Explaining "auschwitz" after the end of history: The case of Italy

History and Theory

Volumn 38, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 84-99

  Bosworth, R J B ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34247293929     PISSN: 00182656     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/0018-2656.781999078     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. R. J. B. Bosworth, Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima: History Writing and the Sceond World War, 1945-1990(London, 1993)
2. See ibid., 11-15
3. See H. Rousso, he syndrome de Vichy (1944-198..) (Paris, 1987)
4. For the background, see Bosworth, Explaining Auschwitz, 186-189.
5. For a 1980s account, see R. W. Davies, Soviet History in the Gorbachev Revolution (London, 1989)
6. For a further account, see R. J. B. Bosworth, "Nations Examine Their Past: A Comparative Analysis of the Historiography of the 'Long' Second World War," The History Teacher 29 (1996), 499-523
7. See initially F, Fukuyama, "The End of History?," The National Interest 16 (1989), 3-18.
8. For English-language introductions, see K. Jenkins, Rethinking History (London, 1991)
9. his On "What is History?": From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White (London, 1993)
10. The great sponsor of these ideas is, of course, Les lieux de mémoire, ed P. Nora. 3 vols. (Paris, 1984-92). An abbreviated English-language version is now available as Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, ed
11. P. Nora (New York, 1996) and his "Between Memory and History: les lieux de mémoire" Representations 26 (1989), 7-25
12. See further in the Italian context Italian Fascism: History, Memory and Representation, ed. R. J. B. Bosworth and P. Dogliani (forthcoming) and the multivolume work edited by Mario Isnenghi, I luoghi della memoria (Bari, 1996-1997)
13. See the essays in M. J. Hogan, Hiroshima in History and Memory (Cambridge, Eng., 1996)
14. I am borrowing my usage from D. Blackbourn and G. Eley, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth Century Germany (Oxford, 1984). For myfullest account of Italy's historical reckoning with its recent past
15. see R. J. B. Bosworth, The Italian Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of Mussolini and Fascism (London, 1998)
16. For a recent English-language account, see R. J. B. Bosworth, Italy and the Wider World 1860-1960 (London, 1996)
17. Alberto Ronchey in Corriere della Sera (30 March 1979). For the background
18. see N. Ajello, Il lungo addio: intellettuali e PCI dal 1958 al 1991 (Bari, 1997)
19. Then the young American historian Michael Ledeen, and many other conservatives, feared that liberal democratic Italy possessed a "Nero complex." M. A. Ledeen, "Italy in Crisis," The Washington Papers 5 (1977), 1-75
20. For a biography, see G. Locatelli and D. Martini, Duce addio: una biografia di Gianfranco Fini (Milan, 1994)
21. For some examples of his myth, see S. Pertini, Sei condanne, due evasioni (Milan, 1978)
22. R. Uboldi, Il cittadino Sandra Pertini (Milan, 1982)
23. R. Monteleone, "Sandro Pertini: una vita spesa bene," Ventesimo secolo 5 (1995), 207-218
24. N. Tranfaglia, "La battaglia contro il fascismo," Ventesimo secolo 5 (1995), 219-225
25. Throughout the literature, a macabre contest continues in the body count. For the latest example, see the exaggerated work edited by R. Lafont, Le livre noir du communisme (Paris, 1997)
26. See, e.g., as quoted by A. J. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The Final Solution in History (New York, 1988), 94
27. For a not altogether convincing English-language account, see D. I. Kertzer, Politics and Symbols: The Italian Communist Party and the Fall of Communism (New Haven, 1996)
28. See, e.g., M. Knox, "The Fascist Regime, its Foreign Policy and its Wars: An Anti-Anti-Fascist Orthodoxy?," Contemporary European History 4 (1995), 347-365
29. S. Neri Serneri, "A Past to be Thrown Away? Politics and History in the Italian Resistance," Contemporary European History 4 (1995), 367-381
30. R. De Felice, Mussolini, 8 vols. (Turin, 1965-1997)
31. For a typical, if bland, example, see B. Painter, "Renzo De Felice and the Historiography of Italian Fascism," American Historical Review 95 (1990), 391-405
32. In what now seem droll words, De Felice explained that he had chosen Ledeen as an interlocutor because any Italian would be too biased politically. The interview has recently been republished in Italy, R. De Felice, Intervista sul fascismo (rev. ed.) (Bari, 1997)
33. Typical examples were the political scientist A. J. Gregor and George Urban, the director of Radio Free Europe
34. R. De Felice, Rosso e nero, ed. P. Chessa (Milan, 1995)
35. R. De Felice, Mussolini l' Valleuto: II La guerra civile 1943-1945 (Turin, 1997), 61-67
36. See, for example, his obituary of De Felice which claimed De Felice for his causes: F. Perfetti, "Democrazia, Stato e nazione nel pensiero di Renzo De Felice," Clio 32 (1996), 545-553
37. See, for example, the articles in Nuova storia contemporanea 2, no. 2 (1998) which modishly include a belated translation of F. von Hayek, "Gli storici e il futuro dell'Europa" (5-18)
38. and a pious re-evocation of R. De Felice, "Il fascismo e gli storici italiani: intervista inedita a cura di Valeri Mikhailenko" (83-90)
39. In English, see, e.g., E. Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy (Cambridge, Mass., 1996)
40. See E. Gentile, "Fascism in Italian Historiography: In Search of an Individual Historical Identity," Journal of Contemporary History 21 (1986), 179-208
41. E. Gentile, "Renzo De Felice: ATribute," Journal of Contemporary History 32 (1997), 143
42. For a telling example of their work, see the 30th anniversary issue of the Journal of Contemporary History 31 (1996), devoted to Italian Fascism
43. E. P. Thompson, The Heavy Dancers (New York, 1985), 199-200
44. For his autobiography, see C. Geertz, After the Fact: Two Centuries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist (Cambridge, Mass., 1995)
45. J. T. Schnapp, "18BL: Fascist Mass Spectacle," Representations 43 (1993), 90-93
46. F. Meinecke, The German Catastrophe: Recollections and Reminiscences (Boston, 1963)
47. G. Allardyce, "What Fascism is Not: Thoughts on the Deflation of a Concept," American Historical Review 84 (1979), 383
48. See, e.g., E. Galli della Loggia, La morte della patria: la crisi dell'idea della nazione tra Resistenza, antifascismo e Repubblica (Bari, 1996)
49. For a judicious account, see N. S. Onofri, Il triangolo rosso (1943-1947)
50. la verità sul dopoguerra in Emilia Romagna attraverso i documenti d'archivio (Rome, 1994)
51. cf. the more anti-anti-Fascist account in G. E. Rusconi, Resistenza e postfascismo (Bologna, 1995)
52. For a classic example, see E. Aga-Rossi and V. Zaslavsky, Togliatti e Stalin: il PCI e la polit-ica estera staliniana negli archivi di Mosca (Bologna, 1997)
53. Cf. also the apology by PDS secretaryM assimo D'Alema in January 1998 for the "totalitarian" crimes of communism, including those allegedly committed by ex-PCI leader Palmiro Togliatti. For a sensible skeptical commentary, see G. Bocca, "Troppo facile scommunicare Togliatti," L'spresso 44 (29 January 1998)
54. See G. Sluga, "Italian National Memory, National Identity and Fascism," in Italian Fascism:History, Memory and Representation, ed. R. J. B. Bosworth and P. Dogliani (forthcoming)
55. For positive leftist accounts, typical of the moment, see G. Pansa, "I fantasmi di Porzus," L'Espresso 43 (14 August 1997)
56. "Ma fateci andare al cinema, bigotti d'Italia!," L'Espresso 43 (11 September 1997)
57. A. Padellaro, "Troppa grazia, san Pertini," L'Espresso 43 (25 September 1997)
58. C. Pavone, Una guerra civile 1943-1945: saggio storica sulla moralita della Resistenza (Turin, 1991)
59. P. Spriano, Storia del partita comunista italiano IV. La fine del fascismo: Dalla riscossa opera-ia alla lotta armata (Turin, 1973), 107-108, 270
60. See J. Walston, "History and Memory of the Italian Concentration Camps," Historical Journal 40(1997), 169-183
61. Even in 1996, official Italy was anxious to excuse its imperial past there. See Aduu: le ragioni di una sconfitta, ed. A. Del Boca (Bari, 1996), 5-6. It is true that in November 1997 president Oscar Luigi Scalfaro finally made one of those modish politicians' "apologies" for Italian policies, but he did so with the vagueness of the genre
62. For an account of the stubborn refusal of the Italian establishment to acknowledge the matter, see A. Del Boca, "Una lunga battaglia per la verità," in I gas di Mussolini: il fascismo e la guerra d'Etiopia, ed. A. Del Boca (Rome, 1996), 45
63. See Christopher Browning's brilliant work on the killing on the Eastern front and, especially, C. R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York, 1992)
64. D. Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (NewYork, 1996)