The Balkanization of Italy
(Operations in Italy, November 30th – December 11th)
Italy is still divided in three: a Soviet occupied zone in northern Italy; the islands of Sicily and Sardinia aligned with NATO; and the peninsular Neutral Zone, governed by a Popular Front of democratic parties from the center to the left.
The most stable component of this new order is the NATO-controlled area. The provisional government (formed by a centrist coalition Christian Democrats, Liberals, Republicans, and eventually Social Democrats) is led by Liberal former partisan Edgardo Sogno, and chooses Palermo as a temporary capital. They do not recognize the official Italian government in Rome, and pledge to liberate the north from Soviet occupation.
Civil liberties are not entirely suppressed, but are strictly controlled. The Communist Party and the communist-led Trade Union CGIL, the peace movement (both catholic and communist), and all autonomous trade-unions are banned by the government. At NATO's request, the post-fascist MSI movement is also banned, and its prominent members arrested. Repression is mainly political. Other aspects of civil life remain nominally free, although there are severe limitations imposed by the state of war: curfews, rationing, compulsory exercises for nuclear war, and some control over information (both the media and private mail).
The USAF and two-thirds of the Italian AM continue operations from Sardinia and Sicily. All Soviet and Hungarian military targets in occupied Italy are assigned to the Italians, in order to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties (or at least to keep the Americans from being blamed for them). The USAF concentrates on long range operations against WP targets elsewhere in Europe. Soviet air attacks against Sicily and Sardinia are difficult and sporadic due to NATO air superiority in the area of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
The Italian Neutral Zone is in turmoil, faced with three would-be governments. The official government consists of the centrist-communist coalition. It is led by the Christian Democrat and former partisan Giuseppe Dossetti as premier, with Eurocommunist leader Enrico Berlinguer as vice-premier. The constitution and all pre-war laws are preserved, on paper.
There are two other "shadow governments," which operate beyond Rome's anemic reach. There is a clandestine communist government, supported by the Soviets and large components of the official Communist Party, which operates in Tuscany, Umbria, and Emilia Romagna. It builds its own clandestine militias, holds its own "popular tribunals," and conducts local administration without input from other parties. They incite pro-Soviet marches in exchange for aid from the north, commit several destabilizing kidnappings of rival politicians and trade unionists, and prepare for insurrection in case of a NATO-led coup.
On the other side, the southern regions of Calabria and Campania are under the influence of a right-wing shadow government formed by elements of local mafias ('NDrangheta and Camorra) and the MSI movement (which is officially banned in the Neutral Zone). These gentlemen are building their own private armies, directly administer most southern cities, and conduct frequent acts of indiscriminate terror in order to inflame the situation and create more opportunities for them to take control. Some in this faction wish to precipitate a direct NATO intervention in southern Italy; others think Rome is weak enough to fall on its own.
All WP and NATO forces are officially banned from the Italian Neutral Zone, but infiltrations are constant on both sides. NATO intelligence agents (not in short supply before the war) can be found all over the neutral zone, making contacts, and even funneling resources to a few paramilitary organizations willing to cooperate with them. Meanwhile, Spetsnaz regularly cross the Po to train and organize communist militias in the Emilia and Tuscany regions.
The Esercito Italiano loyal to the neutral government is still trying to consolidate around Rome. Their situation is not helped by the actions of the government, which votes to partially demobilize forces on December 6th. Officially, this move is done in the name of de-escalation. Unofficially, many politicians are worried about a coup. The army has a tacit order to not intervene against Soviet infiltration forces, in order to avoid a possible military invasion of neutral Italy. They are encouraged to go after the fascists to the south, but just keeping the rail and road corridor from Rome to Naples stable is taxing the army's current resources.
Dossetti and Berlinguer justify the partition of Italy as a temporary necessity dictated by the wartime emergency. The vast majority of the Italian population accepts this logic: it's better to lose the islands and Italia settentrionale than to be nuked. A nuclear escalation is still considered inevitable in the popular imagination: nukes will fly, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a month. To live in the neutral zone is sometimes seen as a life insurance policy. Emigration from the islands to the neutral zone is tremendous: nearly one million people, mainly from Sicily, cross the straits to find a safer life in continental Italy. Emigration from Northern Italy is also high in the first week of the partition, but once the Warsaw Pact establishes control over the area, the movements of the people are strictly controlled. The river Po becomes a militarized area, not unlike the pre-war Inner-German Border.
In the Vatican, the pope prays daily in St. Peter's Square, personally conducting public mass and delivering homilies on peace. He is known to support the efforts of the Roman government to avoid war. While seeking to avoid direct political statements, he has specifically condemned aggression several times, a swipe at the Soviets. The oppression of Catholicism and priests in the Eastern Bloc does come up, as do the increasing attacks on Catholic communities and priests in Central America. This is as much as he is willing to veer his attention from his central message of peace and love.
The Vatican more broadly is trying to increase its aid efforts around the globe. They do what they can for those in war zones, but the general conflagration has upended supply chains everywhere. Each day the war goes on, the rate of food scarcity increases to include millions of new people. Both the First and Second Worlds have almost entirely stopped exporting medical supplies, creating possibly an even bigger catastrophe. The church makes the decision to direct as many resources as possible to these two areas.
Diplomatically, the Vatican's nuncios serve as a secondary network of unofficial communication between neutral nations and NATO. They hope to use this diplomatic pressure to bring an end to the war, or at least ease the humanitarian crisis; but no significant opportunities have presented themselves.
WP-occupied Italy is basically a Soviet-style military regime. In the first week of the occupation, the First Hungarian Army and the Soviet Eighteenth Army establish direct military rule over the whole region.
Local militias begin to purge any politically-suspect elements (as well as all common criminals), soon with the assistance of arriving KGB troops. The purge grows in intensity and scale, going on for weeks. The official name for it is "The Anti-Golpe Campaign," justified by the spectre of a NATO-led right-wing coup. The KGB and the militias harass, arrest, and eventually execute all significant non-communist and anti-communist elements they can get their hands on in the fields of politics, organized labor, social associations, and the media. Euro-communists are not immune, either; accused of being "pro-NATO social-democrats," or, more directly, "socialist traitors," they are purged in large numbers. It is no exaggeration when the Northern Italians start secretly calling this the New Reign of Terror.
Meanwhile, society is quickly transformed along Soviet lines. Large industries are nationalized immediately (without compensation) as strategic assets for the war effort. It is much more difficult to expropriate the majority of smaller industries and private commercial activity dispersed across Northern Italy.
The military government decides to order a general plan of evacuation and relocation against the danger of a nuclear war. Private real estate is nationalized in order to host thousands of refugees; shops and businesses have to be abandoned because of the evacuation orders. Millions of private homes are also abandoned, especially in large cities. In the country, farms and large estates are transformed into collective shelters where entire villages are obliged to cohabitate. In Milan, where there are two active metro lines, the stations and galleries are transformed into large collective shelters, where half a million people are forcibly relocated and re-organized into a sort of large commune. Almost as a side effect, North Italian society undergoes near complete Stalinization- there is no political opposition, private property, or freedom of movement. The nuclear scare works very well to justify the collectivization to ordinary people as a necessary tool for survival in extreme circumstances. It's even welcomed, at first. NATO bombing campaigns on Soviet targets (inevitably resulting in civilian casualties) persuade many people that the danger of war, even nuclear war, is real.
But by the first week of December, when the political purge begins to reach epidemic levels and the expropriation campaign is biting nearly every family, dissent finally begins to spread.
On the military side, there are daily artillery exchanges along the French-Italian and Swiss-Italian Alpine borders, but no major operations due to the impassable terrain and bad weather (heavy snow falls almost every day from Mont Blanc to the sea). Soviet air and land bases are bombed by the AM. NATO's Stay Behind units are well hidden in the Alps, especially in the Veneto, Friuli, and Trentino, and are coordinated directly by NATO command in Brussels. Sanctuaries are established in Switzerland, where many Italian political refugees manage to escape. They are ordered not to act against Soviet Italy yet, fearing a reprisal campaign against civilians, but they maintain high readiness. By the second week in December, they are ready to launch an all-out guerrilla offensive in the event of a NATO counter-attack.
