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A Civil War: A History of the Italian Resistance

1991 edition
Author	Claudio Pavone
Original title	Una guerra civile. Saggio storico sulla moralità nella Resistenza
Translator	Peter Levy
Subject	Italian armed resistance
Genre	History
Published	1991
Publisher	Bollati Boringhieri, Verso Books
Published in English	2013

A Civil War is a history of the Italian resistance movement by Claudio Pavone, first published in 1991. The author, a former partisan, analyses the resistance in multiple aspects, focusing on the motivations, behaviour, expectations and objectives of partisans themselves. The work is an attempt to shift the historiographic focus from the overtly political, in which the parties are agents and at the centre of history, to ethics, that is, analysing subjective motivations, aspirations, delusions and hopes within the partisan movement. Pavone's book significantly shaped historical debates relating to the Resistance and to the crucial period between the armistice of Cassibile and Italian liberation.

The work proposes that the period be considered as three simultaneous wars: "patriotic" against the German invader, "civil" between Italian fascists and anti-fascists, and "class" between revolutionary and bourgeois. Although contentious upon publication, the work is considered to have facilitated a wider acceptance that the events of 1943-45 should be considered as a civil war rather than, as in the previously dominant understanding, a war of liberation.

Mark Mazower of Columbia University, called A Civil War a "great work" and "among the few indisputable masterpieces of contemporary history." David Ellwood, in the English Historical Review, noted, "Pavone’s book will always remain as the outstanding monument to the Resistance movement in its philosophical and political dimensions."

Editions

In Italian

• Pavone, Claudio (1991). Una guerra civile: saggio storico sulla moralità nella Resistenza (in Italian). Torino: Bollati Boringhieri. ISBN 8833906299. OCLC 797565709.
• Pavone, Claudio (2013). Una guerra civile: saggio storico sulla moralità nella Resistenza (in Italian). Torino: Bollati Boringhieri. ISBN 978-8833970134. OCLC 955087397.

In English

• Pavone, Claudio (2013). Stanislao Pugliese (ed.). A Civil War: A History Of The Italian Resistance. Translated by Peter Levy, David Broder. London: Verso Books. ISBN 978-1781682364. OCLC 1051804248.

References

1. Grand, Alexander De; Gagliani, Dianella (April 2001). "Brigate nere: Mussolini e la militarizzazione del Partito fascista repubblicano". The American Historical Review. 106 (2): 677. doi:10.2307/2651779. JSTOR 2651779.
2. Pugliese, Stanislao G. (2004). Fascism, Anti-fascism, and the Resistance in Italy: 1919 to the Present. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 253. ISBN 978-0-7425-3123-9.
3. Varriale, Andrea (2015). "Heroes, spectators, traitors. Representations of the Italian resistance movement in selected filmography". Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte. 28 (2): 234–245. doi:10.13109/kize.2015.28.2.234. ISSN 0932-9951. JSTOR 24713116.
4. Mazower, Mark (22 November 2013). "A Civil War, by Claudio Pavone". Financial Times. Retrieved 24 May 2020.
5. Ellwood, David W. (1 December 2016). "A Civil War: A History of the Italian Resistance, by Claudio Pavone". The English Historical Review. 131 (553): 1580–1583. doi:10.1093/ehr/cew290. ISSN 0013-8266.

v t e Italian resistance movement 1943–1945
Partisan formations	Brigate Fiamme Verdi Brigate Garibaldi Brigate Matteotti Brigate Mazzini Brigate Osoppo Brigata Partigiana Stella Rossa Giustizia e Libertà
Structures	National Liberation Committee Women's Defense Groups DELASEM
Notable persons	Giorgio Amendola Aldo Aniasi Walter Audisio Piero Balbo Eugenio Calò Giorgio Bocca Italo Calvino Carla Capponi Oliver Churchill Eugenio Curiel Giovanni Fornasini Maurizio Giglio Filippo Illuminato Nilde Iotti Primo Levi Luigi Longo Enrico Martini Giorgio Napolitano Teresio Olivelli Ferruccio Parri Tigrino Sabatini Walkiria Terradura Palmiro Togliatti Renata Viganò
Events	1943 Armistice of Cassibile Action off Bastia Acqui Division massacre Four Days of Naples 1944 Monte Battaglia Partisan Republic uprisings Via Rasella attack Ardeatine massacre 1945 Salussola massacre Porzûs massacre Rovetta massacre Death of Mussolini
Overview	Allied Campaign Axis war crimes Civil War Women Partisan brigades Radio Londra Special Operations Executive
Post-war	Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d'Italia A Civil War The Crow Comes Last Liberation Day Museum of the Liberation of Rome Rome, Open City Volante Rossa

• 1991 non-fiction books