Italy’s Diplomacy and the West:
From Allied Occupation in World War II to Equality in NATO, 1940s–50s
Marco Rimanelli
Saint Leo University
1. Introduction: from the Failure of Imperialism to Euro-Atlantic Renewal
Fascist Italy’s military collapse in World War II marked a radical watershed in Italian foreign policy with the demise of her long quest since 1860 to emerge as a leading Mediterranean Power against stronger regional rivals, who routinely undercut her ambitions at regional prestige and pre-eminence. Until 1918 an “Irredentist” Liberal Italy was consumed by Austria-Hungary’s control over the Adriatic, residual Italian provinces (Trentino, Friuli, Istria, Dalmatia) and the Balkans, while being contained in the Mediterranean by Britain (the hegemonic maritime Power) and France (whose colonial empire kept expanding in North Africa encircling Italy), while both Western Powers excluded firmly Russia from the basin in 1800s–1939. In such context, Italy’s national security suffered, while being hindered as well by structural imbalances (developing economy, budget constraints), popular passivity and wrong security priorities (Adriatic supremacy vs. Mediterranean influence; land-defense vs. a high-seas strike-Navy). Thus, Rome had to settle into the traditional ways of the weak by relying on international treaties, diplomacy and alliances to secure her national security and interests as best she could, while inflating her international importance through expensive “state-of-the-Art” Navy and large Army.[1]
Notwithstanding sharp domestic politico-ideological differences, both Liberal Italy (1860–1922) and Fascist Italy (1922–45) were constrained by the same geo-strategic and security frustrations, which they sought to overcome through alliances and opportunistic reversals, arms races and imperialist expansions. The main diplomatic difference between Liberal and Fascist Italy was instead one of degree and strategic vision: all of Liberal Italy’s leaders (Cavour, Crispi, di Rudiní, Giolitti, di San Giuliano, Salandra) always kept a cautious balance between the limits of Italy’s foreign expansionism and the burden of domestic politico-economic shortcomings and international constraints. Instead Mussolini’s aggressive foreign policy and propaganda bluffs jacked-up international tensions against all neighbors, while the regime’s diplomatico-ideological clash against inferior adversaries (Greece, Albania, Yugoslavia, Ethiopia, Spain), blinded him to the actual limits of Italy’s power.[2]
In both periods, Italy’s Navy and Army served as prestigious foreign policy-tools to assure national security and alliance-building with other Powers, but constrained peace-time military budgets and limited war-time experience only further exacerbated Rome’s quest for symbolic Great Power status, rather than devise an effective long-term expansionist strategy. But this dangerous gap between ambitions and military unreadiness was routinely discounted in peace-time under the prestigious veneer of empty diplomacy and power-politics, nationalist rhetoric and limited military strikes against weaker enemies. Only whenever easy diplomatic victories, or the quest for immediate geo-strategic gains to cut off rivals propelled Italy towards improvised military campaigns, she often discovered that the structural wide gap between means and preparation denied her victory, just as much as did enemy efforts. Thus, Italy’s dream to dominate the Mediterranean was never fulfilled except briefly in 1940–42 during the final struggle against Britain, and was doomed since the beginning by a systemic lack of long-term strategic vision and hard military planning. Defeat lead to routine blind domestic rejection of imperialism as a “failed” policy, not to a more realistic revision of national interests and effective means to achieve them, while any lessons learned the hard way were quickly forgotten (1866–74, 1887, 1896–1900, 1919–22, 1943–45). Victory as well, although rare, never stimulated the necessary strategic adjustments in means and doctrine to expand the new conquests.[3]
In World War II Fascist Italy’s dreams of regional supremacy were doomed: left alone by land-oriented Germany (bent on conquering Europe and Soviet Russia), Italy’s critical sea-power struggle with Britain over the Mediterranean never succeeded in breaking the naval stalemate on her favor, squandering instead dwindling resources in ill-planned, impulsive campaigns. Even Italy’s long coveted prizes were mostly secured through German help in 1940–42, not Italian might: Albania, the demotion of France, Nice, Corsica, Dalmatia, Slovenia, control of Greece, a pro-Italian Croatia and Montenegro, Kosovo and Tunisia. By 1942–45 the Allies’ aero-naval conquest of East Africa, the Mediterranean and Southern Italy left the country defeated, devastated and under Allied occupation. Thus, Italy quickly relapsed into the inward-looking mentality of a neutralist, medium-Power.[4]
Yet paradoxically, in few years Italy found herself restored to a measure of international respectability as a new democratic, industrial Western member of NATO and the European Union when the East-West Cold War and nuclear balance of terror since 1946–55 privileged new alliance-cohesion between winners and losers within the democratic U.S.-led West. Meanwhile the loss of all past dangerous dreams of regional Power in World War II finally forced Italy into a more realistic reappraisal of national security during the Cold War (1945–91) and afterwards. Interlocking alignments with the West (United States, NATO, European Union) guaranteed “Atlantic Italy’s” national security, prestige and economic growth at little cost to herself: 1/2) NATO and “Pax Americana” insured her long-term land, sea, air and nuclear security from foreign threats; 3) the European Union’s cross-national integration and large-scale domestic industrialization within the global U.S.-led Western capitalist system insured economic development, trade and emigration. However, throughout the Cold War Italy’s inward consociative, but unstable political system, was consumed by the DC’s quest for domestic monopoly over the economy and all coalition governments until 1992 to keep the rival Communist Party (second-largest party) in the opposition due to its pro-Soviet ideological ties.[5]
2. The Price of Defeat: Italy under Allied Control, 1943–1947
Military defeats in World War II and the Allied invasion of Southern Italy led to Mussolini’s overthrow by Army Marshall Pietro Badoglio’s military-monarchist coup of 25 July 1943. Overnight the regime collapsed to the consternation of both Germany and the Allies, while exposing Fascism’s inner weakness and the deep cleavage that an unpopular war had created. King Vittorio-Emanuele III and Premier Badoglio had both supported Fascism in the past and now sought to preserve the domestic socio-political monarchic-conservative order through a secret “reversal of alliances” to join the Allies and offset the country’s imminent defeat and Hitler’s wrath. But at home an equally pro-Allied democratic opposition emerged in 1943 as an openly anti-Fascist and anti-monarchist front of Christian Democrats, Socialists, Communists, Actionists and Liberals.[6]
Italy’s hope to join the Allies on a base of equality and steer their landings north of Rome to force a quick German retreat from the Peninsula, reflected the best Savoyard tradition of exploiting since the 1600s Europe’s changing balance of power to expand or minimize losses. But by 1943 such plans were utterly unrealistic: 1) in 1915 Italy’s successful diplomatic “reversal of alliances” to the Allied side was really due to her prior neutrality and untapped military might at a time of wild uncertainty over the Great War’s military balance and future outcome; 2) in 1940 Mussolini had been courted both by Hitler and Britain to enter the war on their sides, or remain neutral in exchange for confused colonial cessions; 3) by 1943 the Allies’ superiority was poised to destroy the Axis, regardless of fresh German help to defend Italy. Badoglio now overestimated Italy’s bargaining power and geo-strategic role, given the Anglo-American Casablanca Declaration on the Axis’ unconditional surrender; the sharp Anglo-French hostility to Italy, which hampered Allied diplomatic responses to Badoglio’s peace overtures (July–August 1943); and contempt for Italy’s combat capability.[7]
Britain held the dominant politico-military influence on Anglo-American decision-making and joint war-operations in the Mediterranean, while the United States, although more lenient towards Italy, deferred loyally to Britain’s policy in the basin. Thus, London sought both Italy’s transition from Fascism to a pro-British conservative monarchy, and her complete military demotion as a Power (Italy’s loss of Navy, Armed Forces, colonies, Albania, the north-eastern borders, and possible independence for Sicily and Sardinia). Badoglio was finally forced to sign Italy’s unconditional surrender (Cassibile Short Armistice, 3 September 1943). Although a compromise would have greatly helped the Allied effort by shortening the war and enlisting Italy’s full contribution against Nazi Germany, Badoglio was denied both Allied or Co-belligerency status, while the Allied Military Command took over the administration of all “liberated territories”, albeit the Anglo-American Québec Document (August 1943) was attached to the Short Armistice and ambiguously promised future leniency on the unconditional surrender on the basis of Italy’s actual support of the Allies.[8]
But Germany’s swift occupation of North-Central Italy (July–September 1943) undermined both Badoglio’s secret alliance-reversal and set astray the pre-planned Allied air-borne landing to secure Rome from German retaliations. While the Allies’ amphibious landing at Salerno (between Rome and Naples) was stuck, the King and Badoglio ignominiously fled to the “liberated” South, leaving the 2 million-strong Italian Armed Forces without orders or directions to resist the Germans and regroup. Under heavy German fire the deeply demoralized Italian Army disintegrated in few days: 61 fully armed divisions in Italy, France and the Balkans were soon reduced to just 7, with the majority disintegrating in a rush home, and 700,000 prisoners of war (POWs) deported to Germany. This deprived Badoglio of the only valuable politico-military asset left to resist both Allied military controls and the German invasion. The Allies who still held the contradictory hope of quickly freeing Italy with the active support of the Italian Army were now confirmed in their distaste of Italy. Yet the Italian Navy’s efficient transfer of her still mostly intact forces to the Allies at Malta allowed them to bolster control of the whole basin and Atlantic, while diverting large Anglo-American naval forces to the 1944 Normandy invasion. The harsh clauses of the Long Armistice Accord (Malta, 29 September 1943) imposed post-war demilitarization and the loss of Navy and colonies, while the Allied Control Commission monopolized Italy’s diplomatic, military and domestic policies. Italy disappeared as a Power and was divided in three warring sides (Germany’s occupation and liberation of Mussolini turned Northern Italy into the satellite Fascist Republic of Salò versus the Allied support for the “Reign of the South”, and the rival partisans anti-Fascist civil war in the North).[9]
When Badoglio finally declared war on Germany (11–13 October 1943) Italy became a weak Co-belligerent, but never a partner and full Ally, dashing his hopes of eliminating the armistice before a Peace Treaty to strengthen the Monarchy’s waning domestic authority. Nevertheless Badoglio and Foreign Minister Prunas, as later their democratic successors, kept pressing the Allies to modify the armistice, while using diplomacy to divide them (Americans against British; Soviets against the West) and secure Italy’s re-entry as an equal, independent Power unto the post-war international scene.[10]
In both the pro-Allied South and in the German-occupied North, Badoglio and the King were challenged openly by the anti-Fascist Committee for National Liberation (CLN), which since Fall 1943 also provided the politico-military umbrella for local grass-root Partisan groups in a civil war to reunite Italy under a progressive, democratic, republic, while rejecting both Allied controls and Badoglio’s rival monarchist politico-military command. The Anglo-Americans in 1943–44 propped-up the Savoyard monarchy against Communist inroads (given their success in Yugoslavia, Albania and potentially Greece too), but a sympathetic President Roosevelt still rejected Badoglio’s pleas for Allied status (January 1944), unless he form a new democratic government with his CLN enemies. The CLN instead opposed Allied pressures to join Badoglio in a pro-Allied democratic government of national unity, unless Badoglio and the King resigned (“Institutional Crisis”, October 1943–April 1944). The Allies were frustrated by their inability to dominate the bitter inter-Italian political clash: London steadfastly backed the Savoyard and Badoglio government even against the local Anglo-American Head-Quarters, which supported America’s new pro-CLN posture (February–March 1944).[11]
To break their isolation, Badoglio and Prunas sought to split and neutralize both the Allies and the rival CLN with the Prunas-Vyshinskij Accord (14 March 1944): Palmiro Togliatti returned to Italy to head the Communist Party (PCI, the largest CLN party and best partisan force), while the USSR formally recognized Badoglio’s government (the first by any Allied Power), supported Italy’s wish to a restored Mediterranean role, and ordered the PCI to cooperate with Badoglio and the Savoyard monarchy throughout the war (“Svolta di Salerno”, 24 April 1944). Notwithstanding Anglo-American and CLN outrage, Badoglio and the PCI forced all other democratic parties into his Salerno government, without jeopardizing either the monarchy or allowing radical socio-economic changes. Stalin’s wild diplomatic gamble in Italy allowed the otherwise isolated USSR to bypass the Anglo-American politico-military monopoly over the Mediterranean. But Stalin refused to support diplomatically Italy’s attempts at neutralist “equidistance”; then in 1944–45 the USSR backed Yugoslavia’s claims ( Trieste, Istria) and sought 20% of Italy’s Navy to the USSR as war-reparations. Stalin soon abandoned Italy to the West’s area of influence (unless the Italian Communists wrestled Italy away from the West), while exploiting Western regional supremacy as an international precedent to impose his own politico-military and communist ideological supremacy over Eastern Europe.[12]
Instead, the Anglo-Americans saw Prunas’ diplomatic offensive to regain independence from Allied controls as the last act of Italian duplicity. The Anglo-Americans keenly opposed any Soviet, or Italian influence in the basin, while London until 1946 mercilessly squeezed Italy (backed by France, Yugoslavia and Greece), because any independent democratic Italy could again threaten her national interests in the basin, just like a Red Italy would do. With the Allied June 1944 conquest of Rome the CLN finally succeeded in forming a strong anti-Fascist government by dropping Badoglio and isolating the Savoyard monarchy (Churchill’s opposition was overrun for the first time by Roosevelt), while Italian military and partisan operations were expanded and the CLN pressed the Allies to revise the 1943 Armistice and extend Lend-Lease aid.[13]
America’s interests in the Mediterranean had always been essentially commercial and cultural. The United States supported Italy’s unification in 1848–70, but with minimal direct involvement. America returned to the Mediterranean only in World War I when she emerged as a Super-Power influencing Europe (1917–22), but still shied away from burdensome regional responsibilities. Only in the 1930s–40s the rapid expansion of U.S. oil interests in the Middle-East/Persian Gulf region, and the opposition to Fascist Italy’s Ethiopian and Spanish Wars brought American back to a nebulous Mediterranean consciousness. Yet the United States emerged as a reluctant Mediterranean Power only by World War II, mostly through joint politico-military and economic cooperation with Britain in North Africa (1942–43), Italy (1943–45), France (1944) and protecting the Middle-East’s oil resources and Britain’s regional hegemony (1943–47). America readily accepted Britain’s leadership, hegemony and military strategy to rescue her Mediterranean Imperial life-line to India through “peripheral offensives” throughout the basin. But Anglo-American cooperation in the Mediterranean and Italy soon waned by 1944: America pressed relentlessly for the Normandy Invasion of Nazi-held Continental Europe, while strongly opposing Britain’s obsession on occupying first the Balkans and Greece to forestall the USSR’s drive towards Europe and the Mediterranean. Only the Cold War forced the U.S. to side with Britain to contain the Soviet threat, but Britain’s fatal economic and politico-military demise in 1947–56 forced her gradual withdrawal from the region on behalf of America’s own security system (1947 Truman Doctrine and 1949 NATO).[14]
In 1943–48 Italy unwillingly became both a key test-case for Allied cooperation and brewing East-West tensions. Under U.S. pressures the Roosevelt-Churchill Hyde Park Declaration, 26 September 1944) praised Italy’s democratic evolution, expanded her limited self-government and extended UNRRA aid for economic reconstruction. Roosevelt’s intervention on behalf of Italy was dictated both by natural sympathy and by the politico-electoral impact during the 1944 presidential elections of the Italo-American vote (mostly lost in the 1940 elections) and the domestic and international lobbying efforts on Italy’s behalf by the Catholic clergy, Italo-American communities in the United States and Latin America, as well as by the strong psychological difference that the U.S. public opinion saw between Italy and the fearful Japanese-German threats. America became also aware of her new role as a prestigious Super-Power compared to a declining Britain and a bankrupt Europe. Thus the CLN was assured that Italy’s national integrity would be respected, although U.S. support was often curtailed by Anglo-Soviet hostility to Italy. Yet all Allied concessions to Italy remained more apparent than substantial. Only in December 1945 Rome finally regained most politico-administrative controls and by January 1947 was fully freed from British interference.[15]
Against the Nazi-Fascists the stalled Allies pitted 14 Anglo-American infantry divisions and 6 brigades (including Italy’s Southern Royal infantry-groups), plus 3 armored divisions and 6 brigades, while the German Army Group C had 16 infantry divisions, one RSI Northern Italian Fascist infantry division, 3 Panzer divisions and Panzergrenadieren. In 1944–45 behind the lines 5–6 additional German and 3 RSI infantry divisions operated exclusively against local CLN partisans, which by January 1945 reached 307,000 men in 178 groups (44,720 dead and 21,168 wounded), including 30,305 abroad (Yugoslavia, Greece, France), plus 134,793 patriots (9,980 died) and 43/45,000 political prisoners in Nazi Lagers (4/5,000 survived). Mussolini’s Fascist RSI lined by 1944–45 only 143,000 men in 4 infantry divisions and 150,000 men in the National Republican Guard, plus 20,000 Black Brigades and 10,000 Italian SS; the RSI Air-Force had 79,000 men mostly paratroopers, anti-air defenses and few airplanes; and the RSI Navy 26,000 men. Although Italy’s partisan/civil war was second for magnitude in Europe (excluding Russia) only to Yugoslavia, the ideological clash often played second fiddle: most partisans were predominantly concerned with fighting German occupation and secondly the RSI Fascists (a task ideologically closer to the Communist partisans). The Allied war effort won at last, but the constant partisan attrition on German rear-lines and the frequent anti-guerrilla operations hampered the Nazi-Fascists until the April 1945 general partisan insurrection in Northern Italy’s key urban-industrial areas prior to the Allies’ victory.[16]
The Anglo-Americans feared that the partisan CLNAI would autonomously “liberate” Italy, implement a veritable socio-economic and political revolution abolishing the Savoyard monarchy and purging her ex-Fascist conservative supporters (“Wind from the North”), thus reversing Allied influence like the “independentist” French, Yugoslav and Greek partisans had done shocking the Anglo-Americans. But the Anglo-Americans could neither block, nor divide the CLNAI, and had to openly acknowledge its autonomous military cooperation, especially after the diversion of large Allied military forces for the 1944 invasion of France. But at war’s end (April–May 1945) as Mussolini was executed by Communist partisans, the Allies systematically disarmed and disbanded all guerrilla units to avoid the repeat of any destabilizing local Leftist insurrection as in the Balkans.[17]
Britain finally allowed the long delayed 1944 Hyde Park Declaration to be implemented with increased economic aid and significant reductions in the local Allied politico-military and diplomatic controls by February 1945. Rome’s war effort by April 1945 had produced over a million fighting men on the Allied side: 400,000 in the Navy and Army; 150,000 in Northern Italy’s partisan groups; 150,000 dislocated units and partisans in the Balkans helping the Greek-Yugoslav partisans; 380,000 POWs in Allied territories assigned to local administrative duties (and other 650,000 POWs still in German Lagers). Italy’s last effort to overcome diplomatic isolation was her declaration of war against Japan (15 July 1945). Although marginal and controversial, the war against Japan was seen by Italy’s leadership as a diplomatic tool to capitalize on U.S. support and anti-Japanese feelings. But Roosevelt was countered by Anglo-Soviet opposition until the Allied Potsdam Conference (June–July 1945), thus turning Italy’s anti-Japanese war in a farce devoid of benefits at the 1946–47 Peace Conference.[18]
While being sharply divided on the issue of retaining the colonies, the Italian governmental coalition started to develop its own key post-war foreign policy positions: the Vatican-inspired DC under De Gasperi was deeply split between utopian Catholic-based neutralism and pro-Western military alliance against the USSR; the pro-Soviet PCI (under Togliatti) expanded its electoral base through its decisive role in the Partisan war and fully supported Soviet foreign policy goals, opposing colonial retention and Italy’s war against Japan; the neutralist PSI (under Nenni) was allied since 1943 with the PCI to create a common progressist front against Fascist backlashes and Anglo-American capitalist control; and other minor parties shared similar conservative, nationalistic, anti-British and pro-Western views. All recognized in 1943–47 that military defeat, reconstruction and politico-economico-military dependency on foreign Powers could be reversed only by openly renouncing Mussolini’s past imperialist diplomacy of force in favor of a durable, democratic and cooperative foreign policy with all her ex-enemies. But as the Cold War forced the collapse of the wartime Grand Coalition (Britain, U.S.A., USSR), Italy’s domestic politics became ideologically polarized. Both U.S. and Britain opposed Communist influence: a Leftist pro-Soviet Italy would threaten Anglo-American supremacy in the Mediterranean, given Italy’s geo-strategic position, in a far worse way than the USSR in Greece, Albania, or Yugoslavia could. U.S. aid now supported both openly and covertly De Gasperi as Premier (1946–53) against the Left, with Sforza as Foreign Minister (1947–51).[19]
Although the Cold War gradually reversed Italy’s diplomatic isolation as a vanquished enemy in the 1947–49 period, Rome’s post-war foreign policy inevitably became dependent on U.S. support against British, Soviet and European hostility. De Gasperi assiduously demanded Italy’s readmittance into the international community as a United Nations member to overcome diplomatic isolation, while trying to cushion the harsh peace clauses. Having preserved Italy’s unity, the government restored the economy and democratic institutions, while opposing territorial amputations (colonies, Istria, Süd Tirol) and foreign interference. But neither Italy’s wartime military-diplomatic efforts, nor U.S. support could lighten the heavy peace-treaty, while Cold War winds aggravated East-West tensions.[20]
Regardless of American support, Italy’s fate was sealed with the 1947 Peace Treaty: total loss of Istria, the Dodecanese and colonies; territorial Alpine adjustments for France; total loss of the Navy and demilitarization of the Alpine borders, coasts and islands; minimal Armed Forces (250,000 troops, including the Carabinieri and 200 tanks; 25,000 Air-Force personnel with 200 fighters, 150 transport planes, no bombers, or missiles and atomic bombs; 25,000 Navy personnel with 2 old battleships, 4 cruisers, 4 destroyers, 20 corvettes, 16 P.T.-Boats, no carriers, no submarines, or MAS); and $ 3,473 billion in reparations ($ 100 million to the Soviet Union; $ 125 million to Yugoslavia; $ 105 million to Greece; $ 25 million to Ethiopia; $ 5 million to Albania). America, Britain and France renounced to their reparations and post-war U.S. aid helped foot much of the remaining reparations, while U.S. support kept Trieste for Italy under Allied administration.[21]
Italy’s leadership had deceived herself and the nation since July 1943 by trying to offset defeat and switch sides to join the Allies: rather than becoming a Western ally or co-belligerent Italy was consistently berated internationally as a vanquished enemy, while De Gasperi’s diplomatic attempts for a lenient Peace Treaty by extolling Italy’s democratic evolution, wartime support of the Allies and Resistance were brushed aside. Strong international pressures and U.S. threats to cut-off vital aid forced Italy to sign the punitive Paris Peace Treaty (10 February 1947). At home De Gasperi and Sforza were personally blamed for the loss of lands and expulsion of 350,000 Italians from Istria, Dalmatia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Libya. Yet most of the nation accepted tacitly the Peace Treaty as a symbol of closure given Italy’s weakness and inner politico-moral cleavages: Centrists, Catholics, nationalists and ex-Fascists bitterly opposed it, while Communists, Socialists and Sicilian secessionists saw it as a “just” defeat for the “oppressor” state, or divine punishment according to most Catholics. De Gasperi and Sforza were painfully aware that Italy’s post-war diplomacy would be tainted by wartime defeat, diplomatic isolation, military vulnerability, economic difficulties and heavy politico-economic dependency on foreign Powers. Regardless of mutual distrust, Italy had to re-establish close ties with the Western Powers by ratifying the Peace Treaty and joining both the United Nations and the 1947 Marshall Plan for the economic recovery of Europe.[22]
3. Cold War Diplomacy: from Neutralism to Europeanism and NATO, 1947–57
Under De Gasperi all major Italian parties (DC, PSI, PCI, PRI) formed a governmental coalition to perpetuate their old CLN anti-Fascist wartime alliance and conduct national reforms and economic reconstruction. But the pervasive domestic impact of the Cold War, which ideologically pitted the Leftist PCI-PSI bloc against the DC and the Centrist parties underlined the government’s fragility until the fateful 1948 elections that would decide Italy’s domestic political struggle and foreign policy. While domestic politics remained in a state of flux throughout 1945–1948, Italy’s foreign policy promoted a non-committal neutralist “equidistance” between the emerging Soviet East and Western blocs: given Italy’s bitter past experiences with imperialism and her current state of disarray, only a diplomacy openly based on “equidistance” and good relations with both blocs could preserve a modicum of domestic foreign policy consensus and a hope of independence for a shattered country. However, geo-strategy and international economic dependency increasingly tipped diplomatic and domestic politico-ideological alignments also in Italy towards the West. The United States fully backed the DC and related array of Catholic, monarchist, conservative and moderate forces alike, hoping to mold a broad national anti-Leftist coalition to keep Italy within the fragile Western fold.[23]
The PCI’s dependence on Moscow’s foreign policy directives and its stress on immediate radical reforms made it the symbol of revolutionary change. De Gasperi reacted by pursuing a more decisive pro-Western foreign policy to obtain vital U.S. politico-economic support: De Gasperi’s political survival depended on constant infusions of foreign economic aid and some form of diplomatic success to neutralize the Left. Ambassador Tarchiani had already secured U.S. aid in rebuilding the Italian Merchant Marine, while the Anglo-Americans renounced their quota of the Italian combat Navy. U.S. economic aid to Italy in 1944–46 totaled $ 1,12 billion, but the dual pressure of reconstruction and rise in consumer demand on a still weak domestic economy reinforced the high inflation rate and governmental trade deficits, precipitating another wave of politico-economic strikes that sent De Gasperi to America (January 1947) for more aid and closer politico-military support to help Italy.[24]
De Gasperi’s first trip to the United States in January 1947 was a major success and most of his requests were granted, but the U.S. government and Congress relentlessly pressed Italy to drop the Left from the government if she wanted future aid. But De Gasperi was loathe to provoke the open hostility of the USSR or a show-down with the Left, so he resisted U.S. pressures, while forcing the Left into supporting the ratification of the divisive Peace Treaty. By May 1947 De Gasperi finally disbanded the government and with the external support of the Centrist parties and Vatican formed a DC-only government without the PCI-PSI bloc. With diplomacy now pro-Western, Rome used U.S. support to gain full readmittance as an equal into the international community and the United Nations. Yet, such major political changes took place in Italy only after Churchill’s spirited call to arms to fight the Cold War against the USSR (1946 Iron Curtain Address, Fulton, Missouri). With Soviet threats against Greece, Turkey and Iran, America abandoned isolationism and protected Europe and the Mediterranean by containing Soviet expansion and “satellization” of Eastern Europe (1947 Truman Doctrine), while obtaining the PCF’s exclusion from France’s government (February 1947).[25]
Nevertheless, Containment could not rely only on the U.S. monopoly of the new devastating atomic bombs was overvalued as a security umbrella, because it could not stop a Soviet conventional strike, but only incinerate its cities. Washington also feared a generalized socio-economic collapse of the ravaged Western European democracies, which would promote Communist propaganda, especially in Italy and France. Thus the 1947 Marshall Plan used billions of U.S. dollars in aid to financially spur Europe’s reconstruction as a democratic, industrial bulwark against the USSR and rebuild her armed forces (stimulating U.S. trade and economic growth, without any build-up of U.S. troops). Concerning Italy, De Gasperi’s January 1947 trip to the United States and troubled participation in June–July 1947 to the Marshall Plan (forced on London and Paris by Washington), led to her abandonment of neutralist “equidistance” between the blocs and her gradual reentry as an equal into the international community of Western nations, which cleansed her national psyche of her post-war shame and diplomatic isolation. By reinventing herself as a supporter of European democratic federalism and by renouncing all trappings of national sovereignty and militarism, Italy pursued a policy of firm support for a gradual European economic union. De Gasperi and Sforza stressed that politico-economic neutralism was tantamount to suicide for Italy in her weakened state, while European integration instead would assure economic growth and off-set the 1947 Peace Treaty by providing a cohesive European security against the Soviet threat, solve the German problem, keep Euro-Mediterranean peace and buttress Italy’s defenses. In this context, Rome consistently backed in 1946–1957 all inter-governmental Europeanist projects culminating with the 1950–1954 European Defense Community, the 1951 European Coal and Steel Community, and the 1957 European Community. The Left accused the Marshall Plan to sever Italy’s economic ties with Eastern Europe and the USSR, imposing complete U.S. politico-economic supremacy. This would force Italy and Europe into the West and an inevitable new war against the USSR, leading to internal insurrection.[26]
Throughout 1947–48, both Washington and the Vatican intervened on behalf of De Gasperi. After January 1947 following De Gasperi’s state visit to America, Italy was included within the U.S. sphere of influence and anti-communist containment zone. Situated like Germany on the Iron Curtain border, Italy played an irreplaceable geo-strategic role for U.S. strategy in the Mediterranean. America’s support of De Gasperi in this period was so thorough that with Rome’s tacit approval America directly intervened in Italy’s domestic electoral process with massive supplies and undercover funding for all pro-Western parties, while engineering a massive letter-campaign by Italo-American emigrants to their relatives and friends in support of the De Gasperi government. De Gasperi also secretly asked America to send the U.S. Sixth Fleet before the 1948 elections to cruise along Italy’s coast to intimidate the Left, but was turned down. Yet Washington made public its threat to stop all aid and diplomatic support of Italy if the Left won, while Moscow opposed Italy’s claims on Trieste. But the 1948 Yugo-Soviet Split unexpectedly tossed Yugoslavia in the Western camp and cut the USSR from the Mediterranean. Thus, the West froze the Trieste dispute until 1954.[27]
In Italy the critical elections of 18 April 1948 turned into a massive DC landslide with 48% of the vote plus 11,3% for its governmental allies, and De Gasperi could now fully impose his foreign and domestic programs against a divided opposition (31% PCI-PSI front and 4,8% to the anti-Communist Right). De Gasperi’s overwhelming electoral victory on the Left also doomed the PCI/PSI alliance: after 1948 the PSI gradually broke from the PCI to regain its political independence and by the 1960s rejoined the government (“Opening to the Left”). De Gasperi immediately formed a new pro-Western Centrist government with his weaker allies to establish the broadest possible Catholic-Lay coalition to isolate permanently the Left in opposition and so strengthen the democratic reform-minded Centrist forces. Given the DC’s mixed nature, inevitably the old conservative groups soon stalled needed socio-economic reforms, while De Gasperi struggled to preserve the government’s and DC’s political independence from both the Left and Vatican’s constant interferences.[28]
These sharp contrasts in foreign and domestic policy often embarrassed and paralyzed the government, given the contrasting neutralist and Europeanist pressures inside the DC against De Gasperi’s domestic “secular” policies and pro-U.S. foreign policy, or even joining any European-based defense-system like the Brussel Pact. Created to counter the 1948 Czechoslovak Communist coup and America’s unwillingness to guarantee a U.S.-based permanent military defense of Europe, the Brussels Pact (Britain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg; later renamed Western Union in 1954) was the West’s first peacetime military alliance against either a future revanchist Germany, or the more likely current Soviet threat. As such it strongly conditioned also Italy’s foreign and domestic policy, although Rome was never formally invited to join it. While the United States and Britain sent in 1948 vague feelers and goodwill gestures to encourage Italy to petition her membership in the Pact, soon all Western countries became greatly disturbed by Italy’s indifference and strong neutralist leanings, although it was commonly assumed that Italy’s initial exclusion from the newly-formed Brussels Pact would be only temporary until a strong Western government emerged after the 1948 April elections. But De Gasperi feared any hasty Western alignment would have split the DC between nationalists and pacifists, while galvanizing the Left’s challenge for power. “Equidistance” and “Neutralism” remained easy, but empty diplomatic formulae that all parties could share, while the government deferred any controversial decision after the 1948 elections. Yet this exposed Italy to U.S. criticism and hostility from the other European countries who condemned Italy’s diplomatic ambiguity, just when the Cold War was pushing all European countries to take sides.[29]
Parallel to these concerns, it soon became evident that the Brussels Pact alone could not provide a realistic military response to the threat of a Soviet invasion without direct U.S. military-economic assistance. Any open Italian neutrality required economic self-sufficiency, still impossible to achieve after the embarrassing failure of Fascist autarky and the persistent Italian trade dependence on the basin’s sea-routes on the industrialized West. Neutrality also required for its viability high military spending and fortifications, both prohibited by the 1947 Peace Treaty. Italy’s security remained totally dependent on America and open politico-military alignment with the West. Thus, De Gasperi promoted a national debate to sway the neutralist domestic majority (from the Left to the Catholics and Liberals) to back the West, while unsuccessfully subordinating any Western Alliance membership to America’s diplomatico-military help. But U.S. military strategy in 1948 focused on a conventional World War III-type worst-case scenario following a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, with a U.S.-Western first-line of defense on the Rhine, to then fall back on a more solid, long-term peripheral defense-line in the British Isles, the Pyrenees and North Africa from where to prepare a later Normandy-type invasion and a “third liberation” of the Continent from hegemonic conquests. In these plans also Italy’s long-term defense was discounted as impossible, given the PCI’s role as a potential “fifth column”, except for her vital geo-strategic islands (as Rome feared most).[30]
Once the 1948–49 Berlin Blockade raised the fear of an imminent World War III, Truman expanded American support to Europe through direct military involvement with the Vandenberg Resolution (11 June 1948), authorizing him to enter in any peacetime military alliance deemed vital to preserving America’s national security within the United Nation’s Collective Security framework. Although its stated intent was the military security of the whole Western Hemisphere through the Organization of American States in 1948 (providing a regional alliance between the United States and all Latin American countries), secret negotiations also started in earnest to form an enlarged NATO Western alliance in Europe involving the United States, Canada and the Brussels Pact Powers (June–December 1948). As leader of this North Atlantic Treaty the United States no longer would remain neutral in another global conflict, only to join and win it at the end like in both World Wars. But contrasts emerged between America, Britain and France over the effective scope and size of the Atlantic Pact: America wanted its immediate expansion to all Marshall Plan members, while the Anglo-French sought a delayed limited enlargement (excluding Italy) after the U.S. prior rearmament of the original Brussels Pact Powers. As Tarchiani learned in July 1948 of this momentous change in U.S. foreign policy he redoubled his efforts to convince Rome to abandon neutralism and adhere to the future Atlantic Alliance to secure national defense as an equal with the other European countries. Italy’s membership in the NATO Alliance was strongly resisted by London and Paris out of past hostility, fear of communist coups there, contempt for her ambiguous neutralism and opposition to indirectly strengthening Rome’s claims on Libya through her inclusion in such an unprecedented vast Western military bloc. European uncertainty and distrust of Italy were shared also by Washington, which although keen on enlarging the Western Alliance to Italy and the Mediterranean, was now baffled by Rome’s silence to earlier American feelers since Summer 1948. Washington made it clear that any further Italian delay in answering would increase its own embarrassment and make it difficult to oppose the Anglo-French anti-Italian posture: only Italy’s unconditional entry into both the Brussels Pact and NATO would have extended U.S. protection.[31]
Washington, London and Paris still envisioned the West’s main line of defense on the Rhine, but only Britain strongly insisted in keeping the alliance geographically limited to Continental Europe. Rome finally focused on NATO by September 1948, when Paris switched position supporting now Italy’s membership as vital for French and Mediterranean security. If Italy was still weak, so too were many other proposed members: Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Portugal, Sweden and Ireland were hardly Powers at all, but were instead invaluable geo-strategic assets to NATO, thanks to their air-naval facilities and bases. However uncertainties still persisted at the White House (Truman), influential advisors (like George F. Kennan the “father” of anti-Soviet Containment), the State Department (when Dean Acheson replaced General Marshall as Secretary of State in January 1949) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff which thought Italy of minor strategic value: anti-Soviet military plans in case of World War III called for sustained regional defense of the British Isles-Pyrenees-North African theaters and retaining control only of insular and Southern Italy, while the President’s National Security Council strongly supported NATO and Italy’s immediate inclusion in NATO, because America’s security posture and Italy’s own vital geo-strategic role in the Mediterranean made her too important even without prior Italian entry into the Brussels Pact (NSC Meeting, 21 November 1948).[32]
The flurry of diplomatic traffic in Fall 1948 led to De Gasperi’s secret decision to join the Atlantic Alliance, formally applying in late-December 1948. But domestically, both the Italian Left and the equally influential and vocal Catholic circles inside the DC and Vatican rallied one last time to oppose any national alignment with NATO, thus making Italy’s support of the Western Alliance still ambiguous and hesitant all through Winter 1948–49. The Catholic front was sharply divided between pro-Western and neutralist-nationalistic factions within the DC and Vatican, until De Gasperi finally convinced Pope Pius XII to openly support a pro-Western military front as a necessary tool to stem the advance of atheist Communism in Europe and secure Italy’s own national protection (December 1948). A key role in the Vatican’s open political stand was the pro-Western influence of its Acting Secretary of State Mons. Montini (later Pope Paul VI), whose close ties with many DC leaders and skill in drawing upon Pope Pius XII’s anti-communism. Thus the Pope’s open pro-Western position undercut all clerical oppositions. Then on December 1948 Italian Parliamentary debate awoke Italy to the running battle between government and opposition on foreign policy, while helping De Gasperi overcome the anti-Western opposition of both Left and Right, and gradually sway popular opinion towards participation to such Western military alliance. De Gasperi went to great pains to stress how European unity was the only viable policy for Italy’s security compared to any impractical neutralism, while no official commitment to a Western military bloc had been, or would be undertaken by the government, who pursued instead friendship with both West and East.[33]
Italy’s most influential ambassadors pressed Rome to rapidly take an open stand on NATO. Given the American domestic mixed feelings towards Italy and the Mediterranean, Washington clearly warned Rome of the impossibility of securing from an indifferent U.S. Congress. Sforza’s and De Gasperi’s lingering fear of a negative domestic reaction were overcome by Tarchiani’s prodding and the influential intervention of Pope Pius XII who publicly condemned neutralism and isolationism, while stressing collective security and military alliances as vital to achieve peace against Communism (Christmas Message 1948). It is perhaps surprising how rapidly the Italian government piloted Italy’s entry in NATO (its first post-war military alliance) in December 1948–March 1949, overcoming all domestic oppositions, while remarkably succeeding in harmonizing domestic feelings with Italy’s quest to attain full diplomatico-military reintegration into the West by exploiting the fast changing international situation and the country’s Europeanist orientation. In the end, Italy’s economic integration in a united Europe and military integration in the West, helped her regain an equal status (although only as a medium Power) within the wider international community, while tacitly achieving the revision of the Peace Treaty. Both policies (Europeanist and Atlanticist) were successful only within the framework of a close U.S.-Italian friendship and France’s final diplomatic pressures, which forced Rome to finally face and prevail over domestic opposition and Anglo-European hostility.[34]
By February–March 1949, France’s and Truman’s direct intervention finally overcome all internal and international doubts over Italy’s membership, as Truman and Acheson reluctantly agreed that her inclusion was unavoidable. Italy, Norway, Portugal and Iceland joined NATO as founding members (Washington, 4 April 1949), while Francoist Spain was rejected and Sweden remained neutral to avoid the Soviet satellization of neutral Finland. Parallel to NATO’s birth, West Germany finally became independent (8 April 1949), albeit still divided, demilitarized and under Allied occupation. Given the later Cold War crises and 1950–53 Korean War, the United States would have in any case forced Italy out of her ambiguous neutrality and into NATO by 1952, even if domestic neutralism and the Anglo-European Powers had succeeded in initially weathering the American dissatisfaction and rejected Italy’s early entry in NATO in 1949 (and twice in 1949 and 1952 on Francoist Spain and West Germany). Finally, the 1950–53 Korean War allowed America to weather European opposition: West Germany joined NATO by 1953–55; in 1952 the Southern Flank was expanded to Greece and Turkey; and bilateral U.S. treaties defended Francoist Spain and Japan.[35]
De Gasperi now forced a new parliamentary vote of confidence on the government’s Atlanticist policy (11 March 1949), steamrolling Leftist, neo-Fascist and internal DC oppositions (Dossettians and Gronchists), while stressing to the parliament that NATO was a defensive, non-automatic military alliance, void of onerous financial obligations (or U.S. military bases) for Italy, and vital to strengthen Euro-American solidarity. Italy’s influence as a Western nation no longer tainted by the Fascist defeat in World War II, or diplomatic isolation, would be guaranteed by her membership in NATO as an equal founding member, while national security would be assured by the alliance with the United States, the new hegemonic maritime Mediterranean and Continental land-Power (thus merging the two traditional Italian security directives and helping to repeal also the remaining 1947 Peace Treaty military limitations). The Left remained locked in its futile, anti-Western, nationalist-neutralist cries of betrayal against the government’s pro-U.S., NATO and Europeanist foreign policy.[36]
Italy’s membership in NATO and the Western bloc revived her international image and sense of identity: with NATO Italy could fully remilitarize , while providing an excellent geo-strategic and logistic support for the U.S. Sixth Fleet and NATO forces in the basin. Moreover, given NATO’s concentration in Germany and its total control over the Mediterranean since the anti-Soviet Yugoslav split of 1948, even a lightly-armed “Atlantic Italy” risked little immediate Soviet threat from land, or sea. Thus, throughout 1949–75 Rome safely relied on her loyal pro-American and Europeanist image, without having to shoulder much of the actual NATO military burden during a period when “Pax Americana” aptly symbolized the global reach of a wealthy and semi-omnipotent U.S. Super-Power. In time U.S.-Italian bilateral relations became more balanced and flexible within NATO and the West, while nearly all segments of the Italian public opinion and political forces support and perceive NATO as both the symbol of today’s “Atlantic Italy’s” post-war national renewal, and of America’s strong commitment to back a Western alliance of partners in a democratic, united Europe. America, NATO and the European Union became the three pillars of Italy’s new diplomacy and international identity, deeply conditioning her political and economic growth: 1) U.S. support rescued Italy since the difficult Co-belligerency years of 1943–45, then developed as the vital guarantor for Italy’s own industrial modernization and national security through her nuclear umbrella and politico-diplomatic support of NATO and Europe’s integration; 2) NATO guaranteed national security on land and sea against both the new Soviet threat and old intra-European ethno-nationalist rivalries; 3) European integration (ECSC, EDC, E.C./E.U.) assured such political partnership, unimpeded economico-financial support, capitalist growth, free-trade and intra-European emigration relief.[37]
4. Conclusion: Italy’s return to the West
Throughout the Cold War’s turbulent times, America’s close friendship and protection together with Italy’s membership in the U.S.-led NATO Alliance finally solved Italy’s post-1861 traditional attempts to enhance her international Power-image and interests through a combination of diplomatico-military alliances in Europe and the Mediterranean with the respective hegemonic land-Powers (France, Germany, U.S./NATO) and sea-Powers (Great Britain and America) of the time, backed by occasional independentist foreign ventures. During the Cold War and afterwards, NATO fully secured Italy’s quest for sea-land protection, partnership and support through a politico-military alignment more durable, egalitarian and wider than the Triple Alliance (1882–1914), the Axis (1936–1945), or the Entente/Western Alliance (1904–1919, 1938–1946) could ever provide. But for all her shows of diplomatic and military cooperation with NATO, Italy never truly reciprocated this Euro-Atlantic security blanket with a national military contribution of her own. Instead, Italy’s military contribution to NATO always remained primarily geo-strategic and logistical, with a thorough modernization of the national Armed Forces along current Western standards repeatedly delayed until the late-1970s. Every Italian government since De Gasperi saw Italy’s NATO membership not as a chance to ideologically and militarily integrate her defenses with the West for a future World War III against the Soviet bloc, but as a purely diplomatic tool to avoid a dangerous isolation within the West, while exploiting European integration for international recognition and economic growth.[38]
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[1]Pietro Silva, Il Mediterraneo (Varese: ISPI, 1939); Denis Mack Smith, The Making of Italy, 1796–1870 (New York: Harper & Row, 1968); D. Mack Smith, Italy. Modern History (Ann Arbour: University of Michigan Press, 1959).
[2]A.J.P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery of Europe, 1848–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954); Glen St.J. Barclay, The Rise and Fall of the New Roman Empire (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1973).
[3]Cedric J. Lowe & Frank Marzari, Italian Foreign Policy, 1870–1940 (London-Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975); Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms. Global History of World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Gabriel Kolko, The Politics of War and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1943–45 (New York: Random House, 1968).
[4]Sari J. Gilbert, Armistice to Alliance: Goals & Methods in Italian Foreign Policy, 1943–49 (Ph.D. Dissertation, Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University, 1967); Stephen E. Ambrose, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy, 1938–98 (New York: Penguin, 1998); Norman Kogan, Italy & Allies (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1956).
[5]Amb. Sergio Romano, Guida alla Politica Estera Italiana. Dal crollo del Fascismo al crollo del Comunismo (Milano: Rizzoli, 1993), p. 1–3, 5–7; Giorgio Bocca, Storia della Guerra Fascista, 2 vols. (Bari: Laterza, 1972).
[6]S. Romano, Politica Estera Italiana, p. 5–6, 13–14; Bernard Ireland, The War in the Mediterranean, 1940–43 (London: Arms & Armour, 1993); Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini’s Roman Empire (New York: Viking Press, 1976).
[7]S.J. Gilbert, Armistice to Alliance, p. 20–43; N. Kogan, Italy & Allies, p. 39–67, 171–185; G. Kolko, Politics of War & U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 3–421; Alfredo Breccia, Italia e Difesa dell’Europa (Roma: Istituto De Gasperi, 1984).
[8]Giuseppe Filippone-Thaulero, La Gran Bretagna e l’Italia, 1943–45 (Roma: Ed. Storia & Letteratura, 1979); B. Ireland, War in the Mediterranean, p. 111–212; G.L. Weinberg, A World at Arms, p. 408–470, 587–600.
[9]S..J. Gilbert, Armistice to Alliance, 1943–49, p. 20–43; N. Kogan, Italy and Allies, p. 58–66, 171–206; Pierre Renouvin, Storia delle Relazioni Internazionali (Firenze: UNEDI, 1966/71), v.8, p. 100–107, 114–117, 123–126, 145–159.
[10]G. Filippone-Thaulero, La Gran Bretagna e l’Italia, 1943–45, p. 5–178; A. Breccia, L’Italia e la Difesa dell’Europa, 1943–54, p. 5–78; N. Kogan, Italy and the Allies, p. 6–345; G. Kolko, Politics of War, 1943–1945, p. 5–267.
[11]Norman Kogan, A Political History of Italy (New York: Praeger, 1983), p. 5–83; S. Ambrose, Rise to Globalism, p. 1–37, 54–116; N. Kogan, Italy and the Allies, p. 6–19, 43–49, 57, 63–67, 78–79, 159–160, 163–164, 171–205.
[12]S. Romano, Politica Estera, p. 9–54; N. Kogan, Italy & Allies, p. 6–164; S.Ambrose, Rise to Globalism, p. 1–116.
[13]S. Ambrose, Rise to Globalism, p. 1–116; N. Kogan, Italy & Allies, p. 63–79, 159–164, 171–187, 190–192.
[14]G. Filippone-Thaulero, Gran Bretagna e Italia, 1943–45, p. 146–178; A. Breccia, Italia e Difesa dell’Europa, 1943–54, p. 5–78; N. Kogan, Italy & Allies, p. 19–193; S. Ambrose, Rise to Globalism, p. 1–37, 54–116.
[15]G. Filippone-Thaulero, Gran Bretagna e Italia, 1943–45, p. 146–178; S. Ambrose, Rise to Globalism, p. 1–37, 54–116; N. Kogan, Italy & Allies, p. 19–22, 104–120, 132; S.J. Gilbert, Armistice to Alliance, 1943–49, p. 30–39, 47–48.
[16]Giorgio Bocca, Storia dell’Italia Partigiana (Bari: Laterza, 1966).
[17]G. Kolko, Politics of War & U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 5–267; N. Kogan, Italy & Allies, p. 123–134, 181–183.
[18]Amb. Alberto Tarchiani, Dieci Anni fra Roma e Washington (Milano: Mondadori, 1955), p. 33–38, 73–78, 90–109; Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation (New York: Norton, 1969); N. Kogan, Italy and Allies, p. 135–183.
[19]S.J. Gilbert, Armistice to Alliance, 1943–49, p. 90–105; N. Kogan, Italy & Allies, p. 135–141, 169–193, 206–207.
[20]Rosaria Quartararo, Italia e Stati Uniti, Anni difficili, 1945–52 (Napoli: Ed. Scientifiche Italiane, 1986); Leo J. Wollemborg, Stelle, Strisce e Tricolore (Milano: Mondadori, 1983), p. 3–13; S. Ambrose, Rise to Globalism, p. 55–104.
[21]E. Timothy Smith, United States, Italy & NATO, 1947–52 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991); A. Tarchiani, Dieci Anni fra Roma e Washington, p. 50–155; Egidio Ortona, Anni d’America, 1944–51 (Bologna: Mulino, 1984).
[22]Ilaria Poggiolini, Diplomazia di transizione. Alleati e Trattato di Pace Italiano (Firenze: Ponte Grazie, 1990).
[23]N. Kogan, Italy & Allies, p. 181–185; S. Romano, Politica Estera Italiana, p. 7–9, 15–16, 50–54.
[24]Amb. Alberto Tarchiani, Le 10 Giornate di De Gasperi negli Stati Uniti (Milano: Rizzoli, 1947); A. Tarchiani, Dieci Anni fra Roma e Washington, p. 35–105; N. Kogan, Italy and the Allies p. 151–154.
[25]S.J. Gilbert, Armistice to Alliance, p. 125–153, 207–213; E. Ortona, Anni d’America, p. 1–324; S. Ambrose, Rise to Globalism, p. 54–116; Thomas G. Paterson ed., Origins of the Cold War (Lexington MA: Heath, 1974).
[26]Michael J. Hogan, Marshall Plan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); S. Ambrose, Rise to Globalism, 54–116; John L. Harper, L’America e la ricostruzione dell’Italia, 1945–48 (Bologna: Mulino, 1987).
[27]S. Romano, Politica Estera Italiana, p. 35–36; S.J. Gilbert, Armistice to Alliance, 1943–1949, p. 171–182.
[28]Nico Perrone, De Gasperi e l’America (Palermo: Sellerio, 1995); S. Romano, Politica Estera Italiana, p. 35–36, 72–75; Pietro Pastorelli, La politica estera Italiana del dopoguerra (Bologna: Mulino, 1987).
[29]Ennio Di Nolfo, H. Romain Rainero & Brunello Vigezzi, L’Italia e la politica di potenza in Europa, 1945–50 (Settimo Milanese: Marzorati Ed., 1988); S.J. Gilbert, Armistice to Alliance, p. 241–267.
[30]A. Tarchiani, Dieci Anni fra Roma e Washington, p. 145–149; A. Breccia, Italia e difesa Europea, p. 5–39; S.J. Gilbert, Armistice to Alliance, p. 241–248, 250–252, 266–267; S. Romano, Politica Estera Italiana, p. 5, 43–45, 52–54.
[31]Francis Heller & John R. Gillingham eds., NATO. Founding the Alliance (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992)
[32]A. Breccia, L’Italia e la difesa dell’Europa, p. 5–39; S.J. Gilbert, Armistice to Alliance, p. 248, 297–354.
[33]S.J. Gilbert, Armistice to Alliance, p. 359–406; A. Tarchiani, Dieci Anni fra Roma e Washington, p. 159–163.
[34]S. Romano, Politica Estera Italiana, p. 47–49; S.J. Gilbert, From Armistice to Alliance, 1943–49, p. 420–421, 424–425, 427–438, 441–448, 513–523; A. Tarchiani, Dieci Anni fra Roma e Washington, p. 168–169.
[35]S.J. Gilbert, Armistice to Alliance, p. 450–560; A. Tarchiani, Dieci Anni fra Roma e Washington, p. 163–164, 508–513; E. Timothy Smith, U.S., Italy & NATO, p. 1–176; Dean Acheson, Present at Creation (New York: Norton, 1969)
[36]A. Breccia, Italia e difesa dell’Europa, p. 5–39; S.J. Gilbert, Armistice to Alliance, p. 468–470, 500–555.
[37]N. Kogan, A Political History of Italy, p. 5–83; P. Vannicelli, Italy, NATO & European Community, p. 1–52.
[38]S. Romano, Politica Estera Italiana, p. 165–203; E. Timothy Smith, U.S., Italy & NATO, 1947–52, p. 1–176.