Novelists, Historians and the Memory of the Resistance

During the latter part of the Second World War, Italian partisans fought at the same time against the fascists and the Germans. A new republican constitution was built around the Resistance and for a short time all of the parties that had been involved in the Resistance governed together. With the beginning of the Cold War, left-wing parties were expelled from the government and the Resistance became a subject of dispute. In this context, many historians tended to depict the Resistance as a mass patriotic movement without internal contradictions and divisions which was supported by the vast majority of the population. At the same time novelists, who were often former partisans, provided a much more realistic image of the Resistance. By narrating their experiences, they underlined splits within the Resistance, its military weakness and the reality of relations with the peasantry, which were often problematic. This chapter complements Ginsborg’s focus on the subordination of the resistance to the Allies by exploring the weaknesses the novelists highlighted. It considers the ways these narratives subsequently influenced a revisionist historiography of the Resistance.