WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY SICILIA News Journal Update - (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria: Ransom 13 - Sicily without Italy (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 At the outbreak of the war, Sicily was a land devastated by twenty years

of predatory policies cloaked in pompous propaganda that failed to hide
the failures of the fascist regime. Its border position exposes it to
the most atrocious reprisals, so that, while thousands and thousands of
Sicilians are fighting and dying on the most distant fronts, the
population quickly suffers the bombings that pave the way for the
invasion of July 1943. ---- The great poverty of the middle-lower
classes is exacerbated by the provisions on the compulsory storage of
grain and food products, by the rationing of basic necessities, by the
black market (here the term "scheme" was born), which they enrich mafia
families and fascist hierarchs. All this causes a predisposition towards
the liberating arrival of the allies and the end of fascism.

Much has been written about the preparations for the invasion of the
island by the Anglo-American-Canadian troops, among other things how the
landing was prepared by the United States through an agreement with the
Sicilian-American mafia which would have facilitated the occupation of
the island (1). Salvatore Lupo has attacked this thesis, even recently
with a pamphlet (2) in which, through the study of important often
unpublished documents, he excludes the possibility of a conspiracy with
the mafia. According to Lupo, this, in the person of the boss Lucky
Luciano, was instead involved in the protection of the port of New York
from German saboteurs and from possible "union" protests by the
longshoremen. However, it remains true that, having landed on the
island, the allies used mafia elements both as interpreters (the
Sicilian-Americans) and as "peacemakers" of public order, electing some
of them as mayors, thus providing a never defeated mafia from the regime
a legitimation and further opportunities for enrichment. Suffice it to
mention Lucio Tasca Bordonaro (appointed mayor of Palermo), Don Calò
Vizzini (mayor of Villalba) or Nick Gentile of Raffadali, Michele
Navarra of Corleone, Salvatore Celeste of San Ciprello, etc.

It is the mafia that has boasted of its active role in planning the
landing to legitimize itself, also thanks to the influence deriving from
being, especially in the four provinces of central-western Sicily, the
only "organization" capable of ensuring control of popular masses always
in turmoil. But there is no doubt that the collaboration between the
American army and the mafia after the landing arose from a very specific
US strategy. This can be seen from a document dated 13 August 1943 from
the Office of Strategic Service (OSS) of Palermo (the US secret service
created on 13 June 1942), and addressed to the OSS of Algiers (3): "only
the mafia is in capable of suppressing the black market and influencing
the farmers, who constitute the majority of the population. At the
moment we can count on the Pd'a (Action Party, ed.) and the mafia. We
met with their leaders. The agreements require them to act on our orders
or suggestions. In these parts a pact is not easily broken." From this
and other documents of the same period, the conflict emerges between the
US intelligence services and the American Colonel Charles Poletti, head
of the allied military government, over the failure to purge the
fascists from the public administration, considered by the former to be
a source of discredit towards the allies.

On 14 December 1943, a secret report by agent Vincent J. Scamporino
addressed to the top of the OSS and to those of the Si (Service
intelligence) in Washington (6) underlines "the absolute inability of
the government bodies in charge of administering the island... the
denial of freedom of the press, speech, assembly... the failure to
remove members of the fascist regime from public offices... the failure
to reorganize public security... To protest against a similar situation,
the crowd attacked and set fire to numerous municipal offices. Martial
law has been declared to restore law and order." On 31 March 1944 a
violent riot broke out in Partitico due to the increase in the bread
ration and the distribution of pasta. 8,000 villagers attack the town
hall, discover tons of hidden wheat, burn public offices, throw hand
grenades (the Carabinieri marshal was killed), free the inmates of the
prison and barracks (7).

But for the allied government the continuity of the fascist
administrative apparatus in the institutions is needed, even if this
will then pass intact into the new republican state within prefectures,
police bodies, armed forces, ministries, secret services, public
administration, ready to fulfill the role that it will take shape for
Sicily and Italy within the bipolar world resulting from the Yalta
agreements of 1945.

In the last issue of the newspaper, in the "special" Sicily at war,
Natale Musarra summarizes the ferocious bombings that paved the way for
the Allied landing (4): "From mid-April to mid-July 1943, the "flying
fortresses" Americans hit Agrigento 17 times, Augusta 43, Caltanissetta
6 (had 200 deaths in one go), Castelvetrano 13, Catania 87, Comiso 12,
Gela 12, Licata 19, Marsala 16, Messina 58, Palermo 69, Porto Empedocle
21, Pozzallo 12, Ragusa 27, Sciacca 10, Siracusa 36, Trapani 41, Paternò
9 (over 2,000 dead on 14 July, when the field hospital built to treat
the wounded from the previous days was also bombed), Regalbuto (razed to
the ground by mistake , instead of Troina), Naro (idem, instead of
Canicattì), Palazzolo Acreide and Taormina ("flattened" because they
hosted the German commands), Randazzo". The scientific destruction of
cities and towns is part of the terrorist strategies of each state's air
force, aimed at demoralizing the population and turning them against
their own government. The Sicilians pay for this strategy with over
10,000 civilian deaths and with the cancellation of this tragic aspect
of the "liberation". Nothing but cigarettes and sweets.

But the path of the occupying armies is tinged with the blood of a
series of absolutely arbitrary massacres: civilians and soldiers shot
without even the farce of a trial or conviction: in Biscari (present-day
Acate) and in Piano Stella (in the Caltagirone area) ( 5), in Butera and
Canicattì, while the retreating Germans carried out their massacres,
flooding Sicily with a trail of death characteristic of the brutal logic
of every war.

Once the occupation has taken place and fascism has officially lapsed
after 25 July 1943, there is a Sicily without Italy, administered by a
military government that makes extensive use of the services of the
mafia, the church and former fascists, with all its atavistic unresolved
problems. And with an independence movement at the peak of its flash in
the pan, fueled by a historically reactionary bourgeoisie, by a
self-interested mafia ready to dump it shortly thereafter to jump on the
Christian Democracy bandwagon, but nourished, objectively, also by
genuine and disinterested militancy. This extraordinary convergence of
ideas, interests and methodologies, if it was its strength for a short
period, was also the cause of its sudden deflation. But one of the next
episodes will be dedicated to this specific topic.

In March 1944, Palmiro Togliatti, long arm of the Soviet Union, dropped
the ace of collaboration with the monarchist and anti-fascist forces,
brought the PCI into the unitary government headed by the unpresentable
General Badoglio ("Salerno turning point" of 24 April 1944) referring
the question of the country's institutional structure to the constituent
assembly. A choice that displaces many militants of his party, raised on
intransigence and sectarianism in political relations. Togliatti then
reached an agreement with Msgr. in the summer of 1944. Montini, a
compromise between PCI and DC which lays the foundations for an
agreement between the Vatican and the USSR which will also establish the
disinterest of the Soviet state in the fate of Italy (8).

Meanwhile, US influence on Italian politics and interest in a Sicily
(and an Italy) to be deployed in an anti-Soviet function after the end
of the conflict is growing. In other words, anti-fascism progressively
gives way to anti-communism, and, in this perspective, all "sincere"
anti-communists become pawns of American policy aimed at stabilizing the
country under its protective wing. And who could be more useful than the
fascists? So here are the approaches with fascist elements and groups
operating in the occupied areas, but also the enlistment, by the secret
services, of soldiers from the Decima MAS, whose leader, Junio Valerio
Borghese, captured, is saved thanks to the intervention by the US
commands only to be cleared of the charges and allowed to return to
freedom (9). A page of history that is still controversial but whose
contours are becoming clearer and which allows us to reread relevant
events - among all, the exploits of the Giuliano gang, including the
Portella delle Ginestre massacre - in a new light.

Among the most disastrous outcomes of the Salermo turning point is the
decision to rebuild the Italian army to be sent to fight against the
Germans; position also of the leader of the Catholics Don Luigi Sturzo
who from the American exile on 15 May 1944 hopes for the reconstruction
and rearmament of the army and its sending to the front line on the
Northern front, to give Italy full credit as a nation cobelligerent.

The Italian army, always commanded by officers and generals
distinguished for their loyalty to the fascist regime and the disliked
Savoy monarchy, does not enjoy any sympathy among the population; and
then it is used to suppress the many popular protests; the decision to
launch a massive recall is the Palermo massacre of 19 October 1944, when
the Sabaudia division fired on a popular procession asking for bread and
pasta, causing at least twenty deaths.

Pippo Gurrieri

14 - continues

Giuseppe Casarrubea, Secret history of Sicily. From the Allied landing
at Portella della Ginestra. Bompiani, Milan 2007.

Salvatore Lupo, The myth of the great conspiracy. The Americans, the
mafia and the landing in Sicily in 1943, Donzelli, Rome 2023.

Nicola Tranfaglia, How the Republic was born. The mafia, the Vatican and
neo-fascism in American and Italian documents. 1943/1947. Bompiani,
Milan 2004. Page 94.

Natale Musarra, Killer Air Force, in libertarian Sicily n. 439,
July-August 2023, p. 7.

Giovanni Ciriacono, The forgotten massacres. The American massacres of
Biscari and Piano Stella, ed. edited by the author, Ragusa 2003.

N. Tranfaglia, cit., page. 100.

ditto, p. 112-113.

ditto, p. 237

ditto, p. 11, where a document dated May 19, 1945, classified as top
secret, by James Angleton, one of the heads of the US intelligence
services in liberated Italy, is published. But also other documents on
pages. 60, 62, 64, 65 which establishes, among other things, total
immunity for the men of the X MAS.

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca