Excerpt of 54 by Wu Ming
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The Yugoslavian front, spring 1943
ITALIAN SOLDIERS!
The Slovenian people have launched an inexorable struggle against the occupying
forces. Many of your comrades have already fallen in that struggle. And you will
go on falling day after day, night after night, for as long as you remain tools
in the hands of our oppressors, and until Slovenia is liberated.
Your leaders will lead you to believe that the Slovenian people love you, that
you are being attacked only by ‘tiny numbers of communists.’ This is an insolent
lie. All Slovenes are in accord with the struggle against the occupying forces.
Under the leadership of the Slovenian National Liberation Committee, our entire
people has organised itself into a single invincible liberation front.
ITALIAN SOLDIERS!
Your superiors are concealing from you the desperate situation into which
Mussolini has hurled the ‘Italian Empire’ by selling it to Hitler. They are
hiding from you the fact that Abyssinia, for which Mussolini spilled so much
Italian blood, is no longer in Italian hands. They are hiding from you the
impasse that Italian troops face in all of their African colonies. They are
hiding from you the losses that Italian troops have suffered in the Balkans, and
the fact thatwestern Serbia, Montenegro, most of Bosnia and Hercegovina, Lika,
and parts of Dalmatia have already been liberated. They are hiding from you the
terrible losses and torments inflicted upon Italian troops by the crushing
weight of Russian weapons on the Russian front, and by the unbearable Russian
winter. They are hiding from you the chaos that is breaking out in Italian
cities as a result of the growing food shortages, the result of continuous
bombing by the British Air Force, and the growing discontent of the Italian
people with the policies of the warmonger Mussolini, who is plunging Italy into
the abyss.
ITALIAN SOLDIERS!
Understand what the Italian populace at home is coming to understand more and
more, that Hitler is pushing you on all fronts: in Africa, in the Balkans, in
France and in the USSR, so that you will be unable to form a resistance in your
own country when he attacks ‘Allied’ Italy, just as he has attacked ‘Allied
Yugoslavia’. Understand what any blind man must understand today, that Italy, as
long as it gives allegiance to Germany, will suffer a terrible defeat at sea, on
land and in the skies, at the hands of the united forces of Russia, Great
Britain and all the freedom-loving peoples of the world.
Understand, Italian soldiers, that the only way out for you and for the whole of
the Italian people is to turn your weapons against those who have brought both
you and us nothing but misfortune, to turn them against Mussolini’s fascist
gang! It is vain to claim that you too condemn the bestiality of Hitler and
Mussolini, that you too wish to see the end of fascism and the end of the war.
You must use your actions to demonstrate your love of freedom and peace, your
hatred of the oppressors, both yours and ours. Otherwise what awaits you is
ruin, both yours and theirs.
ITALIAN SOLDIERS!
The Communist Party of Slovenia appeals to you:
Do not carry out your superiors’ orders, do not fire on the Slovenians, do not
persecute the partisans, but surrender to them, do not stand in the way of our
liberation struggle!
Attack and disarm the fascist militia, the agents of OVRA and all those who are
forcing you to fight against the Slovenian people.
Destroy the Italian armed forces, destroy the stores of weapons and food unless
you can give them to the partisans, destroy the means of transport of the
Italian army, lorries, motorcycles, horses, roads, railways, etc.!
Do not let the Italian armies be posted to the Russian front, to die for the
lunatic Hitler and his satellites! Demand to return to your homeland!
Copyright © 2002 Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., Torino
Translation copyright © Shaun Whiteside 2005
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