1945–1948

Abstract

On April 30, 1945, the day after the bodies of Mussolini and his lover Claretta Petacci, as well of those of several Fascist gerarchi were exposed to public execration in Piazzale Loreto, the Milanese newspapers published a statement by the CLNAI, the National Liberation Committee for Northern Italy, which assumed full responsibility for the executions. The “governing body” of the Resistance forces in the North, made up of senior figures from the six anti-Fascist parties, declared that “the execution of Mussolini and his associates, which we ordered, is the necessary conclusion of an historical phase which leaves our country covered in material and moral ruins.” A necessary conclusion, then, but the CLNAI also went on to underline that these “understandable excesses” needed to come to an end: “in the new age which opens up to the free people of Italy such excesses must not be repeated.” The CLNAI, the statement finished, would play a major role in the reestablishment of freedom and democracy “now that the insurrectionary struggle has finished.”²

The CLNs will have to become the keystone of the new Italian democracy.¹