Giannuli rereads the birth of the Republic: “Between 1945 and 1948 a latent civil war”

Telling the story of the birth of the Republic in light of the system of power that took shape in Italy between the end of the Second World War and the elections of 18 April 1948. This is the key to “Shadows on the Republic. 1945-1948: a latent civil war”, the new essay by Aldo Giannulipublished by Ponte alle Grazie (462 pages, 19.90 euros), in which the historian proposes a reconstruction of the three-year constituent period as a decisive phase for understanding the entire Italian republican affair.

The latent civil war

The central thesis of the volume is that post-war Italy was crossed by a “latent civil war“, never resulting in open conflict but constantly present in institutions, parties, security apparatuses, international relations and society. According to Giannuli, that tension then transformed into a “cold civil war”, parallel to the Cold War between blocs, destined to mark the First Republic well beyond 1948.

The book deals with the transition from the monarchy to the Republic, the role of the Constituent Assembly, the institutional referendum, the birth of the party system, the reconstruction of the secret services, the Portella della Ginestra massacre, the attempted coup of 1947, the relationship between Pius XII, the United States and the Christian Democrats, up to the issue of Togliatti’s PCI.

Giannuli claims a transdisciplinary approach: political history is intertwined with constitutional law, sociology of parties, economic history, history of intelligence and international relations and contests the idea of ​​a historiography reduced to a tribunal of the past and instead proposes a method based on the attempt to “understand everyone and not give discounts to anyone”, even when analyzing politically distant or morally compromised actors.

The balance between the parties

The birth of the material Constitution of the Republic has particular importance. For Giannuli, the post-war political-economic system is structured around a balance between partiesthe financial world, state apparatus and Italy’s international position. The result is a model that guarantees stability, but also immobility: a Republic capable of avoiding the fate of Greece and remaining a liberal democracy, but marked by profound continuities, corporatism, low political mobility and unresolved North-South dualism.

The historian attributes an ambivalent role to the DC and the PCI: the merit of having prevented open civil war and allowed the constitutional stability of the country, but also the responsibility of having built a blocked system. De Gasperi, in reading Giannuli, understood the logic of competitive Western democracy more than Togliatti and worked on the construction of a moderate-conservative bloc, while the communist leader, although skilled, committed serious strategic errors in the constituent season.

An essay that, in the year ofeightieth republican anniversaryaims to reopen the discussion on the origins of the Italian democratic state, showing how those origins were more fragile, conflictual and less pacified than is often said.