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| Giustizia e Libertà | |
|---|---|
 Emblem of Giustizia e Libertà | |
| Active | 1929–1945 |
| Allegiance | Italian anti-fascist resistance |
| Type | Partisans |
| Part of | Action Party |
| Engagements | Spanish Civil War,Liberation of Italy |
| Commanders | |
| Notable commanders | Riccardo Bauer,Carlo Rosselli,Ferruccio Parri,Giorgio Bocca |
Giustizia e Libertà (Italian pronunciation:[dʒuˈstittsjaelliberˈta];lit. 'Justice and Liberty') was an Italiananti-fascistresistance movement, active from 1929 to 1945.[1] The movement was cofounded byCarlo Rosselli,[1]Ferruccio Parri, who later becamePrime Minister of Italy,Emilio Lussu,[2]Sandro Pertini, who becamePresident of Italy,[3] and other Italian anti-fascist refugees.
The movement's members held various political beliefs but shared a belief in active, effective opposition to fascism, compared to the older Italian anti-fascist parties.Giustizia e Libertà also made the international community aware of the realities of fascism in Italy, thanks to the work ofGaetano Salvemini.
The anti-fascist organisationGiustizia e Libertà was established in 1929 by the Italian refugeesRiccardo Bauer,[4]Carlo Rosselli,Emilio Lussu,Alberto Tarchiani, andErnesto Rossi. They had been imprisoned onLipari and escaped together on 27 July 1929. Once they reached Paris in August,[5] they began to organise resistance againstItalian Fascism, forming clandestine groups in Italy and setting up an intense propaganda campaign, publishing under Lussu's maxim: "Insorgere! Risorgere!" (Rebel! Revive!).[6]
Carlo Levi was named a director of the Italian branch along withLeone Ginzburg, a Russian Jew from Odessa who had emigrated with his parents toTurin. The group's logo, a flame placed between a G and L was designed byGioacchino Dolci [it], another exile that had escaped from Lipari.[7] The group's members included the exilesRaffaele Rossetti,Alberto Cianca,[8] Vincenzo Nitti, and Francesco Fausto.
Giustizia e Libertà was committed to militant action to fight the Fascist regime—it tried to be not a political party, but a revolutionary movement. The movement sawBenito Mussolini as a ruthless murderer who himself deserved to be killed as punishment.[9] Various early schemes were designed by the movement in the 1930s to assassinate Mussolini, including one dramatic plan of using an aircraft to drop a bomb onPiazza Venezia where Mussolini resided.[9]
After a series of arrests and trials, (including the conviction of Carlo Levi) the movement was forced in 1930 to curb this activity. In 1931, the organisation joined theConcentrazione Antifascista Italiana (Anti-Fascist Concentration), and in 1932 began promoting a plan that aimed not for the restoration of the pre-fascist political order but for a newsocial democracy centered around aRepublican state. It called for economic rights and administrative decentralisation. The group produced its own journal, on which Salvatorelli, De Ruggiero and others collaborated. This journal reflected the politics of the group's leaders, who sought to distance themselves fromcommunism and theItalian Communist Party.
At the outbreak of theSpanish Civil War in 1936, the organisation formed its own volunteer brigades to support theSpanish Republic. Carlo Rosselli andCamillo Berneri headed a mixed volunteer unit of anarchist, liberal, socialist, and communist Italians on theAragon front, whose military successes included a victory against Francoist forces in theBattle of Monte Pelado. They popularised the slogan: "Oggi in Spagna, domani in Italia" (Today in Spain, tomorrow in Italy). In 1937, Camillo Berneri was killed by communist forces during a purge of anarchists in Barcelona. With the fall of the Spanish Republic in 1939,Giustizia e Libertà partisans were forced to flee back to France.
Several members of Giustizia e Libertà, including Aldo Garosci, Alberto Cianca, and Alberto Tarchiani, then emigrated to the United States, where they helped form the antifascistMazzini Society to promote a liberal democratic republic for Italy. They sailed to England in 1943 and set in operation the clandestine Giustizia e Libertà radio to denounce both Fascism and the monarchy for its complicity in Fascism.
Giustizia e Libertà was forced to cease public operations when German troopsoccupied France in 1940. Its members were dispersed, but largely reconstituted themselves as theAction Party (Partito d'Azione) in German-occupied Italy following theArmistice of 1943. The military arms of the organisation, the partisan brigades, were still referred to asGiustizia e Libertà.
After 8 September 1943, partisan units under theGiustizia e Libertà banner formed after the Italian capitulation to Allied forces and the creation of theItalian Social Republicpuppet state of Nazi Germany. As the largest non-Communist partisan groups, they benefited from provisions and training that were denied to other units by the western Allies. Among the group's best known commanders wasFerruccio Parri, who, using the nom-de-guerre "Maurizio," represented the Action Party in the Military Committee of the National Liberation Committee of Northern Italy (CLNAI). Centres of activity included Turin,Florence, andMilan, where a resistance cell was headed byUgo La Malfa, Ferruccio Parri, andAdolfo Tino. Parri was arrested in Milan and turned over to the Germans, but he was later exchanged for German officials imprisoned by the partisans. He returned in time to take part in the conclusive phase of the resistance and in the Milan uprising.
The writerPrimo Levi was a member of the Action Party partisan group inAosta Valley. He was captured by fascist forces in 1943, handed over to the Germans in 1944, and deported toAuschwitz III (Monowitz).
Giustizia e Libertà brigades were regarded as professional military units, which drew fighters from every social class. In the twenty months of the war, their units sustained 4,500 overall casualties, among them the greater portion of their leaders.
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