2. Italy 1947-1948

Free elections, Hollywood style

Those who do not believe in the ideology of the United States, shall not be allowed to stay in the United States, declared the American Attorney General, Tom Clark, in January 1948.1

In March, the Justice Department, over which Clark presided, determined that Italians who did not believe in the ideology of the United States would not be allowed to emigrate to, or even enter, the United States.

This was but one tactic in a remarkable American campaign to ensure that Italians who did not believe in the ideology of the United States would not be allowed to form a government of a differing ideology in Italy in their election of 1948.

Two years earlier, the Italian Communist Party (PCI), one of the largest in the world,] and the Socialist Party (PSI) had together garnered more votes and more seats in the Constituent Assembly election than the Christian Democrats. But the two parties of the left had run separate candidates and thus had to be content with some ministerial posts in a coalition cabinet under a Christian Democrat premier. The results, nonetheless, spoke plainly enough to put the fear of Marx into the Truman administration.

For the 1948 election, scheduled for 18 April, the PCI and PSI united to form the Popular Democratic Front (FDP) and in February won municipal elections in Pescara with a 10 percent increase in their vote over 1946. The Christian Democrats ran a poor second. The prospect of the left winning control of the Italian government loomed larger than ever before. It was at this point that the US began to train its big economic and political guns upon the Italian people. All the good ol Yankee know-how, all the Madison Avenue savvy in the art of swaying public opinion, all the Hollywood razzmatazz would be brought to bear on the target market .

Pressing domestic needs in Italy, such as agricultural and economic reform, the absence of which produced abysmal extremes of wealth and poverty, were not to be the issues of the 1 day. The lines of battle would be drawn around the question of democracy vs. communism (the idea of capitalism remaining discreetly to one side). The fact that the Communists had been the single most active anti-fascist group in Italy during the war, undergoing ruthless persecution, while the Christian Democrat government of 1948 and other electoral opponents on the right were riddled through with collaborators, monarchists and plain unreconstructed fascists ... this too would be ignored; indeed, turned around. It was now a matter of Communist dictatorship vs. their adversaries love of freedom ; this was presumed a priori. As one example, a group of American congressmen visited Italy in summer 1947 and casually and arbitrarily concluded that The country is under great pressure from within and without to veer to the left and adopt a totalitarian-collective national organization. 2

To make any of this at all credible, the whole picture had to be pushed and squeezed into the frame of The American Way of Life vs. The Soviet Way of Life, a specious proposition which must have come as somewhat of a shock to leftists who regarded themselves as Italian and neither Russian nor American.

In February 1948, after non-Communist ministers in Czechoslovakia had boycotted cabinet meetings over a dispute concerning police hiring practices, the Communist government dissolved the coalition cabinet and took sole power. The Voice of America pointed to this event repeatedly, as a warning to the Italian people of the fate

awaiting them if Italy went Communist (and used as well by anti-communists for decades afterward as a prime example of communist duplicity). Yet, by all appearances, the Italian Christian Democrat government and the American government had conspired the previous year in an even more blatant usurpation of power.

In January 1947, when Italian Premier Alcide de Gasperi visited Washington at the United States invitation, his overriding concern was to plead for crucial financial assistance for his war-torn, impoverished country. American officials may have had a different priority. Three days after returning to Italy, de Gasperi unexpectedly dissolved his cabinet, which included several Communists and Socialists. The press reported that many people in Italy believed that de Gasperis action was related to his visit to the United States and was aimed at decreasing leftist, principally Communist, influence in the government. After two weeks of tortuous delay, the formation of a center or center-right government sought by de Gasperi proved infeasible; the new cabinet still included Communists and Socialists although the left had lost key positions, notably the ministries of foreign affairs and finance.

From this point until May, when de Gasperis deputy, Ivan Lombardo, led a mission to Washington to renew the request for aid, promised loans were frozen by the United States for reasons not very clear. On several occasions during this period the Italian left asserted their belief that the aid was being held up pending the ouster of leftists from the cabinet. The New York Times was moved to note that, Some observers here feel that a further Leftward swing in Italy would retard aid. As matters turned out, the day Lombardo arrived in Washington, de Gasperi again dissolved his entire cabinet and suggested that the new cabinet would manage without the benefit of leftist members. This was indeed what occurred, and over the ensuing few months, exceedingly generous American financial aid flowed into Italy, in addition to the cancellation of the nations $1 billion debt to the United States.3

At the very same time, France, which was also heavily dependent upon American financial aid, ousted all its Communist ministers as well. In this case there was an immediate rationale: the refusal of the Communist ministers to support Premier Ramadier in a vote of confidence over a wage freeze. Despite this, the ouster was regarded as a surprise and considered bold in France, and opinion was widespread that American loans were being used, or would be used, to force France to align with the US. Said Ramadier: A little of our independence is departing from us with each loan we obtain. 4

As the last month of the 1948 election campaign began, Time magazine pronounced the possible leftist victory to be the brink of catastrophe .5

It was primarily this fear, William Colby, former Director of the CIA, has written, that had led to the formation of the Office of Policy Coordination, which gave the CIA the capability to undertake covert political, propaganda, and paramilitary operations in the first place. 6 But covert operations, as far as is known, played a relatively minor role in the American campaign to break the back of the Italian left. It was the very overtness of the endeavor, without any apparent embarrassment, that stamps the whole thing with such uniqueness and arrogance-one might say swagger. The fortunes of the FDP slid downhill with surprising acceleration in the face of an awesome mobilization of resources such as the following:7

A massive letter writing campaign from Americans of Italian extraction to their relatives and friends in Italy-at first written by individuals in their own words or guided by sample letters in newspapers, soon expanded to mass-produced, pre-written, postage-paid form letters, cablegrams, educational circulars , and posters, needing only an address and signature. And-from a group calling itself The Committee to Aid Democracy in Italy-half a million picture postcards illustrating the gruesome fate awaiting Italy if it

voted for dictatorship or foreign dictatorship . In all, an estimated 10 million pieces of mail were written and distributed by newspapers, radio stations, churches, the American Legion, wealthy individuals, etc.; and business advertisements now included offers to send letters airmail to Italy even if you didnt buy the product. All this with the publicly expressed approval of the Acting Secretary of State and the Post Office which inaugurated special Freedom Flights to give greater publicity to the dispatch of the mail to Italy.

The form letters contained messages such as: A communist victory would ruin Italy. The United States would withdraw aid and a world war would probably result. ... We implore you not to throw our beautiful Italy into the arms of that cruel despot communism. America hasnt anything against communism in Russia [sic], but why impose it on other people, other lands, in that way putting out the torch of liberty? ... If the forces of true democracy should lose in the Italian election, the American Government will not send any more money to Italy and we wont send any more money to you, our relatives.

These were by no means the least sophisticated of the messages. Other themes emphasized were Russian domination of Italy, loss of religion and the church, loss of family life, loss of home and land. Veteran newsman Howard K. Smith pointed out at the time chat For an Italian peasant a telegram from anywhere is a wondrous thing; and a cable from the terrestrial paradise of America is not lightly to be disregarded.

The letters threatening to cut off gifts may have been equally intimidating. Such letters, wrote a Christian Democrat official in an Italian newspaper, struck home in southern Italian and Sicilian villages with the force of lightning. A 1949 poll indicated that 16 percent of Italians claimed relatives in the United States with whom they were in touch; this, apparently, was in addition to friends there.

The State Department backed up the warnings in the letters by announcing that If the Communists should win ... there would be no further question of assistance from the United States. The Italian left felt compelled to regularly assure voters that this would not really happen; this, in turn, inspired American officials, including Secretary of State George Marshall, to repeat the threat. (Marshall was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953.)

A daily series of direct short-wave broadcasts to Italy backed by the State Department and featuring prominent Americans. (The State Department estimated that there were 1.2 million short-wave receivers in Italy as of 1946.) The Attorney General went on the air and assured the Italian people that the election was a choice between democracy and communism, between God and godlessness, between order and chaos. William Donovan, the wartime head of the OSS (fore-runner of the CIA) warned that under a communist dictatorship in Italy, many of the nations industrial plants would be dismantled and shipped to Russia and millions of Italys workers would be deported to Russia for forced labor. If this were not enough to impress the Italian listeners, a parade of unknown but passionate refugees from Eastern Europe went before the microphone to recount horror stories of life behind The Iron Curtain .

S everal commercial radio stations broadcast to Italy special services held in American Catholic churches to pray for the Pope in this, his most critical hour . On one station, during an entire week, hundreds of Italian-Americans from all walks of life delivered one-minute messages to Italy which were relayed through the short-wave station. Station WOV in New York invited Italian war brides to transcribe a personal message to their families back home. The station then mailed the recordings to Italy.

Voice of America daily broadcasts into Italy were sharply increased, highlighting news of American assistance or gestures of friendship to Italy. A sky-full of show-biz stars, including Frank Sinatra and Gary Cooper, recorded a series of radio programs designed to win friends and influence the vote in Italy. Five broadcasts of Italian-American housewives were aired, and Italian-Americans with some leftist credentials were also enlisted for the cause. Labor leader Luigi Antonini called upon Italians to smash the Muscovite fifth column which follows the orders of the ferocious Moscow tyranny, or else Italy would become an enemy totalitarian country .

To counter Communist charges in Italy that negroes in the United States were denied opportunities, the VOA broadcast the story of a negro couple who had made a fortune in the junk business and built a hospital for their people in Oklahoma City. (It should be remembered that in 1948 American negroes had not yet reached the status of second-class citizens.]

Italian radio stations carried a one-hour show from Hollywood put on to raise money for the orphans of Italian pilots who had died in the war. (It was not reported if the same was done for the orphans of German pilots.)

American officials in Italy widely distributed leaflets extolling US economic aid and staged exhibitions among low-income groups. The US Information Service presented an exhibition on The Worker in America and made extensive use of documentary and feature films to sell the American way of life. It