years of lead

Like every morning, Aldo Moro made his way to the Church of Santa Chiara in Piazza dei Giuochi Delfici in Rome. As his blue Fiat 130 drove down Via Fani, the vehicle in front braked abruptly. Moro's driver was unable to react in time and hit the rear of the car. The escort vehicle, in turn, rammed Moros Fiat. Four people in uniform approached from a bar. But they didn't come to help, they came to shoot. Barely ten seconds later, three bodyguards and Moro's driver were dead, and the fourth bodyguard was mortally wounded. The terrorists dragged Moro into a car and left.

The "Brigate Rosse" were just one of many groups that brought violence and death to the streets and squares of Italy in the 1970s. But she was one of the longest-lived. Most of the others disappeared as quickly as they came, merging, splitting up, changing names, attitudes, strategies. How did this domestic political radicalization come about, which was to be Aldo Moro's undoing?

After the Second World War, industrialization had taken place in Italy at a rapid pace. The 1950s were a period of tremendous economic growth. Millions of people left the poor, rural south and moved to the cities in the north. Many municipalities were overwhelmed with the influx. Not only did rents rise rapidly, there was also a lack of schools and hospitals.

The peculiarities of the Italian party system also prevented quick action. In the ruling Democrazia Cristiana (DC), numerous currents came together, covering the political spectrum from peasant-conservative to pro-union to left-Catholic. This made governing a complicated affair, since it was extremely difficult to reach consensus within the party. But there was no alternative.

The only other party that garnered a significant portion of the vote was the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI). This had little in common with the communist parties of other countries. Benito Mussolini took power almost immediately after its founding in 1921. The PCI was banned and its members suffered persecution; many were involved in the resistance against fascism.

After the war, the PCI took a pragmatic stance, presenting itself less as a workers' party striving for a "dictatorship of the proletariat" and more trying to reach out to peasants, the middle class and the Catholic electorate. In contrast to Soviet communism, it developed “Eurocommunism”, which finally led it to the comromesso storico, the “historical compromise” of cooperation with the DC – which was viewed by parts of the left as a betrayal.

As a result, radical left-wing groups in Italy did not develop exclusively from a student environment, as elsewhere, but from an alliance of students with workers and poorly qualified people who had no chance on the labor market. Not only the economic environment, but also the education system had changed massively in a very short time. Reforms had quadrupled the number of high school graduates who were now flocking to universities. When the economy cooled down in the mid-1960s, there was an oversupply of highly qualified people who, despite their training, had to earn their living alongside the unskilled in the factories.

In this environment, an unmanageable number of more or less radically oriented, often only loosely connected groups formed, which caused unrest not only at universities but also in companies and on the streets. Wildcat strikes, acts of sabotage, spontaneous work stoppages and demonstrations characterized the "hot autumn" of industrial action in 1969.

The Brigate Rosse (BR) were also a mixture of students from the newly founded, elitist reform University of Trento around Renato Curcio and his wife Margherita, children of classic working-class households like Alberto Franceschini and representatives of the new working world made up of the unskilled and overqualified like Mario Moretti. Unlike many other groups that rely on spontaneous
actions, the BR saw themselves as the elitist "cores of the revolution". Based on the conviction that world capitalism cannot be defeated with political or ideological means, Curcio & Co. prepared for a long fight.

The first major action by the brigades was rather harmless: Idalgo Macchiarini, manager of the Sit-Siemens company, was detained for 20 minutes and photographed with a sign around his neck on which BR slogans were written. Only when part of the group went underground as full-time revolutionaries (the regularly), the BR radicalized. Underground life not only necessitated action solely for the purpose of raising capital, it isolated it regularly also from their environment, hardly allowed any external influences and strengthened the existing attitudes. After two of its members were killed in an action against an office of the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) in the summer of 1974, the BR fell into a crisis. The "historic core" around Curcio was arrested, the group increased its security measures - and became more violent. Shots in the kneecaps of unpopular politicians, journalists, public prosecutors or managers became their “specialty”.

Meanwhile, Italy experienced not only an economic crisis with persistently high inflation, but also a new wave of political protests, the intensity of which far exceeded that of 1968/69. These actions were led by a violent autonomous movement that rejected not only the state and the bourgeoisie, but also the trade unions and the Communist Party as part of the supposedly "reactionary system". The PCI drew even more anger the more it agreed to cooperate with the ruling Christian Democrats.

The Autonomen thought little of the Red Brigades' sophisticated operations. Instead, they instigated riots in the city centers and university districts. In the spring of 1977 there were serious riots in almost all major Italian cities. The BR, however, stuck to their strategy. In 1976 in Genoa, a commando shot dead prosecutor Francesco Coco, his bodyguard and his driver on the street.

In the parliamentary elections a few days later, the DC won, as always, ahead of the PCI, but the DC's coalition partners lost seats. However, the PCI refrained from forming a left-wing government and tolerated a minority DC government. In 1978 the cooperation was expanded and a joint program was drawn up. In addition to PCI boss Enrico Berlinguer, the main architect of this compromesso storico was the former prime minister and chief strategist of the DC, Aldo Moro.

The political developments and riots of 1977 convinced the BR that the time was ripe for revolution. The starting signal should be the kidnapping of the man who tried to keep the country governable by working with the communists: Aldo Moro. And the terrorists were lucky. Not only were Moro's security precautions inadequate, but the security authorities were also in the process of being restructured.

Between January and May 1978, the domestic intelligence services were virtually inoperative and the unit of the most experienced expert, the Carabinieri General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, who had been central to the arrest of the "historic core" around Renato Curcio, had just been disbanded. The biggest manhunt in Italian history has turned into a series of bankruptcies, bad luck and mishaps.

But the BR had miscalculated. Instead of breaking down on how to deal with the kidnapping, the government presented a united front (linea della fermezza) and refused negotiations. But that's not all: shocked by the pictures of Moro's dead bodyguards on the streets of Rome, not only did the PCI follow this course, but the press and the public also supported the government's position.

This development surprised not only the terrorist group, but also Aldo Moro. From captivity, he made emotional appeals to the government to work for his release, because: "All of us from our leadership group are involved, and our joint work is being accused." The letters showed a side of the otherwise rather reserved Moro that Italy did not knew. The authenticity of his statements has been hotly debated.

While there was speculation in the press as to whether Moro had been forced to write the letters or had been drugged, Moro increasingly attacked his fellow party members, accusing them of cynicism and indifference. His death will split the party and forever stain the government, the party and the country: "I do not accept the unjust and ungrateful judgment of the DC... I will not acquit anyone and will not defend anyone."

Attempts by the socialist party PSI to persuade the government to send a signal of accommodation have meanwhile dragged on. And with each passing day, the terrorists grew more nervous. After a little more than a month, the BR made concrete demands for the first time. 13 imprisoned terrorists, including the entire "historic core" around Renato Curcio, were to be exchanged for Moro - a demand unacceptable to the government.

On the morning of May 9, 1978, the body of Aldo Moros was found. The BR had to recognize that the population did not want an armed revolution. They had not succeeded in uniting "the proletariat" behind them, on the contrary, the population was appalled by the image of Moro's corpse in the trunk of the car in Via Caetani.

The wave of violence that shook Italy in the 1970s was not yet over. But a turning point was reached with the kidnapping of Moro. A new special anti-terrorist unit was set up under the command of General Dalla Chiesa. Several key members of the BR were arrested, including the head of the Turin column, Patrizio Peci. Exhausted from his long life underground, full of doubts about the strategy and the chances of success of the BR, he revealed the complete structure of the group, revealed hiding places and methods, named names.

While the Red Brigades struggled to survive, right-wing terror revived. A bomb attack by the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (NAR) in Bologna on August 2, 1980 claimed the lives of 85 people. In the years that followed, links between right-wing extremist organizations and the notorious P 2 Masonic lodge, to which numerous politicians and military figures also belonged, were uncovered. To date, the thesis of one strategia della tensione, a "strategy of tension," the assumption that the security authorities would have at least tolerated, if not encouraged, actions by neo-fascist groups. However, imprisoned members of the BR dismissed as ridiculous the subsequent consideration that the security authorities or even a foreign secret service had incited them to commit their crimes. They were concerned with the matter, with “the revolution”. They may have been wrong in their analysis of the political situation in the country, but Mario Moretti and his comrades-in-arms never showed any remorse.

Photo: Atelier Schild-Vogel, Berlin

Felix Melching

born 1985, studied medieval history in Berlin.
He is a freelance historian and one of the two moderators of the DAMALS podcast.