bined with the call that all Italians should unite
to defeat fascism and the Germans. Togliatti’s
aims were long-term, to rally the Italian masses to
an Italian Marxist line afterthe war, to establish
what he enigmatically called ‘progressive democ-
racy’. The inevitable drawback of his policies was
that by supporting the royal government he also
strengthened the anti-communist forces which, as
it turned out, have dominated Italian politics ever
since 1945.
The party in greatest difficulty after the war
was the ‘other party’ of the left, the socialists.
Should it be ready now to unite the left, to gain
a majority in the country and to collaborate with
the communists? It was led by Pietro Nenni, a
warm and popular ‘man of the people’ who
believed that it was the disunity of the working
class that had allowed Mussolini and the fascists
to gain and retain power. Hence his decision after
1945 to urge close collaboration with the
Communist Party. This policy eventually split the
party in 1947, a majority following Nenni; a
minority under Giuseppe Saragat distrusted
Moscow and the communists, left the party on
this issue and formed their own party, the Social
Democrats.
The Christian Democrats were to play the deci-
sive role in post-war Italian politics. The principal
aim of the party was to re-establish the constitu-
tional parliamentary state of the pre-fascist era.
Fervour for reform varied among party members,
those on the left being the keenest. But the
Christian Democrats enjoyed one large electoral
advantage: the full backing of the Vatican. The
leader of the party, who dominated Italian politics
in the immediate post-war years was Alcide
De Gasperi, a practising Catholic. Although not
solely a Catholic party, the Christian Democrats
depended on the support of the Church for their
electoral success. Yet De Gasperi was no mere cap-
tive of the Church. Despite Vatican disapproval he
was ready to work with the communists in the
National Liberation Council during the war and
he encouraged communist participation in the
post-war coalition governments until 1947. It
served the interests of the governments he led
after December 1945 not to drive the communists
immediately into opposition.
In post-war Italy the Church resumed its enor-
mous influence over the lives of believers, the
Vatican and priests backing from their pulpits the
Christian Democrats against the godless commu-
nists. The Christian Democrats succeeded in
attracting by far the largest support of any one
party. However, the alliance of Togliatti’s com-
munists and of Nenni’s Socialist Party, both
strongly based in industrial northern and in
central Italy, obtained as much support as the
Christian Democrats but, with the Allies occupy-
ing Italy until the peace treaty was signed in
1947, they had to content themselves with the
position of coalition partners in governments led
by the Christian Democrat De Gasperi. The com-
munists and their socialist allies were in any case
anxious to prove their good behaviour as a non-
revolutionary political grouping. Dominating the
reborn trade unions, the communists urged
restraint on the workers in the north, and at the
end of the war ensured that the partisans gave up
their arms, so ending any possibility of revolution.
Were these tactics a betrayal of the working class
and the revolution, as extreme-left theoreticians
later claimed? Revolution in the circumstances
prevailing in Italy was unlikely to have succeeded.
Stalin would have given no support. The over-
whelming strength of the Anglo-American
armies, the fact that the partisans were not all
communists and their need for Allied supplies
against the Germans made the notion of a seizure
of power in 1944 and 1945 quite unrealistic.
Despite the support the Church gave to the
monarchy Italy became a republic in 1946, in
response to a national referendum. The majority
for the republic had been slender, reflecting the
small preponderance of the left. A constituent
assembly was elected at the same time, with three
parties gaining most of the votes: the Christian
Democrats secured 35 per cent, the socialists
nearly 21 per cent and the communists just under
19 per cent. The revived extreme right, quasi-
fascists, managed to obtain 5.3 per cent. On
crucial issues, communists and socialists behaved
moderately, so that a constitution setting up a
parliamentary form of government was agreed on
in 1947. It left many issues ambiguous and would
allow the shift to the right to continue.
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