Conclusion

Antifascism manifested itself in many colours. First emerging as a reality and as a concept in Italy in the course of the 1920s, the limited reach of the sole actually existing case (Italy) ensured that, for some years, antifascism—and fascism!—remained a rather marginal phenomenon for observers outside of the confines of the Italian state. In the words of an astute contemporaneous analyst, the Austrian social democrat Adolf Sturmthal: ‘As long as Fascism was considered a purely Italian development, foreign Socialists were inclined to regard the Black Shirts in much the same way as curious spectators look at strange animals in a zoological garden: as interesting specimens, but hardly beasts that might affect one’s own life. To study them might satisfy human curiosity but would bring little practical knowledge’....

Honni soit qui mal y pense

The challenges to traditional ante-bellum or ante-Mussolini ways of ruling and running societies were perhaps most visible in the area of fundamental changes affecting the most popular mass media at that time: newspapers. Virtually all across Europe, the vast majority of hitherto operating daily newspapers were shut down at the moment of liberation, and a new antifascist press often took over production facilities vacated by their compromised former owners. After some cursory glances at the politics of the post-liberation press in Germany and Italy, I then go into considerable detail in the case of France. For it was in France where the challenges to published opinion in the wake of Nazi occupation went further and deeper than anywhere else. In France, however, too, within very few years the power of money regained the upper hand, turning back the clock to the status quo ante bellum.

Last Stands

The moment of liberation in Western Europe spans several years before and after Victory in Europe Day. The roughly two years before 8 May 1945 witnessed the greatest extension of antifascist resistance activism, imparting an aura of radicalization to this period. It is possible to pinpoint specifically when the pressures of radical antifascist resistance activism broke out one last time in post-liberation Western Europe. In Belgium, tensions rose in conjunction with the attitudes of the new post-liberation government headed by the conservative Catholic Hubert Pierlot. In November 1947, first in Marseille but then also in Saint-Étienne, resistance activists defied the old political elite in militant actions which were the last of their kind in post-liberation France. In Italy, the assassination attempt on Palmiro Togliatti in 1948 marked the last stand of the radical resistance spirit, witnessing instances of quasi-urban insurrections in some of the traditional hotspots of antifascism in Italy.

Prologue

It is still an unresolved question why it happened. But, literally in the closing moments of World War II, when the American and Soviet armies converged in central Germany, the impossible occurred. A stretch of German territory with roughly 500,000 inhabitants in the southwestern reaches of Saxony, from the foothills of the relatively industrialized Erzgebirge all the way to the borders with Czechoslovakia, roughly halfway between Chemnitz and Karlovy Vary, remained unoccupied by either the American or Soviet armies for more than five weeks, in some cases up to seven weeks. From 8 May 1945 until mid-June or even later, two Landkreise...

‘Who Is the Government? We Are the Government!’

Liberation Committees were most frequently local institutions of grassroots counterpower vis-à-vis traditional power brokers wishing to facilitate the smooth return to the status quo ante bellum or ante Mussolini. In factories, large offices, and rural areas characterized by the survival of semi-feudal production relations, the latter still a prominent feature in parts of rural Italy, Liberation Committees constituted prima facie challenges to the reestablishment of the dictatorial powers of proprietors and top-level managers. Nowhere did the competing social visions and political projects clash more thoroughly than in factories, offices, or the circumstances confronting landless labourers vis-à-vis traditional landed elites. Next to no serious attention has been devoted to this contentious feature of the moment of liberation until now. My description and analysis of Liberation Committees at the point of production reinforces the assessment of the moment of liberation as a transnational moment of crisis and opportunity when everything appeared possible.

The Wind from the North

No Western European country experienced liberation at such a slow pace as Italy. The Allied landing on Sicily occurred twenty months before the final liberation of Northern Italy in late April 1945. As a result, the evolution of antifascist resistance activism underwent a contradictory development unique in Western Europe. The official Roman government administering liberated Italy and Rome-based coordinating bodies of the resistance operating in the North performed the role of a break on the radical dynamic of antifascist activism in Italy’s North. In parts of Central and Northern Italy, the social power and political clout of Liberation Committees became all-important counterpowers to traditional political authorities, far exceeding the radical dynamics which had propelled French Liberation Committees into the limelight of their day. Virtually all of Northern Italy was liberated by antifascist activists in advance of the arrival of Allied troops moving north.

Rebellion in the South

Much attention has been rightfully devoted to the invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944 and—less so—the Allied landing on the Mediterranean coastline. This chapter focuses on the contribution by antifascist resistance activists to the liberation of France. It is often overlooked that much of Southern France south of the Loire and Lake Geneva was liberated to a significant extent by resistance units. Obviously, without the engagements responsible for the liberation of the Northern half of France by Allied troops, the resistance would not have been able to carry this out. Still, the liberation of roughly half of France by resistance groups had major consequences for the plans of French antifascists for post-liberation society. The most significant acts of defiance of the smooth return to the status quo ante bellum occurred precisely in those areas where the resistance had been largely responsible for the expulsion of German troops.

Introduction

The moment of liberation in Western Europe forms the endpoint or the starting point of countless history books. For good reason. The final end of a murderous total war constitutes a logical marker in historians’ attempts to make sense of the past. This book takes a rather different approach. The moment of liberation is here understood as a roughly five-year-long period which formed a distinct era on both sides of 8 May 1945, the official date of the termination of hostilities in the European theatre of World War II. It includes the final months—indeed, up to two years—of war, occupation, and resistance, but also up to three years—depending on location and circumstance—of the post-liberation period....