In the winter of 1944 the political situation in the southern kingdom, controlled byAllied Military Government (AMG), still appears blocked by the institutional conflict that arose between the anti-fascist parties united in the National Liberation Committee and the royal government presided over by Marshal Pietro Badoglio. In March, the negotiations started at the beginning of ’44 between the Italian diplomat Renato Prunas, general secretary of the Foreign Ministry, and the Soviet representative in the Mediterranean Andreij Vysinsky concluded, which ensured the recognition of the Southern kingdom by the Soviet Union.
The consequences of this agreement were of great importance. The USSR obtained what it had repeatedly been denied by its Anglo-American allies, i.e. involvement in the issues of the Mediterranean area, and showed itself in favor of the formation of an Italian government of anti-fascist national unity with the participation of the PCI. The Italy of Vittorio Emanuele III and Badoglio sought to extend its international relations in order to make the conditions of surrender imposed by the Anglo-Americans less harsh and to consolidate its evanescent government. A few days later Palmiro Togliatti landed in Naples.
In fact, Ercoli had asked Georgi Dimitrov, secretary of the just dissolved Comintern, to return to Italy immediately after the fall of fascism, on 27 July 1943. And he will again forcefully ask Dimitrov the question of his return to Italy the day after Italy’s declaration of war on Germany, on 14 October 1943: “It is necessary that we ourselves have a clear opinion on the question of the participation of communists in the Badoglio government”, in order to be able to influence the position of the Italian comrades “through our broadcasts”.
Already on 10 September – two days after Italy’s unconditional surrender to the Anglo-Americans – Togliatti declared on Radio Milano Libertà that if the Badoglio government takes “in its hands, openly without hesitation, the flag of Italy’s defense against the vile Hitlerian aggression […] the people will give him their support.” And on September 23 he will give a positive opinion to Badoglio’s proclamation for the people’s fight against the Germans and will recognize him as “head of the legitimate government of our country”. Even more significant is the speech of 16 October, again from Radio Milano Libertà, which declared itself in favor of accepting Badoglio’s invitation to expand his government to include anti-fascist parties.
As Paolo Spriano will observe, “the line is clear: collaborate with Badoglio, shift the political axis of his government, transform the Marshal’s government into a democratic government of national unity”. But it is not the line of the CLN of Rome nor of the CLNAI of Milan, who are far from any idea of collaborating with the king and with Badoglio. As well as the Roman communist leaders led by Mauro Scoccimarro and the Milanese with Luigi Longo and Pietro Secchia.
Meanwhile, at the end of October 1943, a conference of the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union, the United States and Great Britain was held in Moscow, which also discussed the Italian problem and approved a joint declaration for the complete destruction of fascism to be pursued with participation in the Italian government “of those sectors of the Italian people who have always opposed fascism”.
In a speech he gave on 26 November 1943 in the Column Hall of the House of Trade Unions in Moscow, Togliatti clearly indicated the themes that would constitute the foundations of the ‘Salerno turning point’ a few months later. First of all, the temporary setting aside of the anti-monarchist prejudicial for the need to establish a government of national unity with the participation of “all the popular democratic forces” to impose “on the whole nation a unanimous, continuous, obstinate effort to conduct the war in a effective”.
Once a victory had been achieved, a Constituent Assembly would have resolved the institutional question and given life to a new Italian democracy: “For this reason the new Italian democracy will have to be a consistent anti-fascist democracy, a strong regime, which rests on a vast network of mass organisations, trade unions, cooperatives, anti-fascist political parties. It must guarantee all popular freedoms.”
On 12 January 1944, again from the Moscow microphones of Radio Milano Libertà, Togliatti will once again indicate the line for a new unified Italian government and for the postponement of the institutional question to the post-war period, just as the negotiations for the Soviet recognition of the Badoglio government were starting : “Prompt, immediate indeed, creation of a democratic national government and with the participation of all anti-fascist parties, […] public solemn declaration by everyone – starting from the king and Badoglio down to the last of the parties – with which the people are promised that the problem of the form of the State will be decided by the people themselves, once the war is over, through the Constituent Assembly of the whole nation.”
However, antithetical positions on the Italian situation are still evident in international communism and at the Soviet leaders. On January 24, Dimitrov sent a document to Foreign Minister Molotov declaring: “Communists must not participate in the current Badoglio government, firstly because this government is not a democratic government, waging active war against the enemy, and, secondly, because the entry of communists into the current government would split the national anti-fascist front and thus strengthen the reactionary elements in the circle of the king and Badoglio”.
This profoundly contradictory situation will provoke a resolution drawn up by Togliatti himself on 26 February 1944, and transmitted on 1 March by Dimitrov to Molotov, which states the opposite of what had been maintained up until then. The communists “demand the abdication of the king, as he is complicit in the establishment of the fascist regime and in all of Mussolini’s crimes, […] they refuse to participate in the current Badoglio government and denounce this government’s policy as an obstacle to the real participation of the Italian people in the war against Germany”.
But a note added by Togliatti to this document reaffirms what he has maintained several times and reiterated as soon as it arrives in Naples a month later: “The communists are even ready to participate in a government without the abdication of the king, on the condition that this government takes action in conduct the war for the expulsion of the Germans from the country, which implements the seven points of the Moscow Conference, and that the king himself agrees to convene after the war a Constituent Assembly to which the final decision on the question of the monarchy and the future regime of the Village”.
The conversation between Togliatti and Stalin on the night between 4 and 5 March, which remained confidential, appears to have been decisive. One can only hypothesize that the judgments of the two communist leaders were substantially coincident and that there may also have been a mutual influence, despite the profound difference in power between the Soviet leader and the Italian leader.
Togliatti will leave Moscow around March 6. The repatriation procedures had been underway for some time, encountering difficulties and delays, both in Moscow and in Italy. Permission will be granted only at the end of January ’44. The journey will last about twenty days. By plane, comrade Ercoli will reach Baku, then Tehran, then Cairo where, on March 14, he will receive news of the Soviet recognition of the Badoglio government. In Algiers, where he arrived on 21 March, the Allied authorities informed him of the difficulty in obtaining air passage and authorized him to continue by sea. Togliatti embarks on the British merchant ship Ascania and will arrive in Naples on the evening of March 27.
Naples will appear to him in an ‘apocalyptic’ scenario, between the fumes of the erupting Vesuvius and the war disasters: “For many hours already, even before arriving in sight of the coasts, an enormous mass of smoke was gathering on the sea for tens of kilometers announced Italy and Vesuvius. […] A rain of fine ash drifted over the gulf, covering the fields and roads. The face of the homeland, once again reached after eighteen years of exile, had something apocalyptic about it.”
Ercoli will arrive at the Federation during the night and will be recognized by his teammates present: Salvatore Cacciapuoti, Clemente Maglietta, Maurizio Valenzi. On 30 and 31 March the PCI will hold the first National Council of the liberated regions. Togliatti’s intervention, defined by Pietro Nenni as the ‘Ercoli bomb’, overturned the political situation of liberated Italy. But in essence it was what he had already stated several times and in particular in the aforementioned Radio Milano Libertà broadcast on 12 January.
The text is a preview extract of Francesco Barbagallo’s report for the conference «Togliatti, the “Salerno turning point” and the roots of the Republic» organized by Futura Umanità – Association for the History and Memory of the PCI, which will be held on Saturday 25 May at the Chamber of Labor of Naples starting from 9:30. Speakers will be Aldo Abenante, Luciano Canfora, Luciana Castellina, Francesca Chiarotto, Piero Di Siena, Eugenio Donise, Adriano Giannola, Nino Ferraiuolo, Gianluca Fiocco, Alexander Höbel, Corrado Morgia, Aldo Tortorella, Lucia Valenzi and Massimo Villone
