Italian anti-war sentiment
Why is the anti-war sentiment is still so strong in Italy?
We Italians, like the French, Spanish, Germans and Greeks, have a recent history that encompasses two world wars, and civil wars on our home territory in the last 60 years. Unlike the British and the Americans – who have never been invaded in the last 100 years – we have had enemies inside our houses and witnessed the war whose front lines were in their front gardens.
This has left a huge scar on Italy. We had 5 years of bombing, firstly from the Allies and then the Germans (and those bombs were not the “intelligent” bombs of modern warfare); Three years of civil war between Italian Partisans and Italian Fascists and two years of German occupation and Nazi oppression. During this, Italians lived the horror of war, from stolen food to burned children and raped women, bitter and vicious fighting between the Partisans and the Italian-German Fascists, that often lead to terrible acts of violence against entire villages punished for supporting Partisan fighters.
At the end of the war Italy had no food, no houses, no roads, no money and an entire nation to re-build. Much like Iraq today. The post war government (made of partisans) included in the new Constitution an article that expressly forbids Italy to declare war upon other peoples.
And that sentiment is still shared by many Italians. With a population of more than 50% over-60s hardship of war and of the post-war years is part of living history. So when the polls declare that 7 out of 10 Italians are against military intervention under any circumstance it is no great surprise, notwithstanding the decisions of the present Italian government when it comes to military intervention in the war in Iraq. felix