Mitteilungsblatt des Instituts für soziale Bewegungen Heft 32
Massimo De Giuseppe / Giorgio Vecchio: Peace Movements in Italy
The article investigates the history of peace movements in Italy from the beginning of the
20th century to the 1970s, and is also intended to assess the historiography about this subject,
indicating its gaps and belatedness. The more profound roots of Italian peace movements
are identified, among other things, in the Nobel Prize conferred to E. T. Moneta, in
individuals such as A. Capitini and G. Lanza del Vasto, as well as in protests conducted by
Catholic priests against the First and the Second World Wars and in the conscientious objection
of Jehovah’s Witnesses. All of these, however, were only minority groups. The first mass
movement in Italy developed between 1948 and 1955: the Partisans of Peace, a group alligned
to the Communist Party. The years of the Cold War brought forth some extraordinary
figures, like don P. Mazzolari and D. Dolci. During the 1960s, the autonomous diplomacy
of G. La Pira had its effects, as well as the experience of the march from Perugia to Assisi,
which had as its departure point the hope to emancipate the organized peace movement from
the control of the political parties. In these years attempts were made to create networks and
comitees, in order to free the peace movement from being seen as an elitarian phenomenon.
In the period of protest around 1968, finally, conscientious objectors, antimilitarism as well
as an interest in 'third world’ problems gained importance.