Italy also celebrates its “liberation” on April 25, but the Italian anniversary falls almost three decades before the Portuguese Carnation Revolution, which marked the triumph over Nazi fascism in 1945, at the end of World War II.
Declared a national holiday in Italy since 1946, the “Celebration of the Liberation of Italy from Nazi Fascism”, also known as the “Festival of Liberation” or simply “April 25”, symbolically commemorates the liberation from Nazi occupation and the defeat of the collaborator fascist regime.
Although the war in Italy did not end on April 25, 1945—it continued until early May—this date was chosen to represent “liberation,” since it was on this day that the withdrawal of troops from Italian cities began. Milan and Turin, from the soldiers of Nazi Germany and the fascist soldiers of the “Republic of Salo”, a “puppet” state created in the last years of the war in the north of the country, at a time when the Allies. have already occupied most of Italy.
By the decision of dictator Benito Mussolini, Italy entered World War II on the side of the Germans, but four years after the start of the conflict, on September 8, 1943, Italy signed an armistice with the Allies, dividing the country into two parts. : British and North American troops were created in the south, while the north was occupied by German troops.
King Victor Emmanuel III took refuge in the Apulia region (south) and Mussolini fled to Germany.
For more than a year and a half, from the winter of 1943 to the spring of 1945, Italy was the scene of a conflict that many classify as a civil war, pitting Nazi forces, supported by what was left of Mussolini’s regime, against the resistance. Italian movement supported by the Allies.
In a bloody conflict in which resistance was essentially carried out by a huge movement of fighters known as the “Partisans” – some 250 thousand fighters, a fifth of whom were killed – they were to organize the “liberation” of Milan and Turin on April 25, 1943, taking advantage of a popular uprising that took place in two major cities in northern Italy against the occupying forces.
Having already “conquered” Bologna on April 21 and Genoa on April 23, the “partisans”, to whom all Italian anti-fascist and resistance movements belonged, including communists, socialists and Christian democrats, crossed on April 2. On February 24, the Po, a river in northern Italy, the last stronghold of the Nazis troops, and the next day German soldiers and soldiers of the Salo Republic began to withdraw from Milan and Turin, which is understood as their surrender on Italian territory. .
The following April, Italy’s provisional government – the first led by Alcide de Gasperi and the last from the Kingdom of Italy – declared by decree that April 25 would become a national holiday to commemorate Liberation Day from the Nazis. Fascism, a term used to describe the connection between Italian fascism and German Nazism, was agreed upon between Mussolini and Adolf Hitler.
On April 25, while Portugal celebrates the 50th anniversary of the revolution that ended the Estado Novo dictatorship, Italy celebrates the 79th anniversary of “its” on April 25, in a context in which the country has the most right-wing government since World War II – right-wing and a far-right coalition led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy, a party considered the heir to the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), created in 1946 by prominent figures. mode. Benito Mussolini was executed on April 28, 1945, two days before Hitler committed suicide.
Last year, April 25 was celebrated in Italy for the first time since the coalition government of the Brothers of Italy, the League (far-right populists) and the Force of Italy (center-right) came to power, causing anticipatory controversy in the celebrations, not least due to contradictory statements by some party officials from the more radical wings of the previous days, avoiding condemnation of fascism and criticism of some of the actions of the “partisans”, often associated with the Communist Party.
However, Meloni, who in his youth praised Mussolini and considered him the best Italian politician of the last 50 years when he joined the MSI youth wing, tried to avoid controversy and instructed everyone to participate in the Freedom Day celebrations. , which he classified as “the moment of rediscovery of national harmony”, also stating then that “law in Italy is incompatible with any nostalgia for fascism”.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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