Modern Italy's Founding Fathers

The Making of a Postwar Republic

Steven F. White

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781350338623
• eBook ISBN: 9781474215510
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia del XX secolo

Modern Italy's Founding Fathers offers a fresh perspective on the genesis of the Italian republic as viewed through the efforts of its three most influential leaders: Christian Democrat Alcide De Gasperi, Socialist Pietro Nenni and Communist Palmiro Togliatti. In concise, accessible prose, this work demonstrates how De Gasperi – the Republic's inaugural prime minister from 1945 to 1953 – and his fellow statesmen's shared experience of Fascist oppression, belief in popular sovereignty, and ability to compromise despite deep ideological differences, enabled the creation of Italy's post-war republic. This path-breaking collective biography traces the genesis of the Italian republic, commencing with the overthrow of Mussolini in 1943 and concluding with the death of De Gasperi in 1954. Drawing on the speeches, writings and personal papers of the three protagonists, on Italian and U.S. archives, on contemporary memoirs and on secondary scholarship, Steven F. White demonstrates how these leaders forged political practices and customs which continue to define Italian parliamentary life to the present day. Examining the interplay of personalities, leadership styles, ideas and political context, this study is a vital text for any student of modern Italy and, more broadly, of Cold War Europe.

1

Three Founding Fathers

In a 1984 newspaper interview, Togliatti’s long-time companion Nilde Iotti asserted that Togliatti and De Gasperi had been carissimi nemici (literally “dearest enemies”).¹ Journalist Vittorio Gorresio, the press’s most respected observer of the Italian Communist Party, entitled a 1977 study with the same phrase. When, and to what degree, could Togliatti and De Gasperi be characterized as amici-nemici—to use a closely related term of Italian political discourse?² And what of the affable Nenni? The three leaders’ anti-Fascism initially bound them together as friendly rivals. Their rivalry turned to enmity with the onset of the Cold War. Even as friendly enemies, Nenni’s and De Gasperi ’s public animosity never eclipsed a measure of private sympathy. Never amicable in a personal sense, Togliatti and De Gasperi’s calculated alliance of convenience endured until mid-1947. All-out antagonists thereafter, they continued to count on one another as formidable opponents and polemical foils.

American historian and former OSS officer H. Stuart Hughes has left the following characterization of the interaction between the Communist and Christian Democratic leaders:

Similar in mental agility and even in physical appearance, the leaders of the two great parties faced each other—like two Jesuits, as one of their colleagues put it—with quiet deadliness across the ministerial council table.³

In another evocative passage, Hughes found in the Christian Democratic leader

something sacerdotal … in that sense he appeared a fitting leader for a Catholic party. Looking far younger than his years—when he first came to power he was sixty four—with a lean and wiry physique, he was able to survive repeated bouts of illness and political crises until he had either driven his rivals from the field or brought them into service as allies.⁴

Friendship, both personal and political, occupies a central place in the analysis that follows. Here I take exception to the tendency in many studies of modern, ostensibly bureaucratic, rationalized state structures⁵ to under-emphasize the role of relational dynamics such as political friendship. In the case of Italy, as in other Mediterranean societies, social bonds and networks of all kinds, formal and informal, continue to offer essential keys for unlocking broader political developments.⁶ Here we will employ a framework for understanding political friendship first articulated by Aristotle and Cicero, and further developed by such modern thinkers as Hannah Arendt and William Rawlins.⁷

Given De Gasperi’s pivotal role in the genesis of the postwar republic, it makes sense to apply our model of political friendship first to the Trentine (a native of Trento province) statesman’s modes of association (both personal and political) with others. The balance of the present chapter traces the social and political formation of each founder in turn, beginning in their early years and continuing up until the Second World War. Disparate as the three men’s socialization and educational experiences were, all three inherited a humanistic tradition focused on expressive cultivation, social awareness, and civic engagement. Each discovered mentors, past and present, who assisted them in consolidating their political vocations. Each entered politics within a particular geo-political context—for De Gasperi the Trentino under the Austrian Empire, for Togliatti Turin in the throes of rapid industrialization, and for Nenni the intensely anti-clerical Romagna—and these contexts distinctively conditioned their respective political credos.

Political Friendship

The root of friendship, according to Aristotle, lay in the ethical qualities of the two friends. Seven centuries later, Cicero in like manner asserted that friendship “can only exist between good men.”⁸ By “good men,” Cicero intended “those whose actions and lives are … free from greed, lust or violence; and who have the courage of their convictions.” In the eyes of their contemporaries, De Gasperi, Nenni, and Togliatti⁹ met this definition.

Aristotle and Cicero regarded friendship as a public as well as a personal good. The kinds of mutual regard and encouragement which link friends are also needed in a proper community, or city-state.¹⁰ Such an extension of inter-personal friendship into the public realm is, in modern parlance, encompassed by the category of “political friendship.” Aristotle viewed the community as a koinonia—literally a “sharing.” Such sharing involves both friendship and justice, which Aristotle asserted “by nature increase together.”¹¹ What’s more, as extended friendships informed by justice, communities are “sustained by a “scheme of cooperation”—a kind of constitution.¹² Central to the argument which I advance in this work is the conjunction of personal and political friendship in the genesis of Italy’s republican order.

Applying Aristotle schemata to the specific socio-political context of the late Roman Republic, Cicero developed a more nuanced analysis, tying together personal character, interpersonal ties, alliance building, and political efficacy.¹³ In the words of classicist Donald Earl, the “politics of the Roman Republic were social and personal.” In their political propaganda, Roman statesmen employed class and partisan terms, taking sides in power struggles pitting “Optimates against Populares, Senate and Businessmen, Senate and People, Caesarians and Pompeians.” Yet there is little evidence that “the average noble Roman politician subscribed to a consistent political philosophy in the sense that a modern might … Romans did not distinguish morality sharply from politics or economics” but looked at affairs largely in ethical terms, “reflecting the personal and social nature of political life itself.”¹⁴

The leadership exercised by our three founding fathers also depended on their capacity to frame political imperatives in ethical terms. Unlike their ancient forebears, however, and as leaders of modern mass parties, De Gasperi, Togliatti, and Nenni anchored their ethical concerns in political ideologies which tied them to their constituents.

Cicero identified fides (trust—fiducia in Italian) as the fundamental prerequisite for friendship.¹⁵ As a conservative, Cicero was not describing elements of an idealized polis, but articulating practical principles of governance in a society necessarily composed of unequal social orders. Based on his own experience, the patrician Cicero regarded political friendships with prominent peers as valuable but also vulnerable to shifts in political winds as well as the vagaries of personal sentiment. More robust for the late republic were asymmetrical ties between patrician patrons and lesser clients.¹⁶ De Gasperi too was a conservative—though a moderate one. He remained comfortable with a class society, so long as it was leavened by Christian compassion.

Let us take a moment here to articulate three concentric circles of amicable ties posited by Aristotle—friendships of virtue, of pleasure, and of utility¹⁷—as these manifested themselves in De Gasperi’s relationships with others. Located in the first category—“friendships of virtue”—were De Gasperi’s closest friends. These close friends comprised a cordata—a mountain climbing team, bound by one rope. An avid climber himself in his younger years, De Gasperi treasured the absolute trust and confidence in each other’s skill and the commitment of all members which typified the cordata.¹⁸ But besides the Roman lawyer and party organizer Giuseppe Spataro¹⁹ and Emilio Bonomelli,²⁰ manager of the papal countryside estate at Castel Gandolfo, there were few political colleagues who De Gasperi trusted so implicitly during the post-Second World War phase of his political career.

The ancient Greeks and Romans dismissed the possibility of full-fledged friendship between man and wife (and more broadly men and women). De Gasperi’s experience in this respect could not have been more different. Alcide’s ties with his wife Francesca powerfully sustained him through thick and thin. Emotional equals, the two forged an exceptional, enduring bond—an indispensable, intimate foundation for De Gasperi’s lengthy political career. Francesca was unquestionably Alcide’s best friend.²¹

Yet as several biographers have noted, De Gasperi was not inclined to romanticism in his relationships with women.²² Deeply involved in Italian politics, he hesitated to court Francesca, even at age forty. A year before their 1922 betrothal, he wrote her, asking:

Do you think that I shall ever have a respite from this public service that sometimes seems to be my cross and is instead my mission or destiny? And that a man in my position has the right to ask another person to adapt herself to this tyranny that will continue to impose itself inexorably? ²³

He did soften his tone in the subsequent portion of the letter, inviting Francesca to “come, live with me, to be drawn to that same attraction, as toward an abyss of light.”²⁴ This last passage reveals how tightly spirituality and sentimentality were intertwined for De Gasperi. Interestingly, Francesca Romano’s family was said to be among the wealthiest in the Trento region. For Alcide, this consideration may have reassured him that his wife and eventual family would be provided for should his political entanglements complicate his ability in that regard.

At the second level—“friendships of pleasure”²⁵—De Gasperi did build significant relationships with younger Christian Democratic Party colleagues. A representative figure here is Giulio Andreotti, who served as undersecretary and then secretary to the Council of Ministers from 1947 to 1954. There were elements of both mentoring and patronage in this friendship, but I would stress even more its quasi-paternal nature. De Gasperi had four daughters but no sons. Might Andreotti and several other up and coming party members been substitutes for the sons he never had?

Andreotti felt orphaned after losing his father—when he was only two—and his mother when he was still a young man. He recalls that when he learned of De Gasperi’s death in mid-August 1954, the news hit him as only the passing of his mother had.²⁶

Doubtless Cicero would have understood such a bond. In Aristotelian terms, again, these were friendships of pleasure.

Most of De Gasperi’s political ties however took the form of alliances—in Aristotelian terminology “friendships of utility”—the third and most inclusive category in the Greek philosopher’s analytical framework. This level of friendship implies, at least provisionally, that the self-interest of each partner correlates with their partner’s. A great asset of De Gasperi’s in forming such ties was the fact that, in Elisa Carrillo’s words, “he learned to accept men as they are, not as they seemed or wished to be.”²⁷ Similarly, in weighing candidates for lesser governmental positions, the prime minister inquired first about their temperament and work experience, paying less attention to their political inclinations.

The modern reader may well find that Aristotle’s approach to political friendship over-emphasizes cooperation at the expense of rivalry. Hannah Arendt offers a sterner conception, defining “politics as the proper sphere of social antagonism.” Particularly i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Three Founding Fathers
• 2. A Daunting Prospect
• 3. From Resistance to Restoration
• 4. Monarchy or Republic?
• 5. The Constitution and the Peace Treaty
• 6. Toward April 18, 1948
• 7. Cold War Stasis, 1948–1954
• 8. Aftermath
• Chronology of Events
• Bibliography
• Index
• Imprint