. Featuring works on modern
Italy (Renaissance to the present) and Italian American culture and society
by established scholars as well as new voices, it has been a longstanding
force in shaping the evolving fields of Italian and Italian American Studies
by re-emphasizing their connection to one another.
Editorial Board
Rebecca West, University of Chicago, USA
Josephine Gattuso Hendin, New York University, USA
Fred Gardaphé, Queens College, CUNY, USA
Phillip V. Cannistraro†, Queens College and the Graduate School,
CUNY, USA
Alessandro Portelli, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Italy
William J. Connell, Seton Hall University, USA
Nicola Cacciatore
Italian Partisans and

British Forces in the
Second World War
Working with the Enemy
Nicola Cacciatore
The Istituto Nazionale Ferruccio Parri
Milan, Italy
ISSN 2635-2931 ISSN 2635-294X (electronic)

Italian and Italian American Studies
ISBN 978-3-031-28681-0 ISBN 978-3-031-28682-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28682-7
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
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Acknowledgements
When writing any book an historian incurs in some debts. This is especially
true for the first book they ever publish, on account of their inexperience
which turns easy tasks into tiresome ones. My work on this book, much
like the British actions in Italy between 1943 and 1945, was studded with
doubts, mistakes and false starts. Sometimes, the best course of action was
to throw weeks of work into the bin and start again. Given this situation,
I feel particularly in debt to all who helped me. I want to thank my PhD
supervisor, Professor Philip Cooke, who expertly guided me through the
pitfalls of research work and was a true mentor for me. I also want to thank
those who read my dissertation (on which this work is based) and offered
their advice on how to improve it: Doctor Paul Hare, Professor John Foot
and Doctor Karine Verley. I also want to thank all the people who helped
me gather the archival documents I used in this work: Andrea D’Arrigo of
the Istoreto in Turin, Professor Carlo Fumian and Roberta Monetti of the
Casrec in Padua (who, in particular, allowed me free entry to the archives
even during the Covid-19 pandemic), Andrea Torre of the Istituto
Nazionale Ferruccio Parri and Professor Tommaso Piffer, who digitalised
and sent me some documents, and finally the personnel of the National
Archives in Kew, who allowed me to make many copies of the documents
I needed and was always kind and helpful. I also need to thank my parents,
my brother and my friends who supported me, whether by giving me
advice, a place to stay when I was visiting the archives or a shoulder to cry
on. You are too many to name, unfortunately. A special thanks to my
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
girlfriend Martina who had the daunting task of proofreading the early
drafts of the text. Finally, I need to thank one last person: Professor
Christopher Duggan, who was my first supervisor in 2015; he was the first
to hear about my project and encouraged me to pursue it.
If our lives are but a bundle of chance encounters, this long list of
names makes me consider mine a good one.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Where
It All Began 13
Opposing Fascism 14
War Returns 26
Spies, Thugs and Patriots 34
Discordant Allies 42
The Englishman Who Fell from the Sky 48
8 September: Resistance and Civil War 58
3 Fieldwork 67
Setting Italy Ablaze 68
Tightening the Belt: Airdrops 85
Size and Aim 93
Politics, or the Lack of Thereof103
British Liaison Missions: A Reassessment112
4 Propaganda117
Too Much Optimism and a Rude Awakening118
Competition129
Italy: A Hostile Environment137
Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The British Propaganda
Machine146
vii
viii Contents
Multiple Solutions to Multiple Problems149

British Propaganda in Italy: An Evaluation154
5 The Long Liberation163

The First Steps164
Rome and Beyond167
The Long Winter of 1944–1945 182
The Last Months of War192
Liberation206
The Aftermath210
6 Conclusions: The British in Italy—A Matter of Image219
Bibliography233
Index245
Abbreviations
AAI Allied Armies in Italy

ACC Allied Control Commission (also: AC)
AFHQ Allied Forces Headquarter
AMG Allied Military Government (also: AG)
BLO British Liaison Officer
CG Command Group
CI Counter-Intelligence
CLN Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (National Liberation
Committee)
CLNAI Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale d’Alta Italia (National
Liberation Committee for Northern Italy)
CU Comando Unico (Unified Command)
CVL Corpo Volontari della Libertà (Voluntaries of Freedom Corp)
FO Foreign Office
MoI Ministry of Information
No. 1 SF Number 1 Special Forces
OSS Office of Strategic Services
OWI Office of War Information
PCI Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party)
PWB Psychological Warfare Branch
PWE Psychological Warfare Executive
SACMED Supreme Allied Command for the Mediterranean (also: SAC)
SIM Servizio Informazioni Militari (Military Information Service)
SOE Special Operations Executive
WO War Office
ix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
This work was born to offer a comprehensive interpretation of the long-

standing depiction in Italian historiography and public memory of the
British as an invasive, domineering force in Italy between 1943 and 1945.
As underlined by Claudia Nasini, up until the 1980s, the mainline inter-
pretation in Italy was built on the idea that ‘[the] Anglo-Americans had
always hindered the development of the Italian Resistance, scared of the
possible growth of potentially dangerous political factions’.1 The crux of
the contrast was identified in the approach to the armed Resistance during
the Italian campaign. The Italians, allegedly, were aiming at the creation
of a ‘partisan army’ of some sort to conduct what they called the ‘guerra
grossa’ (‘big war’) against the Germans, while the British were more inter-
ested in small bands of saboteurs who could strike at selected targets and
quickly disappear.2 As it was put by the No. 1 Special Force (No. 1 SF)3
operational report of May 1945:
1
Claudia Nasini, Una guerra di spie: Intelligence anglo-americana, Resistenza e badogliani
nella Sesta Zona Operativa Ligure Partigiana (1943-1945) (Trento: Tangram Edizioni
Scientifiche, 2012), p. 11. Unless otherwise stated, all translations of original documents or
Italian texts are my own.
2
Pietro Secchia, Filippo Frassati, La Resistenza e gli alleati (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1962), p. 34.
3
This was the name taken by the Special Operations Executive in Italy.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
N. Cacciatore, Italian Partisans and British Forces in the Second
World War, Italian and Italian American Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28682-7_1
2 N. CACCIATORE
ITALIAN partisans have never been, even at their period of greatest

strength - September 1943, June 1944, April 1945 - a secret army; […] To
form a secret army in Occupied Territory was not at any time the objective
of the Allied Commanders […]4
The liaison officers (BLOs) that the British sent behind the frontline to
help the partisans have been the primary victim of this issue. For long,
they have been depicted as the longa manu of the politicians in London,
afraid that the Resistance could veer too much towards Communism and
interested in fracturing and controlling the partisan bands. In this context,
the number of supplies airdropped to the partisans has been for long the
subject of a heated debate.5 Of course, things are more complicated than
this. Indeed, the ‘partisan army’ never came to be.6 Partisan commanders
understood that concentrating large forces in a single area would only
make them an easy target for the Nazi-Fascists. While the idea of creating
an army was never abandoned, the partisan war followed the principle of
survival, with bands shrinking and growing as the situation required. On
the other hand, the British decided to abandon the strategy of ‘secret
armies’ to defeat the Axis only after the USA and the USSR were dragged
into the war.7 This policy change was subject to considerable debate in
London, and the old considerations still lingered in the strategy of the
British secret services, even in Italy. As the British archive became available
to scholars,8 more and more studies have revised the previous
Istituto piemontese per la storia della Resistenza e della società̀ contemporanea ‘Giorgio
4
Agosti’ (Hereinafter: Istoreto), B16a, Report on No. 1 Special Forces activity until April
1945, 3 June 1945.
5
Angelo Ventura, ‘Prefazione’, in Chiara Saonara, Le missioni militari alleate e la resistenza
nel Veneto. La rete di Pietro Ferraro dell’OSS (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1990), p. 8.
6
Santo Peli, La Resistenza in Italia storia e critica (Turin: Einaudi, 2004), p. 208.
7
Mark Wheeler, ‘The SOE Phenomenon’, Journal of contemporary history, 3 (1981), p. 518.
8
The documents preserved in the Foreign Office and War Office archives were opened to
the public in 1972, and the SOE files became available in 1992. In particular, on the SOE
archive, see Stuart, Duncan, ‘“Of historical interest only” the origins and vicissitudes of the
SOE archive’, in ed. by Mark Seaman, Special Operation Executive, A new instrument of war
(Routledge: London, 2006), pp. 217–229.
1 INTRODUCTION 3
interpretation since the mid-1980s,9 showing that the Italo-British rela-

tionship was complex and multi-faceted. However, it seems that rather
than replacing the former, the two interpretations now simply coexist,10
and the discussion has turned into a rather stale match of ping-pong.
The interpretation offered in this book tries to overcome this problem
and offer a unified perspective on the relationship between the British and
the Italians. If archival documents are unequivocally in support of the
‘revisionist’ studies, it becomes extremely interesting to examine why the
oldest interpretation still survives. A simple answer would be to look at the
political dimension of Italo-British relations. Indeed, if one were to con-
fine itself to it, there would be few doubts about the fact that the British
were deeply hostile to Italy. The centre of this hostility was the Foreign
Office and Minister Anthony Eden.11 However, even friendlier figures in
the British establishment, like Prime Minister Winston Churchill, were
clear on the fact that Italy had to ‘work her passage’ to re-enter the inter-
national community.12 This attitude was double-faced. On the one hand,
Italy had cowardly attacked the UK in its moment of maximum vulnera-
bility after the fall of France to the Nazis. However, there were also impe-
rialistic considerations: forcing the country into the British sphere of
influence would allow for complete British control over the Mediterranean
and, thus, safe passage for the goods of the empire. Not even the ‘revision-
ist’ studies put in doubt that this hostility existed in London and that it
conditioned the British position towards Italy. Elena Aga Rossi, for exam-
ple, describes the frequent political contrasts as a significant factor of
9
Marcello Flores, Mimmo Franzinelli, Storia della Resistenza (Bari: Laterza, 2019),
pp. 267–268. Among them: Elena Aga Rossi, L’Italia nella sconfitta: politica interna e situ-
azione internazionale durante la seconda guerra mondiale (Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche
Italiane, 1985); Massimo de Leonardis, La Gran Bretagna e la Resistenza partigiana in Italia
(1943-1945) (Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1988); Tommaso Piffer, Gli alleati e la
Resistenza italiana (Bologna: il Mulino, 2010); Mireno Berrettini, La Resistenza italiana e lo
Special Operations Executive britannico (1943.1945) (Florence: Le Lettere, 2014). C. Nasini,
Una guerra di spie.
10
Piffer, Gli alleati, p. 11.
11
Renzo De Felice, Mussolini l’alleato (Turin: Einaudi, 1997), II, p. 207.
12
Winston Spencer Churchill, The Second World War, vol. V, Closing the ring (London:
The reprint society, 1954), pp. 117; 157.
4 N. CACCIATORE
inefficiency for the British. Fragmentation, according to her, is the key to

interpreting the British presence in Italy, with various centres of power
acting in separate and often contrasting ways.13 However, while this is
undoubtedly correct, it still fails to explain why the positive interactions
between Italians and British (of which the Liaison Missions are the prime
but not sole example) have fallen to the wayside. The beginning of the
Cold War and the stark political competition that it caused indeed played
a role in this, as many read the actions of the British through the lens of
anti-imperialism.14 However, once more, this position seems incomplete:
the interpretation of the armed Resistance has changed many times in the
70 plus years of its history, often following the earthquake-like movements
of the Italian politics.15 The view of the British, on the contrary, has not.
To the point that, as mentioned, the opening of the archives has yet to
bring a complete revision of older positions but rather the birth of two
concurrent interpretations.
The first step in solving this conundrum is to extend the field of analy-
sis: to break the cage of 1943 and 1945. Already in the mid-1970s, Guido
Quazza advised his fellow scholars to incorporate elements of longue durée
in their analysis.16 However, few were successful in doing so. Which is
singular in the case of the Italian Resistance, as Italian anti-fascism can
boast a long and complex struggle against Fascism that was not confined
to the years of the Second World War. The idea that the armed Resistance
had been the culmination of a process begun in 1922, with the Fascist
takeover of the country, is widely accepted by scholars. However, very few
books on the 1943–1945 period open with more than as a short preamble
referencing these events.17 And outside of academia, the connection is
13
Aga Rossi, L’Italia nella sconfitta, p. 198.
14
And the Allies were an easy scapegoat for Italy’s lacklustre modernisation. Piffer, Gli
alleati, p. 10.
15
See Focardi, La guerra; and Mirco Carrattieri, ‘La Resistenza tra memoria e storiografia’,
Passato e presente, 95 (2015), pp. 5–18. Perhaps the most prominent examples of revisionist
studies on the Resistance are the works by De Felice, which started in the mid-1970s with:
Renzo De Felice, Intervista sul fascismo (Bari: Laterza: 1975).
16
Guido Quazza, Resistenza e storia d’Italia: problemi e ipotesi di ricerca (Milan: Feltrinelli,
1976), p. 19.
17
Among them, see Charles F. Delzell, Mussolini’s enemies The Italian Anti-Fascist
Resistance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961); Tom Behan, The Italian Resistance
Fascists, Guerrillas and the Allies (London: Pluto Press, 2009); M. Flores, Storia della
Resistenza.
1 INTRODUCTION 5
rarely, if ever, made.18 On the other hand, the period immediately after the
war, with the difficult transition from war to peace and the Allied occupa-
tion of the country, has been often connected with the Resistance. This
connection is presented almost always negatively as a betrayal (or at least a
watering down) of the Resistance’s ideals. Italy has the propensity to form
a ‘historiography of the unfinished’, whereas all historical happenings are
interpreted as missed opportunities. Since its unification, there have been
attempts to fill the gap between the ‘real’ Italy and an idealised version of
the country that its people (or its rulers) envisioned.19 The Risorgimento,
the Industrial Revolution and the First World War were filtered through
this lens, and the Resistance as well became, for many, another ‘missed
revolution’20 in the history of the ‘great incomplete’ that is the Italian
nation.21
This work, therefore, opens with an analysis of the situation before
1943, trying to keep its focus on the relationship between the Italians and
the British as their contacts increase in frequency with time. Examining
Italian anti-fascism before the war is crucial to understanding Italian
Resistance and the relations between the Italians and the Allies. As Oliver
Wieviorka wrote, European Resistance is often the story of ‘patriots who
fought for their country and, mostly, in their country’.22 However, one
element of the Italian case’s uniqueness is that it began as the story of
patriots who, for the most part, fought outside their country as they were
forced into exile by the regime. Later, many of those who fought Mussolini
in the 1920s and 1930s came back and became prominent leaders of the
Resistance or played a central role in the reconstruction of Italian political
life in the South, under the tutelage of the Allies. Therefore, it is pivotal to
have a proper understanding of their struggles and how the previous years’
events shaped their worldview. Italian anti-fascists, in fact, already had
18
Notably, it was made by Ferruccio Parri, old-time anti-fascist and vice-commander of the
CLNAI, in the opening speech before the Constitutive Assembly on 25 September 1945,
Ferruccio Parri, Discorsi parlamentari (Rome: Senato della Repubblica, 1990), p. 46.
19
Cristopher Duggan, La forza del destino Storia d’Italia dal 1796 a oggi (Bari, Laterza,
2008), pp. X–XI.
20
The concept gained traction especially in the 1960s and 1970s, as the idea of ‘betrayed
Resistance’ was postulated. Notably, this was a debate mostly internal to left-wing parties and
intellectuals. Philip Cooke, L’eredità della Resistenza Storia, cultura, politiche dal dopoguerra
a oggi (Rome: Viella, 2015), pp. 212–213; 319.
21
Roberto Esposito, ‘Unfinished Italy’, Italian Studies, 76:2 (2021), pp. 128–134.
22
Olivier Wieviorka, Storia della Resistenza nell’Europa occidentale 1940-1945 (Turin:
Einaudi, 2018), p. 7.
6 N. CACCIATORE
interacted with the nations that fought Italy before the war broke out. In
many cases, these interactions were profoundly negative, marked by
mutual diffidence and mistrust. This trend would continue in the first
years of the war, as the British made clumsy attempts at ‘detaching’ Italy
from the Axis, supporting Italians whose allegiance to anti-fascism was
tenuous at best while clashing with more genuine and, therefore, more
ideologically rigid, ones. In many ways, this was a prelude to the issues the
British would face in Italy in the 1943–1945 period.
The analysis will then move to the interactions in the field between the
BLOs and Italian partisans, providing examples from missions behind
enemy lines. This will cover, of course, the problem of the airdrops, which
have been for so long a point of fiery debate among historians. Thanks to
the material already unearthed by other scholars, as well as some new
documents found during the research, this chapter aims to reconstruct
this relationship to clear the field from the debris of old prejudices against
the British, examining the material conditions in which they operated and
the way they juggled their meagre resources.
To complete the analysis will be necessary to explore the issue of repre-
sentation and self-representation connected to the British image in Italy.
The focus will be on British propaganda, its management (and its misman-
agement) and the effects it had on the way the British were perceived in
Italy. British propaganda had an enormous impact on Italy. Radio Londra,
for example, is still a well-known name in Italian popular culture. Let us
cite here, for example, Giuliano Ferrara’s short-lived TV programme
which aired during 2011 and 2012 in a timeslot right after the 8 pm TG1
on RAI1, Italy’s main public TV station, aptly titled ‘Qui Radio Londra’.23
However, as much as it had an impact on popular culture, British propa-
ganda failed to dispel the idea that the British were untrustworthy. By
putting British propaganda into its context and examining its interactions
with American and Soviet propaganda, as well as Fascist counter-
propaganda, we can better interpret this failure, apparently in such con-
trast with the popularity enjoyed by the BBC during the period and
afterwards.
The final chapter will be devoted to the British’s approach towards
partisan disarmament and dispersion, as well as the problem of Fascist
epuration. Many points made after the war to expose the supposed British
23
As it was Ferrara’s previous programme, which aired on Mediaset’s Canale 5 from 1989
to 1994.
1 INTRODUCTION 7
hypocrisy focused on these issues. However, similarly to BLOs and the

airdrops, when examined within the practical situation in which the British
found themselves, it appears clear how they were hindered in their efforts
by the resources at their disposal (or lack thereof), not by political
considerations.
From propaganda to partisan disarmament, from airdrops to the man-
agement of the liaison mission, the British made a series of fatal mistakes
in handling their interaction with the partisans. Many of these mistakes
were not tied to a clear-cut political strategy to impede or contain the
Italian Resistance but rather to the lack of any form of strategy, political or
not. The Anglo-Americans simply did not have a strategy for the Italian
theatre. From the start, they adopted a wait-and-see approach24 and con-
sidered the Italian front as a way to distract German forces in their overall
strategy for Europe.25 They were caught unprepared by Mussolini’s dis-
missal in 1943,26 and lacked any form of precise planning for operations
after the initial landing in Sicily,27 just like they lacked any precise planning
for the post-Rome conquest. Considering this, it is clear that an overarch-
ing strategy to handle the Italian Resistance was also missing. The British
were uniquely affected by this, both because of the interaction that Italian
anti-fascists had with them in the previous years and because they were not
able to project a coherent image of themselves and present their plans to
the partisans. As a result, partisans were confused by the discrepancies
between British propaganda and the actions effectively taken by the British
forces. These caused dissatisfaction to grow among the partisans (and
often among the liaison officers, too) and, in the long run, exposed the
British to the accusation of mendacity. Even when handling the partisans’
disarmament and dispersion, the Allies lacked preparation and coordina-
tion. Despite the lessons learned during their advance between 1943 and
1945, they greatly mishandled the disarmament during the spring of
1945, creating fertile ground for dissent and discontent among the
Italians. It is indeed essential to notice how the main narrative about the
relations between Italians and the British, with the British trying to
24
Elena Aga Rossi, Una nazione allo sbando: 8 settembre 1943 (Bologna: il Mulino, 2003),
pp. 192–193.
25
Nasini, Una guerra di spie, p. 14.
26
Norman Kogan, Italy and the Allies (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956), p. 31.
27
Harold Macmillan, The blast of war (London: Macmillan, 1967), p. 365.
8 N. CACCIATORE
control and impede the growth of the partisan movement, can find much
more tangible proof to sustain itself in the last few months of the war.28
Another issue often overlooked is the extraordinary fragmentation not
only of the British but of the Italians as well. It is to underline this point
that the title of this work does not mention ‘Italy’, but rather ‘Italians’.
Defining what the Italians were (or even are today) is complex, and to an
extent, it has always been so. ‘We made Italy, and now we have to make
the Italians’ ruled Massimo d’Azeglio after the Italian unification of
1861.29 In the turbulent times of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, this uncer-
tainty was even greater. Italian anti-fascists, in fact, very quickly claimed
that they were, indeed, the ‘real’ Italians, while the Fascists were illegally
squatting in the country, occupying the state. On the other hand, the
Fascist rhetoric was always clear in pointing at its enemies as the ‘anti-
Italians’, the antithesis of good citizens.30 This situation only got more
complicated after the beginning of the war, especially after 1943. After the
armistice of 8 September, in Italy, there were at least three entities with a
claim to power: the Southern Kingdom, propped by the Allies, the Fascist
Repubblica Sociale Italiana in the North (Italian Social Republic—RSI)
and finally the Committees of National Liberation (CLN), with the one in
Milan in particular (CLNAI) gaining a prominent role. The bands them-
selves were a source of legal power and often administered the land in a
para-statal manner, declaring and enforcing laws.31 While the partisan
band as a ‘microcosmos of direct democracy’ as theorized by Quazza32
remained an ideal to aspire, rather than a reality,33 the partisan band as a
source of sovereignty was very much real.34 Moreover, besides these
28
As pointed out by Claudia Nasini: ‘It was only at the end of 1944 that the [Allies’]
choices, especially of the British, towards the Italian Resistance begun to be influenced, par-
tially, by political considerations’. See Nasini, Una guerra di spie, p. 15.
29
Duggan, La forza del destino, p. X–I.
30
Nicola Cacciatore, ‘“La vera Italia siamo noi.” Gli antifascisti e le loro riflessioni sul
patriottismo e sulla storia nazionale’, Rivista storica del socialismo, 1 (2022), pp. 28–29.
31
The more apparent manifestations of this legal power were the so-called partisan repub-
lics during the summer of 1944. See Massimo Legnani, Politica e amministrazione nelle
repubbliche partigiane (Milan: Istituto nazionale per la storia del movimento di liberazione,
1976), pp. 12–33.
32
Quazza, Resistenza e storia, pp. 241–252.
33
Peli, La Resistenza, pp. 209–211.
34
Giuseppe Filippetta, L’estate che imparammo a sparare (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2018),
pp. 78–79.
1 INTRODUCTION 9
entities, there were several people who simply accepted their position as
bystanders in the events, not taking either side and trying to scrape a liv-
ing. Finally, the Resistance movement itself was an incredibly varied phe-
nomenon, which escapes any sweeping generalization on its nature,
motivation or even its strategy in facing the enemy. The early historiogra-
phy on the Resistance underlined this phenomenon,35 but in the following
years, and for a long time, the armed Resistance was presented as the
prominent, if not the only, way in which Resistance against the Nazi-
Fascists was fought.36 Subsequent studies have shed light on different
aspects and forms of Resistance.37 ‘Passive’ Resistance, which took the
shape of strikes, destruction of foodstuff, aid to the bands and the escaped
Allied PoWs,38 desertion and draft evasion, was vital for the survival and
success of the armed Resistance, as the population, to cite Mao, created
the ‘water’ in which the guerrillas could swim like fish.39 The Resistance of
the Internati Militari Italiani (Italian Military Internees—IMI), the
Italian soldiers deported to Germany after 1943, who choose captivity
over allegiance to the Fascist RSI, as well has been rediscovered and re-
examined after a long period of silence.40 The composition of the armed
Resistance itself has been the object of further enquiries, which underlined
the participation of women in it, often in prominent roles.41 Its ‘Italianness’
35
Nicola Labanca, ‘Resistenza/resistenze Un bilancio tra discorso pubblico e studi storici’,
in ed. by Monica Fioravanzo, Carlo Fumian, 1943 Strategie militari, collaborazionismi,
Resistenze (Rome: Viella, 2015), p. 28.
36
Ibid., p. 40.
37
On the historiography and public memory of the Resistance, see the capital study by
Filippo Focardi: Focardi, La Guerra. And: Mario Isnenghi, Le guerre degli italiani. Parole,
immagini, ricordi 1848-1945 (Milan: Mondadori, 1989); Philip Cooke, The Legacy of the
Italian Resistance (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); John Foot, Italy’s divided memory
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
38
This topic attracted the interest of Anglophone scholars as well; see Roger Absalom, A
strange alliance: aspects of escape and survival in Italy, 1943-45 (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1991).
39
A concept taken from the millenary Chinese military tradition: Gastone Breccia, L’arte
della guerriglia (Bologna: il Mulino, 2013), pp. 26–29.
40
On this topic see Gabriele Hammermann, Gli internati italiani in Germania, 1943-1945
(Bologna: il Mulino, 2004); Sabrina Frontera, Il ritorno dei militari italiani internati in
Germania dalla “damanation memoriae” al paradigma della Resistenza senz’armi (Rome:
Aracne, 2015).
41
Jane Slaughter, Women and the Italian Resistance: 1943-1945 (Denver: Arden
Press, 1997).
10 N. CACCIATORE
as well has been put into question, as studies have shown the large partici-
pation of minorities and escaped PoWs from other countries, from the
Commonwealth to the Soviet Union,42 and even German deserters.43 The
Resistance, therefore, appears more and more as not a strictly ‘Italian’
movement (to borrow again the words of Wieviorka, a group of patriots
fighting for their country in their country), but rather as an i nternationalist
one, which housed a number of different groups banded together under
the flag of anti-fascism. Internationalism truly is the pivotal connection
between the Resistance of the 1920s and 1930s and the armed Resistance
during the war. Italian anti-fascists before the war envisioned their move-
ment more and more as a pan-European one, and it was not by chance if
the calls for some form of European Union gained traction during the war
in anti-fascist circles, regardless of their political colour,44 and not only
in Italy.45
Therefore, while some level of generalisation is inevitable in historical
analysis, this work aims at reinstate at least a bit of this complexity in the
history of Italo-British relations trying to connect various elements and
showing how the anti-fascist struggle before the Second World War
42
For a few examples, see: Mauro Galleni, Ciao, russi: partigiani sovietici in Italia,
1943-1945 (Venice: Marsilio, 2001); Andrea Martocchia et al., I partigiani jugoslavi nella
resistenza italiana: storie e memorie di una vicenda ignorata (Rome: Odratek, 2011); Vasely
Maria Jiri, La resistenza cecoslovacca in Italia: 1944/45 (Milan: Jaca Book, 1975); Gordon
Lett, Rossano a valley in flames: a story of the Italian Resistance (Barnsley: Frontline
Books, 2011).
43
Mirco Carrattieri, Iara Meloni, Partigiani della Wehrmacht disertori tedeschi nella
Resistenza italiana (Piacenza: Le Piccole Pagine, 2021).
44
Charles F. Delzell, ‘The European Federalist Movement in Italy: First Phase, 1918-1948’,
The Journal of Modern History, 32:2 (1960), pp. 241–250. The most prominent example is
the Manifesto for a Free and United Europe, written by Altiero Spinelli and others on the
island of Ventotene, where they were imprisoned by the Fascist regime. Edmondo Paolini,
Altiero Spinelli (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996).
45
See Walter Lipgens, ‘European Federation in the Political Thought of Resistance
Movements during World War II’, Central European History, 1 (1968), pp. 5–19; Tadeusz
Wyrwa, L’idée Européenne Dans La Résistance à Travers La Press Clandestine En France et En
Pologne 1939-1945 (Paris: Nouvelles éditions latines, 1987); Stephanie Wodianka,
‘Connecting Origin and Innocence. Myths of Resistance in European Memory Cultures
after 1945’, in ed. by Lea Brenningmeyer, Martin Butler, Paul Mercheril, and Christoph
Behrens, Resistance: Subjects, Representations, Contexts (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2017),
pp. 153–172.
1 INTRODUCTION 11
influenced the 1943–1945 period, and how this period influenced the
afterwar years as well. This analysis will, hopefully, contribute not only to
the advancement of the field but also help the creation of a shared mem-
ory between Italy and the Anglophone countries on the subject.46
46
Despite the desires of many authors, such memory is still missing. See The history of the
Italian resistance edited and translated by P.D. Cummings (London: Odhams Press Limited,
1957), p. 10.
CHAPTER 2
Where It All Began
In the early morning of the 10 September 1943, two Italian corvettes of

the Royal Navy reached the harbour of Brindisi. One of them, the
Baionetta, was carrying a particularly delicate cargo: the Italian royal fam-
ily and the government, led by Marshal Pietro Badoglio, who had fled the
capital of Rome on the night of the 8 September 1943. However, the
Baionetta had another, perhaps even more unusual, passenger. He was
Richard ‘Dick’ Mallaby, a British agent of the Special Operations Executive
(SOE), the secret service created by the UK in 1940 and to which Prime
Minister Winston Churchill gave the task of ‘setting Europe ablaze’. How
Mallaby ended up sharing the Baionetta’s deck with the King of Italy and
its head of government is a story tied with the history of Italy in the
Second World War. While the corvette was slowly approaching the docks,
Italy’s fate had been sealed, and the previous years’ events had come to a
devastating conclusion. However, to explain why Mallaby was where he
was, we need to recount these events from the perspective of the two main
actors involved, the Italians and the Allies. These two actors, in fact, had a
long and complicated relationship even before the start of the war, which
laid the way to further issues during it.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13

Switzerland AG 2023
N. Cacciatore, Italian Partisans and British Forces in the Second
World War, Italian and Italian American Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28682-7_2
14 N. CACCIATORE
Opposing Fascism
For Italians, things arguably started more than 20 years before, with the
Fascist takeover of 1922. It would be impossible to recount here the
events that brought Benito Mussolini to his position of power.1 However,
it is noteworthy to point out that he enjoyed the support of many strata of
the Italian society, especially of the upper ones. After the First World War,
Italy’s economy struggled to recover, unemployment was rampant, politi-
cal unrest was widespread, and there was a general resentment against the
Versailles peace treaty, which many considered unfair towards Italy. Fascism
was, in the eyes of many, the best way to restore order and bring Italy back
to the forefront of the European stage. For the upper classes and the
church, Fascism was an effective counter to the threat of Bolshevism, and
it quickly gained the support of the reactionaries and the conservatives.
Against those who opposed it, Mussolini and his goons unleashed a wave
of violence and brutality. The black shirt squadre (hence the term squad-
rismo) soon gained grim fame.2 Finally, at the end of October 1922,
Mussolini launched his march on Rome, as the squadristi converged on
the capital. The government asked the King to let the Army intervene, but
Vittorio Emanuele III decided against it. A mix of Fascist sympathies and
the fear that the army would side with Mussolini convinced him to let
things play out.3 Therefore, the Fascists entered Rome unopposed, and
Mussolini was nominated PM by the King.4 The Fascist takeover of Italy
was a violent affair, only draped in the pretence of legitimacy.5 It had only
been possible thanks to the support of the ruling classes of the country
and the church.6 The conservatives and the liberals wrongly believed they
could use Mussolini to quash the Socialists, Communists and even those
Social-Catholic elements of the Partito Popolare Italiano (Italian Popular
Party—PPI), whose leader, the Sicilian priest Don Luigi Sturzo, had
shown sympathies for the plight of the farmers and the working class and
1
On the figure of Mussolini, see the classic volume by Richard Bosworth: Richard
J.B. Bosworth, Mussolini un dittatore italiano (Milan: Mondadori, 2004).
2
Emilio Gentile, Il fascismo in tre capitoli (Bari: Laterza, 2004), pp. 13–21.
3
Bosworth, Mussolini, p. 187.
4
Gentile, Il fascismo, pp. 27–29.
5
For an account of the Fascist takeover in English, see Delzell, Mussolini’s enemies,
pp. 6–25.
6
Bosworth, Mussolini, p. 187.
2 WHERE IT ALL BEGAN 15
had set up cooperative or trade unions to help them.7 In the end, they
were the ones who were phagocytised by Mussolini even if, even after the
realisation that Fascism could not be tamed, they did not rebel. On the
contrary, many simply reaped the benefits of their position inside the new-
born regime.
Since 1925, the regime proclaimed a series of ‘exceptional decrees’ to
squash its opposition. ‘Anti-nationalist’ parties and newspapers were sup-
pressed, passports were cancelled, and emigration was made illegal. The
death penalty was re-introduced after Italy had been among the first coun-
tries in Europe to abolish it in 1889. Moreover, a Tribunale Speciale (spe-
cial tribunal), ‘for the defence of the state’, was set up. It began working
almost immediately, its powers were vast and discretional (as it was consid-
ered a military court), while the accused had minimal rights.8 The police
and the prefetti were empowered to deal with anti-fascists, and they too
could count on discretional powers. Besides prison sentences and death,
another measure adopted by the regime to deal with opposition was the
confino, a form of deportation to remote parts of Italy or to small islands
along the coast which often became open-air concentration camps for dis-
sidents.9 The regime also created two new sections of the police, one to
deal with the anti-fascists who had emigrated abroad, and one to deal with
the anti-fascists still present in Italy. The latter, much more grimly famous,
was the OVRA10 (established in 1927), whose headquarters were
in Milan.11
7
Delzell, Mussolini’s enemies, p. 4. Giovanni Giolitti was among those who made this mis-
take. Gentile, Il fascismo, p. 23.
8
Giovanni Tessitore, Fascismo e pena di morte Consenso e informazione (Milan: Franco
Angeli, 2007), pp. 220–224.
9
Delzell, Mussolini’s enemies, p. 39.
10
The meaning of the name still remains uncertain. It has been explained as Opera
Volontaria di Repressione Antifascista, Organizzazione di Vigilanza e Repressione
dell’Antifascismo, and Organo di Vigilanza dei Reati Antistatali. However, despite the pas-
sion of the Fascist regime for acronyms, it seems it was simply a pun made by Mussolini, by
merging the words piovra (octopus) and ochrana (the czarist secret police). Mimmo
Franzinelli, I tentacoli dell’ovra agenti, collaboratori e vittime della polizia politica fascista
(Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1999), p. 103.
11
To have an idea of the vast repressive apparatus of the regime, see the diagram in Marina
Giannetto, ‘I Rosselli, GL e i Servizi di informazione politica’, in Marina Giannetto (ed.),
Un’altra Italia nell’Italia del fascismo: Carlo e Nello Rosselli nella documentazione
dell’Archivio Centrale dello Stato: Roma, dal 20 giugno 2002 (Roma: Edimond, Direzione
generale per gli archivi, 2002), pp. 26–27.
16 N. CACCIATORE
The Fascist takeover, however, did not mean the end of internal opposi-
tion. Many groups kept fighting underground, especially on the left. The
Communist Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party—PCI)
was the organisation best poised to keep working underground, as it
already had a conspiratorial network and a history of conflict with the
police and the state.12 However, the PCI was somewhat caught off-guard
by the ‘exceptional decrees’ and a number of high-profile members of the
party were arrested, including its leader, Antonio Gramsci,13 who wrongly
believed in the protection granted by his status as a MP.14 Gramsci, one of
Italy’s brightest minds and one of the most influential intellectuals in
Communist history, was left to waste in prison for the rest of his life.15 The
PCI managed to reorganise itself under the leadership of Palmiro Togliatti,
who only escaped arrest in 1925 because he was on a mission to Moscow.
The Party had a foreign centre located in Paris and an internal one in
Milan.16 L’Unità (Unity), the PCI newspaper, continued publication clan-
destinely, together with other Communist publications such as
Avanguardia (Vanguard), Galletto Rosso (Red Rooster) and Stato Operaio
(Worker’ State).17 This work was closely watched by the Italian police and
the OVRA, which proceeded to mass arrests in 1927 and 1928. However,
the skeletal organisation of the PCI survived.18
While the Communists were, and remained for a long time, the most
organised group fighting against the regime inside the borders of Italy,
they were by no mean the only one. The Anarchists too were trying to
topple Fascism,19 and engaged in several terrorist attacks against Mussolini,
and many high-ranking officers in Italy and abroad. However, their results
were unfortunately scarce.20 Moreover, other groups that engaged in
active Resistance were the minorities. Of course, Fascism, as a totalitarian
ideology, could not tolerate dissent or ‘deviancy’ from its notion of
12
Luigi Salvatorelli, Giovanni Mira, Storia d’Italia nel periodo fascista, vol. II (Turin:
Einaudi, 1957), p. 33.
13
14
Giorgio Galli, Storia del Partito Comunista Italiano (Milan: Edizioni il Formichiere,
1976), p. 131.
15
On Gramsci: Angelo d’Orsi, Gramsci una nuova biografia (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2017).
16
Aldo Agosti, Storia del PCI (Bari: Laterza, 1999), pp. 26–27.
17
Salvatorelli, Storia d’Italia, II, p. 35.
18
Agosti, Storia, p. 27.
19
On Anarchism in Italy, see the recent volume: Antonio Senta, Claudio Venza, Utopia e
azione: per una storia dell’anarchismo in Italia (1848-1984) (Milan: Eléuthera, 2015).
20
Delzell, Mussolini’s enemies, pp. 106–109.
i talianità (Italianness) that was trying to impose. Besides Jews and sexual
minorities, whose numbers were relatively small and thus did not pose
much of a threat, the regime brutally repressed the ethnic minorities that
lived inside of Italy. In the North, the South Tirolese people could at least
appeal to the fact that they belonged to a ‘superior’ race. Their neighbour-
ing Slavs in the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia region were not as lucky. The Fascist
regime engaged in a brutal process of forced Italianisation of the local
populace, who responded with acts of active Resistance.21 Finally, the
Arabic population of Libya as well faced Fascism. The population of the
Cyrenaica region offered the most persistent Resistance, bonding around
the local sect of the Senussi.22 Led by Omar al-Mukhtar, the Arab guerrilla
fighters engaged the regime in a prolonged and bloody campaign.23 To
curb this opposition, Mussolini dispatched to Libya first Rodolfo Graziani,
and later Pietro Badoglio. The genocidal campaign of the regime was a
success, thanks to the use of toxic gas, deportations and mass executions
to terrorise the population.24
Diametrically opposed to these groups was the position of most of the
Liberals and of the Catholic opposition. Philosopher Benedetto Croce,
the author of the intellectuals’ anti-fascist manifesto of 1925, took the role
of ‘leader’ of what remained of the Liberal opposition.25 Croce believed
Fascism to be repugnant. However, he also considered it nothing more
than a parathesis in Italian history.26 This belief informed his approach to
Resistance, which remained passive and confined to academic discussion.
Few read Croce’s lamentations against Fascism, and even fewer under-
stood them. Moreover, his interpretation of the historical nature of
21
Salvatorelli, Storia d’Italia, II, pp. 102–106.
22
Giorgio Rochat, Le guerre italiane 1935-1943 Dall’Impero d’Etiopia alla disfatta (Turin:
Einaudi, 2008), p. 10.
23
On this see also the volume by British anthropologist Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard who
lived with the Cyrenaica’s population and took part in the campaign against Italy in North
Africa as a liaison officer with the Senussi: Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, The Sanusi of
Cyrenaica (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963).
24
Rochat, Le guerre italiane, p. 11. On the Italian crimes in Libya: Angelo Del Boca, Gli
italiani in Libia (Bari: Laterza, 1986), vol II. Angelo Del Boca, A un passo dalla forca.
Atrocità e infamie dell’occupazione italiana della Libia nelle memorie del patriota Mohamed
Fekini (Milan: Baldini Castoldi Dalai, 2007).
25
26
Benedetto Croce, Scritti e discorsi politici (1943-1947), ed. by Angela Carella (Naples:
Bibliopolis, 1993), vol. I, pp. 60–61. Unlike Nazism, which constituted a long-term threat
to European civilisation, see Croce, Scritti e discorsi, II, p. 25.
18 N. CACCIATORE
Fascism led him to essentially abandon the field, waiting for this new Dark
Age to pass, a position that made him innocuous for Mussolini. The
Catholic opposition took a similar stance to Croce. Most members of the
Partito Popolare Italiano (Italian Popular Party—PPI) were all too eager
to cooperate with Mussolini, with the noticeable exclusion of the leader of
the PPI himself, Don Luigi Sturzo, who was ousted from his post by his
own party and eventually paid for his intransigence with political exile.27
The 1929 Lateran Pacts between the regime and the Vatican only rein-
forced this cooperation. Mussolini was heralded as ‘a man sent to us by
divine providence’ by Pius XI.28 Liberal and Catholic opposition was weak
and fragmented. Neither group was a real threat to the regime, nor was
able, or even willing, in the case of many Catholics, to engage in a fight
with it. After all, the fact that Croce was left unmolested by Mussolini,
while Gramsci, who also enjoyed similar international fame, was thrown
into prison to languish and die, speaks volumes as to who was considered
a threat by the regime and who merely a nuisance.
However, internal opposition was not the only way anti-fascists contin-
ued their fight. As a result of the PNF tightening its grip on power, many
people fled the country. It would be impossible, of course, to directly
equate the emigration of the 1920s with anti-fascist beliefs. Many emi-
grated to find better jobs, especially to France or Belgium. However, it is
indisputable that a good proportion of the emigrates was indeed running
away from Italy for political reasons or that politics and job opportunities
were closely intertwined. For example, farmers or workers who took part
in strikes or were members of the Socialist or Communist party often
found themselves out of work in Italy and therefore were forced to emi-
grate. According to Aldo Garosci, the first to produce a comprehensive
history of Italian political emigration and an émigré himself, there were
three phases of emigration in the 1920s. The first, going from 1922 to
1925, was mainly economical but also included Anarchists and members
of trade unions who came to fear for their lives. The second wave started
with the tightening of the dictatorship in 1925 and continued until emi-
gration was made illegal in November 1926 with one of the ‘exceptional
decrees’. In this period, emigration became more clearly political, with
entire families moving out of Italy, fearing Fascist reprisals. Finally, the
third wave began in 1926 and saw former members of parliament and
27
28
Bosworth, Mussolini, pp. 261–262.
even former prime ministers, but also diplomats, teachers, artists and intel-
lectuals take the path of exile. The regime made passports void, and these
men had to emigrate illegally.29 Soon, the more energetic members of the
anti-fascist opposition created a network to help their fellow comrades
escape the country. Professor Ferruccio Parri teamed with Carlo Rosselli
for the most daring escapes. After bringing the old leader of the Socialists,
Filippo Turati (69 at the time), to Corsica, they were arrested and sent to
trial in November 1926. Rosselli was sentenced to five years of confino on
the isle of Lipari because of an ‘administrative decision’ by the police.30
Once outside Italy, the émigrés tried to form communities abroad to
keep their beliefs alive and alert Europe against the threat of Fascism. They
were seldom successful. For starters, they were often reduced to a condi-
tion of poverty which greatly hampered their possibility to take concrete
actions.31 Secondly, they often took a passive approach, waiting for Fascism
to collapse under the pressure of economic crises or for other European
countries to make a stand against it.32 Moreover, the same countries where
they lived considered them dangerous subversives and they were often
arrested and deported back to Italy, where they were imprisoned. In
France especially, deportation was a daily occurrence, and the asylum laws
were often disregarded when it came to Italian political émigrés.33 The
reason why this happened was chiefly the same that had helped Fascism’s
rise to power in Italy: the ruling classes of Europe were often more afraid
of Communism or Socialism than they were of Fascism. Oftentimes,
Mussolini was heralded by European leaders as a beacon of stability for
Italy and a bulwark against the spread of Russian Bolshevism.34 Carlo
Sforza, former Foreign Minister who joined the ranks of the emigration in
1927, noted that: ‘the two dictators [Hitler and Mussolini] were con-
fronted by an identical frantic desire of peace. […] The privileged classes
29
Aldo Garosci, Storia dei Fuorusciti (Bari: Laterza, 1953), pp. 11–31.
30
31
Ibid., p. 43.
32
In general, the evaluation of the émigrés’ activities is varied, but most scholars agree that
they were not able to do much other than be a living testimony of the evils of Fascism and of
the fact that not all Italians were aligned with Mussolini. See, for example, Benedetto Croce,
Quaderni della Critica, 5 (1946), p. 113; Garosci, Storia, p. 109; Salvatorelli, Storia d’Italia,
II, pp. 11–12.
33
Enrico Acciai, Antifascismo, volontariato e guerra civile in Spagna. La sezione Italiana
della Colonna Ascanio (Milan: Edizioni Unicopli, 2016), p. 118.
34
Salvatorelli, Storia d’Italia, I, pp. 266–267; 417–419.
20 N. CACCIATORE
(although with some admirable exceptions) wanted security against a

“Red danger” more imaginary than real—and to them the best bulwarks
against the ‘Red danger’ were the two dictators of Berlin and Rome’.35
Silvio Trentin, former professor of law at the University of Venice in exile
since 1925, pinned the blame on the British in particular: ‘Mr. Baldwin
and the Tory Party, obsessed with the idea of protecting the Empire from
Soviet agents, thought it necessary to put a police officer on guard in the
Mediterranean. No one seemed more apt at this task than Mussolini, who
immediately grasped the advantages of the situation’. According to
Trentin, Baldwin’s win in the 1924 elections was nothing short of a god-
sent to help reinforce the regime in Italy.36 Even Winston Churchill, the
future enemy of Mussolini, had nothing but praise for the Italian dicta-
tor37 as late as 1933.38 And his evaluation of the figure of Mussolini, con-
tained in the fifth volume of his history of the Second World War, is hardly
a condemnation:
he [Mussolini] had raised the Italian people from the Bolshevism into which
they might have sunk in 1919 to a position in Europe such as Italy never
held before. A new impulse had been given to the national life. […] His fatal
mistake was the declaration of war on France and Great Britain following
Hitler’s victories in June 1940.39
Notably, this is the same image peddled by many neo-fascist groups today:
a mostly benign government whose only fault was to follow Hitler in his
wars.40 The USA as well took a benevolent stance towards Fascist Italy for
35
Carlo Sforza, The totalitarian war and after. Personal Recollections and Political
Considerations (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1941), pp. 54–55.
36
Silvio Trentin, ‘L’Italia all’estero’, in Antifascismo e Rivoluzione, scritti e discorsi
1927-1944, ed. by G. Paladini (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1985), p. 15.
37
John Ramsden, ‘“That will depend on who writes the history” Winston Churchill storico
di se stesso’, Italia contemporanea, 208 (1997), p. 489.
38
39
Churchill, Closing the ring, pp. 57–58.
40
On the various lies that still survive regarding the Fascist regime and its supposedly
‘humanitarian’ nature, see Francesco Filippi, Mussolini ha fatto anche cose buone le idiozie che
continuano a circolare sul fascismo (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2019).
the same reasons,41 at least until the Fascist aggression against Ethiopia.42
However, a web of economic and cultural interests tied the two countries
together.43 A coalition of bankers and industrialists prevented the USA
from inflicting upon Italy anything more than ‘moral’ sanctions, which
were largely ineffective in stopping the war.44 Moreover, there was also the
fact that a large Italian community was present in the States, especially in
New York, and played a role in the Presidential Elections.45 Integration in
the American lifestyle and a form of proud Italo-nationalism were often
two sides of the same coin for the Italo-Americans.46 The first contacts
between Italian anti-fascists and their future foreign partners were, there-
fore, cold.
Moreover, the anti-fascist exiles often faced hostility in the same com-
munities they tried to proselytise. The case of the Italo-Americans was
hardly unique. Italian communities abroad were heavily fascistised, as they
perceived the Regime as a way to be proud of their native country. The
Fascists played on this sentiment to extend their reach abroad. In the late
1920s, the Regime created the Fasci all’estero (Fasces abroad), an associa-
tion aimed at Italians abroad, as a direct propagation of the Italian Fascist
Party. The Fasci all’estero aimed at promoting Fascist culture and itali-
anità, but also at emarginating those whom the Regime deemed to be
un-Italian, which meant, of course, the anti-fascists.47 The anti-fascists,
poor and scattered, were not able to face them, as the Fasci all’estero
enjoyed not only the prestige of being the official Italian organisation for
Italian emigrants, but also the financial backing of the Italian state. The
Fasci all’estero were ubiquitous. In Egypt, for example, the Fascist regime
invested a lot of effort in schooling projects in order to fascistizzare (make
41
Andrew N. Buchanan, ‘American policy towards Italy during its “decade of war”’, in ed.
by M. M. Aterrano and K. Varley, A Fascist decade of war 1935-1945 in international perspec-
tive (New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 28–41 (p. 29).
42
Antonio Varsori, Gli alleati e l’emigrazione democratica antifascista 1940-1943 (Florence:
Sansoni Editori, 1982) pp. 21–26.
43
Ennio di Nolfo, Michele Serra, La gabbia infranta. Gli Alleati e l’Italia dal 1943 al 1945
(Bari: Laterza, 2010), p. 8.
44
Buchanan, ‘American policy’, p. 30.
45
Varsori, Gli alleati, p. 28.
46
di Nolfo, La gabbia, p. 9.
47
Emilio Gentile, ‘La politica estera del partito fascista. Ideologia e organizzazione dei
Fasci italiani all’estero (1920-1930)’, Storia contemporanea: rivista trimestrale di studi storici,
6 (1995), pp. 906–911.
22 N. CACCIATORE
Fascist) the local community, and it was largely successful.48 The project
was crowned in 1933 with a visit of King Vittorio Emanuele III to the
Italians of Egypt, and the local anti-fascists were forced to observe, with
resignation, that their fellow countrymen supported the Regime
enthusiastically.49
Despite all those difficulties, Italian anti-fascists in exile showed particu-
lar tenacity and even the ability to evaluate their position and reinterpret
their role in Italian history in the face of Fascism. By 1927 the anti-fascist
emigration had its nucleus in Paris, and political parties began reorganisa-
tion. The first were the Socialists, divided between a maximalist party, the
Partito Socialista Italiano (Italian Socialist Party—PSI), and a revisionist
one, the Partito Socialista dei Lavoratori Italiani (Socialist Party of Italian
Laborers—PSLI). Then there were the Communists of the PCI, under the
leadership of Palmiro Togliatti. Finally, the Partito Repubblicano Italiano
(Italian Republican Party—PRI). The PPI and the Liberal party never
reorganised. Their adherents remained isolated figures in the emigration.50
In April 1927, at a conference sponsored by the Lega Italiana dei Diritti
dell’Uomo (Italian League for Human Rights—LIDU), in Nerac, the par-
ties decided to band together and create the Concentrazione Antifascista
(Anti-Fascist Concentration), led by the PSI leader Pietro Nenni.51 The
PCI declined the invite, claiming it was an ineffective way to counter the
regime.52 And indeed, the Concentration first programme was rather pas-
sive, as many still held hope that Vittorio Emanuele III would finally do
something. Only during the following year, when the King stood idly as
Mussolini barged into matters of dynastic succession concerning the Savoy
household, even his most staunch supporters were forced to face reality:
Vittorio Emanuele III was perfectly content with the regime and had no
intention to intervene. After this, the Concentration openly called for a
48
Joseph John Viscomi, Out of Time: History, Presence, and Departure of the Italians of
Egypt, 1933-present, University of Michigan dissertation, 2016, pp. 30–31.
49
Milano, Istituto Nazionale per la Storia del Movimento di Liberazione in Italia ‘Ferruccio
Parri’ (INSMLI), Fondo Battino, Una famiglia di vagabondi del mediterraneo, b. 1, fasc.
1, p. 45.
50
Garosci, Storia, pp. 31–32.
51
Salvatorelli, Storia d’Italia, II, pp. 27–28. On the Concentration: Santi Fedele, Storia
della concentrazione antifascista 1927-1934 (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976).
52
republic in Italy. Similarly, the Lateran Pacts of 1929 between the Vatican
and the Fascist regime marked an anti-clerical turn for the Concentration.53
However, the most notable group born out of this period was Giustizia
e Libertà (GL),54 founded in Paris in 1929 by several high-profile Italian
émigrés. These included the Rosselli brothers (Nello and Carlo), Emilio
Lussu, Fausto Nitti, Gaetano Salvemini, Alberto Cianca, Alberto Tarchiani
and others. Carlo Rosselli had escaped his confino in Lipari with Lussu and
Fausto Nitti in July 1928, thanks to the help of Tarchiani, who organised
their escape. Once in Paris, Rosselli and others decided to cut ties with
their former parties (Rosselli himself had been a Socialist) and create a
new, supra-party organisation: GL. Rosselli conceived it as a revolutionary
force, a clear breakaway from the previous anti-fascist organisations and a
space to elaborate a political programme for the future of Italy.55 To him,
the condition of émigré was a contingency; therefore, even in exile the
anti-fascists had a duty to fight against the regime.56 Ideologically, the giel-
listi were pursuing a form of ‘social-liberalism’ (socialismo liberale),57 fol-
lowing the footsteps of another intellectual persecuted by the regime,
Pietro Gobetti.58 When some officers of the British SOE, later on, tried to
pinpoint GL’s ideological stance, they found it quite hard to define from
their perspective: ‘it could be defined as a sort of political Buchmanism,
calling to all classes in society, but with a slight bias towards the poorer
classes’.59 If GL’s ideology could be vague at times, its aims were better
defined. The group wanted to prepare the ground for an Italian war
against Fascism while training the future ruling class of Italy.60 In order to
attain these goals, the giellisti tried to elaborate a coherent reinterpreta-
tion of Fascism as a historical phenomenon and of the role of anti-fascists
in Italian history. To GL, Fascism was the autobiography of the Italian
nation (l’autobiografia della nazione),61 in other words, it represented the
53
C. Delzell, Mussolini’s enemies, pp. 56–59.
54
On GL, the literature is boundless, especially in Italian. See Marco Bresciani, Quale
antifascismo? Storia di Giustizia e Libertà (Rome: Carocci Editore, 2017).
55
56
Bresciani, Quale antifascismo?, p. 10.
57
Ibid., pp. 71–72.
58
59
TNA, HS 6/821-82, Telegram from D/H113 (Cairo) to J section, 20 September 1942.
60
Leone Ginzburg e Carlo Levi, ‘Il concetto di autonomia nel programma di “G.L.”’,
Quaderni di Giustizia e Libertà, 4 (1932), p. 7.
61
24 N. CACCIATORE
culmination of long-lasting problems and contradictions within the Italian

state and its democracy that had compounded to finally explode in the
form of a dictatorial regime. This meant that Fascism was a proper histori-
cal phenomenon; consequently, GL had to uproot its historical founda-
tions to overcome it. Of particular interest for the giellisti in this sense was
the Risorgimento and its role in Italian history. The Risorgimento, going
roughly from 1848 to the late 1800s, was the period when Italy achieved
political unification, but also when, according to GL, the seeds for Fascism
were planted.62 It was a ‘missed revolution’63 which left untouched
century-old structures of oppression and prevented Italy from becoming a
properly modernised nation.64
The concrete results that GL could attain in fighting Fascism were lim-
ited and often did not go beyond a series of beaux gestes with little to no
practical value65; however, its ideological impact on the anti-fascist com-
munity was immense. Thanks to the vivacity of its members and the cha-
risma of Carlo Rosselli, GL quickly rose to prominence and managed to
attract not only former members of other parties but also young people.66
Soon, it extended its network in Italy, where it operated clandestinely to
spread anti-fascist publications.67
Meanwhile, the international situation shifted considerably. In 1933
Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, and Rosselli immediately under-
stood the implications of this event. Fascism had stopped being an Italian
oddity and became an international threat.68 In a prophetic article
62
An evaluation that was shared, for different reasons, by the Fascists as well. See Massimo
Baioni, Risorgimento in camicia nera studi, istituzioni, musei nell’Italia fascista (Turin:
Carocci editore, 2006).
63
On this topic: Lucy Riall, Il Risorgimento Storia e interpretazioni (Rome: Donzelli edi-
tore, 2007), p. 34.
64
Carlo Rosselli, ‘Discussione sul Risorgimento’, Giustizia e libertà, 26 April 1935.
Salvatorelli, Storia d’Italia, II, pp. 52–53. On GL’s position on the Risorgimento, see Carlo
Rosselli, Scritti dell’esilio, ed. by Costanzo Casucci (Turin: Einaudi, 1988), p. 246. Carlo
Panizza, ‘Antifascismo e Risorgimento. Una discussione all’interno di Giustizia e Libertà’,
Quaderno di storia contemporanea, 32 (2002), p. 25.
65
Delzell, Mussolini’s enemies, pp. 64–71. The most spectacular example was Bassanesi’s
flight above Milan: L. Salvatorelli, Storia d’Italia, II, pp. 71–73.
66
Nicola Tranfaglia, ‘introduzione’, in ed. by M. Giannetto, Un’altra Italia, p. X.
67
Delzell, Mussolini’s enemies, pp. 71–75. On the clandestine network, see the interesting
documents produced by the Italian Fascist police and published in: Giannetto, Un’altra
Italia, pp. 173–190.
68
Bresciani, Quale antifascismo?, pp. 165–166.
ublished in November 1933, aptly titled ‘la Guerra che torna’ (‘War is
p
returning’), GL’s leader, gloomily but firmly, predicted that the Nazi-
Fascists would inevitably go to war, and therefore pacifism, championed
by the Socialists, was no longer an option.69 Anti-fascists, according to
Rosselli, had to close ranks and prepare for the fight, to transform the
Fascist war into a civil war and a social revolution.70
The Nazi’s takeover of Germany had also alarmed the Communists,
who cautiously approached the Socialists. Besides the Concentration and
GL, the only other movement of some relevancy in the Italian anti-fascist
landscape was the PCI. However, they did not attain much in the 1920s
due to the Stalinist policy of self-isolation and the constant repression of
the Regime. The PCI did not participate in the Concentration and labelled
GL as merely another bourgeoisie party led by a ‘rich dilettante’. In 1930,
Togliatti and Luigi Longo (leader of the Youth Federation) announced
that the PCI wanted its members to return to Italy to rebuild the under-
ground network. The cat-and-mouse game with the Italian police thus
continued, with members of the PCI being arrested and new ones imme-
diately taking their place. At least until 1934–1935, when the OVRA con-
ducted its largest round-ups, which led to hundreds of arrests and
liquidated both the PCI and GL networks in Italy. However, by this date,
the policy of rigid-self isolation imposed by Stalin was drawing to an end.
In August 1934, the PCI signed a ‘unity of action’ pact with the PSI,
despite Togliatti’s derogatory comments about Nenni barely three years
before. This pact opened, for the Italian anti-fascists, the era of the Popular
Front, much like in many other European countries.71 The PCI’s new
strategy was now to infiltrate Fascist organisations and trade unions in
order to prepare the ground for future subversion from the inside. It was
a tactic of legal action to lure the ‘brothers in black shirts’ that the giellisti
found unpalatable.72 To Rosselli, the idea of working inside the Fascist
organisations to fight Fascism was ‘political suicide’.73 The reproach
between the PSI and the PCI came as a blow to GL. Rosselli, in this
69
70
Carlo Rosselli, ‘La guerra che torna’, Quaderni di Giustizia e Libertà, 9 November
1933, pp. 1–8.
71
Bresciani, Quale antifascismo?, pp. 168–169. On the Soviet policy in this period and the
popular fronts, see Silvio Pons, La rivoluzione globale Storia del comunismo internazionale
1917-1991 (Turin: Einaudi, 2012), pp. 98–112.
72
73
Carlo Rosselli, ‘Non è l’ora di ripiegar gli ideali’, Giustizia e Libertà, 24 July, 1936.
26 N. CACCIATORE
period, waved between Communist and Proudhonian sympathies, which

alienated some of his fellow giellisti. Tarchiani, Lusso and others left the
movement.74
War Returns
Rosselli had been grimly prophetic when he wrote in 1933 that ‘if we had
to choose between war and the end of Fascism, or peace and the continu-
ation of Fascism, we would choose the latter. But this is not a choice we
can make, for Fascism will inevitably bring war to Europe’.75 The first
confirmation of this prophecy took place not in Europe but in Africa. On
2 October 1935, Mussolini announced that Italy would invade Ethiopia,
the continent’s last independent state. The next day, without a formal
declaration of war, troops crossed the border from the Italian colonies of
Somalia and Eritrea, following a plan that had been in the works since
1932.76 Italy had a colonial interest in Ethiopia since the second half of the
1800s and had already attempted to conquer it in 1895, an attempt that
was repelled thanks to the bravery of the Ethiopians and led to the Italian
defeat at Adwa (a spectacular Ethiopian painting of the battle now hangs
in the halls of the British Museum in London). Revanchism and colonial-
ism mixed up in the Fascist aggression against the African kingdom, which
was conducted with ruthless efficacy and overwhelming military superior-
ity. Marshal Pietro Badoglio, supreme commander of the Italian Army,
could count on more soldiers and artillery and aerial superiority over the
Ethiopians.77 This did not prevent Badoglio from committing several war
crimes to assure the victory, including the widespread use of toxic gas on
both soldiers and civilians, in blatant disregard of international conven-
tions.78 The war was quickly over and, on 9 May 1936, Mussolini pro-
claimed Vittorio Emanuele III Emperor of Ethiopia, usurping the title
74
75
Rosselli, ‘La guerra che torna’, pp. 1–8.
76
Rochat, Le Guerre, pp. 15–20.
77
Ibid., pp. 48–65.
78
On this see Rochat, Le Guerre, pp. 65–70. Angelo Del Boca, La guerra d’Abissinia
1935-1941 (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1965). Giorgio Rochat, ‘L’impiego dei gas nella campagna
d’Etiopia’, Rivista di storia contemporanea, 1 (1988), pp. 74–109. Angelo Del Boca, I gas di
Mussolini: il fascismo e la guerra d’Etiopia (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1996), which also contains
the aforementioned article by Rochat, ‘L’impiego dei gas’.
from Hailè Selassiè, while Badoglio gained the title of Duke of

Addis Ababa.79
The reactions to this war of aggression were varied. The international
community made some belated protests (even if France had given its
generic consent to an Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935), but essentially
let things happen passively. The League of Nations approved sanctions
against Italy, but they had limited effects80 or, in the case of the USA, they
were not enforced.81 Rosselli rightfully dubbed the whole affair a ‘com-
media’ (travesty).82 Indeed, France, and especially Great Britain, had the
chance to stop the Fascist war, but decided not to act.83 Trentin noted
how the Fascist aggression against Ethiopia gave the three European pow-
ers (France, Germany and the UK) a chance to advance their international
positions and therefore they did not oppose it.84 The passivity of the inter-
national community before this war of aggression was, for many anti-
fascists, the confirmation that their fight was a matter between Italians,
and that they could count only on themselves.
The Ethiopian war came as a severe blow to the already weakened anti-
fascist movement. The PCI had sacrificed its best men in the early 1930s,
and its network had been largely dismantled. Similarly, GL could boast
only a nominal presence inside Italy. In exile, the Concentration had been
dissolved, and the parties were bitterly split among themselves. Internally,
the triumph of Mussolini convinced many to leave the fight. Some did so
out of misguided patriotism, as they thought they had to support Italy’s
war effort no matter what. Others believed that the fight was lost for
good. Finally, some wrongly believed that the dictator would relax his
control over the state, as Napoleon III did in the 1860s, once he was sure
79
However, Ethiopian Resistance continued, and Italian troops soon found themselves
fighting in a bloody guerrilla war. Rochat, Le Guerre, pp. 131–134; 140–141.
80
81
di Nolfo La gabbia infranta, p. 8.
82
Carlo Rosselli, Scritti politici e autobiografici (Naples: Polis Editrice, 1944), p. 92. See
also a series of letters by Rosselli on the matter: Giannetto, Un’altra Italia, pp. 151–154.
83
Steven Morewood, ‘An opportunity missed Britain and the Abyssinian Crisis’, in ed. by
M. M. Aterrano and K. Varley, A Fascist decade of war 1935-1945 in international perspective
(New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 13–27 (pp. 13–14).
84
Silvio Trentin, ‘Appello agli italiani’, in Antifascismo e Rivoluzione, scritti e discorsi
1927-1944, ed. by G. Paladini (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1985), p. 299. Of the same opinion
was an article on GL’s newspaper: ‘Come si presenta la Guerra d’Africa’, Giustizia e Libertà,
2 August 1935.
28 N. CACCIATORE
of his position.85 On the contrary, in the latter part of the 1930s, the
regime became more oppressive, its control stricter, its repression more
brutal. This process coincided with a closer relationship with Nazi
Germany, which culminated in the Racial Laws of 1938, aimed at discrimi-
nating against Jews and other ‘lesser races’, and the Pact of Steel, the for-
mal alliance between the two countries, in 1939.86
However, if Ethiopia was a reason for disappointment, the next conflict
seemed to be the start of the anti-fascist comeback. Two months after the
end of the Ethiopian war, the Spanish Civil War broke out, as the Fascist-
inspired general Francisco Franco rebelled against the republican govern-
ment of Spain, engulfing the country in war. The Italian anti-fascists
quickly gathered under the republican flag, as Mussolini sent his black
shirts to support Franco.87 The first Italian volunteer expedition, com-
prised of GL and the Anarchists, arrived in Barcelona to support the local
autonomous Catalan republic.88 To Rosselli, Spain was to be the stepping
stone for a revolution that would reach Italy, finally topping the Fascist
regime.89 His most famous oration, Oggi in Spagna, domani in Italia
(‘Spain today, Italy tomorrow’), delivered on the waves of Radio Barcelona,
centres on this point almost entirely.90 According to Rosselli, the interna-
tional confrontation between Fascism and democracy had begun and
Italians had to do their part. The 130 men strong Italian column had its
first engagement on the 28 August 1936, near Huesca on the Aragonese
front, repelling the attack of a much larger force in a brutal battle where
Rosselli himself was wounded.91 Finally, the anti-fascists had the chance to
fight. ‘The era of armchair opposition had ended’ proclaimed Rosselli.92
Similarly, Lussu claimed that Spain, at last, had provided the emigration
with a bit of ‘revolutionary glory’.93
85
86
On the Italian racial laws and the life of Jews under Fascism see in particular: Michele
Sarfatti, Gli ebrei nell’Italia fascista. Vicende, identità, persecuzione (Turin: Einaudi, 2000).
87
88
On GL in Spain see Acciai, Antifascismo, volontariato e guerra civile in Spagna.
89
Bresciani, Quale antifascismo?, p. 196. Rosselli, Scritti politici, pp. 179–180.
90
Rosselli, Scritti politici, p. 168.
91
92
Rosselli, Scritti politici, p. 179.
93
Giustizia e Libertà, 28 August 1936. On this: Stephanie Prezioso, ‘“Aujourd’hui en
Espagne, demain en Italie” L’exil antifasciste italien et la prise d’armes révolutionnaire’,
Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’Histoire, 93 (2007), p. 91.
Despite this encouraging start, things soon started to turn sour for
GL. The Catalan front became marginal as the Spanish republic veered
towards Communism rather than the Anarcho-Syndicalism of Barcelona.
It was the PSI and PCI who benefitted from this situation. Nenni arrived
in Madrid in August 1936, while Luigi Longo reached the city a few weeks
later. At the beginning of September, the émigrés held a meeting in Paris
to coordinate their action, and a rift emerged between GL and the
Anarchists on one side, who wanted to keep privileging the Catalan front,
and the PCI and PSI on the other, who wanted to align with the Madrid
government.94 As a result, the Social-Communists started organising their
own column, led by the Republican Randolfo Pacciardi, a veteran of the
First World War. The Italian Legion thus hurried to Spain, where the local
government recognised it as the Garibaldi Batallion, part of the interna-
tional battalion. It received its baptism of fire near Madrid on 13 November
1936, repelling a Fascist attack on the city. However, arguably the most
spectacular success of the Italian column happened in mid-March 1937,
near the town of Guadalajara. Here, the Italian anti-fascist battled the
black shirts sent by Mussolini, who assaulted their positions for a whole
week. Finally, the Fascist line broke into a rout, which allowed the repub-
lican force to launch an effective counter-offensive from their positions.
Psychologically, the impact of the battle of Guadalajara was immense. It
had been the first confrontation on the battlefield between Fascists and
anti-fascists since the early 1920s, and the émigrés saluted it as a prelude
for the fight to move to Italy.95
However, the situation in Spain rapidly deteriorated. The Communists
overthrew the Anarchists in Barcelona, killing hundreds, including promi-
nent Italian Anarchists Camillo Bernieri and Giovanni Barbieri. GL, tied
to the Catalan front, found itself isolated and unable to play the same
prominent role as before in anti-fascist circles. In March 1937, the Social-
Communists launched a new anti-fascist united front, the Unione Popolare
Italiana (Italian Popular Union—UPI) in France, which included mem-
bers of the LIDU, GL and the PRI and, at its high, could boast 45,000
members. However, unlike the Concentration, this organisation was
clearly dominated by the PSI and the PCI.96 Rosselli, back from Spain,
94
95
Delzell, Mussolini’s enemies, pp. 145–154. On Guadalajara also: Rochat, Le Guerre,
pp. 107–112.
96
30 N. CACCIATORE
found it impossible to exert the same influence as before. He had been

impressed by Guadalajara and the PCI discipline and tried to open talks
with the Communists.97 Unfortunately, Mussolini decided he had toler-
ated the anti-fascist enfant terrible enough. On 9 June 1937, the Rosselli
brothers, Carlo and Nello, were assassinated by French Fascist thugs near
Bagnole-de-l’Orne in Normandy. Around 200,000 attended their funeral
in Paris, and the murder aroused such international outrage that the
Fascist press tried desperately to find a scapegoat in the Anarchists, even if
this notion was blatantly ridiculous.98 Leaderless, GL entered an agonising
phase and soon dissolved.99 Its legacy, however, survived and a few years
later many of its former members would create the Partito d’Azione
(Action Party—Pd’A) to fight in the Italian armed Resistance.100
Meanwhile, the Spanish Civil War drew to its tragic conclusion. The
republican forces collapsed under the weight of the Francoist troops, the
airstrikes of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and their internal frictions.
The Italian anti-fascists suffered some 600 dead and more than 2000
wounded. However, despite the appearances, Spain played a crucial role in
the events that were to follow. Many anti-fascists got their first experience
of armed combat in Spain, and the Garibaldi battalion was to serve as the
model for the Garibaldi brigades and other formations that fought in the
Italian Resistance between 1943 and 1945.101 Moreover, the Fascist
regime was weakened by the war, as Italy depleted a vast amount of
resources, both financial and material, to help Franco.102 This did not stop
Mussolini from attacking Albania in 1939 and proclaiming it a protector-
ate of Italy, wasting even more resources and extending the front of a pos-
sible war in the Balkans.103 Moreover, between 1935 and 1939, nuclei of
internal resistance had begun to reorganise, and, for the first time, young
97
98
99
Ibid., pp. 164–166.
100
On the Pd’A see the comprehensive volume: Giovanni de Luna, Storia del Partito
d’Azione la rivoluzione democratica (1942/1947) (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1982).
101
The legacy of the Spanish Civil War remained central in the PCI discourse even after
1945, see Raffaele Feruglio, ‘La memoria della Guerra civile Spagnola nella stampa del Pci
1948-1964’, Italia contemporanea, 247 (2004), pp. 271–284.
102
Rochat, Le Guerre, p. 130.
103
Rochat, Le Guerre, p. 241.
people who had lived most of their lives under Fascism started questioning
its authority.104
After the disappointment of Ethiopia and the defeat in Spain, the Italian
anti-fascists were to suffer another blow. On 23 August 1939, Nazi
Germany and the Soviet Union signed the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop
pact, shattering the unity of action inside the UPI and the Popular Fronts
across Europe.105 The PCI aligned with Soviet policy, while the PSI indig-
nantly denounced the pact. Nenni, who wanted to keep working with the
PCI, was forced to resign and almost expelled from the Party. The UPI
quickly crumbled as the Communists abandoned it.106
Shortly thereafter, the war prophesised by Rosselli broke out. Hitler’s
offensive against Poland took many by surprise, Mussolini and his goons
more than others.107 The high ranks of the regime knew the war was
approaching. However, during the negotiations for the Pact of Steel,
signed in 1939, they were reassured by the Nazis that Germany would not
go to war before 1942.108 They were fooled. The Germans had little
regard for their ally, which they mistrusted from the start. Giangaleazzo
Ciano, Foreign Minister of Italy, was informed of Germany’s true inten-
tions only a few days before the offensive against Poland, informally, dur-
ing a ball hosted by Ribbentrop.109 Italy was not ready. Everybody knew
it, despite the belligerent proclamations of Mussolini in public.110 The
Fascists claimed Italy was ready to join Germany; however, it needed some
resources on lease to catch up with industrial production. When the
Germans enquired about the Italian needs, a list was prepared, under the
directive by Ciano to ‘avoid any criminal optimism’. The list included six
million tons of coal, two million tons of steel, seven million tons of oil,
22,000 tons of rubber and much more. The total was some 16 mil-
lion tons of supplies, the equivalent of 17,000 trains (or 45 trains a day for
one year). Known as the ‘Molybdenum List’ (from the name of one of the
materials requested), it was presented to the Germans who remained,
104
Salvadorelli and Mira claim this was thanks to the PCI tactics of infiltrating the Fascist
organisations and appealing to the population. Salvatorelli, Storia d’Italia, II, p. 373.
105
On this: Pons, La rivoluzione globale, pp. 118–132.
106
107
Giorgio Bocca, Storia d’Italia nella guerra fascista 1940-1943 (Bari: Laterza, 1973),
vol. 1, p. 59.
108
Ribbentrop even claimed Germany would not go to war before ‘four or five years’.
109
Bocca, Storia d’Italia, p. 58.
110
Ibid., p. 61.
32 N. CACCIATORE
rightfully bewildered before it. When they asked, perplexed, when Italy
was expecting this insane amount of supplies, the Italian ambassador
replied: ‘as soon as possible’.111
Therefore, Germany went to war alone, and it seemed that the neutral-
ist faction had prevailed inside the regime for a time. However, the Nazi’s
spectacular victories in Poland, Denmark, Norway and France soon
changed things drastically. Lured by the prospect of an easy victory,
Mussolini threw his unprepared country into the war to get, in his own
words: ‘a share of the loot’. Vittorio Emanuele III, formally the only
authority in Italy who could allow a war declaration, obediently obliged,
showing once more his weakness. He did not take time to consider the
letters from Nitti and Sforza, who, from their exile, implored him not to
bring Italy into the war. On 10 June 1940, thus, Mussolini proclaimed
from a balcony in Piazza Venezia, Rome, Italy’s declaration of war against
France before a cheering crowd.
Italy’s participation in the war was, as it is widely known, underwhelm-
ing. The Italian troops were underequipped, underfed and short on man-
power.112 The Army, Navy and Aviation worked semi-independently from
each other, and inter-departmental rivalries were so strong as to seriously
hamper cooperation.113 Motorised divisions could only rely on light and
outdated tanks,114 and the same could be said for the Aviation, whose
planes were not up to the standards of modern aerial warfare.115 This situ-
ation was exacerbated by the rapacity of the industrialists of the Ansaldo
and Fiat groups, who held the monopoly on army commissions and used
their influence with the higher ups of the regime to milk the armed forces
and refuse to update their production.116 Mussolini, who was well aware of
111
Bocca, Storia d’Italia, pp. 62–63.
112
Salvatorelli, Storia d’Italia, II, pp. 446–449. The Italian industrial production was never
able to compete with other major nations involved in the conflict. See on this topic: Paolo
Ferrari, Andrea Curami, ‘Le armi tra storiografia militare ed economica. Indirizzi e interpre-
tazioni’, Italia contemporanea, 190 (1993), pp. 130–149. Andrea Curami, ‘L’industria bel-
lica prima dell’8 settembre’ Italia contemporanea, 261 (2010), pp. 665–679.
113
114
Ibid., pp. 190–191.
115
Ibid., pp. 230–235.
116
Ibid., pp. 210–211; 307; 309–310. The main industrial groups constituted an illegal
cartel to better exploit the situation, see Curami, ‘L’industria bellica’, p. 667. On the role of
the Ansaldo group: Fabio degli Esposti, ‘L’Ansaldo industria bellica’, Italia contemporanea,
190 (1993), pp. 149–168. Fortunato Minniti, ‘L’Ansaldo di Cavallero raccontato dagli
archivi’, Italia contemporanea, 190 (1993), pp. 168–173.
this situation, did not seem to care.117 Only the navy could boast modern
ships and equipment,118 however, since Italy entered the war without a
precise plan of action, no one knew precisely what those ships were sup-
posed to do.119 Italy entered the war unprovoked, and without knowing
what to do. Mussolini’s ambitions to conquest Provence, Corsica, Tunisia,
Greece and possibly even Yugoslavia and Egypt were little more than pipe
dreams for a nation that had been constantly at war for the previous five
years and had depleted most of its resources. Italy was, at best, a secondary
power. However, the regime could not accept this situation for reasons of
international prestige.120 It was from this stubborn stupidity that the trag-
edy of the Fascist wars was born. The war against France was the first case
study for things to come: it was short, pointless and costly.121 The Italian
army was not able to make a dent in the French defences, and the French
fleet was even able to bomb Genoa unopposed on the 14 June (while the
Germans were entering Paris). These first signs of the Italian weakness did
not seem to bother Mussolini or the High Commands. Indeed, the regime
was sure that the war was already over. A clear indication of this mentality
is the way the Italian army was mobilised and then quickly de-mobilised.
Between June and July, the army counted some 1,800,000 men, which
were slowly reduced to about 1,600,000. Then, 600,000 more men were
sent back home at the beginning of October. A move that appears all the
more nonsensical if one considers that a few days later, on 12 October,
Italy would attack Greece.122
When the war broke out, Italian anti-fascists were, paradoxically, more
ready for it than the Fascist regime, despite its bombastic claims. In France,
the émigrés quickly proposed to the government to organise an Italian
legion to fight for the republic. The project was approved, but the collapse
of France prevented it from becoming a reality. After France surrendered,
many anti-fascists were arrested and sent back to Italy to face trial and
imprisonment. Others either fled to other countries, mainly the UK and
117
118
Rochat, Le Guerre, pp. 206–217. On the navy under the Fascist regime, see the recent
volume by Fabio De Ninno, which disproves many myths about the Italian navy of the
period. Fabio De Ninno, Fascisti sul mare: la Marina e gli ammiragli di Mussolini (Bari:
Laterza, 2017).
119
120
Ibid., pp. 241–242.
121
Ibid., pp. 248–251.
122
Ibid., pp. 255–256.
34 N. CACCIATORE
the USA, or joined the local French Resistance.123 They scattered around
the world, and communications became increasingly difficult. Despite
this, they kept on fighting. The world war was, as prophesied by Rosselli,
a ‘revolution’,124 a chance to finally resolve the civil war between the ‘real’
Italians and the Fascists.125 In the words of Trentin: ‘world war [was] sud-
denly transfigured into a struggle for national liberation’.126
Spies, Thugs and Patriots

By the end of June 1940, France had collapsed, and the UK was left to
fend off the Axis’ advance. France’s etrange défaite, as Marc Bloch called
it, marked a turning point in British war strategy. The possibility of con-
fronting Germany on the battlefield was gone, and the UK had to gear for
a defensive war. Such a radical shift in perspective can only be described as
a ‘detonation’.127 However, hopes for the final victory were not lost. After
all, the UK had survived similar situations of isolation before, during the
Napoleonic wars, for example, and it managed to wrest victory from the
jaws of defeat.128 Moreover, a sense of optimism was pervading the British
Commands and elites. Now that the UK was alone, they thought, its
action could be more effective than when it had to coordinate with its
allies.129 It was in this climate that the government created the Special
Operation Executive to conduct sabotage and covet propaganda in
Europe. On 22 July 1940 Winton Churchill gave the new Minister of
Economic Warfare and chief of the SOE, Hugh Dalton, a simple order:
‘now, set Europe ablaze’.130 The British strategy, which was based on
123
Flores, Storia, pp. 6–7.
124
Rosselli, ‘La guerra che torna’, pp. 1–8.
125
Cacciatore, ‘“La vera Italia siamo noi.”’, p. 34.
126
Silvio Trentin, ‘La lotta antifascista’, in Antifascismo e Rivoluzione, scritti e discorsi
1927-1944, ed. by G. Paladini (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1985), p. 405.
127
David Stafford, ‘The detonator concept: British strategy, SOE and European Resistance
after the fall of France’, Journal of contemporary history, 2 (1975), p. 208.
128
Wieviorka, Storia della Resistenza, p. 27.
129
David Stafford, Britain and European Resistance, 1940-1945 A survey of the Special
Operations Executive, with documents (London: Thistle Publishing, 2013), p. 10.
130
On the SOE scientific literature has been lacking for some time, as a starting point, see
M.D.R. Foot, SOE An outline history of the Special Operations Executive 1940-46 (London:
British Broadcasting Corporation, 1984); William Mackenzie, The secret history of SOE
(London: St Ermin’s Press, 2000); Mark Seaman (ed.), Special Operations Executive: a new
instrument of war (London: Routledge, 2006); Stafford, Britain and European Resistance.
lanning that dated back to 1938,131 envisioned the creation of an intelli-

p
gence network in Europe to coordinate the action of secret armies of par-
tisans fighting the Axis. In the end, the British would need only a small
expeditionary force to deliver the coupe-de-grâce to their enemies, worn
out by the European Resistance.132 Just like the scant army of the duke of
Wellington was able to expel the French out of Spain thanks to the Spanish
guerrilla in the 1810s.133 It was surely an ambitious plan; and, in the end,
very little of it came to fruition; both because of the British lack of resources
and because of the overestimation of the capabilities of the Resistance
organisations to oppose the German occupation.134 As it has been noted:
‘sober calculation of the number of aircraft necessary to create and main-
tain such secret armies rendered the plan impossible even before American
entry in the war made it unnecessary’.135 Indeed, the SOE remained
understaffed and undersupplied for the whole duration of the war.
Moreover, it had to face from the start the hostility of the other secret
services, like the SIS, and of the regular military.136 The RAF, for example,
disliked the idea of destining some of its planes to supply the elusive par-
tisans of the continent and assigned to the SOE its older and less efficient
models.137 The British military culture found the project overall unpalat-
able, as it considered guerrilla warfare but a waste of resources and a
potential source of political instability.138 Considering the lack of resources
and support, therefore, it should not come as a surprise if the SOE did not
produce astonishing results in the first years of its life. However, much like
its birth was due to a turn in the war; likewise, it found a new purpose as
the situation shifted again. The year 1940 might have been a ‘detonator’
year, but 1941 was no less explosive. Germany attacked the USSR and
Japan the USA, thus ending the period of British isolation in the war.
Now, victory was not a hope but a definite possibility. It was only a matter
131
When Section ‘D’ (for ‘destruction’) was established. D. Stafford, ‘The detonator con-
cept’, p. 186. On the evolution of the British strategic thinking on covert warfare, the prin-
cipal source remains the aforementioned work of Stafford, Britain and European Resistance.
132
Stafford, Britain and European Resistance, pp. 11–12; 17–18.
133
The reference to the Spanish guerrillas (as to the Irish Sinn Fein and the Chinese
Irregulars) was made by Hugh Dalton himself: Hugh Dalton, The fateful years; Memoirs
1931-1945 (London: Frederik Muller, 1957), p. 368.
134
Stafford, Britain and European Resistance, p. 20.
135
Wheeler, ‘The SOE Phenomenon’, p. 518.
136
Stafford, Britain and European Resistance, pp. 13–14. On the internal conflicts in
London and the ‘battle of Whitehall’, see Wieviorka, Storia della Resistenza, pp. 49–58.
137
Ibid., pp. 178–180.
138
Frederik W. Deakin, ‘La Gran Bretagna e la Resistenza europea’, Il Movimento di libera-
zione in Italia, 65 (1961), p. 4.
36 N. CACCIATORE
of how long it would take for the Axis to capitulate. In this context, SOE’s
activities were scaled down as the creation of large clandestine armies to
defeat the enemy became obsolete.139 However, this situation proved ben-
eficial for the SOE. Its objective went from the grand but vague plan of
creating partisan armies to the smaller but far more manageable one of
conducting sabotage against specific objectives in coordination with the
Allied armies.140 This allowed for easier planning and lowered the number
of supplies, men and planes the service needed to run efficiently. Starting
from 1942, thus, the SOE was able to conduct its operations much more
easily and fruitfully. Likewise, its support to the European Resistance
became more organised and generous. France, for example, in the first
three years of the war, received only the 6.5% of the total containers of
supplies delivered during the conflict; the Low Countries received the 10%
and Denmark only the 4%.141
As for Italy, the Italian section of the SOE (the J section) shared the
agency’s troubled history, further complicated by the peculiar situation of
the country. Italy, in fact, between 1940 and 1943, remained part of the
Axis forces. Therefore, it was not a nation to liberate from enemy occupa-
tion, like France or the Netherlands. However, the idea that sedition could
be employed to topple Mussolini’s regime was widespread. Already in
December 1940, Churchill appealed to the Italian people claiming that
Mussolini had betrayed Italy by dragging it into a senseless war and sign-
ing an unnatural alliance with Germany, Italy’s historical enemy.142
Moreover, there was also the fact that an Italian Resistance had already
been active long before the beginning of the war. Thus, the situation was
at least promising for the SOE, and in 1941 the J section was created. The
same Italian anti-fascists that had been considered potentially dangerous
subversives a few years before were now a possible ally against Fascist
Italy.143 However, given the restraints under which the service had to
operate in the first years of its life and the condition of Italy as an enemy
139
Stafford, ‘The detonator concept’, p. 209. Stafford, Britain and European Resistance,
p. 84. Piffer, Gli alleati, p. 33.
140
This also came with new threats to the SOE independent action, and the service had to
survive even an attempt to abolish it. Stafford, Britain and European Resistance, pp. 85–99.
141
Wieviorka, Storia della Resistenza, pp. 190–191.
142
Isabella Insolvibile, ‘Autoassoluzione di una nazione. Il racconto egemonico dell’Italia
nella seconda guerra mondiale’, Italia contemporanea, 276 (2014), pp. 549–550.
143
Cacciatore, ‘Missed connection’, pp. 266–267.
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Merchants were equally quick to see the advantages of punctual
delivery, and the Williams enterprise prospered. The following month
he contracted with Wilson for the building of the Town of Liverpool,
there being some delay in placing this contract as Wilson had just
contracted to build the steamer Henry Bell for the Liverpool and
Glasgow trade. The City of Dublin’s maiden voyage was made on
March 20, 1824.
Meanwhile the Dublin and Liverpool Steam Navigation Company
had been founded, and started trading operations in September
1824 with the steamer Liffey. In December of the same year the
Mersey was added, and in 1825 the Commerce. The last named was
the largest vessel so far employed in cross-channel traffic. She was
built at Liverpool by Messrs. Grayson and Leadley.
The competition among the companies was exceedingly keen, and
increased as they added to their respective fleets. The City of Dublin
Company paid little heed to what was known as the Original
Company, but found its work cut out in competing with the other two.
The first really serious rate war broke out, and seems to have spread
to the steamer companies in the Scottish and North of Ireland
passenger trade.
Not content with cutting rates to vanishing-point, the northern
rivals indulged in lively newspaper polemics in the shape of
advertisements, which praised their own boats and gave the lie
direct to the manifestos of their opponents. The owners of the Swift,
sailing from Glasgow, advertised the “great superiority” of their
vessel “over the cock boat that is puffed off as sailing direct from the
Bromielaw.” “For the sake of strangers coming from a distance it may
be proper to state that her power and size are double, and her speed
so much greater, that when the two vessels start together the Swift
runs the other out of sight in five or six hours.”
The George Canning was the vessel referred to in this
contemptuous manner and her owners retorted in kind. Their
advertisement referred to the “contemptible article in the Swift’s
advertisement” as “stating a gross falsehood knowing it to be such.”
The Swift is challenged to produce a single instance of ever having
accomplished her passage from Belfast in so short a time as the
George Canning, and the public are informed that the two have
never yet sailed together either from Belfast or Glasgow, and the
Swift is asked when and where she ran the other out of sight.[43] So
matters went on until the Swift was sold to the London, Leith, and
Edinburgh Shipping Company in 1826. The companies actually
carried saloon passengers from Belfast to Glasgow for 2s. a head;
second cabin passengers went for 6d., and deck passengers went
free.
[43] Glasgow Herald, June 30, 1825.
The war on the Liverpool and Dublin route ended in the Liverpool
Companies carrying saloon passengers for 5s. and steerage
passengers for 6d. each, one of the vessels conveying on one
voyage seven hundred steerage passengers at that fare.
Negotiations between the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company
and the Dublin and Liverpool Steam Navigation Company followed,
by which the former purchased the Navigation Company’s steamers.
They had then a fleet of fourteen vessels and entered upon a long
career of prosperity, chequered by occasional battles with rival
companies. A rate war with the Langtry Company of Belfast ended in
the steerage fare between Liverpool and Belfast being reduced to
3d., including bread and meat. For a time, too, there was rivalry
between the Dublin Company and the Waterford Commercial Steam
Navigation Company, which in 1837 joined in the trade between that
city and Liverpool with the iron paddle-steamer Duncannon, of 200
tons, built by Laird of Birkenhead. This was probably the first iron
steamer built for the cross-channel service, but by no means the first
to be seen in Irish waters.
While the companies were struggling, passengers were even
carried free between Liverpool and Waterford, and sometimes
between Liverpool and Dublin. “A story is told of a passenger going
into the Dublin Company’s office at Waterford, and inquiring the
cabin fare to Liverpool. He was told he would be taken for nothing, to
which he replied, ‘That is not good enough, you must feed me as
well.’” There is a tradition also that when one of the rival companies
of the Liverpool and Dublin service “advertised its willingness to
carry passengers for nothing, and to give them a loaf of bread, the
other company capped the offer by the addition of a bottle of
Guinness’ stout.”[44] The fight continued for three years, until the City
of Dublin and the Waterford Company came to terms. This
settlement brought about peace between the Belfast and the British
and Irish Companies, the former sharing the Liverpool and Belfast
trade with the Cork Company, while the British and Irish Company
shared the London and Dublin trade with the Waterford Company.
This truce continued for several years, but the war had sent nearly
all the Waterford trade to Liverpool, to the detriment of the line
running between Waterford and Bristol. A dispute followed between
the Waterford and Bristol Companies and was maintained until the
Bristol Company bought off the Waterford Company with an annual
subvention of one thousand pounds.
[44] Kennedy’s “History of Steam Navigation.”
The increase in the number of steamers from 1820 onwards was

extraordinary. In 1825, forty-four steamers were building at London
and Liverpool alone, with tonnages varying from 250 to 500. Most of
these vessels were built for the coastal service, the only international
voyages being between the British coast, France, and the
Netherlands. In 1818, according to Dodd, steamers were employed
on the Clyde in the conveyance of merchandise, though for the most
part vessels propelled by the new invention, as it was generally
called, were confined to passengers, the goods being sent by sailing
boats. In 1820 and 1821 no steamers were employed in the foreign
trade, but in 1822 it appears that the entrances inward of steamers
engaged in the foreign trade numbered 159, with a tonnage of
14,497, while the clearances numbered 111 with a total of 12,388
tons. The coasting trade in that year for the United Kingdom was 215
vessels entered inward, with a tonnage of 31,596, and the
clearances numbered 295 with an aggregate tonnage for the year of
42,743. The year 1823 saw a falling off in the entrances and
clearances in the foreign trade, but in the following year there was a
partial recovery which was continued in 1825; and in 1826 the
number of entrances of steam vessels was 334, with an aggregate
tonnage of 32,631, the clearances being 268 with a tonnage of
27,206. In that year also the coasting trade showed 2810 entrances
of 452,995 tons, and 3833 clearances of 518,696 tons. By 1828 the
coasting entrances rose to 5591, with an aggregate of 914,414 tons,
with 6893 clearances and an aggregate tonnage of 1,009,834.
French-owned steamers first appeared in the United Kingdom
records in 1822, when there were ten entrances of 520 tons
altogether. In 1823 the entrances from France had shrunk to seven,
of a total of 364 tons, and the clearances were the same; but by
1827, 74 entrances of French steamers are recorded, and 43
clearances.
In 1829 Holland appears for the first time in the list with one
steamer entered and cleared. But in 1830 the steamer traffic
between the two countries had grown so that the entries of Dutch
steamers numbered twenty-three, with an aggregate of 6463 tons,
and the clearances thirty-two with 8992 tons. By 1836 the entries in
the United Kingdom coastal trade were 13,003, with an aggregate
tonnage of 2,238,137, and the clearances 12,649 with an aggregate
of 2,178,248 tons. In 1837 Belgium, France, and Spain figured in the
returns, and in 1838 Portugal and Brazil. Russia and Turkey were
added to the list in 1839. In that year the United Kingdom coastal
entries numbered 15,556 of 2,926,521 tons, and the clearances
15,498 of 2,894,995 tons. These figures do not include vessels in
ballast nor those with passengers only.
The report of the Commissioners appointed by the Privy Council in
1839 to inquire into steamship accidents, shows that some laxness
prevailed in regard to registration, no fewer than 83 unregistered
steam vessels being discovered, most of which were in the
passenger trade; thirty-seven of these were on the Mersey, sixteen
on the Thames, twenty-six on the Humber, and four on the rivers on
the east coast of Scotland. The Commissioners added that there
were probably many others unregistered, as they did not visit all the
ports.
On the other hand, there were only twenty-five registered
steamers on the Humber, Ouse, and Trent, and thirty-nine at
Liverpool. Two Liverpool companies owned more vessels than the
total number registered there. The Commissioners found that
nineteen-twentieths of the large number of trading steamers between
Ireland and Liverpool, some of which were registered in English and
some in Irish ports, were owned in Ireland. The report further stated
that of the 766 steam vessels tabulated as belonging to Great
Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Guernsey, and Jersey, 484 might be
considered as river steamers and small coasters, and 282 as large
coasters and sea-going ships.
The total number of registered vessels at the end of 1838 was
677, with a total registered tonnage of 74,510, a total computed
tonnage of 131,080, and estimated horse-power 54,361.
Unregistered vessels numbered 83 of 9638 tons gross, and 2129
estimated horse-power. The foregoing particulars show how rapidly
the number of steamers increased for some years.
Services seem to have been started between almost every two or
three ports of the United Kingdom. The little wooden vessels were
long-lived, and had some unique experiences owing to the
venturesome characters of their captains, owners, or charterers.
Provided the vessel would float and get along it seemed to be the
opinion of its owners that it could go anywhere and carry anything.
Thus a vessel built for river traffic was thought suitable for deep-sea
work also. It is not surprising to find that many of the steamers
changed hands frequently. They were renamed at every change, and
the resulting confusion makes it difficult to trace their history.
It seems fairly certain, however, that accidents were frequent, and
it became necessary to devise means of carrying boats which would
accommodate at least a considerable number of the passengers if
necessary. Regulations as to the compulsory carriage of life-buoys,
life-belts, rafts, floating seats, and other contrivances for supporting
people in the water did not come into force until many years after.
The sole means of safety in the early days of steam navigation were
the boats and such wreckage as happened to float if the vessel sank
or went to pieces. But most of the steamers were so small, and on
their voyages so crowded, that they could not carry nearly as many
boats as were required.
The boats were generally carried on the tops of the paddle-boxes.
A suggestion which was carried into effect, especially in some of the
larger ocean-going steamers, was that the paddle-boxes should be
built square and be detachable from the guards, so that if a disaster
should befall the vessel they could be used as boats. This
contrivance had numerous disadvantages, not the least of them
being the unwieldiness of the paddle-boxes, and the difficulty of
managing them when afloat. Another suggestion was that each
steamer should carry two large boats of equal dimensions which
could be used as the tops of the paddle-boxes. The main advantage
claimed for this idea was that it would not add materially to the
weight of the vessel. Captain George Smith, in the ’thirties, contrived
a peculiarly shaped lifeboat which would fit over the paddle-wheels
and take the place of the paddle-boxes, and might when occasion
required be turned right side uppermost and launched outside the
paddle-wheel. He tried this experiment on the steamer Carron. “The
upper section,” he wrote, “of her paddle-wheel is covered by a
lifeboat 25 feet long, 9 feet beam, and having four air-tight cases
which may be removed if required on particular occasions. This
lifeboat is capable of containing between forty and fifty persons.
When in her place over the paddle-wheel the midship thwarts are
unshipped, which admits of the wheel revolving within 6 inches of
her keelson; she lies bottom upwards on two iron davits, which
enable her to be turned over and lowered by six men in two or three
minutes.”
The early river steamers were often overcrowded, which is not to
be wondered at in those days of insufficient control, and a cartoon of
the period represents the passengers as hanging on to the rigging,
the bowsprit, the funnel, and anything else of which they could catch
hold. Complaints of reckless speed and careless navigation were
frequent, and the Worshipful Company of Watermen and Lightermen
gave orders that the speed should not exceed five miles an hour: but
the captains of the Thames steamers were often fined for breaking
the rules, as they were in the habit of racing against boats belonging
to rival companies. As to overcrowding, the Times of April 16, 1838,
thus delivered itself: “It would be as well if some measures be
adopted to prevent steamers being overcrowded during the Easter
holidays. During the last Easter and Whitsuntide holidays the
steamers were crammed with passengers in a fearful manner, the
small vessels carrying 500 and 600 passengers at one trip, and the
larger ones 1000 and 1500 persons, as closely packed as negroes in
the hold of a slave-ship.”
By 1846 the rivalry among the companies on the river brought
about the usual rate war. The steamers and the Watermen’s
Company were often at loggerheads, and neither always agreed with
the City Corporation. An attack of the City Corporation employees
upon those of the Watermen’s Company was valiantly resisted, and
the watermen went to gaol in consequence. Punch commented on
this as follows: “Considerable excitement has been occasioned by
some experiments which have lately been tried in the Thames navy,
on the same principle as that recently applied to the Bellerophon,
which was got ready for sea in sixty hours, and got unready again
with equal promptitude. The Waterman No. 6 took in coals and
ginger-beer, manned her paddle-box, lit her fire, threw on a scuttle of
coal, filled her boiler, blackleaded her funnel, tarred her taffrail, and
pitched her stoker into her engine-room, all within twenty minutes,
and sailed away from her moorings at Paul’s Wharf amidst the
cheers of her checktaker. This manœuvre was accomplished for the
purpose of striking terror into the minds of the civic forces at
Blackfriars Pier, who are only tranquil at present in compliance with
the terms of a recent armistice.”
The modern development of the coastal steamer service has
naturally been confined to a strict meeting of its own requirements,
and it is not proposed to go at length into all the minutiæ of the
differences between the steamers of the various lines. Some of the
most famous companies have already been mentioned and their
early struggles with competitors described. In connection with
coastal and cross-channel traffic it will now be sufficient to sketch the
careers of a few others which have helped to make steam-ship
history.
TRINITY MONARCH ROYAL GEORGE TRIDENT
YACHT
The “Monarch” and “Trident” (General Steam Navigation Co.)

convoying the Royal Yacht with the Queen and Prince
Consort to Edinburgh, 1842.
General Steam Navigation Company

To London shipowners belongs the credit of establishing one of
the oldest steam-ship companies in the world, the General Steam
Navigation Company. It was founded as far back as 1820 and its first
steamer, the City of Edinburgh, was built expressly for trade between
Edinburgh and London by Messrs. Wigram and Green at Blackwall,
and was launched on March 31, 1821. Her engines were by Boulton
and Watt, and were of 80 horse-power nominal.
A steam-ship of any kind was a novelty at that time, and the
launch of such a large vessel on the Thames attracted the attention
of all classes. The Duke and Duchess of Clarence, who were
afterwards William the Fourth and Queen Adelaide, accompanied by
the Duchess of Kent and a large suite, paid a special visit to the
wharf to see her. The royal party expressed themselves as much
surprised by the magnificence of the accommodation provided for
the passengers as by the noble and graceful proportion of the vessel
in which such powerful machinery had been placed. The City of
Edinburgh was followed in June 1821 by the James Watt, launched
by Messrs. Wood and Co. of Port Glasgow, and at that time
described as “the largest vessel ever seen in Great Britain propelled
by steam.” Her engines were of 100 nominal horse-power, and drove
paddle-wheels 18 feet in diameter with sixteen floats, which were 9
feet in length by 2 feet broad.
The company was incorporated in 1824 and then and for many
years afterwards occupied a place second to none in the British
mercantile marine as carrier of passengers, mails, goods, and cattle
on the leading routes from London to the North, and to the principal
commercial ports of Western Europe. The Earl of Liverpool, of 168
tons register and 80 horse-power, was built for the company at
Wallis’s yard on the Thames in 1822.
An early picture of this vessel shows her to have been two-
masted, carrying on the foremast three jibs, two topsails, and a
trysail, and on the mizzen two enormous flags, one several yards
long bearing the name of the vessel, and the other, half the size of
her spanker, being the company’s house flag, while at the stern she
displayed an immense ensign, and at the bows a little Union Jack.
Her paddle-boxes were rather forward of amidships, and a tall funnel
with a spark-catcher above stood a short distance in front of the
mizzen-mast.
In 1833 this company built the Monarch, of which a contemporary
newspaper says, under the heading “Gigantic Steamboat”:
“The dimensions of the Monarch, Edinburgh steamer, launched a
few days since are as follows:—extreme length 206 feet 1¹⁄₂ inches,
width of deck 37 feet, width outside the paddles 54 feet 4 inches,
length of keel in the tread 166 feet; length of deck from the stem to
the taffrail 193 feet, depth in hold 18 feet. The extreme length given
above is within 2 feet of the largest ship in the British Navy; she is
larger than any of His Majesty’s frigates, and longer than our 84-gun
ships. Her tonnage is somewhat more than 1200 tons, and the
accommodation below is so extensive that she will make up 140
beds, and 100 persons may conveniently dine in her Saloons.”
The “Trident,” in which the Queen and Prince Consort

returned, Sept. 1842.
The Trident, built in 1842, was another of the company’s famous

ships, and was probably the first steam-ship in which a reigning
sovereign went for a lengthy sea voyage. Queen Victoria paid her
first visit to Scotland and made the return journey from Edinburgh
with Prince Albert and their suite on this vessel. An interesting
description of the voyage appeared in “Leaves from the Journal of
our Life in the Highlands.” The Queen remarked of the
accommodation on the Trident “that it was much larger and better
than on the Royal George,” which was the royal yacht of the period,
and that it was “beautifully fitted up.” The Trident soon lost sight of all
the accompanying vessels, except the company’s steamer Monarch,
which “was the only one that could keep up with us.” Writing a few
days later to the King of the Belgians the Queen says: “We had a
speedy and prosperous voyage home of forty-eight hours on board a
fine, large, and very fast steamer, the Trident, belonging to the
General Steam Navigation Company.”
These vessels, of course, were of wood, but when iron steamers
were introduced and paddles gave way to the screw propeller, the
company was not slow to see the advantages of the innovations, and
to adopt them for its services.
In modern times this company has distinguished itself by its zeal
for self-improvement. Every important development in steam-ship
construction and engineering has been marked by the company by
an addition to its fleet, one of the most recent being the Kingfisher,
the first steam turbine-driven passenger steamer on the Thames.
London and Edinburgh Shipping Company

Probably on none of the British coasts was the advent of the
steamer hailed with more pleasure than on the east coast. Travel
between London and the east of Scotland, before railways were
possible, and when the land journey had to be made by stage-coach
or on horseback, or a sea journey performed in sailing smacks, was
a tedious operation. The smacks were large of their sort, and as
comfortable as vessels of that period usually were (which is not
saying much), but the North Sea was as turbulent then as now, so
that passengers who went down to that part of the sea in smacks
usually had an experience which lasted them a lifetime.
The London and Leith service of the present day is maintained by
a line of steamers as good as any on the coast. The existing
company was not the first to trade between the two ports whence it
takes its name, but its history connects it with the earliest attempts to
found a regular service between the English and Scottish capitals.
This was established in 1802 by the old Edinburgh and Leith
Shipping Company, with six smacks. About seven years later there
was established a London and Edinburgh Shipping Company, which
possessed ten smacks. There had previously been a Leith and
Berwick Company, so called because Berwick was a port of call
between the Forth ports and London. This was the Union Company,
which for fifty years previously had traded from Berwick. It was
absorbed by the London and Leith Shipping Company in 1812, and
this combination was joined by another in 1815. The existing
company is the lineal descendant of the combination of the three.
Before steam was used “it was not an uncommon experience,”
says an historical publication issued by the London and Edinburgh
Shipping Company, “for a smack to lie windbound in the roads for
days before venturing out of the Forth, and instances were more
than traditional of a smack with a cabin full of passengers being
tossed about on the North Sea for days or weeks, and then forced to
come back to Leith for the replenishment of stores, without having
been any nearer to London than when she set out.” On one occasion
a smack in which there were seven cabin passengers was nine days
at sea, the year being 1825, and the month March. Upon leaving
Leith for London and getting well into the North Sea they were driven
towards Norway for four days, when a “welcome change of wind set
in, which drove them back towards Scotland with equal rapidity.”
Having sighted the Bell Rock they continued the voyage to London,
and made a good run in spite of the loss of some spars and canvas.
The passengers were “unhappy” and at times were not allowed on
deck for fear of being washed overboard. Another smack was three
weeks endeavouring to get to London and then had to return for
more stores. Prior to the smacks the voyages were usually made by
brigs of anything between 160 to 200 tons, which sailed when their
owners thought they had enough cargo and passengers aboard.
The “Carron” (Carron Co.).
The “Kingfisher” (General Steam Navigation Co.).
Presumably no one sailed by smack who could afford to coach

between Scotland and London, but the coach fare in 1824 was £13
and the smack fare £4. Passengers by smack had a fair chance of
witnessing a sea-fight, during which the ladies would be locked up in
the cabin while the martially-inclined among the passengers might
be called upon to assist the crew in repelling the attack of a French
privateer. The smacks were superseded by the celebrated Aberdeen
schooners or themselves converted to that rig, and the schooners
bravely upheld the reputation of sail as long as possible against the
all-conquering power of steam. But in 1850 the company introduced
steam and the fine clippers were withdrawn. It is this company’s
proud boast that it has never lost a passenger.
The Carron Company

The Carron Company, manufacturers of iron goods, maintained a
passenger service between Carron and London with sailing sloops
long before steam-ships were invented. So long ago as 1779 the
company advertised in the Edinburgh Advertiser as follows:
A t C A R R O N — F o r L O N D O N.
To ſail March 5, 1779
THE GLASGOW, Robert Paterſon maſter, mounting
fourteen twelve pounders, and men anſwerable. For
freight or paſſage, apply to Mr. G. Hamilton,
Glaſgow, Meſſ. James Anderſon & Co. Leith, or the
Carron Shipping Company at Carron Wharf.
N. B. The Carron veſſels are fitted out in the moſt
complete manner for defence, at a very
conſiderable expence, and are well provided with
ſmall arms. All mariners, recruiting parties, ſoldiers
upon furlow, and all other ſteerage paſſengers who
have been accuſtomed to the uſe of fire arms, and
who will engage to aſſiſt in defending themſelves, will
be accommodated with their paſſage to or from
London, upon ſatiſfying the maſters for their
proviſions, which in no inſtance ſhall exceed 10s. 6d.
ſterling.
The Carron veſſels ſail regularly as uſual, without
waiting for the convoy.
As the sloops carried the company’s famous carronades there can
be no doubt that they were well armed. The company can boast a
more ancient connection with steam-ship building than any other firm
in the British Isles, for they constructed the hull for one of the Miller
boats and assisted in the construction of one of Symington’s
engines. Miller is reported to have examined Symington’s engines at
the Carron works. The company soon ran steamers instead of sailing
vessels along the east-coast route and have continued to do so up to
the present day, the latest additions to their fleet being the Thames
by A. and J. Inglis, and the Carron, 308 feet long, which has her
steering gear fitted aft at the rudder head and controlled by hydraulic
action on the telemotor principle.
An interesting fact in connection with the Carron Company is that
the first set of complete castings for James Watt’s steam-engine
were made at their works, and were erected at the house of Dr.
Roebuck, who was one of the founders of the company and a
personal friend of Watt. A part of the cylinder of this engine marked
“Carron 1766” is still preserved at the works. John Smeaton, of
Eddystone Lighthouse fame, was also associated with the Carron
works.
The “Fingal” (London and Edinburgh Shipping Co.).
The “Lady Wolseley”
(British and Irish Steam Packet Co.)
Dundee, Perth and London Shipping Company

This company dates, like others on the east coast, from the time
when the voyage between the Thames and Scotland was only
performed by sailing smacks, and of these they ran nineteen. But in
1834 the smacks were removed and paddle-steamers took their
place. Their first steamers were the Dundee and the Perth, each
boat having a commander as well as a sailing master. They were
wonderful vessels for the time, being of 650 tons burden and 300
horse-power. They were advertised as “these splendid and powerful
steamers”; the cabins were “airy, commodious” (epithet beloved of
steam-ship companies), and “elegant.” The company’s present-day
fleet consists of the London and the Perth, each of 1737 tons and
3000 horse-power.
Isle of Man Steam Packet Company
No steamer company holds a more honourable position in the
coastal and passenger trade than the Isle of Man Steam Packet
Company. The vessels in early years were known as “the little
Cunarders,” a compliment which they well deserved. The
appearance of the vessels of the two companies was much the
same, and the red and black funnel has always been a distinguishing
feature of both lines. The first boat of the Isle of Man Company was
built by John Wood of Glasgow in 1830, and named the Mona’s Isle,
a title which has been borne by more than one distinguished
successor. She was schooner-bowed, and carried on her paddle-
boxes, which were placed well forward, the familiar three-legged sign
of Manxland. The engines of the first Cunarder built for the
transatlantic service were by Napier, who also built the hull, and this
steamer was to all intents and purposes a large edition of the Mona’s
Isle, whose engines he had previously built. Her dimensions were
116 feet in length by 19 feet beam, with a depth of 10 feet, and 200
gross tonnage. She cost £7042, and when sold in 1851 after twenty-
one years’ service, in which she proved a most profitable vessel, she
fetched £580.
But the first steamer seen in Manx waters was the Henry Bell,
named after the constructor of the historic Comet; she was on her
way from the Clyde to Liverpool to be placed on the service between
Liverpool and Runcorn and put in at Ramsey Bay. In May of the
following year the Greenock arrived at Douglas, whence she took
some passengers to Laxey, and, as a local chronicler puts it, “moved
by apparent enchantment.” The Mona’s Isle was thought to be too
large and valuable to risk being used in winter, and a smaller boat
was therefore ordered from the same builder. This was the Mona,
and after her arrival in July 1832, she was engaged in a service
between the island and Whitehaven and in taking visitors on trips
round the island. Even before the advent of the steamers, the Isle of
Man had become a favourite place at which to spend the summer,
especially among the people of the north and west counties. If
affection for the island could induce so many hundreds of people to
brave the discomforts of a voyage from the Mersey to Douglas and
back again in the small sailing packets which then were the means
of communication, it is little wonder that the advent of the steamers,
restricted in dimensions as they were, poor in accommodation, and
slow travellers, should have increased her popularity. Occasionally
the sailing packet took as long as a week to make the trip, and it was
hailed as an extraordinary circumstance that a vessel trading
between Douglas and Whitehaven was able to make fifty-two
voyages each way in the course of a year. In 1813 also, a sailer took
three days and nights to get within sight of Liverpool, and was then
driven back by stormy weather to the island.
The “Ben-my-Chree” (I.). Built 1845.
The Mona had one mast on which she could carry a jib, a forestay-
sail, a mainsail, and a topsail, and her funnel was abaft the paddle-
boxes, which were amidships. She was faster than her predecessor,
and usually did the journey between Liverpool and Douglas in about
seven and a half hours. She once reached Whitehaven from
Douglas in a trifle over four and a half hours, which was claimed to
be one of the fastest pieces of travelling on record. The Queen of the
Isle, which was the company’s third ship, was the fastest vessel
afloat at the time. These three boats, according to a bill issued in
1834, were known as the Royal Mail and War Office steam-packets,
though they never had any connection, so far as the company has
been able to ascertain, with the War Office. A Liverpool firm
purchased the Mona in 1851 and sold her to the City of Dublin
Company, who ran her for several years, until she was hopelessly
outclassed in size and accommodation by newer boats. She was
then used as a tug, and so spent the remainder of her days.
The first steamer ordered by the company to be built in the island
was the first King Orry, by John Winram, with engines by Robert
Napier. This boat was the last of the company’s wooden paddle-
steamers. She was a very reliable boat but not particularly fast, for
she usually took about seven hours for the trip each way. In 1843 the
Queen of the Isle was relieved of her engines, sold, and turned into a
full-rigged sailing ship and met her fate off the Falkland Islands.
The Ben-my-Chree, a three-masted schooner, the first of the
company’s steamers to be built of iron, was fitted with the Queen of
the Isle’s engines. The Tynwald, a larger steamer still, followed in
1845, and was herself followed by the Mona’s Queen, a rather
smaller vessel but faster, and bearing a figure-head which the carver
said was a likeness of Queen Victoria; be that as it may, the vessel
was named in commemoration of the visit of the Queen to the island
in 1847.
Hitherto the company’s steamers had been of little more than local
interest; the Douglas was now ordered and she acquired
international fame. This vessel was the first of the Manx boats in
which the straight stem was adopted. She was built in 1858; her
length between perpendiculars was 205 feet, with a beam of 26 feet
and a depth of 14 feet, and a gross tonnage of 700. The Tynwald,
which was of the same tonnage was 188 feet long, by 27 feet beam,
and 13 feet 6 inches depth. The Douglas was thus longer in
proportion to her beam than any of her predecessors, and being
powerfully engined, made 17¹⁄₄ knots on her trial trip. She did the
passage between Liverpool and Douglas in 4 hours and 20 minutes,
and was the fastest sea-going paddle-steamer afloat.
The situation at this time between the Northern and Southern
States of the United States of America was becoming strained, and
there were already indications of the approaching conflict. After four

Italian Partisans and British Forces in The Second World War Working With The Enemy 1st Edition Nicola Cacciatore

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Italian Partisans and British Forces in The Second World War Working With The Enemy 1st Edition Nicola Cacciatore

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Italian Partisans and British Forces in

the Second World War Working with the

Too Serious a Business European Armed Forces and the

Trapped behind enemy lines : Accounts of British

British Subversive Propaganda during the Second World

India and World War II War Armed Forces and Society

History s Queer Stories Retrieving and Navigating

British Armored Cars in World War II The Best

Italian Partisans and

ISSN 2635-2931 ISSN 2635-294X (electronic)

Multiple Solutions to Multiple Problems149

5 The Long Liberation163

6 Conclusions: The British in Italy—A Matter of Image219

AAI Allied Armies in Italy

This work was born to offer a comprehensive interpretation of the long-­

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

ITALIAN partisans have never been, even at their period of greatest

interpretation since the mid-1980s,9 showing that the Italo-British rela-

inefficiency for the British. Fragmentation, according to her, is the key to

hypocrisy focused on these issues. However, similarly to BLOs and the

Where It All Began

In the early morning of the 10 September 1943, two Italian corvettes of

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13

(although with some admirable exceptions) wanted security against a

culmination of long-lasting problems and contradictions within the Italian

period, waved between Communist and Proudhonian sympathies, which

from Hailè Selassiè, while Badoglio gained the title of Duke of

found it impossible to exert the same influence as before. He had been

Spies, Thugs and Patriots

­ lanning that dated back to 1938,131 envisioned the creation of an intelli-

The increase in the number of steamers from 1820 onwards was

The “Monarch” and “Trident” (General Steam Navigation Co.)

General Steam Navigation Company

The “Trident,” in which the Queen and Prince Consort

The Trident, built in 1842, was another of the company’s famous

London and Edinburgh Shipping Company

The “Kingfisher” (General Steam Navigation Co.).

Presumably no one sailed by smack who could afford to coach

The Carron Company

Dundee, Perth and London Shipping Company

The “Ben-my-Chree” (I.). Built 1845.

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Multiple Solutions to Multiple Problems149

5 The Long Liberation163

6 Conclusions: The British in Italy—A Matter of Image219

This work was born to offer a comprehensive interpretation of the long-

lanning that dated back to 1938,131 envisioned the creation of an intelli-