Wolves Over Italy¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter excoriates the peace terms imposed on the Italian republic after the Second World War as a betrayal of Allied promises and a vindictive imperialist settlement. It opens by noting the cynical disregard for the Atlantic Charter and United Nations Charter, contrasting these professed war aims with the humiliating conditions being forced upon Italy. Churchill’s 1943 remark that Italy could “work her passage home” is held up as a promise that British imperialism never intended to keep.
The chapter argues that the Italian people more than fulfilled their side of the bargain. Hundreds of thousands of Italian youth, misled by the leaders of the Socialist and Communist Parties whom they trusted, fought alongside the Allies as partisans behind German lines, waged guerrilla war, organised strikes in northern factories, and seriously hindered the German war machine. When British and American troops finally broke through the Gothic Line and swept into the Lombardy Plains, they found that most of the work had already been done for them: city after city fell without a struggle, and the huge industrial plants of Milan, Genoa and Turin were practically intact thanks to the workers’ activities. If this was a war against fascism, the Italian people could claim the first decisive victory, having been chiefly responsible for the downfall of Mussolini and the collapse of the twenty-year-old Fascist regime. If this was a war for democracy, they had abolished the obsolete monarchy and established a Democratic Republic.
The chapter notes that during the recent elections, despite posters promising “Vote for the monarchy and the British and Americans will aid us!”, the majority voted for the republic, though the narrow victory proved the strength of reactionary forces. These elements are now being further strengthened by the harsh peace terms, with nationalistic slogans replacing revolutionary ones and open fascist provocation on the increase.
The polemic is directed sharply at the leaders of the working-class parties, the Socialists and the Stalinist Communists. Their role is described as “particularly revolting”: with their aid, many workers are falling into the nationalist trap, believing their interests identical with those of the capitalist class. The chapter points out that when the capitalist press—ably seconded by the Stalinist and Socialist press—laments the loss of Briga and Tenda to France, it is the financial groups with investments in hydro-electric plants whose voice is heard; the question of Trieste menaces the capitalists who own mines and marine works in that area. The reformist and Stalinist leadership of the CGIL (Italian TUC) has joined with the De Gasperi government in prohibiting strikes during the peace treaty discussions to display “national solidarity”. Togliatti and his ‘Communist’ party thus reveal that ‘Browderism’ is by no means dead.
The chapter concludes by insisting that the weapons of the working class are not identical with those of the bosses and their state. The working class does not go begging for crumbs from the table of the four over-fed victors. It resists the peace terms by strengthening its organisations and fighting against the bosses’ attempts to place the burden of the ‘peace’ on workers’ shoulders. It appeals not to the Bevins, Byrnes and Molotovs, but to the solidarity of the workers of Britain, America and Russia. On territorial questions—Venezia Giulia (Trieste), Briga, Tenda, the Tyrol—it proposes no ready-made solutions imposed from above, but insists on the principles of self-determination: let the people of these territories decide their own destinies. On the loss of the colonies, it objects only that the peoples of Libya, Somaliland and Eritrea have simply exchanged one set of masters for another. The chapter ends with the slogans: “Down with Imperialism! For the independence of all colonial peoples!”