A History of Everyday Politics of Resistance in Rural Tuscany, 1943-44

Abstract

From September 1943 following the fall of Mussolini's fascist regime and the signing of an armistice between Italy and the Allies, central and northern Italy came under Nazi German occupation. A Committee of National Liberation (CLN) was formed by the leaders of Italy's five anti-fascist underground political parties to organise armed resistance and to influence the formation of a post-Liberation Italian government. The literature valorises such resistance as superordinate to other forms - as do local commemorative events and Liberation Day celebrations. I use a case study of a rural Tuscan community to challenge this hierarchical concept of resistance and to develop a new analysis that recognises the importance of everyday resistance by local inhabitants to undermine the Nazi-fascist regime through covert, non-combative measures.

Acts of everyday resistance could be independent of any form of organisation, or planned in collaboration with others. I liken armed resistance to frontline soldiers in a regular army. Everyday resistance provided intelligence lines, guides to navigate local terrain, food, footwear, civilian clothing, long and short-term shelter, transport and medical services. It also worked to deprive occupation forces of food and other essentials. Severe retribution could result for protagonists of everyday resistance, their families, households or entire communities.

The first scholarly study to use everyday resistance as the primary optic of analysis for the period, this thesis adds new dimensions to rural Tuscan resistance history. It reveals such resistance to be integral to the broader resistance effort, foundational to the formation of local armed resistance bands and crucial to their success. Motives for everyday resistance reflected local values and priorities of family, community - and dignity, while its practices reflected survival mechanisms developed by tenant farmers under the notoriously oppressive Tuscan sharecropping system. Landowners' resistance reflected their customary patron-client obligations. This study found that for a short while relations between the two shifted away from extreme power differentials to closer alignment of shared purpose, interest and practice.

Everyday resistance went largely unnoticed by Nazi-fascist authorities. Its cumulative effect was to strengthen and grow armed resistance - a fact recognised by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, Commander in Chief of German armed forces in Italy. Wehrmacht officers' failure to inflict reprisals in communities suspected of everyday resistance led Kesselring take the unusual step of demanding direct authority over SS troops in Italy and to escalate punitive raids on rural communities as a means to quash everyday rural resistance. I propose these decisions were directly affected by the combined success of both forms of resistance in this area.

Everyday resistance goes almost unnoticed in the literature, where popular images show dishevelled young men and their comrades festooned with munitions ready to protect family, liberty and country. In this thesis I show that wartime demographics meant everyday resistance in rural Tuscany was largely the province of women who recorded the region's lowest literacy levels so left no written records. Even well-educated female members of political parties considered their non-combative resistance an extension of their role as women and didn't speak of it after the war. A key finding of this thesis is that women's customary practices of maintaining silence and not being noticed - practices born of weakness and oppression became during the German occupation strengths and successful agents of resistance.

This thesis sheds light on a poorly understood area of resistance, its nature and significance, its relation to armed resistance, its broader consequences and complexity. It offers a more complete picture of resistance in rural Tuscany and is a basis for comparative resistance studies. Show more