"MORE THAN A WAR BETWEEN NATIONS, A CIVIL WAR": THE WORLD WAR IN THE MEMORIES OF SHAREHOLDERS

The subject of the article is the memory of the Second World War among former members of the Partito d'Azione; it does not focus on the memory of the Resistance, which has already been extensively studied, but on the memory of the international and global aspects of the conflict. A wide range of published sources - memoirs, essays and newspaper articles are used to identify some distinctive features of the collective memory developed by the former members of GL and the PdA: first of all, the idea of a just war, of the fight against the fascist evil; a contrasting relationship with the memories produced by the Allies, particularly the Anglo-American, which are sometimes received with a hostility dating back to the tensions and controversies of the war years, but more often willingly adopted; the reflections on the Cold War, with the consequent marginalization of Soviet memories; above all, the mythical function of the story, the founding role that the memory of the conflict played, for almost all the former members of the PdA, on the post-war political, moral, social order.