Assasination of Carlo Rosselli. Journal of Contemporary History-1997-Pugliese-305-19.pdf

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DOI: 10.1177/002200949703200302

1997 32: 305Journal of Contemporary HistoryStanislao G. Pugliese

Death in Exile: The Assassination of Carlo Rosselli

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Stanislao G. Pugliese

Death in Exile: TheAssassination of

Carlo Rosselli

... the sad death in exile according to a law that appears almost inevitable for thebest sons of Italy....

Carlo Rosselli

Filippo Turati e il socialismo italiano&dquo;

When the grand old man of Italian socialism, Filippo Turati, died in Paris in1932, many saw his passing as the end of an era. In truth, the great hope ofItalian socialism had been dashed with the rise to power of Mussolini and the

fascist regime a decade earlier; Turatis death was a symbolic postscript to thatdefeat. In a moving elegy, Carlo Rosselli commemorated his death and withpoetic insight lamented what seemed the inexorable destiny of sad death in

exile for those Italians who fought against injustice. Rosselli had made a namefor himself in the 1920s as a heretical socialist, criticizing the intellectual and

political shortcomings of Italian socialism. During the 1930s he was the enfantterrible of the anti-fascist opposition in exile; this reputation was ultimately toseal his fate as he himself hinted years earlier. Yet his legacy was manifest inthe programme of theAction Party and its noble attempt to forge a new Italyout of the crucible of the armed resistance against nazism and fascism.

Carlo Rosselli (1899-1937) was born into a wealthy, patriotic, bourgeoisJewish family with strong ties to the Risorgimento. Like most of their class, the

Rosselli family fervently supported the new nation-state and answered its callto arms in 1915. The eldest brother,Aldo, was killed at the front in 1916,while Carlo and his younger brother, Nello, served as junior officers (eventhough as sons of a widow, they could have claimed exemption from militaryduty). With the end of the war and the rise of fascism, both brothers were con-fronted with a stark ethical dilemma: since acceptance of the regime was out ofthe question, they were forced to choose either active opposition or quietmoral resistance. The studious historian Nello opted for the latter; his moreexuberant and expansive brother Carlo joined the active resistance.

Trained as an economist, Carlo abandoned a promising career as a professorof political economy and devoted his prodigious energy, intellect and fortuneto various anti-fascist projects. In 1925, he was the moving force behind the

1 Quaderni di Giustizia e Libert, 3 (June 1932), 1-42; reprinted m Carlo Rosselli, Scritti

politici, eds Zeffiro Ciuffoletti and Paolo Bagnoli (Naples 1988), 215-73.


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publication of Non Mollare! (Dont Give Up!), one of the first anti-fascistunderground publications and the one which published documents directlyincriminating Mussolini in the June 1924 assassination of the reform socialist

deputyGiacomo Matteotti. In

1926,he convinced the socialist Pietro Nenni to

collaborate on a more theoretical journal, Il Quarto Stato, which sought torevitalize the moribund socialist tradition after its defeat at the hands of

fascism. Throughout the 1920s, Rosselli had disturbed the waters of theItalian Left with trenchant essays criticizing the failure of the socialistsand communists in the struggle against fascism.Arrested for the successful

expatriation of Filippo Turati, he was tried and sentenced to confino, thefascist practice of sending enemies of the state to remote outposts in southern

Italy. For two years on the island of Lipari, Rosselli clandestinely worked on

his major theoretical work, Socialismo liberale. In July 1929, along withEmilio Lussu and Francesco Fausto Nitti (nephew of the former PrimeMinister), he managed a daring and dramatic escape by boat from Lipari tothe shores of northAfrica and then on to Paris, the home of Italian anti-fascists in exile. There he established the largest and most influential non-Marxist movement, Giustizia e Liberta, with a newspaper of the same name.From Paris, Rosselli continued his incessant campaign against fascism andwhat he saw as the fatal flaws of the anti-fascist resistance: the false hope of

legalistic methods; the fetishization of the proletariat and the consequent

demonization of the bourgeoisie; the refusal to recognize the power ofnationalism; the failure to synthesize theory with action; and the theoreticaldivorce between socialism and liberalism.

The particular problems created by exile were often uppermost in Rossellismind. He had insisted, from the earliest days of his active participation in theanti-fascist cause, that the struggle was to be carried out in Italy, and not fromabroad. Exile did not change his position; if anything, he continued to insist

that the important workwas

to be done in Italy, among the youth, workersand middle class. Rosselli was highly conscious of the exile tradition ofthe Risorgimento and often related his life and thought to men like Mazzini,Cattaneo, and others in the nineteenth century. Perhaps Rosselli thought ofhimself in the tradition of the exiled Hebrews and the moral catalyst of theBiblical prophets when he wrote that Greek rationalism and the Messianismof Israel were the foundations of his liberal socialism.22

As Rosselli predicted, fascisms victory in Ethiopia pushed the regime, witha renewed yet false sense of confidence, into new adventures. Even before May

1936 when victory was proclaimed inAfrica, the regimewas

setting its sightson other parts of Europe. In Spain on 16 February 1936, the republicans wereelected after the bienio negro, or two black years, of conservative rule. In

1934, the Republic had been in peril, but had been saved by an uprising of

2 Carlo Rosselli, Socialismo liberale, ed. John Rosselli (Turin 1979), 4.


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peasants and workers. Meanwhile, in France, a coalition of socialists andradicals were victorious in the spring elections of 1936, in what seemed like aneffective response to the attempted coup detat of February 1934.Although it

mighthave

appearedthat the forces of the Left were

finally respondingto the

fascist threat in Europe, Rosselli saw continued signs of weakness. Hecriticized the Italian version of the Popular Front as defensive and insufficientin answering fascism by recreating the old party coalitions of the past. On 4

July 1936 the League of Nations officially ended the sanctions against Italy.Rosselli responded with one word: nausea.3 Stephen Lux, a Viennese Jew,Czech citizen and journalist for Prague Presse, committed suicide during the4 July session to call attention to the plight of the Jews in Hitlers Germany.For Rosselli, the suicide of Lux was an individual gesture, symbolizing thecollective

suicideof democratic

Europe.Several days after the attempted coup detat of 18 July 1936 in Spain,various members of Giustizia e Liberia met in the offices of the journal on RueVal-de-Grace in Paris. Rosselli proposed quick and decisive intervention

against fascism in Spain; here was the opportunity to transform anti-fascismfrom a negative, passive idea into a positive, active force. Unfortunately, thereform socialists were hesitant and the communists were awaiting word fromMoscow on how to proceed. Only the maximalist socialists and the anarchistsagreed with Rossellis demand for a volunteer force to leave immediately for

Spain. For thenext ten

months until his assassination, Rosselli fought a battleon two fronts: against Franco and his followers, and trying to convince thesupporters of the Spanish Republic that this was not just a civil war to defendthe Republic, but the first scene in the last act of the drama of Europeanfascism. Rosselli saw the Spanish Civil War as the first real opportunity tocombat fascism on equal terms, on the field of battle, with the only elementunderstood by fascism- force.With his arrival in Barcelona during the first week inAugust 1936 noted

by the police,4Rosselli was received by a contingent of FAI (Federacion

Anarquista lb6rica) and introduced to members of theCNT

(ConfederacionNacional del Trabajo) and POUM (Partito Obrero de Unificacion Marxista).He wrote back to his English-born wife, Marion, that for now, it was not areal or modern war, but rather a slow siege.5 Managing to hammer togetheran accord with the regional government of Catalonia, he created an Italiananti-fascist column of volunteers. Members of Giustizia e Liberia joined with

3 LEuropa si fascistizza ..., in Giustizia e Libert, 10 July 1936 (hereafter cited as GL; theissues of the newspaper are conserved in the Istituto Storico della Resistenza in Toscana [ISRT] in

Florence and in the New York Public Library); now in Carlo Rosselli, Scritti dellesilio

,

II, ed.Costanzo Casucci (Turin 1992), 385-7.4 Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Ministero dellIntero, Divisione Generale della Pubblica

Sicurezza, DivisioneAffari Generale e Riservate, Rome (hereafter cited asACS); busta 4221,fascicolo 4.

5 11August 1936, a copy of the original (in French) is conserved in theArchivio Giustizia eLibert (AGL) in the ISRT, Florence; sezione I, fascicolo 2, sottofascicolo 5, n. 3.


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Italian anarchists to create the Ascaso Column.6 Together, Rosselli and the

republican MarioAngeloni shared command of this first group of 130 Italianvolunteers, of whom approximately 70-80 were anarchists, 20 were membersof Giustizia e

Liberta,and the remainder either

socialists,communists or

republicans.~After a week, Rosselli returned to Paris where he tried to

persuade the other anti-fascists to volunteer in Spain. By the end of the monthhe was back in Spain, on theAragon front. By October 1936, the first elementsof the International Brigades had come together in Spain.

Rosselli was also instrumental in helping to formAndr6 Malrauxs airsquadron, the only air defence of the Republic before the arrival of aeroplanesfrom the USSR. The pilot Giordano Viezzoli, a member of Giustizia e Liberta,volunteered for service in Malrauxs squadron. On 30 September 1936 he was

killedafter a

dogfightover the

skiesof Madrid.

The fascist police, efficientas

usual, were aware of an important meeting that took place in Malrauxs housein the summer of 1936. Malraux had invited his friend Leo Lagrange, Ministerof Sport in the French government, to discuss the possibility of French supportfor the Spanish Republic. Rosselli and Viezzoli were also present, along withthe Russian writer Ilya Ehrenburg.9The Italian Ascaso Column received its baptism of fire on 28August 1936

at Monte Pelato, where, even though outnumbered and lacking properweapons, they held their own against the forces of Franco. Tragically,

Angeloniwas

killed in this first action and command of the Column passedexclusively to Rosselli who was slightly wounded by an intelligent bullet.o

6 The Column was named after FranciscoAscaso, a Spanish anarchist killed in Barcelona inthe early stages of the military uprising against the Republic. Lma Simonetti of Trieste joined theColumn soon after its formation. For the important role of women in the Spanish Civil War, see

Shirley Mangini, Memories of Resistance: Womens Voices From the Spanish Civil War (NewHaven 1995).7 Aldo Garosci, Vita di Carlo Rosselli, 2 vols (Florence 1973), II, 180.8 In December 1936, Giuliano Viezzoli, who had received a medal of honour for his service in

the first world war, sent a letter to the podest (the ancient Roman term used by the fascists forMayor) of Trieste, his home town:

My son Giordano, born in Trieste, fought with a Garibaldian faith in Spam, continued thesame struggle for the freedom of peoples in which I believed in fighting the war. The lead ofItalian bombs has ended his short life. It is not your victory! It is rather the shame of thedecadence of the monarchy that you represent. I return the medal to you; make morebombs with it: with it you accelerate the final reckoning and the hour of the social revolu-tion.

Quoted in Franco Fucci,Ali contro Mussolini (Milan 1978), 132-3. On Viezzolis death, see

GL, 9 October 1936.

9 ACS, busta 4221, fascicolo 4.10 He described the event to Marion in a letter: ... the alarm had been given and I climbed atopthe trench; I was observing the zone in the early light of dawn when the first bullets began to fly. Ifelt a very light blow on the right side. No pain. I climbed down into the trench, saw that I was

losing a little bit of blood, and took myself to the infirmary.A very fortunate bullet: superficialentrance and exit, no injury, no pain ... I feel that I will return, as I felt, although I didnt tell you,that the honour of the first bullet (extremely intelligent) would be mine. Letter of 31August


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Notwithstanding his wound and the death ofAngeloni, Rosselli was hopeful;anti-fascism had finally transformed itself: The prophets are no longerunarmed.And the descendants of the prophets, rifle in hand, have acquired anew consciousness.1After a brief

respitein Paris, where he had gone to

recuperate from his injury, he returned to Barcelona on 7 November. There he

gave what was to be his most important speech, on Radio Barcelona andbeamed into Italy. It was an act that probably sealed his fate. The radio hadbeen effectively used by the Loyalists for propaganda; in stirring and ringingphrases, he urged Italians to support the Spanish Republic as the first step in

overthrowing fascism in Europe and tied the volunteer and exile tradition tothe most glorious names in recent Italian history: Santarosa in Greece;Garibaldi in theAmericas; Mazzini in England; Pisacane in France- all fight-

ingfor

justiceand freedom.

Back in Paris to recuperate from the phlebitis that had plagued him sincechildhood, Rosselli continued to organize men and arms for the Spanishrepublicans. He returned to the offices of Giustizia e Liberta, and wroteseveral penetrating essays on the course of the war in Spain&dquo; and the unfoldingdevelopments in Europe.13As for many others, fighting for the SpanishRepublic was a defining experience, even a metamorphosis:

I must confess that after the long years of exile, it was only when I crossed the borders of

Spain, when I enrolled m the peoples militia and donned the overalls - the symbolic uni-

form of armed labour-

and embraced the rifle, that I felt a free man again, m the fullness ofmy digmty.4

After more than a decade of persecution, arrests, trials, imprisonment and

exile, the anti-fascists finally felt part of a larger community. The stigma ofexile, though worn with fierce pride, could be set aside in the name of a largercause.After years of having to ask, beg and receive, the anti-fascists were

finally able to give, contribute and establish themselves as a positive force,fighting for something. The Spanish experience had opened up new horizons

1936, emphasis in the original; reprinted m Carlo Rosselli, Oggi in Spagna, domani in Italia(Turin 1967), 46-8.

11 Carlo Rosselli, Per lunit dellantifascismo italiano in GL, 22 January 1937; reprinted in

Oggi in Spagna, op. cit., 102-6 and Scritti dellesilio, II, 445-9.12 The last essays on the Spanish Civil War, all in Giustizia e Libert in 1937 were Nostra

guerra, 12 February; La Spagna sola, 19 February; Leroica morte diAntomo Cieri sulfronte Huesca, 16April; Per una Guadalajara in terra italiana, 23April; Guerra e politica in

Spagna, 7 May; Dopo le giornate di Barcellona, 14 May; Crisi in Spagna, 21 May; Mediazione

impossibile, 28 May.All are reprinted in Scritti dellesilio

,

II, 468-545, passim.13 See especially Riflessioni sullo stato dEuropa, 29 January 1936; La situazione in Italia, 5

February 1937; La crociata antisovietica, 26 February 1937; and Alla ricerca di farfalle sotto gliarchi di Tito e di Brandeburgo, 11 June 1937, all in Giustizia e Libert; now in Scritti dellesilio,II, 453-7, 463-7, 475-9, 549-54.14 Speech to volunteers atArgenteuil, France, 10 February 1936; partially printed posthumous-ly in GL, 18 June 1937; then in Oggi in Spagna, op. cit., 110-14 and Scritti dellesilio, II, 458-62.


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and possibilities. Spain was a decisive turning-point in the history of Italiananti-fascism: The myth of an anti-fascist who does not fight is ended. Thedefamation of an Italian proletariat incapable of reacting to fascism is ended.The

academyof exile to which an

ungrateful destinyseemed to condemn us is

ended.15 The intervention in Spain would be the bridge that bound the anti-fascists to Italy and acted as a catalyst for a humanistic, socialist revolution in

Italy. The anti-fascists would lead the Italian people from their servitude and

passivity into a new period of history in which they would be active, consciousagents of their own fate. For Spain, for Italy, for the new socialist revolution,it is worth- if necessary - dying. 16That necessity was borne byAntonio Gramsci who died on 27April 1937

after 11 years in fascist prisons. Giustizia e Liberta devoted a six-columnheadline and its first

pageto his

death, callingit a slow assassination. 17

Rosselli wrote a commentary which placed Gramsci with Gobetti as a heroic

martyr: Ils seront reconnus un jour comme les prophetes de lItalie libre qui seconstruit aujourdhui par 1esprit et par une lutte tres dure. For Rosselli,Gramsci was the very incarnation of the revolutionary ascetic.8 On 22 May, atthe Gymnase Huygens in Paris, a service was held in Gramscis memory.

Among the speakers were Marchel Cachin, editor of the French Humanit,

Egidio Gennari of the Partito Comunista dItalia (PCdI), Bruno Buozzi of thePartito Socialista Italiano (PSI) and Carlo Rosselli. In his speech, just twoweeks before his own

death,Rosselli contrasted Gramsci and Mussolini as

two different types of humanity. While Mussolini was bruyant, irrationnel,improvisateur, demagogue, aventurier, traitre a lideal de sa jeunesse, Gramsciwas intime, reserve, rationnel, severe, ennemi de la rh6torique et de toutesorte de facilite, fidele a la classe ouvriere dans la bonne comme dans lamauvaise fortune.9

Throughout his career, Rosselli seemed to foreshadow his own destiny when

speaking of anti-fascist martyrs.In an

essay commemoratingthe murder of the

socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti, he remarked: This type of anti-fascist-the prosaic hero- was destined to be killed. 120 Perhaps sensing that his wordsand actions had irretrievably set in motion a modern tragedy, he made plans to

expand the scope of the war in Spain.Still afflicted with painful phlebitis, Rosselli left Paris and on 27 May

arrived at the spa town of Bagnoles-de-lOrne in Normandy, where he took aroom at the Hotel Cordier. Marion soon joined him and Nello arrived on 6

15 Oggi in Spagna, op. cit., 112.16 Ibid., 113.17 Giustizia e Libert, 30April 1930.18 Portrait de la nouvelle opposition en Italie in GL, 7 May 1937, signed Curzio.19 Due climi politici: due tipi di umanit, speech of 22 May 1937, published posthumously in

GL, 18 June 1937; now m Scritti dellesilio, II, 543-5.20 Eroe tutto prosa in Scritti dellesilio, I, 268.


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June. That day they visited Maison Blanche, the home of the historian ElieHalevy, together with RaymondAron. Carlo had established a daily routine atthe spa, taking the cure in the morning, working in his room until late after-noon and then going for a drive in the countryside in his Ford car, which had

miraculously survived the front in Spain. This routine was duly noted byseveral fascist police spies who had arrived in the resort soon after him.On the afternoon of 9 June, Carlo and Nello drove Marion to the station

and watched her depart for Paris where she would help celebrate the tenthbirthday of their eldest son, John.When they returned to the hotel, the brothers usually avoided the heavy

traffic of the main road and turned into a side road that led past the forest at

Couterne. Knowing this, the assassins had pulled over to the side of the road,giving the impression that they had broken down. The brothers, coming uponthe disabled vehicle, stopped their car and approached to assist the driver, atwhich point they were attacked and killed. Carlo was killed by four daggerthrusts, two of which severed his carotid artery; Nello was attacked by lessefficient murderers, suffered many dagger wounds and appeared to have putup some resistance.An autopsy later revealed bullet wounds as well. The

bodies were dragged a short distance and left in the undergrowth by the sideof the road, a dagger nearby. The assassins drove off, taking Carlos Ford,but abandoning it several kilometres further on. It was found the next daywith a bomb, whose fuse had failed, on the back seat. The bodies were not dis-covered until two days later; their possessions had remained undisturbed. 21There was an eyewitness: Helene Besneux, a hairdresser, was bicycling onthe road by the forest when she came upon the automobiles. Three days later,on 12 June, she reported to the authorities that she had seen a pool of bloodand that one of the men had seen her, given her a murderous look, and thendriven off.22

News of the double assassination shocked and stunned the anti-fascist

community.A crowd estimated at between 100,000 and 200,000z3 peopleattended the funeral services in Paris and the

cortegemade its

wayto the

Pere Lachaise cemetery accompanied by the music of Beethovens Eroica

symphony. There, the brothers were laid to rest under the inscription:

21 Gaetano Salvemini, Carlo and Nello Rosselli:A Memoir (London 1937), 65-8; idem,Lassassinio dei fratelli Rosselli in No al fascismo, ed. Ernesto Rossi (Bari 1951), 255-304; idem,The Rosselli Murders in The New Republic, 18August 1937; see also Charles F. Delzell, The

Assassination of Carlo and Nello Rosselli, June 9, 1937: Closing a Chapter of ItalianAnti-Fascism in Italian Quarterly, XXVII, 107 (Winter 1987), 47-64; Pierre Guillen, La risonanza in

Francia dellazione di Giustiziae

Liberte

dellassassinio dei fratelli Rosselli in Giustiziae

Libertnella lotta antifascistae nella storia dItalia, ed. Carlo Francovich (Florence 1978), 239-60.22 Salvemini, Lassassinio dei fratelli Rosselli in No al fascismo

,

op. cit., 257.

23 Emilio Lussu testified at the trial of General Roatta that The day of the funerals, theimmense boulevard that led to Pre Lachaise cemetery was filled with more than 300,000 persons,from every country. Not only Paris, but all of Europe was present that day. His testimony is repro-duced in Il processo Roatta: i documenti (Rome 1945), 82-4.


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CARLOAND NELLO ROSSELLI

MURDERED TOGETHER

THE 9TH JUNE 1937EXPECT TOGETHER

THAT THE SACRIFICE OF THEIR YOUTH

WILL HASTEN

IN ITALY

THE VICTORY OF THEIR IDEALS

JUSTICEAND LIBERTY

Almost 13 years later to the day, the anti-fascist cause was struck by a secondMatteotti case. 24

The fascistpress

tried to link the assassinations to conflicts within the anti-

fascist community, implicitly accusing the communists, anarchists and allies ofGiustizia e Liberta. The recent murder of the anarchists Camillo Berneri and

Francesco Barbieri at the hands of Stalins agents in Spain gave this storycredibility. Not coincidentally, the most aggressive support for this theorywas to be found in the pages of Il Telegrafo, the daily newspaper of Livorno,under the editorship of GiovanniAnsaldo and controlled by Count Galeazzo

Ciano, Minister of ForeignAffairs and Mussolinis son-in-law.25 People, how-ever, were not fooled. From hisAmerican exile at Harvard, the historian

GaetanoSalvemini

spokefor the

majoritywhen he wrote that all roads lead

to Rome.26Ansaldo had made the treacherous journey from anti-fascistoutsider to fascist insider with relative ease.As Rosselli had written in 1935,TheAnsaldo case is symbolic. It is the case of so many bourgeois and Italianintellectuals. It is, in a man, the entire Italian crisis. 121

Carlo and Nellos mother,Amelia Pincherle Rosselli, a renowned playwrightin her day, bore the deaths of her two sons with dignity and stoic resignation.Years later, the president of the Italian Republic and former colleague of CarloRosselli, Sandro Pertini, wrote that she seemed to emerge from the terrible

24 The phrase is Salveminis, Lassassinio dei fratelli Rosselli, 258. Twelve years later (1949) amonument was erected in the forest of Bagnoles-de-lOrne to mark the site of the assassinations.Carlo Sergio Signori was commissioned to create the monument, a stark and poignant design that

was, according to the artist Gmo Severini, the first abstract monument in France. The abstraction

of the forms expresses a mysterious and moving grandeur that is tied to the tragedy.AmeliaRosselli wrote that the work [was] extremely noble and significant in its austere simplicity, inLuciano Galmozzo, Monumenti alla libert: antifascismo, resistenza e pace nei monumenti italianidal 1945 al 1985 (Milan 1986), 41-2.25 On 12 June, Il Telegrafo wrote that the assassination was the result of suppression due tothe hatreds among the diverse extremist sects of antifascism.Ansaldo wrote that Rosselli, who

recently had become a communist, had expressed, in private and in public, his approval of the"suppression" of Berneri. This approval attracted the hatred of the Italian and Cataloman

anarchists living in France; the next day the paper insisted that Rosselli had fallen almost

certainly because of some anarchist vendetta; quoted in Salvemini, Lassassinio dei fratelh

Rosselli, op. cit., 258-9, note 1.

26 Salvemini, Carlo and Nello Rosselli: A Memoir, op. cit., 68.

27 OscenoAnsaldo in GL, 20 September 1935; now m Scritti dellesilio, II, 214-16.


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events of June 1937 like the heroine of a Corneille tragedy.28 The young wivesand seven children of the two brothers left Paris and eventually spent thewar years in Larchmont, NY. Marion lived for another 12 years after the

assassination,but as Salvemini wrote at her

passingin

1949, after Carlosmurder her life was a painful descent toward death.29It soon became clear that the assassins were members of the French

Cagoule, a secret extreme right-wing sect known by the hooded cape of itsfollowers and with ties to the French secret services and the secret societyCSAR (Comite secret daction revolutionnaire).3 Evidently, the assassins hadbeen following Rosselli closely for several months, if not longer. On 15February 1938 Marion Rosselli recognized one of those arrested in the case,Fernand Ladislav Jakubiez. Posing as a travelling carpet salesman, Jakubiez

had appearedone

morningat

the Rosselli home in Paris during theautumn

of1936, asking suspicious questions about Carlo. In the spring of 1936, a certainCarlo Zanatta had presented himself to members of Giustizia e Liberta in

Paris, claiming to be an army deserter with information against a Communist

Party member. Under questioning, it became apparent that his entire story wasfalse. Bursting into tears, he revealed that he had concealed a loaded pistol inthe belt of his trousers. He had been approached by an agent provocateur atthe Italian Consulate in Paris with instructions to assassinate Rosselli. 31

The assassination of the Rosselli brothers and the explosion of a bomb at

the building of the National Confederation of French Charitieson

11September 1937 forced the French authorities to investigate the cagoulards.Their work turned up more than one hundred individuals. On 12 January1938, Minister of the Interior of the Blum government, Max Dormoy,announced the arrest of seven individuals related to the Rosselli murders: JeanFilliol, Fernand Jakubiez, Robert G.E. Purieux, Jean Marie Bouvyer, L.C.

Huguet,Andr6 Tenaille 3 and J. Foran. Five were already under arrest; Huguetand Filliol were being sought. One of the cars used in the assassinationbelonged to Eugene Deloncle, one of the leaders of the CSAR.

A serious shortcoming of the investigation was that it failed to admit thatthere was any Italian connection to the assassinations. In January 1938, theFrench daily Matin reported that Dormoy had noted that the weapons of the

28 She was always an exemplary wife, mother, grandmother; a very fine writer, truly worthy tobe remembered among the great Italians of this century. Sandro Pertim, Presentation toAldo

Rosselli, La famiglia Rosselli; una tragedia italiana (Milan 1983), vi.29 Marion Rosselli in Il Ponte, V, 11 (November 1949), 1443.

30 On the Cagoule, see Philippe Bourdel, Le Cagoule (Paris 1970) and Christian Bernadac,Dagore. Les cahiers secrets de la Cagoule (Paris 1977); see also J.R. Tournoux,LHistoire Secrte:

La Cagoule, le Front Populaire, Vichy, Londres, Deuxime Bureau lAlgrie Franaise, LOAS(Paris 1962) and Douglas Porch, The French Secret Services: From the DreyfusAffair to the GulfWar (New York 1995).31 Marions identification of Jakubiez is recounted in Salvemini, Lassassinio dei fratelli

Rosselli, op. cit., 263; the Zanatta episode can be found in Garosci, Vita, II, op. cit., 147-8.32 Tenaille had been identified by Hlne Besneux, the hairdresser who was driving by the sceneof the murders.


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cagoulards came from beyond Frances borders; another official in the Frenchpolice force cited the number of arms, rifles, machine-guns of Italian manu-facture found in the investigation.33 But soon after these announcements the

Blum government fell andwas

replaced in January 1938 by Daladier, whosought to appease Mussolini at all costs in the futile hope of distancing Italyfrom nazi Germany. Consequently, for reasons of international politics, allfuture work on the assassinations and the cagoulards was confined withinFrances borders. With the fall of France and the creation of the Vichy regime,all were freed under Marshal P6tain. Dormoy was arrested by the Vichyregime and later killed during the night of 25-26 July 1941 by a bomb placedunder his bed.

At the end of the war, with the fall of the Petain regime, a new enquiry was

initiated against the cagoulards.Andr6 Tenaille had died fighting for the nazison the Russian front; for his services, he was posthumously awarded the

Legion of Honour by the Petain government.34 Eugene Deloncle, after enteringthe service of the nazis, was killed by the Gestapo; Franqois Metenier becamehead of Petains bodyguard.35 Metenier, Jakubiez and Puireux were arrestedand imprisoned; Filliol, Bouvyer, Foran and Huguet could not be found. On 6

June 1945, Jakubiez gave the following account of what happened on 9 June1937:

We went to Bagnoles. I was m Filliols car with Puireux and Baillet,6 while Alice 37 andBouvyer went in Faurans car. We had lunch in two different restaurants nearby. When wemet, Filliol let us know what we were to do, giving us precise instructions. We knew that thetwo Rossellis would have lunch at the same place as Fauran, Bouvyer andAlice. When thetwo Rossellis left the restaurant, we followed them m our car. They were accompanied by awoman [Marion], whom they left at the station of Bagnoles. Then they went toward

Alenqon, and we followed them.After having made some purchasesmAlenqon, the Rossellistook the road toward Bagnoles.At a certam point, Filliols car, in which I was travellmg,passed that of the Rossellis and cut them off. Filliol got out of the car with Baillet, pretend-ing that there was some mechanical problem. Rossellis car came to a stop. Carlo remained atthe wheel. His brother got out. Filliol, who was bent under the bonnet as if searchmg for the

problem, brusquely arose and discharged his parabellum38 at Nello, who fell. Baillet rushedtoward the car, where Carlo was still at the wheel, and shot him. Carlo was killed in aninstant. His brother, gravely wounded, had fallen into the ravme. I stabbed him two or threetimes with a dagger; Filliol finished him off with the pistol. The dagger that was found at thesite was mine. Filliol kept his. It was he who gave us all the same daggers. Puireux remainedat the wheel of his car during the incident. The occupants of the second car, who saw thecrime, turned around m the direction of Paris. Baillet and I threw the bodies into the forest

by the side of the road. Filliol searched the bodies and took some papers, that were sent to

33 Matin, 13 January 1938, quoted in Salvemmi, Lassassinio dei fratelli Rosselli, op. cit., 264.

34 La France, 17 September 1942.35 Salvemini, Lassassinio dei fratelli Rosselli, op. cit., 265.36 Jakubiez substituted Baillet, whom he thought had been killed in the Resistance, for Tenaille.37 Alice Lamy was the wife of Filliol. On 30 November 1945, she confessed to being present on9 June 1937, but admitted nothing else.38 The P38 was a weapon adopted by the German army in 1908 and remained the infantrypistol until 1938.


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Italy, as I discovered later. I got mto the victims car together with Baillet; we abandoned itafter several kilometres.11

A monument was erected on the site of the assassinations in 1949 and a

survey of the place raises provocative questions: only a hundred metres awayis the entrance road to the Chateau de Couterne; the Hotel Cordier is a merekilometre and a half from the site; a working farm is nearby. Why would theassailants choose such a site?

Although Jakubiez had confessed in June 1945, the trial of the cagoulardsdid not take place until 11-28 November 1948. Jakubiez was given a lifesentence of hard labour; Metenier was sentenced to 20 years hard labour;Puireux, four years of hard labour; those charged in absentia were sentencedto death. (Curiously and conveniently, both in France and in Italy, deathsentences were usually handed down to those in absentia.) No mention wasmade of Italians involved in the assassination.4 Yet the evidence points to thefact that the Italian fascist police were watching Rosselli at the Hotel Cordier.4

In Italy, the prosecution of those responsible for the Rosselli assassinationsdegenerated into absurdity.Attempts to place high fascist officials on trialwere often haphazard, with some minor officials convicted while major partyfunctionaries were either ignored or forgotten about.As early as July 1944,with the publication of Decreto legislativo luogoteneziale #159, a HighCommission for SanctionsAgainst Fascism had been established under theoverall direction of former Foreign Minister Carlo Sforza. The Decreto calledfor the creation of four commissions: one to deal with property seized from the

Fascist Party; another to sequester fascist profits; a third, under the directionof Mario Berlinguer,42 to prosecute fascists; and a fourth, under MauroScoccimarro,43 to purge fascists from the government.44 The first documententered into evidence at the trial of Italian officials involved with the murderswas prepared by the SIM (Servizio Informazioni Militare - MilitaryIntelligence). After specifying various acts of sabotage (including germwarfare), it stated

simply:5)

Suppressionof bothersome persons in various

localities. Means: various, preferably poison.&dquo;5Judge Italo Robino of the High Commission for the Punishment of Fascist

Crimes questioned General CesareAm6, of SIM - the agency responsiblefor espionage and counter-espionage under Mussolini.At one point in the

interrogation, when the secretary who was recording the question was absent,Ame said to Robino: Why dont you seek those responsible for the real and

39 Testimony reproduced in Salvemini, Lassassinio dei fratelli Rosselli, op. cit., 293-4.40 The sentences were reported in Le Monde, 29 November 1948.

41 The document, Highly Classified (Risservatissima Raccomandata) is found in theACS,busta 4221, fascicolo 4.42 Father of the future PCI leader Enrico Berlinguer.43 Mario Scoccimarro, of the PCI, had just recently been released from a long prison term. Hewas active in the armed Resistance and later served as vice-president of the Italian Senate.44 Roy Palmer Domenico, Italian Fascists On Trial, 1943-1948 (Chapel Hill 1991), x.45 Clara Conti, Servizio secreto (Rome 1945), 112.


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truly bloody crimes committed by fascism? The Rosselli murders, forinstance. Robino asked whatAme knew about the Rosselli assassinations, butthe general replied, I know nothing, but there is a certain Emanuele, I believean

official, who must know many things. Are you trying to say, Robinoasked, that he participated?Ame responded with a sphinx-like, Perhaps.Later, he was to deny ever saying anything of the kind, and even denied beingquestioned.46

Sante Emanuele was a retired colonel of the carabinieri (military police). Hetestified before the High Court of Justice that

... while he was the head of the Third Section (counter-espionage) of the Servizio

Informaziom Militare, Colonel PaoloAngioi, internal head of the service, m a daily report,gave him the order to ehmmate Carlo Rosselh. He passed the order to the head of the

counter-espionage centre m Turin, Major Roberto Navale, who had made direct contact withthe French cagoulards, who carried out the crime. The initiative came from the ForeignMinister, Galeazzo Ciano.4

In sworn testimony in September 1944, Emanuele stated that he had metCiano andAnfuso after the assassination of the Rosselli brothers and I can

say specifically that the attitude of Ciano was such as to show clearly that thedecision was his. The attitude ofAnfuso was that of one who co-operated. 141FilippoAnfuso was cabinet chief at the Foreign Ministry and as such, close to

Ciano. Loyal to Mussolini after the coup detat of 24-25 July 1943, he servedin the Republic of Salo and was appointed ambassador to Berlin.Another

high-ranking member of the fascist hierarchy to be implicated was GeneralMario Roatta, commander of the losing fascist side at the battle of

Guadalajara and twice Chief of Staff of the Italian army. Since 1934, he hadbeen the head of the SIM and was rumoured to have been involved in the

assassination of KingAlexander of Yugoslavia. He was the highest-rankingItalian military officer in Spain helping Franco, along with his German

counterpartAdmiral Wilhelm Canaris.

The climax of Italian efforts to obtain justice in the Rosselli affair was thetrial held in Rome before the High Court of Justice for the Punishment ofFascist Crimes, from 29 January to 12 March 1945, known as the RoattaTrial.49 Emanuele was questioned by Judge Lorenzo Maroni on 31 January1945:

46 Ibid., 22-3. Conti was the secretary of Judge Italo Robmo; the two were later married.

47 From the transcript of the High Court of Justice, 12 March 1945; quoted in Conti, op. cit.,31 and Salvemini, Lassassinio dei fratelli Rosselli, op. cit., 266.

48 Testimony of Santo Emanuele at the Roatta trial, quoted in Conti, op. cit., 257-69; and

Salvemini, Lassassinio dei fratelli Rosselli, op. cit., 267-9.49 The documents and transcripts of the trial have been published in Il processo Roatta: i docu-menti (Rome 1945). Those accused were: Fulvio Suvich, Under-secretary for ForeignAffairs and

Ambassador to the USA in 1936, retired in 1938; Francesco Jacomini, Vice-chief in the Cabinet of

the Ministry for ForeignAffairs and Governor ofAlbania; Zenone Benini; Paolo Cortese;Alberto

Pariani, anArmy Chief of Staff; FilippoAnfuso; Mario Roatta; PaoloAngioi; Santo Emanuele;Roberto Navale; Vincenzo Bertolini; Manlio Petragnani; Efisio Ligas; Eugenio Piccardi; Domemco


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Marom: You have elaborated a vast programme for the war m Spam.Acts of sabotagebehind the red lines.&dquo;

Emanuele: We had no other way to protect the soldiers in Spam except by sabotage .... Theorders of execution came to me fromAngioi. Now I will speak of the Rosselh affair. The

elimmation of Rosselh was certamly not an isolated fact, but must be inserted into the matrixof actions relative to the war m Spam. The Rosselli affair must be considered as an act of

sabotage to ehmmate the activity of Carlo Rosselli who was recruiting red troops.I transmitted this mission to the Turin centre, directed by commandant Navale .... It wasthis centre that took care of all the details. Major Navale organized everything, independentof me. 51

Emanueles testimony implied that Ciano andAnfuso decided on Rossellisassassination without conferring with Mussolini.Although there exists no

smoking gun directly implicating Mussolini, it is highly unlikely that either

Ciano orAnfuso would have undertaken such an action on their own

On 22 March 1937, Navale had met with members of the Cagoule in MonteCarlo. The French asked for 100 Beretta semi-automatic weapons in exchangefor the suppression of troublesome persons.Anfuso admitted to participatingin this meeting with Navale and Emanuele. 12The fascist dagger left behind by Jakubiez was used by the fascist papers to

prove that it was an anti-fascist crime: fascists would not be so foolish as toleave behind such evidence. Yet Vittorio Cerruti, former ambassador to Berlinand Paris, testified that when he met Ciano after the assassination, the ForeignMinister said to him: &dquo;You must admit that the idea of the dagger was reallya brilliant idea&dquo;. I deduced that the dagger was placed there, by orders of

Ciano, with the intention of accusing the anti-fascists of the assassination.S3On 12 March sentence was passed on all the accused:Anfuso (in absentia)

was found guilty and sentenced to death by firing squad; Roatta, Emanueleand Navale were all found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment; theirsentences were to be published in all the Rome daily papers.Angioi wassentenced to 20 years and 6 months; Pariani to 15 years; Petragnani to 12

years.54 Only Roatta, Emanuele and Petragnani were under arrest at the time

and the court was to lose Roatta in the middle of the trial. Roatta, who hadbeen complaining of ill health, was in the military hospital on Via Giulia inRome. On the night of 4 March, he simply walked out of the hospital and dis-

appeared.Although a half-hearted attempt was made to find the General, he

easily made his way to Francos Spain where he was given a warm welcome.

Formica. Suvich, Jacomini and Benini were not charged in the Rosselli assassination. The pre-siding judge was Lorenzo Maroni, the prosecutor was Mario Berlinguer.

50 Besides the traditional acts of sabotage, Emanuele revealed during the trial that the fascistshad contemplated releasing deadly bacteria in Spam against the Loyalists an early example of

twentieth-century germ warfare.51 Il processo Roatta:i documenti

,op. cit., 26.

52 Anfusos testimony is in Salvemim, Lassassinio dei fratelh Rosselli, op. cit., 279-86.

53 Il processo Roatta:i documenti, op. cit., 77.

54 Ibid., 183.


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Several days later, on 7 March, the leftist parties organized a mass demonstra-tion of 15,000 at the Coliseum; after marching up the Via dei Fori Imperiali,the crowd was fired upon by carabinieri protecting Prince Umberto at the

Quirinale Palace. 55 The travesty of justice continued when the Supreme Courtof Cassation annulled the sentences of Navale,Angioi and Pariani. The Navalecase was sent to the Court ofAssizes in Rome, which recognized his guilt, butreduced the sentence to seven years. The Supreme Court of Cassation alsoannulled the sentences of those guilty in the death of GiuseppeAmendola.Another trial in Perugia in 1949 absolvedAnfuso, Emanuele and Navale. In1953Anfuso was elected to parliament as a deputy from the MSI (MovimentoSociale Italiano- the neo-fascist party that arose after the second world war)and served as editor of the partys newspaper, Il Secolo dItalia. Roatta

returned to Italy in the 1960s and died a freeman in Rome in 1968.

Questions concerning the Rosselli assassinations surfaced again in 1951when the remains of the brothers were transferred for burial in Italy andAlberto Moravia published Il con formista.56 Moravia was a first cousin to theRosselli brothers; his father was Amelia Pincherle Rossellis brother.Interviewed by the noted critic Enzo Siciliano in 1972, one year after BernardoBertolucci had directed his cinematic version of The Conformist, Moraviastated that his novel was based on the Rosselli assassinations. 17

Proof of fascist authorship of the assassination is provided by the fascist

regime itself. In the Archivio Centrale dello Stato in Rome, a documentprepared by the Director of the Political Police Division (signature illegible) on1 February 1939 lists more than 50 anti-fascist volunteers killed in the SpanishCivil War. Listed as # 12850 is Carlo Rosselli, founder of Giustizia e Liberta,wounded at Monte Pelato, assassinated near Paris, by fascists, the llth [sic]June 1937, together with his brother Nello&dquo;The Rosselli brothers, representing two different types of resistance to

fascism, werc thus inducted into that pantheon of martyrs to fascism whichincluded Piero Gobetti, GiovanniAmendola, Giacomo Matteotti,Antonio

Gramsci and others who had refused to consider any moral compromise withthe regime.

Stanislao G. PuglieseisAssistant Professor at Hofstra University where he teaches courses

55 The Roatta trial, his escape and the demonstration are recounted in Domenico, op. cit.,134-9.

56 Alberto Moravia, Il conformista (Milan 1951); in English, The Conformist

,

trans.AngusDavidson, (New York 1982).57 Enzo Siciliano, Morovia (Milan 1971). For an analysis of Bertoluccis film, seeAngela Dalle

Vacche, The Body in the Mirror: Shapes of History m Italian Cinema (Princeton 1992), 57-92;Peter Bondanella, Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present (New York 1983), 301-6.

Millicent Marcus, Italian Film in the Light ofNeorealism (Princeton 1986), 285-312.58 ACS, Busta 4421, fascicolo 4. Emphasis added.


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in modern European intellectual and cultural history. His work in

progress, Carlo Rosselli: Socialist Heretic andAntifascist Exile, was

recognized as the Best Unpublished Manuscript in 1996 by the

Society for Italian Historical Studies.

Assasination of Carlo Rosselli. Journal of Contemporary History-1997-Pugliese-305-19.pdf

Documents

Transcript of Assasination of Carlo Rosselli. Journal of Contemporary History-1997-Pugliese-305-19.pdf