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Italy

General Post-World War II

Caserta, John. The Red Brigades: Italy's Agony. New York: Manor, 1978.

Catanzaro, Raimondo, ed. The Red Brigades and Left-Wing Terrorism in Italy. London: Pinter, 1991.

Bull, I&NS 7.4, notes that this work "brings together various specialists who analyze Italian terrorism along specific themes.... Overall, this is an important research monograph which expands considerably our knowledge of left-wing terrorism in Italy. What is missing, however, is any analysis of the role of politicians, the police and the state."

Ellwood, David W.

1. "The Impact of the Marshall Plan on Italy, the Impact of Italy on the Marshall Plan." In Cultural Transmissions and Receptions: American Mass Culture in Europe, eds. R. Kroes, R.W. Rydell, and D.F.J. Boscher, 100-124. Amsterdam, Netherlands: VU UP, 1993.

2. "Italian Modernisation and the Propaganda of the Marshall Plan." In The Art of Persuasion: Political Communication in Italy from 1945 to the 1990s, eds. Luciano Cheles and Luciano Sponza. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2001.

3. "The 1948 Elections in Italy: A Cold War Propaganda Battle." Historical Journal of Film, Radio & Television 1 (1993).

4. "The Propaganda of the Marshall Plan in Italy in a Cold War Context." Intelligence and National Security 18, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 225-236.

"The Marshall Plan delivered the goods, and deployed an ever-wider range of communication methods to inform, educate, and convince its beneficiaries. The [Communist] Party failed to learn the importance of mass audio-visual media from its defeat in the 1948 elections, and had no useful response to the double onslaught of Hollywood and the USIS/ERP programme."

Lazar, Marc. "The Cold War Culture of the French and Italian Communist Parties." Intelligence and National Security 18, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 213-224.

"[T]he Cold War had a considerable impact in France and Italy, being relayed domestically by two powerful communist parties and amplifying already-existing conflicts in each of these societies. In France, as in Italy, the confrontation was violent, and developed into a kind of 'war culture'.... It permitted polemical and political passions to be unleased against ... 'the enemy'.... Yet, despite its intensity and continual stoking, this confrontation was always mastered and controlled by communists and non-communists alike."

Maugeri, Franco. From the Ashes of Disgrace. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1948.

Constantinides: The author headed Italian naval intelligence from 1941 until the Italian surrender, and then headed an intelligence organization targeted against the Germans. "The memoir deals with various facets of his career during the war, but disclosures of an intelligence interest are not many." Nevertheless, because so little on Italian intelligence during the war has been translated into English, this book "is all the more to be prized, even though it is patently an incomplete account."

Miller, James. The United States and Italy, 1940-1950: The Politics and Diplomacy of Stabilization. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.

Richelson, Jeffrey T. Foreign Intelligence Organizations. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1988.

NameBase notes that Richelson "offers organization-chart overviews of the services of several countries, and summaries of some of the current issues. Included [is] ... Italy (SISDE, SISMI, and the P2 problem)."

Cline, PSQ 104.1, comments that "[g]iven the uneven quality of the information available to him, Richelson has done a skillful job of weaving together a systematic description of the secret intelligence agencies of eight important nations.... This ... publication is a reference tool that, despite its limitations, will be handy on the shelf for any researcher dealing regularly with the arcane world of secret intelligence."

Willan, Philip. Puppet Masters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy. London: Constable, 1991.

In an excess of obeisance to conspiracy hype, Bull, I&NS 7.4, finds this book to be "an excellent analysis of the state and security services' role in terrorism." Willan's thesis is that "the American and Italian secret services ... colluded with right-wing terrorism and manipulated left-wing terrorism as a means of ... keeping out of power the largest communist party in the west." However, the author "does ... not prove this thesis unequivocally but he offers sufficient evidence for its possible validity."

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