Today is a national holiday in Italy, la Festa della Repubblica, celebrating the referendum in 1946 that dumped the Savoy monarchy and made Italy a republic. It was a close vote—54% for a Republic, 46% for Monarchy—but not without irregularities.
Many Italian soldiers still stranded overseas did not vote. Also, Allied-occupied districts in the north did not vote as these territories were promised to Communist Yugoslavia. Still, 89% of registered Italian voters cast ballots.
The nation was split north and south with the southern regions opting for continuing the monarchy. Major southern cities were heavily monarchist: Rome 54% Naples 80%, Palermo (60%) Reggio Calabria (60%). This may be attributable to the innate conservativism of southerners and lobbying by the Church. More importantly, the Communist Party—which favored a republic that they could dominate—had an overwhelming presence in the north.
Not only were Communists more numerous in the north but they had been the most violent of partisans in those Fascist-held and German-occupied regions known as the Salò Republic during the war. In fact, they executed Mussolini despite an Allied order to save him for trial. Furthermore, an estimated 50,000 Fascists and family members were liquidated by them and their Yugoslav allies at war’s end. The Communist threat was an existential one in post-war Italy. The USSR was funding it.
Southern Italy was spared the German occupation, but the Allied one was just as humiliating, despite Allied propaganda to the contrary. Sophia Loren’s Two Women (1960) is closer to the truth. Moroccan troops raped extensively, uncontrolled by their French officers; British and American troops turned Naples into a brothel, and the Mafia was invited back to Sicily as Allied collaborators.
Southerners had every reason to resent the Savoys. It was the King who approved Mussolini’s decision to enter the war in 1940, with its horrific consequences—the deprivations, the bombings, and the murderous Allied invasions. It was he who botched Italy’s surrender in 1943 and opened the door to German occupation. Historically, the House of Savoy was blamed for crippling the south as a result of the reunification in 1860 onward—the new taxes, the military draft, the political suppression, and the pillage of the Bourbon (the previous rulers) treasury.
Perhaps all of this paled in the southern mind when compared to the chaos and Communism a new republic would usher in. Even before the referendum was certified Neapolitans stormed the Communist Party headquarters in that city exchanging gunfire with police. Nine demonstrators were killed, scores injured after two days of violence.
Such animosity hastened the need for a final certification of the referendum. To speed things up a provisional government proclaimed the republic on June 18th, before the mandatory judicial certification. The royal family, now led by King Umberto II, cried foul but abdicated rather than prolong the nation’s agony. Both the Italian flag had to be redesigned, without the Savoy coat of arms, and a new national anthem adopted to replace the Marcia Reale (Royal March).
The new Repubblica Italiana was in trouble from the start. Designed to have a weak executive (Prime Minister) so as to avoid another Mussolini, it was further weakened by a multiplicity of political parties. Italian governments fell regularly, making Italy the butt of many a joke. Its main objective was to keep the Communists from taking power. Eventually, this led to the Years of Lead (as in bullets) when the Red Brigades and right-wing reactionaries made Italy a battleground for twenty years (1968 – 1988). Communists fomented labor strikes that almost led to the collapse of FIAT until CEO Gianni Agnelli rallied his thousands of white-collar workers to counter the Communist threat.
The republic is now led by a center-right coalition with Giorgia Meloni as Prime Minister, and enjoying a period of calm coupled with economic prosperity. Italians have known the extremes of politics and always strive for a conservative path. One can wonder if monarchy had won out in 1946 would Italy have avoided the wrenching years that followed?
And might we be prouder if an Italian royal family represented our ancestral homeland? –JLM
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