2024-02-21 11:18:13
Time.news – A double game was played on the institutional question that affected Vittorio Emanuele III and the Savoy dynasty in 1944, on a national and international scale. In the aftermath of the authorization by the Allies to transfer the Government from Brindisi to Salerno on 27 January, with the recognition of Italy as a “liberated territory”, the Congress of anti-fascist parties meeting at the Teatro Piccini in Bari on the 28th clearly reiterated the concept of the abdication of the king and the convening of a constituent assembly. The Congress, an expression of the souls of the Liberation Committee, beyond its role had been convened in a semi-official form so as not to offend the susceptibility of the Allies, who were reluctant to grant this body the chrism of representativeness of the Italian people, a characteristic which they also did not recognize never. As for the monarchy, the English were on different and opposite positions to those of the Americans, not going beyond a hypothetical possibility without however affecting dynastic continuity too much; the ironclad US republican tradition was instead pre-eminent on the Italian vision of things. On the other hand, the head of the inter-allied control mission, the British general Noel Mason-MacFarlane, had appeared in Brindisi before Vittorio Emanuele and Queen Elena in shorts and with the attitude of someone who gives them orders, insensitive to the indignation and to the feeling of annoyance of the royal couple: just as he had then forced them to be removed from the residence they occupied, he had no qualms about the fact that they could be removed from the throne of Italy.
It was the jurist Enrico De Nicola who tried to make Savoia understand the opportunity to take a step back before history decided for him. He had met him on 20 February in Ravello, and had urged him to appoint Umberto lieutenant general of the Kingdom, with executive power from the moment of his return to Rome, for a smooth transition that would preserve dynastic continuity. It was a compromise to save what perhaps could no longer be saved. His father had never given either trust or credit to the Prince of Piedmont, always keeping him out of the decisions and not even informing him of the armistice negotiations: on the evening of 9 September 1943, in fact, he did not even know that the Council of Corona at the Quirinale to decide what to do after the announcement of the unconditional surrender by General Dwight Eisenhower on Radio Algiers. The refined solution devised by De Nicola was reluctantly accepted by Vittorio Emanuele, with a “yes” that was reported the following day to Mason-MacFarlane. But it is Winston Churchill who immediately understands that those movements and negotiations go far beyond the settling of scores between Italians, instead affecting the political-military framework of the conduct of the war and its balance at the end of hostilities. On 22 February in London he delivered a speech to a crowded House of Commons which was immediately called “the coffee pot speech”.
With one of his brilliant linguistic creations in images he expresses a firm opposition to the proposal of the Bari Congress for a constituent assembly, in support of Badoglio and his government and therefore of the monarchy. “If you have to hold a hot coffee pot in your hand – he claims in the metaphor – it is better not to break the handle until you are sure you have another one that is equally comfortable and practical, and in any case until you have a tea towel at hand”. Churchill does not stand in defense of Vittorio Emanuele III, because he is a lucid politician, but of the monarchical institution, which he saw at that historical juncture as a barrier, the only one at the moment, to the communist risk. And he also explicitly manifests his denial of the authority and authoritativeness of the revived anti-fascist political parties gathered in Bari.
Benedetto Croce and Carlo Sforza responded to the “coffee pot speech” with a formal letter of protest which the British Prime Minister let fall on deaf ears. The anti-fascist parties would like more to legitimize themselves in the eyes of the Allies and therefore launch the idea of a large popular demonstration, with a general strike which should demonstrate the support they enjoy. The Anglo-Americans were strongly upset and during a meeting in the prefecture in Naples the US governor Charles Poletti (he had been governor of New York) asked for that decision to be revoked: not obtaining it, the strike was declared illegal and the agitators were arrested. Mason-MacFarlane would like to go even further, proceeding directly to the arrest of party leaders. In Naples, on March 4, almost no one joined the strike to protest Churchill’s speech.
Croce will note in his diary what the attitude of the Allies is on the subject of “the removal of the king to form a democratic government. But I have observed and experienced that the English and Americans who handle political affairs in Naples are very late in comprehend”. Churchill, caustic, had already dismissed him thus: “I learn from Harold Macmillan that Croce is a dwarf professor of about 75 who has written good books on aesthetics and philosophy. I have no more faith in Croce than in Sforza”. The solution to the impasse had been devised by De Nicola, the future provisional Head of State and first President of the Republic despite his monarchist beliefs, obtaining the green light from Croce and Sforza, who even wanted to skip a generation of the Savoys by making Maria José the regent of the little Vittorio Emanuele: Umberto would have exercised the sovereign functions as lieutenant of the Kingdom, with Vittorio Emanuele III nominally on the throne but retired to private life awaiting formal abdication. Once the war was over, following a popular referendum, a constituent assembly would establish what the new Italy would be like.
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