Randolfo Pacciardi

Randolfo Pacciardi (right) with the Prime Minister of Israel , David Ben-Gurion (1958)

Randolfo Pacciardi (born January 1, 1899 in Giuncarico , Gavorrano , Grosseto Province , Tuscany ; † April 14, 1991 ) was an Italian anti-fascist , politician of the Partito Repubblicano Italiano (PRI) and defense minister of the Italian Republic in the post-war period .

Life

Engagement in the PRI and exile in Switzerland

Pacciardi completed a law degree after attending school . For the ambitious young lawyer from Maremma , the older and politically experienced lawyer and politician Giovanni Conti was both teacher and mentor. Pacciardi accompanied Conti on election tours in Lazio, Tuscany and Umbria and wrote articles for La Voce Repubblicana , the daily newspaper of the PRI, which Conti founded in January 1921.

After completing his studies, he took up a position as a lawyer . In 1923, along with Gigino Battisti and Raffaele Rossetti, he was one of the founders of Italia Libera , an association of anti-fascist war veterans that held protests after the murder of Giacomo Matteotti . He remained its secretary until the association was dissolved in 1925. In the 1920s he was Giovanni Conti's successor, along with Fernando Schiavetti and Ugo La Malfa, the editor of La Voce Repubblicana . After all anti-fascist newspapers were banned , La Voce Repubblicana had to cease its publication in 1926.

On December 16, 1926, the Confino Commission in Rome pronounced a “banishment judgment” against the “well-known anti-fascist” Randolfo Pacciardi. To avoid the imminent arrest, he went into exile in Switzerland with Egidio Reale. While Egidio Reale preferred western Switzerland, Pacciardi settled in Lugano , where Guglielmo Canevascini entrusted him with the editing of the “Libera Stampa”. From the canton of Ticino he fought underground against the fascist regime, both in journalism and by organizing and participating in specific actions (e.g. Giovanni Bassanesi and Gioacchino Dolci's flight over Milan ). Papers were smuggled into Italy via Lugano, and anti-fascist fighters (e.g. Fernando de Rosa, Sandro Pertini , Luigi Delfini) came to Italy from Lugano with false papers. In 1933 he was expelled by the Foreign Minister of Switzerland , Giuseppe Motta , and settled in France .

Exile in France, Spanish Civil War and World War II

In April 1933 he succeeded Raffaele Rossetti as secretary of the Republican Party of Italy (PRI), which was banned by Benito Mussolini , and held this office until he was replaced by Giuseppe Chiostergi in March 1934. Pacciardi, a staunch anti-fascist, took part in the Spanish Civil War in 1937 as commander of the Garibaldi battalion . The battalion took u. a. participated in the defense of Madrid and drove out in Guadalajara the Italian troops fighting on Franco's side . He was wounded in the battle of the Jarama . He wrote a book about his experiences in Spain , which was published in Switzerland a year later . In the summer of 1937 he left Spain and returned to France.

In the same year he began to reorganize the Republican Party of Italy in France. At the end of the year he founded a weekly newspaper, La Giovine Italia , which first appeared in Paris and from autumn 1938 in Annemasse . He called Ottavio Abbati to Paris and entrusted him with the administration of the newspaper, the first issue of which appeared on December 4, 1937. The newspaper did not see itself as a party newspaper, but as an anti-fascist newspaper. The authors who regularly wrote articles for Giovine Italia included Alberto Tarchiani , former editor-in-chief of the daily Corriere della Sera and founding member of Giustizia e Libertà , the former Foreign Minister Carlo Sforza , Egidio Reale and the President of the French League for Human Rights , Victor Bash . The fourth page of the newspaper was in the French side and was overseen by Mario Pistocchi, a prominent republican emigrant and publicist. Most of the articles on this page were written by Pistocchi and Albert Bayet , a French sociologist and publicist.

In February 1938, at the invitation of the Italian-American anti-fascist organizations, Pacciardi went on a lecture tour in the United States , where he lectured on the Spanish Civil War and anti-fascism. The trip served to establish contacts and also fundraising in order to secure the publication of Giovine Italia in the long term. During his absence, Ottavio Abbati held the secretariat of the Republican Party. After his return and on the occasion of the 8th Congress of the party in June of the same year, he again became PRI secretary together with Cipriano Facchinetti . He and Facchinetti held the office of PRI secretary until they were replaced by Mario Carrara (Mazzini Society, New York) in January 1942.

In 1939 Pacciardi founded the Mazzini Society with other anti-fascists ( Lionello Venturi , Giuseppe Antonio Borgese , Gaetano Salvemini , Michele Cantarella , Aldo Garosci , Carlo Sforza, Alberto Tarchiani, Max Ascoli and others) , which opposed to other Giustizia e Libertà groups the monarchy and against the agreement that GL representatives in Toulouse had signed with socialist and communist resistance fighters.

Escape from France

After the German occupation of Paris in 1940, Pacciardi settled in Marseille . The situation of the political emigrants became more and more precarious; Jewish refugees and politically persecuted people poured into southern France from all over France, from where they hoped to escape overseas. Pacciardi was in immediate danger, because his name appeared on a list of 123 "dangerous subversives" living in France that the fascist police had sent to the German occupation authorities. He was threatened with arrest and transfer to Italy. In Marseille, Pacciardi and Emilio Lussu began to organize the departure of their followers (PRI and Giustizia e Libertà ) from France. They contacted the Center Américain de Secours under Varian Fry , who supported both companies financially. While under Lussu's leadership the militants of Giustizia e Libertà managed to leave France and to get to safety, Pacciardi's escape plans failed due to poor planning and an overly careless handling of money. In November 1941 Pacciardi boarded the Portuguese freighter Serpa Pinto in Casablanca and left his political friends, including Ottavio Abbati, penniless in Oran .

Exile in New York and return to Rome

In December 1941 the ship docked in New York , where Pacciardi had many contacts (Max Ascoli, professor and co-founder of the Mazzini Society ; Alberto Tarchiani and Carlo Sforza; also the trade unionists Luigi Antonini and Augusto Bellanca and the mayor of New York, Fiorello LaGuardia ), which he followed. He went on lecture tours through the USA and was active as a journalist. He was unable to carry out his plan to form an Italian legion . He also met President Roosevelt's political advisor , Adolf Berle , and came into contact with Deputy Foreign Secretary Sumner Welles . Max Corvo put Pacciardi in contact with the head of the OSS , William Donovan, and with Earl Brennan , the head of the Italian section. These contacts are also what made it possible for Pacciardi to resume contact with his friends in Oran and Casablanca after the Allies landed in North Africa . Some of them were then recruited by the OSS to work in the Italian section. In the summer of 1944 he returned to Rome via Algiers .

Post-war period, reorganization of the PRI and MP

After the fall of Mussolini and the end of the German occupation of Rome, the then PRI secretary Giovanni Conti began reorganizing the Republican Party in Rome in 1943/44, but soon came into conflict with Randolfo Pacciardi, who still had great influence within the party . After the end of the Second World War , Pacciardi followed Conti again as PRI secretary in May 1945, before being replaced by Giulio Andrea Belloni in September 1946 . At that time, Ottavio Abbati was one of his closest collaborators in rebuilding the PRI; However, this was dismissed in July 1945 because of differences of opinion over the course of the party.

On June 25, 1946, Pacciardi became a member of the Constituent Assembly (Assemblea Costituente) , of which he was a member until March 31, 1948. Shortly thereafter, on July 1, 1946, he became chairman of the PRI faction and between July 1946 and January 1948 was also a member of the Committee on International Treaties (Commissione per i trattati internazionali) .

In January 1947, he succeeded Belloni for the fourth time as secretary of the PRI and held the position together with Ugo La Malfa and Oronzo Reale until they were replaced by Belloni in December 1947.

As a candidate for the PRI, Pacciardi became a member of the Chamber of Deputies ( Camera dei deputati ) for the first time on May 8, 1948, and was a member of the Chamber of Deputies ( Camera dei deputati ) for twenty years from the first to the end of the fourth legislative period on June 4, 1968.

Defense Minister and Committee Chairman

On May 23, 1948, Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi appointed him Minister of Defense (Ministro della Difesa) in his fifth cabinet . He also held this ministerial office in the sixth and seventh De Gasperi cabinet until July 16, 1953. In addition to his ministerial office, he was a member of various committees of the Chamber of Deputies, from June 1948 to June 1949 the Committee for Education and Fine Arts (Commissione istruzione e belle arti) , between June 1948 and June 1950 the Committee on Labor, Immigration, Cooperation, Social Security and Assistance, Post-War Assistance, Hygiene and Public Health (Commissione Lavoro, Emigrazione, Cooperazione, Previdenza e Assistenza Sociale, Assistenza Post Bellica, Igiene e Sanità pubblica) and from July 1950 to June 1953 the Defense Committee (Commissione Difesa) .

After leaving the ministerial office, Pacciardi became a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Colonies (Commissione Rapporti con l'Estero, Compresi gli Economici, Colonie) in the second legislative period in July 1953 , of which he was vice-chairman from February 1954 to June 1958 . During the third legislative term, he was a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Immigration (Commissione Affari Esteri, Emigrazione) between June 1958 and June 1959 and chairman of the Defense Committee (Commissione Difesa) between July 1958 and May 1963 .

Most recently, he was a member of the Defense Committee in the fourth legislative period between July 1963 and June 1968 and was also a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Immigration from January 1964 to January 1967.

Political Positions in the Post-War Period

Pacciardi represented over the years increasingly anti-communist views and gradually became a supporter of presidentialism by gaullistischem model. At the same time he grew up in party tensions with the leader of the PRI, Ugo La Malfa and the political secretary, Oronzo Reale. Subjected to attacks by his own party, Pacciardi left the management and founded his own political movement, Difesa repubblicana (German: Republican Wehr). On the occasion of the first congress he described La Malfa and Reale as "matchmakers" (mezzani) of the Socialist Party.

Because of his repeated attacks against the center-left ruling coalition, in which the PRI was also involved, he was expelled from the party in 1964. He then founded the Unione democratica per la Nuova Repubblica (UDNR) movement and named Giano Accame, a former RSI fighter, as vice-president. The increasing disdain that he showed for the institution of parliament and his admiration for the presidential model were pointedly expressed again and again and made him increasingly close to the right-wing circles. In the elections in May 1968, Pacciardi's list received hardly any votes; he himself was not re-elected as a member of parliament.

The rumors of alleged sympathy for neo-fascists and putschists did not die down, for example on the occasion of a private visit to Greece during the colonel's dictatorship when he paid a visit to Foreign Minister Pipinelis . Pacciardi justified himself by saying that he had informed Foreign Minister Nenni and the Italian ambassador in Athens about his planned trip and that he had not met the head of the junta, Papadopoulos .

On the night of December 8, 1970, an attempted coup was attempted under the leadership of Junio ​​Valerio Borghese , which was immediately stopped. Shortly thereafter, Pacciardi said at a congress of the UDNR: “We are witnessing the government's decay.” Pacciardi himself was suspected of having been involved in the development of plans for a coup in 1974 with Edgardo Sogno ; however, he denied the existence of such plans.

Re-entry into the Republican Party

In 1981 Pacciardi was re-admitted to the PRI at his request. He died in Rome in 1991.

literature

• Alessandra Baldini, Paolo Palma: Gli antifascisti italiani in America (1942-1944). La "Legione" nel carteggio di Pacciardi con Borgese, Salvemini, Sforza e Sturzo. Le Monnier, Firenze 1990.
• Raffaella Castagnola, Fabrizio Panzera, Masimiliano Spiga: Spiriti liberi in Svizzera. La presenza di fuorusciti italiani nella Confederazione negli anni del fascismo e del nazismo (1922-1945). Franco Cesati Editore, Firenze 2006.
• Mauro Cerutti: Randolfo Pacciardi. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . July 31, 2009 , accessed January 20, 2020 .
• Mauro Cerutti: Fra Roma e Berna. La Svizzera italiana nel ventennio fascista. Franco Angeli, Milano 1986.
• Giovanni Conti: Controcorrente e copialettere. Rome, no year (around 1945).
• Max Corvo: The OSS in Italy (1942-1945). A personal memoir. Praeger, New York 1990.
• Adriano Dal Pont, Simonetta Carolini: L'Italia al confino 1926-1943. The ordinanze di assegnazione al confino emesse dalle Commissioni provinciali dal November 1926 al luglio 1943. La Pietra, Milano 1983.
• Giuseppe De Lutiis: I servizi segreti in Italia. Dal fascismo alla seconda repubblica. Editori Riuniti, Roma 1998.
• Santi Fedele: I Repubblicani in esilio nella lotta contro il fascismo (1926-1940). Le Monnier, Firenze 1989.
• Mimmo Franzinelli: La sottile linea nera. Neofascismo e servizi segreti da Piazza Fontana a Piazza della Loggia. Rizzoli, Milano 2008.
• Varian Fry: Surrender on Demand. Random House, New York 1945.
• Anne Klein: Refugee Policy and Refugee Aid 1940-1942. Varian Fry and the Committees for the Rescue of Politically Persecuted People in New York and Marseille. Metropol Berlin 2007, pp. 354–355.
• Randolfo Pacciardi: Il Battaglione Garibaldi. Volontari italiani nella Spagna Repubblicana. La Lanterna, Roma 1945, pp. 41-42.
• Randolfo Pacciardi: Verso l'esilio. In: AA.VV .: Egidio Reale e il suo tempo. Firenze 1961.
• Paolo Palma: Una bomba per il duce. La centrale antifascista di Pacciardi a Lugano (1927-1933). Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli 2003; the same: Randolfo Pacciardi. Profilo politico dell'ultimo mazziniano. Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli 2012.
• Elisa Signori: Républicains et giellistes en France entre guerre d'Espagne et Résistance. In: Pierre Milza, Denis Peschanski (eds.): Exils et Migration. Italiens et Espagnols en France (1938-1946). 1995.
• Alessandro Spinelli: I repubblicani nel secondo dopoguerra (1943–1953). Longo, Ravenna 1998.

Web links

• Entry on the homepage of the Camera dei deputati
• Randolfo Pacciardi on treccani.it/enciclopedia/

Individual evidence

1. ↑ On May 15, 1922, Conti wrote to Agostino Ghisleri about his meeting with Pacciardi: I have known him since he, a student in Grosseto , attended my conferences as a listener. He was a brave soldier in the war, was honored with three silver medals and proposed for the gold medal. After the war he graduated from high school and enrolled at university; in November he will get his doctorate in law and I will make him a good and honest lawyer. He has now been with me for six months and is making his first experiences. I think highly of him and his soul is pure. - See Antonluigi Aiazzi, Democrazia come Civiltà. Il carteggio Ghisleri-Conti 1905-1929 , Milano 1977 (Editrice Politica Moderna), p. 355
2. ↑ Paolo Palma, Randolfo Pacciardi. Profilo politico dell'ultimo mazziniano , Soveria Mannelli 2012 (Rubbettino), p. 117.
3. ↑ Randolfo Pacciardi, Verso l'esilio. In: P. Ingusci, A. De Donno et al., Egidio Reale e il suo tempo , Firenze 1961 (La Nuova Italia), p. 96
4. ^ Adriano Dal Pont, Simonetta Carolini: L'Italia al confino 1926-1943. Le ordinanze di assegnazione al confino emesse dalle Commissioni provinciali dal novembre 1926 al luglio 1943 , Milano 1983 (La Pietra), vol. IV, pp. 1325-1326
5. ↑ Paolo Palma: Randolfo Pacciardi. Profilo politico dell'ultimo mazziniano. Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli 2012, p. 119.
6. ↑ Randolfo Pacciardi: Verso l'esilio. In: P. Ingusci, A. De Donno u. a .: Egidio Reale e il suo tempo. La Nuova Italia, Firenze 1961, pp. 104-105
7. ^ Randolfo Pacciardi: Il Battaglione Garibaldi. Volontari italiani nella Spagna Repubblicana. Nuove Edizioni di Capolago, Lugano 1938.
8. ↑ La Giovine Italia , January 22, 1938, p. 3
9. ↑ Paolo Palma: Randolfo Pacciardi. Profilo politico dell'ultimo mazziniano. Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli 2012, p. 125
10. ↑ Elisa Signori, Républicains et giellistes en France entre guerre d'Espagne et Résistance , in: Pierre Milza, Denis Peschanski (eds.): Exils et Migration. Italiens et Espagnols en France (1938-1946). 1995; Pp. 563-564
11. ↑ " What had been lacking were places to hide in once the refugee had arrived in Africa, and some way of moving them on to Lisbon or Gibraltar from there. For these, we turned to the two Italians, Lussu and Pacciardi. Since most of the Italians felt they couldn't go through Spain safely, no matter what papers or disguises they had, Lussu and Pacciardi had been working on schemes to get their men across to Africa, and thence to Gibraltar or Lisbon. Their ideas on how to do this differed radically. Lussu, the more cautious of the two, sought and found genuine safe conducts from Marseille to Oran or Algiers, and then sent his people on to Casablanca by an underground railway which he had built up by remote control from Marseille. Pacciardi stowed his people away for the Mediterranean crossing, hid them in Oran, and was planning to put them all on a big fishing boat which was to take them to Gibraltar ". (Varian Fry, Surrender on demand , New York 1945 (Random House), pp. 189-190). Pacciardi failed to impress Varian Fry. " To me he seemed somewhat naive and even a trifle swashbuckling, but I knew that the people back in New York had great confidence in him. ", Ibid. P. 109
12. ↑ The debacle of the flight connection via Oran and the failure of the cooperation between Pacciardi and the Center Américain de Secours in Marseille are described in: Anne Klein: Refugee Policy and Refugee Aid 1940–1942. The Varian Fry Committee in Marseille and New York. Berlin 2007, pp. 354-355
13. ^ On this, see Alessandra Baldini, Paolo Palma: Gli antifascisti italiani in America. La "Legione" nel carteggio di Pacciardi con Borgese, Salvemini, Sforza e Sturzo. Le Monnier, Firenze 1990.
14. ↑ ibid., Pp. 60–61
15. ^ Max Corvo, The OSS in Italy 1942-1945. A personal memoir. Praeger, New York 1990, p. 27
16. ↑ ibid., P. 37
17. ↑ ibid., Pp. 48–49
18. ↑ Alessandro Spinelli: I repubblicani nel secondo dopoguerra (1943–1953). Longo Ravenna 1998.
19. ↑ Giovanni Conti: Controcorrente e copialettere. Rome, no year, pp. 67, 101
20. ↑ Paolo Palma: Randolfo Pacciardi. Profilo politico dell'ultimo mazziniano. Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli 2012, p. 140.
21. ↑ ibid., Pp. 141–142
22. ↑ ibid., Pp. 144–145
23. ↑ ibid., P. 146
24. ↑ ibid., P. 147