47/2 - Qualestoria. Rivista di storia contemporanea. XLVII, N.ro 2, Dicembre 2019

judgments on the Italian Social Republic in ordinary and military sentences The judgment on the legal and political nature of the Italian Social Republic goes through all the phases of transitional justice in Italy, asking fundamental questions: what is the nation after 8 September 1943? Can different conceptions of nationhood exist and coexist in post-fascist Italy? The Extraordinary Court of Assize of Turin (June-August 1945), defines the nation as necessarily anti-fascist, while the Court of Cassation recognizes a possible «republican fascist patriotism» and therefore two different (and legitimate) ideas of nationhood. In the final phase of transitional justice (1954), the Military Supreme Court becomes the protagonist of the most extreme revision of the concept of nation, through the rehabilitation of the Italian Social Republic and the overcoming of anti-fascist legislation.

Many rumors and legends arose after the bombings on Italian cities during the Second World War. According to one of these rumors, some Italian – namely members of the Resistance – reported to the Allied air forces which civilian targets to hit. After the war, neo-fascist press spread the rumor, and so did some attorney during the trials against collaborationists. Former partisans, while firmly rejecting these accusations, testified that the Resistance provided to Allies information only about military targets, always recommending them to spare civilian facilities. The article focuses on the birth and meta-morphosis of the rumor, used from 1944 to 1954 in order to attack anti-fascist political counterparts.

This essay offers the first description and analysis of the judicial work of the Extraordinary Court of Assize of Lucca (Tuscany), which brought to trial the crimes of collaborationism with Nazi-fascists committed in the area between 1943 and 1945. The data on the activities and on trials celebrated by the court from 1945 to 1947 are given; then, particular attention is paid to a court case with a woman accused of having relations with the fascist political police, which, even though it may look like a less important case and trial, gives the opportunity to show the peculiarities and critical issues of this special judicial practice against fascist crimes and, also, the hidden importance and spreading of «secondary» collaborationism.

The essay concerns the events that involved Jewish-owned artistic heritage in the Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral (OZAK, 1943-1945). Established in September 1943 by the Germans after the occupation of Italy, the OZAK included the province of Trieste, where the Nazi racial laws were applied. This implied the seizure of all Jewish assets, including art collections. As evidence of these facts, the cases of the families Brunner, Morpurgo and Pincherle are explained and reconstructed thanks to archival sources, emblematic examples of the different paths that Jewish cultural heritage could have taken.

Sport was one of the battlefields of the political and ideological conflicts that marked life in Trieste and the «Area A» of TLT, not only in relation to football and cycling but also in less popular disciplines. Starting to the recent works of Archambault, Sbetti and Zanetti Lorenzetti, this paper aims to deepen, in the broader context of the revival of Italian sport post-WWII, the reconstruction and conflicts of Trieste sport. In particular the focus is on Sports institutions (sometimes in a sutonomic and coordinated manner and some-times in a conflictual way): they have played an active role in defending of Italianness. To complete this paper, the auhors made use of secondary literature and direct sources. In particular the archives of Giulio Andreotti, of «Zone di Confine» Office, of Precidency of Council Minister, IOC and CONI as well as the most important national newspapers.

Once the diplomatic battle for Gorizia/Gorica was lost in the aftermath of World War II, the new communist authorities in Belgrade hastily decided in 1946 to build the «Ersatz» administrative, economic and cultural center of the Slovenian-populated region of northern Littoral (severna Primorska). Adopting principles of Western pre-war modern-ist urbanism (Le Corbusier’s The Athens Charter), Nova Gorica, as the nascent town was called, intended to become an ideal environment for the «new working man», a showpiece of socialism vis-à-vis «crumbling» capitalist landscape on the other side of the newly settled border, conveying also the message of anti-fascism and national lib-eration struggle. However, after Tito’s split with Moscow when new conflicts erupted along Yugoslavian eastern borders, the erection of the «lighthouse» of socialism on the western border became a task of secondary importance for the authorities in Ljubljana and even less in Belgrade. Using materials from archives in Nova Gorica, Ljubljana, and Belgrade, this article sheds light on the relationship between the authorities at local and republican level concerning this prominent project. It shows how the authoritative decision about radical modernization was imposed by the top communist decision-makers in close collaboration with the architects, who considered themselves the teachers of the new way of life. Eventually, this millenarian mission failed in a couple of years, leaving further development of the new urban center of the border region to the initiative of local political and economic elites, which shaped the town.

This article aims to analyze the autobiographical practice within the Italian Communist Party (Pci) after the Second World War. Those who attended the political cadres’ school between 1945 and 1956 were required to write about their lives, and to submit these writings to the scrutiny of the Party. To take into consideration this practice allows to reflect on the pedagogical dimension within the Pci and on the relations between militants and Party itself, during the transition phase from a restricted organization of «professional revolutionaries» to the «partito nuovo» supported by Palmiro Togliatti. Moreover, the diversity of autobiographical approaches to the self-narration refers to the plurality of trajectories to the communist militancy, allowing to criticize excessively mechanicanistic causal paradigms. The article focuses on the case study of Turin, an industrial metropolis, because of its political and social specificities and its relevance in the history of the Communist Party in Italy.

At the end of Word War II, the post-fascist Italian establishment had to deal with most of the abuses perpetrated by the previous regime. Movable and immovable property belong-ing to citizen from «enemy nations» were then returned. The analysis of the Tuscan Case is carried out on the basis of the documents conserved at the Historical Archive of Monte Dei Paschi di Siena. The aim of the analysis itself is both to highlight the complexity and slowness of the return of goods mechanism, and to un-derline the substantial continuity with the past: as a matter of fact, was the same Ente di gestione e liquidazione immobiliare (Egeli) to confiscate the properties before and during the War, and to return them at the end of the conflict. Very frequently the restoration of full rights on personal belongings, turned into a long and exhausting process for the owners themselves. As a result, the return procedure often became quite harmful, carrying out further abuses instead of healing them.

«Qualestoria» è la rivista dell’Irsml FVG, fondata nel 1973 come «Bollettino dell’Istituto regionale per la storia del movimento di liberazione nel Friuli Venezia Giulia». Ospita contributi di autori italiani e stranieri, promuovendo la pubblicazione di numeri monografici e miscellanei. La rivista propone tradizionalmente tematiche legate alla storia contemporanea dell’area alto-adriatica e delle zone di frontiera, rivolgendo particolare attenzione allo studio e alla storiografia dei paesi dell’Europa centro-orientale e balcanica. Le proposte di pubblicazione vanno inviate all’indirizzo e-mail della redazione. Saranno preventivamente valutate da esperti interni ed esterni al comitato di direzione. I saggi pubblicati nella sezione «Studi e ricerche» sono sottoposti in forma anonima a double-blind peer review. «Qualestoria» è attualmente presente nei seguenti indici: Bibliografia storica nazionale, Catalogo italiano dei periodici (Acnp), Essper, Gbv (Gemainsame Bibliotheksverbund), Google Scholar, Res. È inoltre inserita dall’Anvur nella lista delle riviste scientifiche ai fini dell’abilitazione scientifica nazionale. La rivista non si intende impegnata dalle interpretazioni e vedute espresse da articoli e note firmati.

The goal of this work is to analyze nationalist and Neo-fascist organizations established in the territory of Friuli and Venezia-Giulia in the immediate postwar period. These associations, that mainly gathered together former soldier but also common citizens, aimed to defend and legitimate the Italian rights over Friuli Venezia-Giulia region that was still under the Allied control and whose future was uncertain. Among these groups, was not uncommon the presence of ambiguous organizations set up by former members of the Fascist regime formations. Most of these groups acted on their own initiative, but some of them, like the Osoppo Association, were directly linked to the Italian institutions. Therefore, this research pursues the goal of analyzing the protagonists, the organization and propaganda strategies carried out by the different players that were operating in the Italian Eastern border area during the complicated period that followed the Liberation and ended with the Peace Treaty.