The Italian Communist Party after 1945
behaved in a way that was contrary to communist
tradition, deliberately seeking general acceptance
by shedding its violent revolutionary image. The
party was led by the astute veteran Palmiro
Togliatti, who had returned from Moscow as
recently as 1944. The communists would prevail,
he believed, only by following a democratic
course, winning mass support among the Italian
people first and then dominating society from this
position of strength. It would take time. This was
a rejection of Lenin’s revolutionary line and
Togliatti had to assert himself against the more
ardent traditional communists. Stalin probably
approved this strategy for communist parties in
Western Europe, where the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ had
taken firm control, because he hoped to be left in
peace to consolidate Soviet power in central and
Eastern Europe. Togliatti’s avowal of the consti-
tutional, non-violent path to socialism prepared
the way for a close electoral alliance, virtually a
fusion, with the Socialist Party, which was led by
another veteran and Togliatti’s companion in
arms during the Spanish Civil War, Pietro Nenni.
One pivotal question for the future would be
whether a democratic left, including the commu-
nists but not necessarily dominated by them,
would emerge in post-war Italy. The year 1947
was crucial for the future of Italian politics. The
US and Britain had identified a critical Soviet
challenge in Europe: Turkey was under pressure
and in Greece civil war was raging: they were, in
Truman’s words, ‘still free countries being chal-
lenged by communist threats both from within
and without’ – while in Poland and the rest of
Eastern Europe the Soviet Union and the indi-
genous communists were tightening their grip.
Truman’s response was to offer the democratic
Western European states US support – diplo-
matic, economic and military. The outcome was
the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and the
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The effect of
this support on Italian politics was that the
Christian Democratic leader Alcide De Gasperi,
after a visit to Washington, forced his commu-
nist–Socialist partners out of the governing coali-
tion in May 1947.
The heightening tensions of the Cold War also
created enormous strains within the communist–
Socialist pact. Could the communists continue
to be trusted? A minority among the Socialists led
by Giuseppe Saragat demanded that their party
break off their close relationship with the commu-
nists; when they failed to persuade their col-
leagues, they left the party in 1947 and eventually
formed the Italian Social Democratic Party
(PSDI). By giving up the struggle within the
party and splitting the socialists, the PSDI left the
communists in a position from which they were
able for the next three decades to dominate the
left. Thus the communists opposed the Marshall
Plan, though earlier the communist–Socialist
alignment had accepted American economic aid.
But the communist and Nenni Socialists were
never strong enough to form an alternative gov-
ernment on their own, nor could they find any
other small parties to join them to provide a
majority in parliament. Domestically the Com-
munist Party tried to make itself acceptable by
espousing democracy and a multi-party system,
an Italian road to socialism. But the autocratic
organisation and leadership principle which the
Communist Party itself strictly adhered to under-
mined confidence in the authenticity of their548 THE RECOVERY OF WESTERN EUROPE IN THE 1950s AND 1960s
Population (millions)1946 1962 1979 2004
Italy 44.99 50.17 56.80 58.2
Great Britain 49.18 53.44 55.93 60.5
West Germany 43.29 56.9 61.0 82.7*
East Germany 18.6 17.1 16.8
France 40.60 46.99 53.38 60.4*This figure is for Germany as a whole.