Confronting America: The Cold War between the United States and the Communists in France and Italy

CONFRONTING AMERICA

The New Cold War History Odd Arne Westad, editor

CONFRONTING AMERICA

The Cold War between the United States and the Communists in France and Italy

ALESSANDRO BROGI

The University of North Carolina Press

CHAPEL HILL

© 2011 THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Designed by Kimberly Bryant and set in Miller with Gotham display by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brogi, Alessandro.

Confronting America : the Cold War between the United States and the communists in

France and Italy / Alessandro Brogi.

p. cm. — (The new Cold War history)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8078-3473-2 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. United States—Foreign relations—France. 2. France—Foreign relations—

United States. 3. United States—Foreign relations—Italy. 4. Italy—Foreign relations—

United States. 5. United States—Foreign relations—1945–1989. 6. Communism—

France—History—20th century. 7. Communism—Italy—History—20th century.

8. Anti-Americanism—France—History—20th century. 9. Anti-Americanism—Italy—

History—20th century. 10. Parti communiste français. 11. Partito comunista italiano.

I. Title.

E183.8.F8B724 2011

327.73044—dc22 2010052563

15 14 13 12 11 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

INTRODUCTION

1 THE COMMUNISTS AND NATIONAL REBIRTH IN FRANCE AND ITALY, 1944–1946

2 CONFRONTING THE COMMUNISTS IN GOVERNMENT: The American Response, 1944–1947

3 POLARIZED CONFRONTATION: U.S. Aid and Propaganda versus Cominform in France and Italy, 1947–1950

4 COMMUNIST PEACE CAMPAIGNS AND AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE, 1948–1955

5 THE CULTURAL COLD WAR AT ITS PEAK: Mass Culture and Intellectuals, 1948–1956

6 DIPLOMATIC MANEUVERING: Communist and American Interplay of Foreign and Domestic Policies during the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations

7 REDEFINING OPPRESSION: The 1960s, from Affluence to Youth Protest

8 REDEFINING INTERDEPENDENCE: The Eurocommunism of the 1970s and the U.S. Response

EPILOGUE: Cultural and Political Decline

CONCLUSION

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

Marshall Plan propaganda poster by the Italian Christian Democratic Party 90

Christian Democratic poster against the PCI-PSI Popular Front for the 1948 national elections 106

The PCI’S anti–Marshall Plan propaganda poster 120

Anti-NATO poster by the PCF, 1951 127

PCF poster, 1952 129

Propaganda poster for the Marshall Plan, 1947 140

PCI’s electoral poster for the 1953 national elections 150

Italy’s Christian Democratic Party’s electoral poster for the 1953 national elections 151

Anti-NATO poster by the PCF, 1953 153

The PCI’s campaign against the Vietnam War 262

Youth Federation of the French Communist Party poster, 1968 283

PCF poster, 1971 320

PCI poster, 1973 329

The Italian Student Communist Movement in solidarity with the women’s emancipation movement announcing a demonstration on Women’s Day, 8 March, 1970s 353

PCI poster, 1984 372

PCF poster, 1985 374

Poster announcing the Gay Movies Program by the gay movement section of ARCI, 1984 380

Acknowledgments

At first, I thought I could write this book quickly and without much aid. Of course, like most academics caught in the passion of discovery, I was mistaken. The scope of the research would not have been possible without the assistance of several institutions and individuals. I have also benefited from the critical insights of colleagues who read my first drafts. To all these people and institutions I am truly indebted, although, of course, the views expressed herein are my own.

My first acknowledgment goes to the Fulbright College of the University of Arkansas, and more specifically to the History Department, for allowing considerable leeway with my teaching load, and for showing trust and encouragement through a number of travel grants, a generous summer research stipend, and additional support during my off-campus assignments. History Department Chairs Jeannie Whayne, David Sloan, and especially Lynda Coon have been my strongest advocates with the college administrators. This has been true until the finish line, when, in times of budget cuts and restrictions, Professor Coon not only offered a subsidy from the History Department’s own account but also obtained one from the office of Fulbright College Dean William Schwab to help cover the printing costs of this sizeable manuscript.

I am also deeply obliged to the Nobel Peace Institute of Oslo, Norway, which is to be singled out, among the external institutions, as the most supportive and encouraging one for my project. My six months there in 2007 as a research fellow were not only the most productive in the whole time span of this work; they were also the most insightful, thanks in part to the frequent discussions I was privileged to have with an elite group of historians. With the Nobel Institute’s director, Geir Lundestad, I continue to have fruitful discussions. Geir and I may agree on many things and agree to disagree on many others. What matters most is that he, like the other members of the Nobel fellowship, perfectly fulfills the program’s mission: as Geir constantly reminded each of the institute’s fellows, our task was to push one another to the limit, with candid and sometimes brutal criticism, as we faced the difficult tasks of adopting an interdisciplinary as well as truly international approach to history, and of writing on many issues that may still be controversial. Swiss historian Benedikt Schoenborn and the genuinely Norwegian Asle Toje, the other two recipients of this fellowship so fortunately resumed that year, patiently considered my arguments, and discussed matters of anti-Americanism with me. Joining us at the end, the renowned Dutch director of the European Association of American Studies, Rob Kroes, helped ease my pain in dealing with the rather elusive notion of Americanization. The Nobel Institute is also exemplary in its library staff: I especially thank Anne C. Kjelling and Bjørn H. Vangen for their help finding rare source material.

My research in the United States, which included visits to presidential libraries stretching from New England to Kansas, would not have been possible without the additional support I received through a George C. Marshall/Baruch Research Grant from the George C. Marshall Foundation and through Truman Library and Ford Library travel grants. All three archives also must be recognized for their remarkably helpful staffs, comparable to that I once experienced at the Eisenhower Library. The Ford Library offered perhaps the most enthusiastic support, showing me the treasure of material on international relations in this frequently overlooked archival source. The Carter Library, too, should be noted for its prompt and effective release of material through its electronic resource access. My research experience in the United States also bears the memory of the iconic archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration, Sally Kuisel. I concur with the list-server H-Diplo, who recently so admiringly paid homage to Sally’s memory.

In France, despite the restrictions still applied to the French Communist Party’s documentation, archivist Pascal Carreau directed me to unexpectedly informative files and paper collections of some of the party leaders, a discovery that prompted me to extend my stay in Paris. At the Gramsci Institute in Rome I was even more fortunate to gain access to documents of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) up to the late 1970s. My special thanks go to Giovanna Bosman, and to my colleague and fellow Florentine Silvio Pons, the institute’s director. Silvio has been not only supportive but enthusiastic about discussing with me the PCI’s international record from his masterfully knowledgeable point of view. Simona Granelli, from the Gramsci Institute in Bologna, helped me find some of the most appropriate Italian images for the book’s illustrations. From France, Frédérik Genevée also assisted me through the difficult process of acquiring the copyrights for the PCF’s propaganda posters.

I was fortunate and honored to have another opportunity for extended research in Italy, thanks to the Johns Hopkins University’s offer of a visiting professorship at its Bologna Center in 2004–5. The advantage of being at its renowned School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) was not simply logistical. John Harper, amid our discussions on the U.S.-European rift during the 2004 presidential elections, also took time to discuss my project while it was at its most difficult developing stage. The brilliant students at SAIS also were a source of inspiration—a class later matched in brilliance by my fall 2009 undergraduate and graduate students in Cold War history at the University of Arkansas. At its embryonic stage, this project also benefited from the support and equally inspiring environment of the Institute for Strategic Studies at Yale University. As an Olin fellow there, I had the wonderful opportunity to brainstorm about my tentative topic with Paul Kennedy, with co-Olin fellows Jeffrey Engel, Andrew Preston, and Mary Kathryn Barbier, and, of course, with my long-time mentor, John Lewis Gaddis.

While the drafting of the manuscript was in full swing, several distinguished scholars gave careful consideration and useful recommendations. David Ellwood offered important critical insights on my drafts of chapters 3 and 4; Irwin Wall did the same on chapters 8 and 9; two colleagues at the University of Arkansas, Richard Sonn and Evan Bukey, proofread all the rest, with patience and thoughtful advice. Through frequent correspondence or long conversations, other colleagues patiently listened, encouraged, and lent their insights. In no particular order of importance, they are Richard Kuisel, Mario Del Pero, Federico Romero, Leopoldo Nuti, Kaeten Mistry, Marc Lazar, Frédéric Bozo, Charles Maier, Olav Niølstad, Vladislav Zubok, Günther Bischof, Jessica Gienow-Hecht, Jeremi Suri, Patricia Weitsman, Marc Selverstone, Alonzo Hamby, and my University of Arkansas colleagues David Chappell and Randall Woods. Thanks also to the three (yes, three) anonymous readers selected by the University of North Carolina Press for their endorsement and cogent advice. It has also been a pleasure to work with such an efficient staff at UNC Press. I understand why so many authors are proud to be part of this team.

There is finally one emerging reader who perhaps gave the most valuable support. For my seven-year-old son Samuel, this book has literally taken a lifetime. At the end of the long process, whenever stress seemed to be taking over, I only had to look at his smile to be reminded of my ultimate motivation for the work.

Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used throughout this book.

ACUE American Committee on United Europe ADA Americans for Democratic Action AFAP Association Française pour l’Accroissement de la Productivité AFL American Federation of Labor ARCI Associazione Ricreativa Culturale Italiana CCF Congress for Cultural Freedom CERM Centre d’Etudes et des Recherches Marxistes CESPE Centro Studi di Politica Economica CGIL Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro CGT Confédération Générale du Travail CIA Central Intelligence Agency CIF Confederazione Italiana Femminile CIO Congress of Industrial Organizations CISL Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori CLN Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union CPUSA Communist Party of the United States of America CU Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs DC Democrazia Cristiana ECA Economic Cooperation Administration ECSC European Coal and Steel Community EDC European Defense Community EEC European Economic Community ENI Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi ERP European Recovery Program EURATOM European Atomic Energy Community FGCI Federazione Giovanile Comunista Italiana FLN Front de Libération Nationale FO Force Ouvrière IACF International Association for Cultural Freedom ILGWU International Ladies Garment Workers Union IRBM Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles IRI Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale JCR Jeunesse Communiste Révolutionnaire

JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff KGB Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti LCGIL Libera Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro MDAP Mutual Defense Assistance Program MLF Multilateral Force MPEA Motion Picture Export Association MRP Mouvement Républicain Populaire MSA Mutual Security Administration MTV Music Television NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NCL NonCommunist Left NSC National Security Council OCB Operations Coordinating Board OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development OEEC Organization for European Economic Cooperation OSP OffShore Procurement OWI Office of War Information PCE Partido Comunista de España PCF Parti Communiste Français PCI Partito Comunista Italiano PDS Partito Democratico della Sinistra PPS Policy Planning Staff PS Parti Socialiste PSB Psychological Strategy Board PSDI Partito Socialista Democratico Italiano PSI Partito Socialista Italiano PSIUP Partito Socialista Italiano di Unità Proletaria PSLI Partito Socialista dei Lavoratori Italiano PSU Parti Socialiste Unifié RAI Radio Televisione Italiana RDF Radio Diffusion France RDR Rassemblement Démocratique Révolutionnaire RPF Rassemblement du Peuple Français SDS Students for a Democratic Society SEATO South East Asian Treaty Organization SFIO Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière SIFAR Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland UDI Unione delle Donne Italiane UEC Union des Etudiants Communistes

UIL Unione Italiana del Lavoro UJCLM Union des Jeunesses Communistes MarxistesLéninistes UNEF Union Nationale des Etudiants de France UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization UNITEC Union des Ingénieurs et Techniciens UNLA Unione Nazionale per la Lotta contro l’Analfabetismo UNRRA United Nations Relief and Recovery Administration UPIM Unico Prezzo Italiano Milano USIA United States Information Agency USIE United States Information and Education USIS United States Information Service VOA Voice of America WEU Western European Union

CONFRONTING AMERICA

INTRODUCTION

At the onset of the Cold War, Palmiro Togliatti and George F. Kennan shared a particular vision of America. The leader of the fastest growing Communist Party in the West and the architect of America’s containment strategy against Soviet Communism, from their opposite points of view, nurtured a similar pessimism about the U.S. role as leader of the Western world.¹ Togliatti’s indictment of the United States was occasioned in May 1947 by former Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles’s press statements that the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) was an insurrectionary party funded by the Soviet Union. These declarations coincided with the political crisis that a few days later led Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi—allegedly under pressure from Washington—to expel the PCI from the government’s national coalition, which had been in place since the last year of the war.

The general secretary’s response to Sumner Welles was an emblematic editorial in the 20 May issue of the party’s daily L’Unità, titled Ma come sono cretini! (What Idiots They Are!). It was a clever retelling of the old dichotomy between mature, wise, committed, refined Europe and young, crass, hedonistic, naive America—dangerously naive at that, for its stupidity was now matched by its power and arrogance. Only in America, Togliatti wrote, could a party buy prestige and influence with money; and, no doubt, Washington treated Italy like a territory inhabited by competing tribes, instead of parties that naturally emerged from its national traditions. This should not have surprised any European, since at heart, the Americans were still slaveholders, who now wished to buy entire nations the same way. They also did so, Togliatti judged, because they [were] not intelligent and lacked historical experience and mental finesse. Americans were like the majority of their films, with all their luxury, their technology, the legs and all the rest of those beautiful actresses; after watching them for a while, one was overwhelmed with irritation and boredom, realizing that it [was] only a dehumanized exhibition, a mechanical repetition of gestures and situations deprived of the spontaneous vibrating of souls and things.²

Previous foreign rulers had dominated the country, and at times had even influenced its national identity, but not its very soul and intellectual resourcefulness. Italy, the Communists averred, was now engaged in a double resistance: to defend the country’s national sovereignty and national intelligence against, in Togliatti’s words, the massive wave of plain idiocy of the Yankee invader.

Two years later, Kennan’s judgment of America’s world leadership was equally scathing. As director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, and still revered for having masterminded containment, he was highly influential at the White House. He was, however, an iconoclast, where the icon was modern America as an acquisitive society characterized by its mass phenomena in production, consumption, and culture. His intellectual background associated him with the organicist conservatism dating back to Edmund Burke’s condemnation of the French Revolution, a legacy that continued through thinkers such as Ferdinand Tönnies, Oswald Spengler, Max Weber, Henry and Brooks Adams, and Walter Lippmann. They all abhorred the relentless rationalization that subordinated every aspect of life, the logic of material achievements and money making, turning most of the qualitative into quantitative, and transforming the organic community into a mechanized, atomized society of passive consumers.³ Conscious of his position as a policy maker and defender of the system, Kennan for the time being expressed his insightful critique only within small circles. His letter to a staff member from 17 October 1949 offers a fine example of his agonizing reflections.

While Kennan would not have given credit to any communist indictment, he nevertheless took the cue for his own critique of American society and foreign policy from his reflections on the communist adversaries. He did so often with regard to his area of expertise, the Soviet Union. In this case he focused his thoughts on Western Communism. He acknowledged that its strongest drive was emotional, nationalist, and intellectual: the desire to win appreciation, attention and power [was a] much more important component of Communism than desire to better a material condition. The point was not how many followers communism could thus obtain. Kennan believed (rather incorrectly with regard to Italy and France) that it was a movement without popular appeal in advanced countries. But since it was a development not only imported from Moscow but also deeply rooted in Western civilization, it could not be regarded as an anomaly. Its emotional appeal induced Kennan to stigmatize some fundamental flaws in the complicated civilization of the West. The main problems stemmed not from fear of material deprivation; they originated rather from the disintegration of basic social groups in which the individual found the illusion of security through the sense of belonging—namely, the family, the local community, the neighborhood, the recreational group. And since America best represented the evolution of this modern society, Kennan turned his analysis to the problems within:

Millions of Americans are today bewildered and anxious because they are trying to solve as individuals problems which they could solve only by a collective approach. But what is causing these groups to disintegrate is the urbanization of life—that is, the revolution in living wrought by modern technology, rather than just complexity. As this urbanization fragmentizes social groups, it centralizes the media of psychological influence (press, radio, television, movies) and makes recreation passive and vicarious rather than active and immediate. At the same time that it breaks up the groups in which the individual found scope for the development of leadership, self-respect and self-development, it provides a vast fog of recreational stimuli which demand nothing of the individual, develop nothing in him and tend to atrophy his capacity for self-expression. The result of all this is a gradual paralysis of the sense of responsibility and initiative in people.

Thus lamenting this drifting condition of the average American, Kennan concluded not being the masters of our own soul, are we justified in regarding ourselves as fit for the leadership of others? All our ideas of ‘world leadership,’ ‘the American century,’ ‘aggressive democracy,’ etc. stand or fall with the answer to that question.⁴

This was no admission of communist superiority. The fact remained that all these insecurities of the Western man, all these conditions of atomized passivity, what philosopher Herbert Marcuse later would call one-dimensional society, had already, in Kennan’s opinion, softened up great masses of people for the acceptance of totalitarian rule. The enslavement of the individual would be thus complete.⁵ Kennan’s alternative was attuned with his self-professed dirigisme, as opposed to socialism, and reflected his advocacy of minority rule by an enlightened elite: he recommended abandoning "the evils of a laissez-faire attitude toward technological advances and preached a cure through a high degree of paternalism."⁶

Kennan’s position within the U.S. leadership elite has been recognized as that of a pessimist by nature, one whose pessimism was rendered so much deeper by the ritualistic optimism of official American culture.⁷ His ideas, as both an insider of and, later, an academic outsider to U.S. foreign policy, are so often heavily scrutinized because they cast a critical light on conventional America, penetrating its surface, clarifying its idiosyncrasies, its will to power, and making sense of its world role.

These reflections from two rival political positions announced the terms of the cultural and political Cold War in Western Europe. Western Communists would attempt to redefine society and even national identity with the crucial assistance of their virulent, at times dogmatic, and at other times multidimensional and ambiguous anti-Americanism. Americans—not only the iconoclasts—were forced into self-analysis by the cultural and political struggle against communism in allied countries. Western Communism, even more than the Eastern, Soviet brand of communism, compelled U.S. policy makers, diplomats, and influential intellectuals to reconsider the image America projected abroad, and even to ponder the general meaning of American liberal capitalist culture and ideology. Many of those representatives soon had to concede to Kennan and other critics that they could not simply dismiss the political and cultural ascendancy of the Italian and French Communist Parties as an aberration in the Western world. Their reactions to this reality ranged from sober reassessment of America’s diplomacy, or even way of life, to radical and at times rabid countervailing anti-communism.

Indeed, the Western European Communists and their anti-Americanism stimulated among American leaders and intellectuals both self-criticism and instinctive patriotism. Sometimes the two feelings were present within the same individual, and both frequently originated from a conviction that America was and should remain exceptionalist vis-à-vis Europe. In many respects, this phenomenon was mirrored among French and Italian Communists: their anti-Americanism remained indiscriminate for the most part; but the process of modernization they identified with American capitalism and culture also prompted them at critical times to pursue cultural and political variations of it in order to forge a distinctly European—and often, in the early Cold War, Soviet-inspired—brand of modernity.

Togliatti’s and Kennan’s anxieties also signified the totality of the conflict between two antagonistic and universalistic models. The United States would gradually realize that economic determinism, the assumption that economic recovery would by itself curtail communist power in France and Italy, was flawed. While economic conditions seemed to provide the main breeding ground for communism in Western Europe, it soon became apparent that the appeal of the PCI and of the Parti Communiste Français (PCF) was emotional as much as economic. By identifying capitalist oppression with American domination, that appeal combined a promise of material improvement with a defense of national independence and indigenous culture. As the Cold War struggle in the Third World would later confirm, nationalism was a crucial component of communist confrontation with America. Beginning in the last year of World War II, the French and Italian Communists’ capacity to reconcile patriotism and proletarian internationalism was further corroborated by their organizational power, with an ability to seize key economic and political institutions, and by their intellectual magnetism, since most Marxists understood that the cultural challenge to the established order was as critical as the political dimension. Together, these components of communist influence offered a powerful resistance to American hegemony.

The main purpose of this book is to examine the resilience of that appeal throughout the Cold War, and to assess how effectively the United States countered it by selecting among America’s various economic, diplomatic, cultural, and covert options. In particular, this clash induced Washington to test constantly its own flexibility at home and with its European allies. In part this is a story of how the French and Italian Communists confronted American influence—or even its cultural manifestations defined under the broad and often misleading term Americanization. But in confronting this very influential brand of anti-Americanism, the United States was also encouraged to confront itself, its foreign policy, and its own social structure and overall culture. Today the capacity to confront international problems with ideological, diplomatic, and cultural appeal is known as soft power—in contrast to hard power, consisting mainly of coercion or economic inducements.⁸ During the Cold War the most perceptive American officials realized that their resort to soft power could be a formidable complement to America’s economic, strategic, and political approaches to Europe; but if misused, this power of persuasion could easily backfire, especially among the most troublesome Western European allies.

While this is ultimately a study of U.S. foreign relations, it is also a work of international history, encompassing perceptions and choices from all three sides of this story. Only from this multiple perspective can we fully reveal how the French and the Italian Communists responded to American hegemony. If this battle for hearts and minds became a basic component of America’s handling of the Western alliance, it was an even more fundamental issue for the two parties captive in a hostile empire; and through their experiences, it was a crucial part of the two countries’ general response to U.S. influence. Several recent studies have focused on the French and Italian Communists’ interaction with Eastern Europe, especially with their main frame of reference, the Soviet Union. I am indebted to the literature that has clarified the degree of coordination between Moscow and Western European Communists, as well as the combination of myths and realities in this often tormented relationship.⁹ But my study is founded on the assumption that the ultimate confrontation for any Communist party, but especially for those in Western Europe, was with capitalism, consumerism, modernization, and mass culture.¹⁰ The confrontation with America, even when implicit, or used primarily for domestic purposes, was the critical test for the French and Italian Communists. It was a struggle for their own legitimacy and existence.

Toward a Definition of Communist

Anti-Americanism in Western Europe

Western Communist anti-Americanism was crucial to understanding U.S.-Western European relations for other reasons as well.¹¹ It should not be taken for granted as a feeling or a strategy based on ideological aversion and political expediency. Stemming from traditions of Western European perceptions of America, the two parties’ views of the United States bore a far larger meaning and far deeper implications than simple mirror opposition. Since they tapped such a vast repertoire of others’ cultural constructs and specific denunciations of American policies or the U.S. social landscape, those views also reflected previous realities, contradictions, and irrationalities. By trying to universalize the threat coming from overseas, they also confirmed the elusiveness of the concept known as anti-Americanism.

Some forms of anti-Americanism are about what the United States does; others are about what the United States is. In more than two centuries of U.S. history it has also become gradually clear that there are as many forms of anti-Americanism as there are ways to be American. The various ideological, cultural, nationalist ways of being anti-American thus reflect the very plurality and complexity of the American nation. Several authors have even questioned whether we can clearly identify such a broad sentiment as anti-Americanism.¹² For our purpose it is important to note that in its most radical forms, anti-Americanism is an utter rejection of American policies, society, values, and culture. A resentment so thorough, the most perceptive analyses have pointed out, can only in part result from the disproportionate power of the United States. It is also, and above all, a matter of representations—in some cases of mystifications, too. Todd Gitlin, an American intellectual who has repudiated his radical leftist past, quipped that anti-Americanism is an emotion substituting for an analysis. The irrational nature of such a feeling can be overstated. Gitlin added that when the hatred of foreign policies sputters into a hatred of an entire people and their civilization, then thinking is dead and demonology lives. When complexity of thought devolves into caricature—and all broad-brush hatred of any nation, whatever its occasions, is caricature—intellect is on its way to reconciling itself to mass murder.¹³ Such reflections are caricatures in themselves, for they confirm the increasingly polemical tones of those who take sides with or against the United States.¹⁴ These polemics show that this discourse has been not about a nation, but about a worldview, a faith, an encryption of everyone’s fears and hopes, a frame of reference that acts on the conscious and subconscious levels of every people. No other nation has enjoyed this status.

This is because, as Rob Kroes has put it, America was invented before it was discovered. Then the republic, from its origins, became a beckoning beacon poised as counterpoint to Europe.¹⁵ However it was interpreted, America represented a chance for renewal, a tabula rasa on which Europeans could reinvent themselves, shed their burdens of rank, status, subjugation. It follows that the expectations, the standards by which the new land was measured have been far higher than those of any other part of the world. Europeans first forged this conception of American uniqueness. It then became a core element of American identity, for the United States defined itself in opposition to Europe. Forming its own generalized representation of Europe as imperfect, the United States upheld its own claim to distinctiveness, to what became known as exceptionalism. The term signified the regeneration of decadent European social, political, and international norms into a perfectible national experience, made possible by the American promise of universal freedom, and enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. In the early twentieth century, Americans reiterated this claim to universality and codified their national identity based on this creed: reformulated as Americanism, the exceptional traits of the rising world power were, in Theodore Roosevelt’s words, the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity and strength—the virtues that made America.¹⁶

In the most general sense then, anti-Americanism can be explained as the expression of repeated disillusionment after ever rising expectations about the New World, and as the mirror opposite of the American creed, of the U.S. pretense to universalism and perfectibility. As will be shown, the communists’ resistance to America emanated from their own equivalent assertion of universality and perfectibility. Moreover, several prominent Western European Communists, especially in the early Cold War, nurtured animosity against America in part because their expectations about a progressive, radical America had been shattered.

Western European Communism also incorporated the Old World’s notion of the New World as the challenging path to its own modernization. Anti-Americanism became fully formed between the 1920s and 1930s. At that point the United States foreshadowed Europe’s future, rekindling endemic fears about modernity. Anti-Americanism thus became a codeword for all the internal tensions within each nation undergoing rapid transformation. Most such transformations depended only in part on American influence. But when, after World War II, the U.S. presence in Europe became dominant in every field, those fears became more comprehensive and less symbolic. According to the most negative perceptions of this influence, modern capitalism, in its managerial, Americanized form, subsumed a mechanized world immersed in materialism, consumerism, mass culture, all of these together projecting the worst visions of a homogeneous, conformist, and spiritually and intellectually hollow society. Italian and French Communists, while echoing and amplifying those fears, also portrayed the Soviet model of modernization as the alternative, serving instead of enslaving humanity.

All the above indicates that, among the various ideologies, communism expressed the greatest coherence in combining the distinct components—political, social, and cultural—of anti-Americanism. Communists in Western Europe were also the most adept at utilizing the intersection between politics and culture to manifest their opposition to the United States and their alleged defense of national independence. Next to the Cold War, these were the main reasons why right-wing anti-Americanism, which had prevailed in the interwar period, was eclipsed by the intellectual and political Left starting in the mid-1940s.¹⁷ Even the prominence of Charles de Gaulle and the significance of his conflicts with the United States must be considered against the backdrop of leftist dominance of the anti-American discourse. Consistency, however, did not always mean rigid, obtuse, and even irrational resistance. Alongside the virulent, all-embracing, dogmatic, and often deceptive communist judgments of America at the peak of the Cold War, we find the ebb and flow of more discerning forms of Marxist anti-Americanism in Western Europe.

The coherence, effectiveness, and cunning of French and Italian communist anti-Americanism can also be assessed against that of the Soviet Union. Power made a difference. The Soviet Union could at crucial junctures compromise with the United States, thanks to the recognition it received as a superpower. For much of their Cold War experience, the French and Italian Communist Parties were powerless—especially on the world stage. Their anti-Americanism consequently often surpassed that of the Soviets in thoroughness, if not consistency. The two parties, however, enjoyed another source of recognition and empowerment: the electorate. Thanks to the relative connection between communist voters and their leaders, the anti-Americanism of the party apparatus did not appear as orchestrated as it was in the Soviet Union.¹⁸ Furthermore, the PCI and PCF could work as magnets for all sorts of discontent regarding the U.S. presence and American policies: for example, in the early 1950s, the Stockholm Peace Appeal, which was coordinated from Moscow, gathered far more consensus in France and Italy than the size of the two parties would indicate. Whenever we consider the alacrity with which French and Italian Communists stepped in line with Moscow, we must also take into account their ability to adapt their Cold War allegiance to national realities. This was especially true in their resistance to American influence.

Approach, Sources, and Broader Questions

It should be clear from the start that my approach to all these themes from a triangular perspective cannot be comprehensive. This is not a thorough history of Western communist politics, culture, and international choices; nor is it a detailed account of U.S. Cold War politics and culture, or of every U.S. intervention against Western Europe’s Communists. A survey of that sort would be either too diffuse or, if it accounted for most details, too lengthy. Filtering the enormous literature on all these subjects has helped me to contextualize my broad yet targeted themes. This is a work of discovery and reinterpretation more than a synthesis of existing literature. As an interpretive account, it focuses more on the why than on the how questions. The discovery, while grounded in archival sources, grows from an analysis that interweaves cultural with traditional diplomatic and economic themes. This relatively rare combination of methods¹⁹ emphasizes deep connections between cultural constructs, issues of national identity, and high policy. Only in this way can we illuminate the multidimensional nature of anti-Americanism and of American management of the Western alliance.

While following a chronological structure, and highlighting the main crises that characterized the multidimensional confrontation between Western European Communism and the United States, I do not pretend to deal with each one of them comprehensively. Nevertheless, I also eschew broad generalizations in favor of the systematic, nuanced discussion that these themes deserve. The analysis does linger on episodes, debates, or reflections by intellectuals and leaders that help trace the nature, logic, trends, and finally the unraveling of the confrontation.

This broad perspective further benefits from its comparative framework. Prompted by pathbreaking works that have conjoined the political or intellectual histories of the French and Italian Communist Parties,²⁰ I extend this comparison and redirect it westward to include the two parties’ coping with the Atlantic alliance, and America’s own understanding of their parallels and differences. As I did with my previous work on diplomatic relations among the three countries, I use a comparative analysis to show developments and characteristics in U.S. relations with France and Italy that tend to remain hidden or ignored in separate treatments of U.S. bilateral relations with either one of them.

It is by exploring the interconnectedness of diplomacy and cultural constructs that I test my main broad questions. The first regards America’s management of the Western alliance. I submit that the American response to the communist threat in France and Italy, and even the effects of Americanization broadly speaking, were most successful when the United States combined its psychological warfare with a more subtle use of diplomatic actions that only indirectly helped modify the political balance in each of the two allied countries. Particularly effective was the U.S. emphasis on European integration and Western interdependence as a rising trend against the traditional balance of power. This helped undermine the impact of communist anti-Americanism in many ways; most important among these, European mastery of interdependence helped supersede the most traditional nationalist arguments from any political source, including the Communists; it also defused the communist appeal by shaping a European continent increasingly emancipated from American control.

The same reasoning applies to my second broad question about the effectiveness of communist anti-American campaigns. The two Communist Parties enjoyed their greatest leverage when they conflated their own psychological warfare with actions that enhanced their international presence. This was particularly true immediately after the war, when they profited from the artificial extension of the wartime Grand Alliance, and during the pacifist campaigns they orchestrated between the birth of NATO and the debate over the European Defense Community in the early 1950s. It was finally true with regard to the Eurocommunist experiment of the 1970s, with which the PCI especially tried to reverse the trend of Western interdependence away from its pro-American direction, while also staying clear of heavy Soviet influence.

This focus on the diplomatic and international dimensions further prompted me to reexamine previously overlooked differences between French and Italian Communists. Orthodox in most respects, the PCF was also more concentrated and militant than the PCI on foreign affairs. This was in part because of the centrality of France in international developments—including Vietnam, Algeria, the German question, the Gaullist approach to NATO—and in part because of the party’s intensive debate and soul-searching regarding French national identity. And yet, the generally more flexible PCI displayed a rather astute understanding of international realities. The diminished relevance of Italy in the international arena made it a detached observatory of others’ grand diplomacy. Further, the country’s diplomatic weakness increased the international prominence of the Communist Party. This became particularly evident when the PCI positioned itself to subvert the alleged deleterious effects of U.S.-Soviet détente in the 1970s.

Drawing attention to the diplomatic framework can cast some light on the intricacies of specific campaigns and episodes. But the most overarching theme of this book remains that of the coming of the American model of modernization. My third broad question, which addresses both American capacity to project that model and communist ability to resist it, has received considerable attention. Stephen Gundle in particular has elucidated how the challenge of mass communications, commercial cultural industries, and consumerism together undermined the power of the Italian Communists. Furthermore, he has pointed out the irony that the PCI, which excelled in the cultural sphere, best adapted to and survived in the competition with mass media and commercial culture but in so doing also undercut its own attempt at cultural hegemony.²¹ While concurring with those conclusions, I propose that a wider perspective including comparative aspects and a closer look at the decision-making process in Washington as well as in the two Communist Parties’ political bureaus further illuminates the whole issue of Americanization in both countries. That issue must be reformulated, taking into full account the correlation among international events such as Algeria, or Vietnam, and the coming of consumer society. It also needs to be placed in context with the redefinition of oppression by the American civil rights, feminist, and student movements. That very redefinition nourished but also undermined communist orthodoxy, protest, and power in France and Italy, as shown in this book’s final three chapters.

Moreover, America’s self-perception and changed image by the late 1960s as less exceptionalist, less naively optimistic, more vulnerable in every way, showed the superpower’s true weaknesses but also highlighted its pluralistic and multifaceted character. It thus inspired further adaptations and permutations of communist anti-Americanism in France and Italy. It also reignited subtlety and ambivalence in the Communists’ assessments of America that echoed and refined their ambiguities of the immediate postwar period. But especially those assessments reflected America’s own ambivalence, proved its cultural dominion and confirmed its role as harbinger of Europe’s future.

To show the correlation of cultural constructs, economic realities, and political and diplomatic action, I have privileged archival sources—of the two Communist Parties, the U.S. State Department and presidential libraries—and complemented them with significant commentaries by media and intellectuals. Most accounts of anti-Americanism have focused on the latter, without fully establishing the connection between those commentaries and actual decisions and strategies by party leaders. Some scholars have gone in the opposite direction. They decry the elitist approach to the study of anti-Americanism and stress the importance of identifying the phenomenon by social strata. Accounting for the variety of audiences, they favor poll and statistical data.²² For my purpose, the grassroots response is useful but remains in the distant background. The archival sources reveal how party leaders in France and Italy, or policy makers in the United States, assessed, followed, or guided the voices from below. They also allow me to compare and contrast mutual perceptions of all three sides’ political outlooks and to evaluate their accuracy. Intellectual writings, which constitute my other main primary reference, require scrutiny and interpretation in order to reveal the complexity of the anti-American phenomenon. But the examination of the debates among party, government, and embassy officials entails even more careful deciphering. For even their most straightforward pronouncements connote attitudes, preconceptions, and cultural and ideological constructs. I thus found that, especially in such a highly ideologized encounter, the archival documents gave me the best clues to the crosscurrents of politics, diplomacy, and culture.

1 THE COMMUNISTS AND NATIONAL REBIRTH IN FRANCE AND ITALY, 1944–1946

America’s confrontation with Western European Communism was as meaningful as its clash with Soviet Communism. Although the postwar growth of the French and Italian Communist Parties highlighted economic distress and quickly induced American policy makers to seek economic solutions, the leftist appeal was broader than simply economics, though this was not always immediately apparent to outsiders. In the first postwar years French and Italian needs for reconstruction entailed a redefinition of national politics and identities. The postwar experience for the two profoundly traumatized nations came to be formulated in terms of national rebirth and renewal, offering, as might be expected, a chance for radical solutions. Communist anti-Americanism and American anti-Communism remained carefully restrained and relatively muted while the two parties remained included in government coalitions, and until the wartime Grand Alliance irretrievably broke down in the spring and summer of 1947. But the very legitimacy acquired by the communist forces in France and Italy in 1944–46, especially when further justified by a public desire for radical renewal, was in most respects more threatening to the emerging Western cohesion than their strong opposition in the first decade of the Cold War.

The Two Parties’ Strengths, Differences, and Contradictions

During the last years of World War II, the strength of the French and Italian Communist Parties grew not only from economic distress, but also from their capacity to reconcile passionate patriotism with proletarian internationalism. It was buttressed by organizational power and ability to seize key economic and political institutions, as well as by intellectual magnetism. The two parties’ leaders understood that cultural transformation was as critical as political change. All these sinews of communist influence—nationalist, organizational, cultural—became the essential components of a powerful resistance to American hegemony.

At the time of the Liberation, the Grand Alliance yielded immediate results for the French and Italian Communist Parties. In both cases, the Soviet Union gained political influence over the two countries: in March 1944 it was the first of the great powers to recognize Italy’s provisional government that had deposed and ousted Benito Mussolini a few months earlier; it was also the first to welcome Charles de Gaulle, then interim prime minister, at a power summit in Moscow that December for a treaty of friendship. These diplomatic moves led to the return from Soviet exile of party leaders Palmiro Togliatti and Maurice Thorez, and to the formation of broad coalition governments including the PCI and PCF.¹ These developments constituted more than a revival of the Popular Front of the mid-1930s, for the two parties received popular acclaim for breaking the political impasse, defending the nation, and giving the masses hope of economic emancipation.

With their participation in the provisional governments, the PCF and PCI transformed themselves from conspiratorial, sectarian cliques into mass parties, adopting parliamentary politics and democratic means to reach power. Their membership skyrocketed in the last year of the war: in France from three hundred thousand in 1939 to more than eight hundred thousand by the end of 1945; in Italy, the underground party of a few thousand became by the end of the war a mass organization of 1.7 million (reaching 2.5 million in 1947), second only to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Equally staggering was the number of affiliates to the communist-dominated and highly politicized trade unions, reaching in the early Cold War years 3.8 million in the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) and a slightly lower figure in the Confederazione Generale del Lavoro Italiana (CGIL), founded in 1944.

While similarities prevailed, significant differences divided the two parties, differences that have been amply examined and reassessed. Many will emerge in the course of this study. Suffice it here to mention the most outstanding ones. A renowned, though a bit overstated distinction casts the PCF as genuinely bolshevized, more doctrinal, and more cohesive than the PCI.² To some extent that difference reflected the respective political traditions of Italy and France. In the former, where the state’s weakness remained endemic, partitocracy, or rule by parties, undermined a strong executive—with the notable exception of the discredited fascist years—and also favored the search for constant mediation and even transformism (as Italian political culture described party back-channeling), the Communists reinforced their tendency to assimilate and compromise.³ In the latter, where the state was strong and centralized, where societal conflict was more inscribed in its evolution and even enshrined in the French Revolution, unassailable ideological faith could be more easily conflated with national identity.⁴ International status also mattered. In France a strong national identity depended on the obsessive maintenance of a strong international role; no less sensitive to prestige, vanquished Italy was much weaker and severely handicapped by fragile national unity and the disgrace of the fascist experiment. Communist nationalism needed to be calibrated to these different situations.

Because ideological intransigence and national identity could be more closely aligned in France, the French Communists became more subordinate to Soviet dictates than their Italian counterparts. While recent research has revealed that Italian comrades also maintained a strong intimacy with Moscow, at least until the Prague Spring of 1968,⁵ the PCI’s long experience as a clandestine group under Fascism kept its cadres alert to possible political backlash. A more subtle explanation has also highlighted the need to replace a reactionary mass regime with a strong revolutionary mass organization deeply inserted in society and with an appeal beyond that of the working class. Fear of being marginalized, as in 1920–21, also informed Togliatti’s conduct in refounding the PCI in 1944 as a partito nuovo, a new national, mass party able and willing to participate in a coalition government. In contrast, the experience in the Popular Front of the mid-1930s gave the PCF more confidence in its capacity to maneuver the system.⁶ Furthermore, the rapid growth of the PCI in 1944, the sheer number of new members, precluded systematic indoctrination in Soviet-style Marxism Leninism, notwithstanding Togliatti’s determination to do so, whereas Thorez found it relatively easy to impart the Marxist-Leninist formation of the party’s new adherents. Even at the highest party levels, Thorez retained more control than Togliatti. The latter experienced difficulty persuading the Central Committee to confirm his March 1944 Svolta (turn), a move—mostly decided by Stalin, as we now know—that temporarily set aside the party’s antimonarchy stance and subordinated revolutionary goals to the necessity of national unity against Germany and Fascism.⁷

The prominence of intellectuals was notable in both parties. Nevertheless the PCI fielded a more highly educated leadership than the PCF: the intellectual sophistication of founding leaders such as Antonio Gramsci and Palmiro Togliatti had not isolated the party from the masses; in fact it more frequently allowed it to exert an effective control of its rank and file—thus tempering the effects of rapid, undisciplined growth—as well as of its most radical leaders, since Togliatti fully exploited his privileged access to Gramsci’s legacy. Their French counterparts brandished their modest backgrounds as badges of honor but also maintained less control of fellow-traveling intellectuals. If this was potentially and ironically one of the French Communists’ major weaknesses, the Italian Communists found a main obstacle in the countervailing faith of the Italian masses: the Catholic Church.⁸

Relevant as these differences may have been, the two Communist Parties followed remarkably parallel paths, at least until 1956, and for this reason America’s attention focused on those similarities. Immediately the analogies emerged with the two parties’ spectacular ascendancy in 1944–46. The Catholic novelist Georges Bernanos had famously claimed that a poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread. The two Communist Parties demonstrated that, in countries which had experienced material and spiritual loss, the dream of national reassertion could be as important as the need for material restoration.

NATIONALISM

Mass discontent caused by economic dislocation, and the natural craving for change after a devastating wartime period, largely explained communist success. But no less important during the Liberation and postwar period was the overwhelming credit and prestige—among both the middle and working classes—that the red partisans received from having led the Resistance against Nazi Germany and the fascist forces. Militants in both parties profited from their clandestine record, from the experience many of them had in the Spanish Civil War, and from the discipline and devotion they could muster under intense pressure. Even death brought them luster. Frequent setbacks did not tarnish the Resistance myth, for defeat could also forge a strong sense of national solidarity: in most respects being the parti des fusillés for the French Communists or holding the majority of the thirty-five thousand casualties of the Resistenza for the Italian Communists added to their reputation as martyrs of fascist and Nazi repression. Later, the Communists could cite that record to reinforce their claim that the Resistance, the chance for genuine national revival and independence, had been betrayed by the Anglo-American allies and by the other partisan forces. The myth of the heroic battle for national liberation and the partisan propaganda became so effective that communist consent to Stalin’s purges or to the Russian-German entente of 1939–41 soon disappeared into public oblivion.⁹

Heroism was not enough, however. The two parties reinforced their patriotic credentials by embracing the rhetoric of national prestige. Even before being readmitted as a legitimate political force, the PCF declared in its 1943 Charte du Conseil National de la Résistance that the main task for the Communists was to defend the political and economic independence of the nation and to restore France’s power, grandeur, and universal mission. At the 1945 Party Congress Thorez began to emulate Charles de Gaulle, declaring that "the independence of France and the restoration of its grandeur, sacred vow of all our heroes, must be the leading principle of the future foreign policy of the country." Significantly, as a follow-up, the party issued an anthology of Thorez’s most prominent speeches titled Une politique de grandeur française. A year later, with de Gaulle no longer at the helm of the provisional government, and with the PCF at the height of its power, in a highly symbolic gesture, the military parade of 14 July took place for the first and only time at the site of the Bastille instead of at the Arc de Triomphe. As the Christian Democrat prime minister, Georges Bidault, proclaimed, 14 July is the feast of workers, not of the bourgeois. We are going to celebrate it with the people! For the first time in French history, the Communists were no longer just communards: under the Resistance, the protection of national greatness seemed perfectly attuned to the socialist promise. Party historian Annie Kriegel even coined the term National-Thorezism to explain this strong appeal.¹⁰

While the French bourgeoisie had temporarily lost its primacy in representing the connection between grandeur and the Revolution, the Italian bourgeoisie appeared more permanently damaged by its historical failure to make Italy one of the great powers. Fascism had left a desire for international respect, a legacy that persisted after humiliating defeat. In his first speech after returning to Italy, Togliatti called for his party to lead the nation and to restore national pride among the youth after the vacuum created by the collapse of fascism; under the ideological opposite of fascism, Italy could thus become again great, strong, respected.¹¹ In a country where artificial pomp had so often replaced civic and democratic integration, such claims of grandezza might have seemed irrelevant and counterproductive. But for the PCI the point was to reclaim a strength and vitality that other movements had failed to project. Writing to his comrade and member of the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (CLN) Mauro Scoccimarro in 1944, Togliatti recommended emphasis on the rhetoric of national unity and national grandeur in order to further help cast our policy as truly national. For defeated Italy, finally, restoring grandezza meant nurturing patriotic more than nationalist feelings. The Communists suggested that, thanks to their government participation, the vanquished would never become a client nation.¹² This argument also implied that the arrogance of the winners could reignite revanchist nationalism in Italy.

The message of patriotism remained clear for both Communist Parties: national grandeur should not only be bent on restoring great power status; it would also lead to moral resurrection. The recovery of moral standing after World War II had become a crucial source of international prestige: the French were still reeling from the Vichy experience; the Italians were pervaded by a sense of guilt for having consented to the shames of tyranny—which, on top of being oppressive, had failed miserably in mastering aggression. To be nationalist today in Italy, Togliatti proclaimed in 1943, is to be antifascist. The PCF echoed with the slogan, L’anti-communisme, c’est l’arme de l’anti-France.¹³ In countries exhausted, humiliated, and ashamed by defeat and collaboration, a commitment to national independence became perfectly reconcilable with pacifist rhetoric. Besides contributing to national liberation, the Resistance, like most patriotic movements, enjoyed an aura of moral purity, of which the Communists claimed to be the incarnation. Jean-Pierre Rioux noted that the PCF set itself up as spokesman of the poor and the pure, wielding a moral advantage worth more than all theories. The Italian Communists also found stronger appeal on moral than on doctrinal ground. They contended that the Resistance was not a mere civil war: since the Resistance contributed to the Allied war effort, they argued, it was the best ground for a fair peace treaty and for international recognition of the country’s moral rebirth.¹⁴

By recasting nationalism as democratic and anti-imperialist, the two parties also justified their ambivalence on issues such as the unresolved Trieste dispute between Italy and Yugoslavia, or France’s insistence on retaining its overseas empire. In the immediate postwar months Togliatti argued that a nationalist frenzy over the Northeast borderlands would only work to the advantage of reactionary groups who dreamed of a neofascist revival, just as had happened after World War I. Furthermore, he construed, a recrudescence of Italian imperialism, as recent history had shown, would weaken Italian independence and grandeur: colonial adventures by a relatively poor country would be a drain on national resources and would also alienate the great powers to the point of reducing Italy to a vassal imperialist (of the Anglo-Americans).¹⁵ The PCF was naturally more ambiguous on the French imperial mission, which in North Africa (not ripe for socialist emancipation) still seemed acceptable. But certainly it lost no opportunity in 1945 to distinguish itself from de Gaulle, responsible, according to Thorez, for unlatching reactionary, imperialist ventures (at that point, referring to the bombing of Damascus).¹⁶ All these arguments, from both parties, naturally served Soviet interests; but they also helped the two parties cast an image of moral patriotism. Downplaying chauvinism helped them to further discredit the extreme Right and to uphold the politics of the Grand Alliance. These politics could especially prevent Anglo-American control of their nations, while also validating a communist role in the coalition governments.

Above all, democratic nationalism signified the right of the proletariat to represent national interests, as opposed to the decadent bourgeoisie, which was responsible for the March on Rome, Munich, and Vichy. For the French Communists there was a spiritual equivalence between their leader, former miner Maurice Thorez, who, underscoring his humble origins, proclaimed himself a fils du peuple (son of the people), and the historic fille du peuple, Joan of Arc. Evoking the feats of one paladin established a link between the party’s personality cult and patriotism, while the national mission of the French proletariat became clearer by stressing the ideal continuity with the Revolution of 1789. National grandeur and workers’ internationalism were even more intertwined for France than for the Soviet Union, and the eighteenth-century Phrygian cap, symbol of republican liberty, abounded in the iconic propaganda of wartime and postwar French Communism. That myth, confirming that the Left was born in France long before Marxism, granted the PCF an additional emblem of honor, even as it pledged its allegiance to Moscow.¹⁷

Likewise, the Italian communist partisans, fighting under the banner of the Garibaldi Brigades, claimed continuity between the most progressive traditions of the Italian Risorgimento and the renewed task of the country’s working class. The PCI’s mission was to complete that revolution, which had remained unfinished under the combined pressure of the bourgeoisie and the monarchy, guilty of collusion with fascism. Further, this reasoning suggested that, since fascism had precipitated Italy’s decline, the only hope for a restored role in the world was through the most advanced social transformation, just as had happened before in Britain, France, and Russia. That was the true meaning of a resumed Risorgimento, the nineteenth-century reawakening that had restored Italy’s ability to contribute to modern civilization, and to aspire to equal status with the other European powers. Togliatti repeatedly argued that Italy could attain real grandezza only if it let its most progressive forces, that is, the working class and its vanguard, lead the nation. And in 1946 Rinascita, the communist journal that best reflected the theoretical debate within Italian Marxism, contended that of all parties, the PCI was the one with the broadest and most accurate vision of the nation’s interests, and the journal attributed to the working masses the strongest will to bring about Italy’s rebirth.¹⁸

Besides seeking legitimacy from the past, the two Communist Parties tried to lay their strongest claim on the present, for their grandeur did not appear as borrowed as that of their government coalition partners. Following a pattern later popularized as ‘empire’ by invitation, the leaders de Gaulle, Pietro Badoglio, and their immediate successors repeatedly wooed the Americans in order to boost their own status through financial assistance and diplomatic support. At the Liberation parade in Paris, de Gaulle asked General Dwight Eisenhower to lend him two American divisions so that he could impress his fellow French and firmly establish his authority. A few months earlier Badoglio had been even more explicit, as he tried to avert America’s isolationist impulse by asking Washington to assume in Italy and the Mediterranean a leading part vis-à-vis all the other Powers. Only next to the U.S. power, he reminded Roosevelt, could Italy hope for an honorable place in the world.¹⁹ Even moral resurrection seemed subordinated to Italy’s return into the family of great powers next to the new Western hegemon, as the Christian Democrat leader Alcide De Gasperi told Secretary of State Jimmy Byrnes in August 1945. According to de Gaulle, France could continue to be a beacon of Western democracy if it could work in harmony with the other beacon, the United States. While none of