Research Archive

WHERE WERE WE

BOOK 6 AFTER ITALIA 1.0:2.0:3.0

• Giuseppe Garibaldi: Be Or Not Be Hero
• From Columbus’s connections with Spain to Giuseppe Garibaldi ceding his victories to King Vittorio Emanuele II at Teano.
• Garibaldi’s position in history as part of the South American wars of independence explored. Brief Bio by Frank J. Coppa. Factual narrative citations: John Foot^[1] and Tim Parkes’s^[2] opinion editorials, Garibaldi’s autobiography translated into French by Alexandre Dumas; Dumas also wrote the introduction to the autobiography.
• The meaning of ‘liberal’in the Italian context put up against the ‘Whig Party’ of England.
• Factual narrative citations: Lucy Riall’s^[3] book ‘Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero’held up against other commentators such as Alfonso Scirocco and his book ‘Garibaldi: Citizen of the World ’on the subject. Roland Sarti’s^[4] analysis of Riall’s book and whether she attempts an interpretation of ‘cancel culture.’ forms part of the discourse. In contemporary times, the Italian right-wing Northern League fires up the discourse of Garibaldi against its antithetical leftist nemesis ‘Associazione Liber Piemont (ALP)’.
• Pope Pius IX sided against Garibaldi because of his anti-clerical leanings and support for Democracy, but then the church was against Protestants, Evangelists and Freemasons being the root of the ‘Risorgimento’. Maurice Wilkinson’s ‘The Myth of Garibaldi’ ^[5] gives a Catholicon perspective of Garibaldi.

Butterflies Swarm Across The 1860 Decade

• Political storms sweeping across Europe have characteristics of Chaos Theory.
• Calabrian patriots were dealt with severely by the Bourbon restoration. The Garibaldi phenomenon provided reparations of sorts. Adversary General Stocco regrouped to assist Garibaldi’s arrival at Reggio Calabria. Francavilla’s connection is worked into folklore associated with the prominent Monnacio family; Vincenzo Simonetti son of Foca’ is mentioned in historical documents.
• Factual narrative citations: Christopher Duggan’s opinion that civil war brought about unification.
• Conflict of personalities between Garibaldi and Cavour surfaces.
• Contemporary opinion pining for the Bourbon status quo for City States is aired by Sicilian Filippo Spadafora^[6]
• Whether Winston Churchill and Camillo Benso, known as Cavour, were similar is proposed and discussed. John Churchill’s role in British history is brought into the discourse. Factual narrative citations: historian Robert Lacey, Sir Robert Menzies, the Duke of Wellington faces off with Napoleon at Waterloo.
• Italy’s fate remains embedded with Catholicism, Britain makes a clean break with the Papacy but still finds a way to back the Bourbon Monarch for its political purposes.
• Factual narrative citations: Winston Churchill’s thoughts on Benjamin Disraeli, disparities between North and South influenced by geography. Josip Broz commonly known as ‘Tito’ makes part of a case study for the understanding of the Italian North-South dilemma.
• Looking back nostalgically and procrastination explored via Andrew Marvel’s poem ‘To His Coy Mistress’,the ‘Canto dei Sanfedisti’and ‘Italiella.’^[7]
• Plato’s ‘The Republic’, andThomas More’s ‘Utopia’ books are analysed to get a feel for the need for social equality to take root in Europe. Thomas Hood (1799–1845) in his poem ‘A Plain Direction’reports onthe slowness of the progress made.
• Oligarchs were born of dystopic governance and billionaires in the West ready to subvert Democracy.
• The Popes play up merry hell, the ‘Reformation and Counter Reformations’ quandary has Henry VIII of England and Thomas More at odds, More lost his head. Catholic Mary and Protestant Elizabeth slug it out.
• The meaning of spirituality is a powder keg waiting to explode. Factual narrative citations: Arius, Presbyter of Alexandria, Leo Tolstoy, John Milton and John Julius Norwich.
• Own opinion editorial of systemic corruption. Factual narrative citations: Egyptology, Pareto Principle, Aldous Huxley, Winston Churchill’s Defence of Democracy.
• Against all odds, Italy became united.
• Italy Is United; But Pour More Oil
• Italy is politically and socially in troubled waters.

PICA Law

• Tutorial based on a Research Paper ‘Law enforcement and political participation: Italy, 1861-65’ by Antonio Accetturo, Matteo Bugamelli and Andrea Lamorgese.
• Law enforcement war of attrition pits the army against brigands, peasants unfairly burdened. Electoral suffrage through the ballot box is far from assured, protest is the only means of being heard, and ‘mafia’ becomes synonymous with banditry.
• Garibaldi has regrets about his handing over to the King. His connections to the American Civil War are explored. His son Ricciotti takes on the mantle to make Italy a Republic, the setting is Filadelfia, up the road from Francavilla.

1870-1900: Rome Cedes, Liberal State Fledges, Socialism 101

• Wars elsewhere in Europe dictated events in Italy.
• Papal power dislodged with Rome forced into the united Italy under a Monarch.
• The South pines with Bourbon romanticism; danger looms from those trained militarily, mix in credos for the making of ‘black market’ governance otherwise known as Mafia’ in Sicily, ‘Cosa Nostra, Ndrangheta and Camorrra’ in Calabria.
• Italy’s economy languishes, the only bright spot is silk production but underpinned by child labour. Attempts were made to improve education to ward off the influence of socialism and clericalism.
• Factual narrative citations: Carlo Collodi (Pinocchio fame) focussed his fable on the sloth and dishonesty of the ruling classes.

1876-1900 Trial and Error Sequences for Governance

• The plight of the poor, founded on food shortages, stokes political unrest,
• PM Crispi concocts a plan to promote patriotism by initiating wars, Massawa/Eritrea and Dogali/Ethiopia andlater Adua (Adwa).
• Socialists enter Sicilian politics forcing consideration for land reforms, strongly opposed by wealthy landowners; violence erupts.
• Vogels Join Volksdeuchen Balkan Migration
• Oral history account of migration to the Balkans.
• Discourse relates to the spread and later the contraction of the Ottoman Empire.
• The rise of the Hapsburg Empire into South-eastern Europe.
• Factual narrative citations: Helga Horiak Harriman,^[8] Danube Swabians (Donauschwaben).
• Issues arise with religious disparity between Catholic and Orthodox Christianity.
• All Political Off-Ramps Lead to Conflict

Nonno Giuseppe, Idealistic Shadows and Economic Flickering

• Francesco Crispi considers options for a new governance model. Marxism headlining in the universities kept up political pressure.
• An improvement in the economy provides a breather and thought is given by Giovanni Giolitti to enhance materialism to maintain economic momentum, new brands Fiat; Lancia and Alfa Romeo are born but limited to the North.
• In the South cheap transatlantic fares gave the poor an out to go and make money in America.
• Factual narrative citations: Benedetto Croce wants to abandon consumerism to promote greater depth in employment opportunities and diversify away from civil jobs.
• The Futurism Movementeventually became fascismafter 1918.
• Known oral history of our Simonetti ancestors blended into the documented historical narrative of the times.
• Limited research of the origins of ‘Simonetti’, the effect of genetic dilution put into perspective.
• Simonetti landholdings: farming & house lots in Francavilla, Nonno’s death a blow to family’s welfare

Giolitti’s Liberal Experiment

• Socialism remains in Giolitti’s crosshairs, even though the possibility of revolution was ever so slight, given the lack of industrialisation.
• The ‘Nationalists’provided wiggle room for the strain between Gilliotti and the Industrialists whilst the war was sparked by the Balkan crisis. Gilliotti makes overtures to the Catholic Church, by then realising that secular governance was inevitable.

Italy and WWI Made for Each Other

• Contradictions in its socialist ideology did not prove a hindrance to Benito Mussolini joining the Futurists and Nationalists advocating for war.
• Factual narrative citations: Sir Samuel Hoare^[9] Britain’s MI5 spy in Rome has Mussolini play up the need for Italy to remain in the war. Ernest Hemingway in his book ‘A Farewell to Arms’.
• Italy wanted to redeem historical territories South Tyrol and Istria from Austria.
• Italy does have an aircraft industry.

The Liberal State Becomes a Casualty

• Northern Italy’s proximity to Croatia and cross-border settlements goes back centuries. The Vogel connection to immigration is made.
• Italy shares modestly in the spoils of war with the gain of Trent, South Tyrol and Istria, but missed out on Dalmatia and Italian Italian-speaking port of Fiume (Rijeka). Discontent led to a coup led by D’Annunzio.
• Benito Mussolini soul searches and decides to ditch his left-leaning sympathies to sure up popular support. In effect, the move makes him the same as the Nationalists.
• Factual narrative citations: The ‘Anarchists’ (university graduates) led by Antonio Gramsci.
• Mussolini was duplicitous in the control of the Squadristifor incremental gain for political power.
• Fascism Made to Order
• Mayhem, courtesy of the Squadristi,needed to be rewarded but critically the Fascist movement had to avoid being destroyed in the process. Mussolini showed creativity in such a task to prevent the implosion of his party.
• Mussolini fell in with the landowners by his stopping further land transfers to peasants. He also reconciled with the church by allowing religious symbols in public and beginning a program to repair war-damaged churches.

Stains of Feudal Persistence

• Family oral history encompassing ambient economic conditions facing members and how they worked to overcome them. Simonetti’s are farmers, Cannatelli’s in commodities trade and leather tanning.
• Factual narrative citations: Edward C Banfield, Gerocarne terrain appears to be like that of ‘Montegrano’, the scourge of Pellagra (vitamin deficiency).
• Business survival secrets in poverty point to ‘good, bad and ugly’

Nonno Giuseppe Attisani

• Known oral history of our Attisani ancestors blended into the documented historical narrative of the times.
• Factual narrative citations: Research Paper: The construction of the road network in Italian East Africa (1936-41) by Stefano Cecini^[10].
• Nonno Giuseppe Attisani went to North Africa to work for Construction ‘Ditta’ (Company) Puricella.’Conditions captured by Cecini’s Paper are presented as a synopsis. The contracts that the men signed up to make them participate in a kind of ‘living hell’ reminiscent of what may happen after Mephistopheles^[11] takes one’s soul to that place.
• Family photos of our mother and grandfather provide valued insight into our past in Francavilla. Nonno’s appearance is compared to Clarke Gable (Movie: Gone with the Wind).
• Family disruption cause dysfunctional norms to arise made even more distasteful by cultural demands of the time. Evidence that it became a learnt experience is explored with opinions.
• Characters’ relationship to later events in Australia are introduced: Nicola Gattuso married Maria Rosa Geroloma Orsida; my high school friend’s father Cristiano Spiller immigrates from Northern Italy.

The Fascist Nation Packaged

• The everyday fascists were being moulded into a nation around the cult figure known as ‘il Duce’.
• The struggle between the Church and Mussolini was based on their competing for the ideology for the spirit of the people.

Sir Winston Churchill

Brief Bio

• So that we get to know that he was privileged but not born perfect or led a perfect existence pre-WWII.
• Churchill was afflicted by ‘bipolar’ disorder. Factual narrative citations: Prof Nassir Ghaemi, Professor of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Tufts University.

Pitfalls in the Political Wilderness

• Snapshot of his political career.
• His involvement in Saudi Arabia’s development. Factual narrative citations: Synopsis based on Robert Lacey’s book ‘The Kingdom.
• Introductions to Roosevelt (FDR) and the inimitable Harry St John Philby who was Kim’s father. Kim would later become one of the five spies recruited by the Soviets.
• Churchill at first sees positives in Fascism. Mine own need to hypothetically understand what Fascism meant if I had to choose between destitution and promise out of the drudgery of poverty.
• Churchill and the Russia post the Communist ascendency.
• Churchill stumbles with the ‘Gold Standard’.
• Churchill implies his shortcomings in paying homage to Neville Chamberlain.
• WW2 Bookend to WW1
• Review of Italy’s hegemonic position or lack thereof in European power struggles, is explored. Ottoman power sliding.
• Contemporary commentators studied for their opinions about Britain declaring war against Germany in what became known as the ‘Great War’. Factual narrative citations: Eric Metaxas^[12], historian Robert Lacey, ‘Intelligence Squared’,with eminent panellists’ debate “Britain Should Not Have Fought in the First World War”.
• Tutorial of WWI to ensure an understating of what occurred at a time when the Russian Revolution ushered in Karl Marx’s Communist ideology as a formal means of governance. Professor Victor Davis-Hansen^[13] labelled Marx, Engels including Gramsci and other adherents as ‘pernicious thinkers; he added Sigmund Freud into the mix.
• Personal observations shared of ‘God’and ‘Conscious Human Brain’. Factual narrative citations: Sir Thomas More (1478 – 1535), Francis Bacon^[14] (1561-1626) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778).
• My Catholic upbringing, the need to go to heaven rather than hell, is analysed. The personal viewpoint leads to a basis for understanding the human propensity continually to throw up outlier ‘anti-Christs’ which preclude us from peacefully coexist.
• The conceptual ‘Original Sin’ is analysed to explain resident evil or malice in all of us. Factual narrative citations: Luc Ferry quotes Rousseau, Old Testament Bible incites ethnic cleansing.
• The relative difficulty for Democracy to be instituted compared to Communism and theocracies which can be bludgeoned into existence by authority. Factual narrative citations: Stephen Kotkin, Professor of History at Princeton University.
• Gentlemen Prime Ministers of Britain Chamberlain and Baldwin were pushovers for the likes of Hitler and Stalin; Churchill was more of the ‘head-kicker’ needed to take them on.
• Once We Departed Italia

There Was Strife: 1968-1973

• We become distanced from Italia’s politics.
• I marry Monika and my family makes steady progress.
• Italy universities produce an oversupply of graduates who are duped into militantism
• In 1970 a regional government system was instituted, and left-wingers benefited.
• Air of superiority surfaces in the North, fragmentation. New liberal laws are enacted; divorce is among these.

Terrorists & Recession Woes:1973 – 1982

• Democracy on the nose; due to activism in the North and Mafia in the South.
• Graft fuels political clientelism.In the South Public works are a cash cow to organised crime; unemployment finds career paths in crime.
• In the North the middle class finds relief in Marxist ideology against public servants.
• Unnatural political alliances between CD and PCI lead to even more corruption

Italia 2.0 – La Prima República Finisce, Inizia Italia 3.0 – La Seconda República

• Recession ends in 1984, business flourishes but government squanders the advantage, public debt rises substantially
• EC’s need to rein in debt for the common currency impedes business. North blames the South for ‘cash burn’ leads to calls for a ‘federation’ and ditching the ‘republic’ policies leading to the collapse of the 1^st
• Neo Fascists Alleanza Nazionale makes a run but Berluscone’s new party is victorious with their backing plus that of the ‘Northern League’.
• Italia Enters the 21st Century
• Northern League puts the boots into the South
• Berlusconi rehashes Italy’s Fascist past and questions the ‘Resistance’ and alliances do the merry-go-round
• Democracy In The 21st Century
• Has its challenges

 

[1] Professor of Modern Italian History, Department of Italian, University College London, London, England. Author of Milan Since the Miracle: City, Culture, and Identity and others.

[2] Published in the ‘New Yorker’ Magazine, 9 July 2007.

[3] Irish Historian, studied at the London School of Economics and the University of Cambridge.

[4] Professor Emeritus, Department of History, UMass Amherst, A specialist on Italian and European social history, author of Fascism and the Industrial Leadership in Italy, 1919-1940 (1971).

[5] Wilkinson, Maurice. “The Myth of Garibaldi.” The Catholic Historical Review, vol. 13, no. 4, 1928, pp. 630–645. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25012482. Accessed 10 Mar. 2021.

[6] ‘Giuseppe Garibaldi – Man and Myth’, Best of Sicily Magazine.

[7] Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare’

[8] Doctoral Thesis ‘The German Minority in Yugoslavia 1941 – 1945’

[9] Sparticus-Education.com; John Simkin Blog 1997, quotes historian Peter Martland, credited with uncovering the deal.

[10] Original in Italian: http://dprs.uniroma1.it/sites/default/files/16.html

[11] Assuming Mephistopheles must have been credited with some wins of those souls which he bargained for.

[12] YouTube Channel “Socrates in the City”

[13] A professor emeritus of Classics at California State University, Fresno, the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in classics and military history at the conservative Hoover Institution

[14] Book: The New Atlantis

§ Giuseppe Garibaldi: Be Or Not Be Hero

• From Columbus’s connections with Spain to Giuseppe Garibaldi ceding his victories to King Vittorio Emanuele II at Teano.
• Garibaldi’s position in history as part of the South American wars of independence explored. Brief Bio by Frank J. Coppa. Factual narrative citations: John Foot^[1] and Tim Parkes’s^[2] opinion editorials, Garibaldi’s autobiography translated into French by Alexandre Dumas; Dumas also wrote the introduction to the autobiography.
• The meaning of ‘liberal’in the Italian context put up against the ‘Whig Party’ of England.
• Factual narrative citations: Lucy Riall’s^[3] book ‘Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero’held up against other commentators such as Alfonso Scirocco and his book ‘Garibaldi: Citizen of the World ’on the subject. Roland Sarti’s^[4] analysis of Riall’s book and whether she attempts an interpretation of ‘cancel culture.’ forms part of the discourse. In contemporary times, the Italian right-wing Northern League fires up the discourse of Garibaldi against its antithetical leftist nemesis ‘Associazione Liber Piemont (ALP)’.
• Pope Pius IX sided against Garibaldi because of his anti-clerical leanings and support for Democracy, but then the church was against Protestants, Evangelists and Freemasons being the root of the ‘Risorgimento’. Maurice Wilkinson’s ‘The Myth of Garibaldi’ ^[5] gives a Catholicon perspective of Garibaldi.

Butterflies Swarm Across The 1860 Decade

• Political storms sweeping across Europe have characteristics of Chaos Theory.
• Calabrian patriots were dealt with severely by the Bourbon restoration. The Garibaldi phenomenon provided reparations of sorts. Adversary General Stocco regrouped to assist Garibaldi’s arrival at Reggio Calabria. Francavilla’s connection is worked into folklore associated with the prominent Monnacio family; Vincenzo Simonetti son of Foca’ is mentioned in historical documents.
• Factual narrative citations: Christopher Duggan’s opinion that civil war brought about unification.
• Conflict of personalities between Garibaldi and Cavour surfaces.
• Contemporary opinion pining for the Bourbon status quo for City States is aired by Sicilian Filippo Spadafora^[6]
• Whether Winston Churchill and Camillo Benso, known as Cavour, were similar is proposed and discussed. John Churchill’s role in British history is brought into the discourse. Factual narrative citations: historian Robert Lacey, Sir Robert Menzies, the Duke of Wellington faces off with Napoleon at Waterloo.
• Italy’s fate remains embedded with Catholicism, Britain makes a clean break with the Papacy but still finds a way to back the Bourbon Monarch for its political purposes.
• Factual narrative citations: Winston Churchill’s thoughts on Benjamin Disraeli, disparities between North and South influenced by geography. Josip Broz commonly known as ‘Tito’ makes part of a case study for the understanding of the Italian North-South dilemma.
• Looking back nostalgically and procrastination explored via Andrew Marvel’s poem ‘To His Coy Mistress’,the ‘Canto dei Sanfedisti’and ‘Italiella.’^[7]
• Plato’s ‘The Republic’, andThomas More’s ‘Utopia’ books are analysed to get a feel for the need for social equality to take root in Europe. Thomas Hood (1799–1845) in his poem ‘A Plain Direction’reports onthe slowness of the progress made.
• Oligarchs were born of dystopic governance and billionaires in the West ready to subvert Democracy.
• The Popes play up merry hell, the ‘Reformation and Counter Reformations’ quandary has Henry VIII of England and Thomas More at odds, More lost his head. Catholic Mary and Protestant Elizabeth slug it out.
• The meaning of spirituality is a powder keg waiting to explode. Factual narrative citations: Arius, Presbyter of Alexandria, Leo Tolstoy, John Milton and John Julius Norwich.
• Own opinion editorial of systemic corruption. Factual narrative citations: Egyptology, Pareto Principle, Aldous Huxley, Winston Churchill’s Defence of Democracy.
• Against all odds, Italy became united.

§ Italy Is United; But Pour More Oil

• Italy is politically and socially in troubled waters.

PICA Law

• Tutorial based on a Research Paper ‘Law enforcement and political participation: Italy, 1861-65’ by Antonio Accetturo, Matteo Bugamelli and Andrea Lamorgese.
• Law enforcement war of attrition pits the army against brigands, peasants unfairly burdened. Electoral suffrage through the ballot box is far from assured, protest is the only means of being heard, and ‘mafia’ becomes synonymous with banditry.
• Garibaldi has regrets about his handing over to the King. His connections to the American Civil War are explored. His son Ricciotti takes on the mantle to make Italy a Republic, the setting is Filadelfia, up the road from Francavilla.

1870-1900: Rome Cedes, Liberal State Fledges, Socialism 101

• Wars elsewhere in Europe dictated events in Italy.
• Papal power dislodged with Rome forced into the united Italy under a Monarch.
• The South pines with Bourbon romanticism; danger looms from those trained militarily, mix in credos for the making of ‘black market’ governance otherwise known as Mafia’ in Sicily, ‘Cosa Nostra, Ndrangheta and Camorrra’ in Calabria.
• Italy’s economy languishes, the only bright spot is silk production but underpinned by child labour. Attempts were made to improve education to ward off the influence of socialism and clericalism.
• Factual narrative citations: Carlo Collodi (Pinocchio fame) focussed his fable on the sloth and dishonesty of the ruling classes.

1876-1900 Trial and Error Sequences for Governance

• The plight of the poor, founded on food shortages, stokes political unrest,
• PM Crispi concocts a plan to promote patriotism by initiating wars, Massawa/Eritrea and Dogali/Ethiopia andlater Adua (Adwa).
• Socialists enter Sicilian politics forcing consideration for land reforms, strongly opposed by wealthy landowners; violence erupts.

Vogels Join Volksdeuchen Balkan Migration

• Oral history account of migration to the Balkans.
• Discourse relates to the spread and later the contraction of the Ottoman Empire.
• The rise of the Hapsburg Empire into South-eastern Europe.
• Factual narrative citations: Helga Horiak Harriman,^[8] Danube Swabians (Donauschwaben).
• Issues arise with religious disparity between Catholic and Orthodox Christianity.

§ All Political Off-Ramps Lead to Conflict

Nonno Giuseppe, Idealistic Shadows and Economic Flickering

• Francesco Crispi considers options for a new governance model. Marxism headlining in the universities kept up political pressure.
• An improvement in the economy provides a breather and thought is given by Giovanni Giolitti to enhance materialism to maintain economic momentum, new brands Fiat; Lancia and Alfa Romeo are born but limited to the North.
• In the South cheap transatlantic fares gave the poor an out to go and make money in America.
• Factual narrative citations: Benedetto Croce wants to abandon consumerism to promote greater depth in employment opportunities and diversify away from civil jobs.
• The Futurism Movementeventually became fascismafter 1918.
• Known oral history of our Simonetti ancestors blended into the documented historical narrative of the times.
• Limited research of the origins of ‘Simonetti’, the effect of genetic dilution put into perspective.
• Simonetti landholdings: farming & house lots in Francavilla, Nonno’s death a blow to family’s welfare

Giolitti’s Liberal Experiment

• Socialism remains in Giolitti’s crosshairs, even though the possibility of revolution was ever so slight, given the lack of industrialisation.
• The ‘Nationalists’provided wiggle room for the strain between Gilliotti and the Industrialists whilst the war was sparked by the Balkan crisis. Gilliotti makes overtures to the Catholic Church, by then realising that secular governance was inevitable.

Italy and WWI Made for Each Other

• Contradictions in its socialist ideology did not prove a hindrance to Benito Mussolini joining the Futurists and Nationalists advocating for war.
• Factual narrative citations: Sir Samuel Hoare^[9] Britain’s MI5 spy in Rome has Mussolini play up the need for Italy to remain in the war. Ernest Hemingway in his book ‘A Farewell to Arms’.
• Italy wanted to redeem historical territories South Tyrol and Istria from Austria.
• Italy does have an aircraft industry.

The Liberal State Becomes a Casualty

• Northern Italy’s proximity to Croatia and cross-border settlements goes back centuries. The Vogel connection to immigration is made.
• Italy shares modestly in the spoils of war with the gain of Trent, South Tyrol and Istria, but missed out on Dalmatia and Italian Italian-speaking port of Fiume (Rijeka). Discontent led to a coup led by D’Annunzio.
• Benito Mussolini soul searches and decides to ditch his left-leaning sympathies to sure up popular support. In effect, the move makes him the same as the Nationalists.
• Factual narrative citations: The ‘Anarchists’ (university graduates) led by Antonio Gramsci.
• Mussolini was duplicitous in the control of the Squadristifor incremental gain for political power.

§ Fascism Made to Order

• Mayhem, courtesy of the Squadristi,needed to be rewarded but critically the Fascist movement had to avoid being destroyed in the process. Mussolini showed creativity in such a task to prevent the implosion of his party.
• Mussolini fell in with the landowners by his stopping further land transfers to peasants. He also reconciled with the church by allowing religious symbols in public and beginning a program to repair war-damaged churches.

Stains of Feudal Persistence

• Family oral history encompassing ambient economic conditions facing members and how they worked to overcome them. Simonetti’s are farmers, Cannatelli’s in commodities trade and leather tanning.
• Factual narrative citations: Edward C Banfield, Gerocarne terrain appears to be like that of ‘Montegrano’, the scourge of Pellagra (vitamin deficiency).
• Business survival secrets in poverty point to ‘good, bad and ugly’

Nonno Giuseppe Attisani

• Known oral history of our Attisani ancestors blended into the documented historical narrative of the times.
• Factual narrative citations: Research Paper: The construction of the road network in Italian East Africa (1936-41) by Stefano Cecini^[10].
• Nonno Giuseppe Attisani went to North Africa to work for Construction ‘Ditta’ (Company) Puricella.’Conditions captured by Cecini’s Paper are presented as a synopsis. The contracts that the men signed up to make them participate in a kind of ‘living hell’ reminiscent of what may happen after Mephistopheles^[11] takes one’s soul to that place.
• Family photos of our mother and grandfather provide valued insight into our past in Francavilla. Nonno’s appearance is compared to Clarke Gable (Movie: Gone with the Wind).
• Family disruption cause dysfunctional norms to arise made even more distasteful by cultural demands of the time. Evidence that it became a learnt experience is explored with opinions.
• Characters’ relationship to later events in Australia are introduced: Nicola Gattuso married Maria Rosa Geroloma Orsida; my high school friend’s father Cristiano Spiller immigrates from Northern Italy.

The Fascist Nation Packaged

• The everyday fascists were being moulded into a nation around the cult figure known as ‘il Duce’.
• The struggle between the Church and Mussolini was based on their competing for the ideology for the spirit of the people.

Sir Winston Churchill

Brief Bio

• So that we get to know that he was privileged but not born perfect or led a perfect existence pre-WWII.
• Churchill was afflicted by ‘bipolar’ disorder. Factual narrative citations: Prof Nassir Ghaemi, Professor of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Tufts University.

Pitfalls in the Political Wilderness

• Snapshot of his political career.
• His involvement in Saudi Arabia’s development. Factual narrative citations: Synopsis based on Robert Lacey’s book ‘The Kingdom.
• Introductions to Roosevelt (FDR) and the inimitable Harry St John Philby who was Kim’s father. Kim would later become one of the five spies recruited by the Soviets.
• Churchill at first sees positives in Fascism. Mine own need to hypothetically understand what Fascism meant if I had to choose between destitution and promise out of the drudgery of poverty.
• Churchill and the Russia post the Communist ascendency.
• Churchill stumbles with the ‘Gold Standard’.
• Churchill implies his shortcomings in paying homage to Neville Chamberlain.

§  WW2 Bookend to WW1

• Review of Italy’s hegemonic position or lack thereof in European power struggles, is explored. Ottoman power sliding.
• Contemporary commentators studied for their opinions about Britain declaring war against Germany in what became known as the ‘Great War’. Factual narrative citations: Eric Metaxas^[12], historian Robert Lacey, ‘Intelligence Squared’,with eminent panellists’ debate “Britain Should Not Have Fought in the First World War”.
• Tutorial of WWI to ensure an understating of what occurred at a time when the Russian Revolution ushered in Karl Marx’s Communist ideology as a formal means of governance. Professor Victor Davis-Hansen^[13] labelled Marx, Engels including Gramsci and other adherents as ‘pernicious thinkers; he added Sigmund Freud into the mix.
• Personal observations shared of ‘God’and ‘Conscious Human Brain’. Factual narrative citations: Sir Thomas More (1478 – 1535), Francis Bacon^[14] (1561-1626) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778).
• My Catholic upbringing, the need to go to heaven rather than hell, is analysed. The personal viewpoint leads to a basis for understanding the human propensity continually to throw up outlier ‘anti-Christs’ which preclude us from peacefully coexist.
• The conceptual ‘Original Sin’ is analysed to explain resident evil or malice in all of us. Factual narrative citations: Luc Ferry quotes Rousseau, Old Testament Bible incites ethnic cleansing.
• The relative difficulty for Democracy to be instituted compared to Communism and theocracies which can be bludgeoned into existence by authority. Factual narrative citations: Stephen Kotkin, Professor of History at Princeton University.
• Gentlemen Prime Ministers of Britain Chamberlain and Baldwin were pushovers for the likes of Hitler and Stalin; Churchill was more of the ‘head-kicker’ needed to take them on.

§ Once We Departed Italia

There Was Strife: 1968-1973

• We become distanced from Italia’s politics.
• I marry Monika and my family makes steady progress.
• Italy universities produce an oversupply of graduates who are duped into militantism
• In 1970 a regional government system was instituted, and left-wingers benefited.
• Air of superiority surfaces in the North, fragmentation. New liberal laws are enacted; divorce is among these.

Terrorists & Recession Woes:1973 – 1982

• Democracy on the nose; due to activism in the North and Mafia in the South.
• Graft fuels political clientelism.In the South Public works are a cash cow to organised crime; unemployment finds career paths in crime.
• In the North the middle class finds relief in Marxist ideology against public servants.
• Unnatural political alliances between CD and PCI lead to even more corruption

Italia 2.0 – La Prima República Finisce, Inizia Italia 3.0 – La Seconda República

• Recession ends in 1984, business flourishes but government squanders the advantage, public debt rises substantially
• EC’s need to rein in debt for the common currency impedes business. North blames the South for ‘cash burn’ leads to calls for a ‘federation’ and ditching the ‘republic’ policies leading to the collapse of the 1^st
• Neo Fascists Alleanza Nazionale makes a run but Berluscone’s new party is victorious with their backing plus that of the ‘Northern League’.

§ Italia Enters the 21st Century

• Northern League puts the boots into the South
• Berlusconi rehashes Italy’s Fascist past and questions the ‘Resistance’ and alliances do the merry-go-round

§ Democracy in he 21st Century

• Has its challenges

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[1] Professor of Modern Italian History, Department of Italian, University College London, London, England. Author of Milan Since the Miracle: City, Culture, and Identity and others.

[2] Published in the ‘New Yorker’ Magazine, 9 July 2007.

[3] Irish Historian, studied at the London School of Economics and the University of Cambridge.

[4] Professor Emeritus, Department of History, UMass Amherst, A specialist on Italian and European social history, author of Fascism and the Industrial Leadership in Italy, 1919-1940 (1971).

[5] Wilkinson, Maurice. “The Myth of Garibaldi.” The Catholic Historical Review, vol. 13, no. 4, 1928, pp. 630–645. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25012482. Accessed 10 Mar. 2021.

[6] ‘Giuseppe Garibaldi – Man and Myth’, Best of Sicily Magazine.

[7] Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare’

[8] Doctoral Thesis ‘The German Minority in Yugoslavia 1941 – 1945’

[9] Sparticus-Education.com; John Simkin Blog 1997, quotes historian Peter Martland, credited with uncovering the deal.

[10] Original in Italian: http://dprs.uniroma1.it/sites/default/files/16.html

[11] Assuming Mephistopheles must have been credited with some wins of those souls which he bargained for.

[12] YouTube Channel “Socrates in the City”

[13] A professor emeritus of Classics at California State University, Fresno, the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in classics and military history at the conservative Hoover Institution

[14] Book: The New Atlantis

§ The Peninsula of City States

• Greek Settlements around Calabria and Sicily, dramatized by Virgil’s ‘The Aeneid’.
• Roman connections to Vibo Valentia in Calabria.
• Summary of the peninsula’s foreign occupations through history.

Fast-Forward Historical Ready-Mix

• Brief tutorial on the Italian Peninsula’s geographical and biblical historical connections.
• Contextual discourse based on Dr Eric Cline’s lectures: Bronze Age, Anatolia, Sea People, Philistines, Etruscans, Canaan, Mycenean culture, Cyprus name derived from ‘Cuprum’,Lattin name for Copper, tin trade routes, the Exodus.
• Chaos Theory effect on Civilizations, Homer’s ‘Troy, Simcha Jacobovici’s interpretation of Exodus, and Noah’s flood have similarities with the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu.
• Agricultural know-how exchange between East, West and North Africa.
• Beginnings of social and religious structures of communities. The Peninsula mountain terrain is the cause of communal fragmentation.

Tincture of Oblivious Bliss

• Augustinian friar Johan Mendel discovers genetics, too late for the rulers to overturn their incestuous clinging to power, beginning with the Pharaohs.
• The gods of Egypt include the monotheistic beliefs of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Incest resulting in Tutankhamun’s frail physical condition. Other factual narrative citations: Ptolemaic Dynasty and Cleopatra
• Contrary to the teachings of the Old Testament Bible, in its attempts to rectify the events following the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, incestuous marriages became the norm in the Roman Empire and later, Christian Europe.
• The Hapsburg Dynasty was genetically corroded by an inbred gene pool. Hapsburg’s insane control over the Italian Peninsular. The last Hapsburg King of Spain was Charles II, which culminated in the War of the Spanish Succession.
• Kaiser Wilhelm II, the British Monarchy and WWI and later Charles Edward’s force into the Nazi camp during WWII.

§ Only a Millenia To The Renaissance

Getting Dark Ages out of the Way 400-1000

• Roman Empire dislodged by the Islamic, Ottoman Empire
• Parlous state of governance of the peninsula. Factual narrative citations: Dante Alighieri, Niccolò Machiavelli, Historian Christopher Duggan
• Lombards invade from the North, and Byzantium holds together in the South.
• The Prophet Mohammad, stirred things up with Christianity setting up the Crusades, leading to the Ottoman’s invading across the Balkans, eventually halted by Charles Martel’s son, who became known as Charlemagne.
• Frankish administration over the North
• The beginning of Papal ascendency

Feudalism Locked and Loaded

• Brief tutorial on the Feudal system of governance.
• The ‘peasant’ of the British class structure, in the Italian context defines the downtrodden lowest class as ‘contadini’. The term is evaluated from a contemporary viewpoint.
• Introduction to Edward C Banfield’s confronting research ‘The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (1958)’. The reach of the term ‘contadini’ into 20^th Century Simonetti’s.
• Britain sets the pace for reform for labour rights.
• Pope Urban sets the course for the Crusades. Factual narrative citations: Steven Runciman’s books of the Crusades.

Communities Sprout 11th to 14th Century

• Trade goes hand in hand with the Crusades.
• The differentiation between North and South surfaces.
• Enter the Normans.
• Enter the German, Hohenstaufen Dynasty
• German influence and intrigues over the Papacy. Factual narrative citations: Germany’s Henry III was succeeded by Henry IV, the last German Pope, Victor II (1055-7), Abbey of Monte Casino, WWII connections.
• Factual narrative citations: Richard I, the Lion-Heart of England, Angevin Empire, King John, ‘Magna Carta’.
• The ‘Sicilian Vespers’ rebellion against the French, Simonetti folklore interpretation.
• End of the Hohenstaufen Dynasty.

Francavilla Angitola: Town from Antiquity

• The human soul, driver to form communes?
• Introduction to the work by Lorenzo Malta. Research into the origins of my homey commune and whether it had Greek connections. Factual narrative citations: Virgil’s hero Aeneas, Lycophron’s poem ‘Cassandra’,Paris, the son of Priam and Hecuba of Troy.
• Eastern Saints in Calabria; The Patron Saint of Francavilla is ‘San Foca Martire’ with connections to the hieromartyr^[1] from ‘Sinópe nel Ponto’, in today’s Turkey.
• Saint Gregory’s (Bishop of Tours)^[2], recorded Latin writing of ‘San Foca Martire’, is translated into a quote to explain the connections with snakes. Factual narrative citations: ‘Menologion of Basil II’ manuscript depicting Phocas-(Foca) at the point of execution. Simonetti folklore interpretation of the Saint.
• 9^th and 10^th Centuries Saracen’s attacks on the Calabrian coasts. Factual narrative citations: pushback by Byzantine leader, Nikephoros Phokas; his bio is narrated. Cross-fertilised folklore of the two men named ‘Phokas’ circulates.
• The Simonetti-Attisani family makes up the descriptive historical narration. Factual narrative citations: Norman Kings Roger I & II, Arab Muslim geographer, Muhammad al-Idrisi, writings by Ilario Tranquillo confirmation of the commune at the turn of the millennia.

The Washout (Renaissance Italy 1300-1494)

• In the North, Ghibelline and Guelf factionswere a complex web of ineffective alliances. Factual narrative citations: Dante Alighieri’s ‘Devine Comedy’.
• Governance evolution in the City States, Financial Systems make the elites of Bankers: Bardi, Peruzzi and Medici. Factual narrative citations: loans to Edward III, England for the ‘Hundred Years’ War’, break the bankers.
• In the South, the Feudal Kingdom was ruled by Angevins until 1442. Geography is a hindrance to governance. Francavilla’s social and commercial development is reviewed. Factual narrative citations: writer Leandro Alberti, Alfonso of Aragon Duke of Calabria (later king of Naples). Writers Lorenzo Giustiniani and Antonio F Parisi have opposing views of the Roman provenance of the locale Ad Turres.
• Factual narrative citations: Black Death in 1348, Giovanni Boccaccio wrote the ‘Decameron’about that period. Enrico degli Scrovegni, the son of Money Lender, Reginaldo degli Scrovegni, commissioned Giotto to adorn the Arena Chapel, but still earned a place in Dante’s hell.
• Calabria remains in the backwaters of feudalism whilst changes at the top continued with the support of the Papacy: Angevine’s to oust the Hohenstaufen Dynasty, war between Angevines and Aragonese followed.
• Francavilla was bought and sold during the takeover by the Aragon Dynasty. Large numbers of Spanish settled in Calabria.
• Niccolò Machiavelli uses the revenge taken by Ferrante in his book ’The Prince’. Writer Peter Robb and historian Christopher Duggan weigh in on that discourse about revenge.

Bosphorus Phosphorus: Part 1

• This is a lead into events which will occur in the 20^th
• Elemental phosphorous forms a critical molecular component that enables all living cells to utilise the fuel for the maintenance of life. Discourse engages in the other facets of phosphorous, its incendiary properties used as a metaphor for the clash of civilizations, Christian Europe and Muslim East across the Bosphorus Straights. All were made even more complex by the ‘Great Schism’ which split Christianity into Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity.
• Human propensity for heinous behaviour explored.
• The nature of God presiding over human consciousness presented through factual narrative citations: Documentary Hypothesis or Graf-Wellhausen Hypothesis’in the development of the Old Testament Bible.
• Theme encompassing the destruction of humankind exists in various cultures. Factual narrative citations: Epic Mythological Poem about Gilgamesh king of Uruk, Prometheus, Epimetheus and Pandora from Greek mythology and Noah. In contemporary times the existential struggle continues amongst ‘Communism’, ‘Socialism’ and the ‘Religions’ seen as the antithesis of ‘Democracy’. Governing structures vacillate through principles of ‘liberalism’. The ‘Doomsday Clock’ ticks on.
• Factual narrative citations: Luc Ferry, Ovid, John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’, Evolutionist Charles Darwin and his protagonists Intelligent Design advocates, Stephen Meyer, James Tour and Creationist, Michael Cremo. Dante’s ‘Inferno’ could not adequately deliver damnation for the ‘anti-Christ’ Hitler, Stalin and Mao Zedong.
• Satirical light humour to lighten the mood infused with references made to ‘Monty Python’crew and The Firm’stringing together in a song about the adventures of the ‘Starship Enterprise’.
• The spread of Islam alarms the West to unite adequately to mount a defence of Christendom, however ‘Sharia Law’ prevailed over territories captured when of process of proselytising was enforced.

§ Nature Echoes Across Applied Social & Economic Veneers: 1494-1789

Markers to the 16th and 17th Centuries

• Wealth created by the banking dynasties became economically unproductive due to investments made in works of art and villas.
• Charles VIII of France in 1494 initiated war in the North enriching some of the locals.
• By 1527 Spain controlled Sicily, Naples and Lombardy
• War between France and Spain mitigated by lack of cash.
• Galileo Galilei made his pronunciation for a heliocentric universe (concerning the earth) for which he will fall foul of the Catholic Church
• Attempts at social reform were being tried in England with the ‘Poor Law of 1601’ delivering mixed results.
• The Italian economy improves after the plague of the earlier century. Public works included land reclamations in the North.
• Catholic Spain’s antagonistic stance against Protestant England fuelled the attempt to invade the British Isles by the Spanish Armada.
• In the South brigandage begins to assert itself due to unemployment and food shortages.
• Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes wreak devastation. A review of Francavilla’s plight makes for a sombre reflection.
• Origins of the ‘Simonetti’ name and possible connections with Spain explored.

Earthquakes Mix It With 18th Century Enlightenment Reforms

• Spain’s power waning, Charles II, the last of the Spanish Hapsburgs dies leading to the ‘War of the Spanish Succession’.
• Makings of the First King of an Italian city-state emerged after Victor Amadeus (1666-1732) switched his allegiance from France to Austrian Hapsburgs. But there were troubles in that Regency, the Spanish came back to reclaim Sardinia and then Sicily. The Savoy Kingdom was brokered by the Quadruple Alliance (Britain, France, Hapsburg, Emperor Charles VI and the Dutch Republic),
• Calabria’s lot was to continue in a parlous state made worse by new seismic activity. Factual narrative citations: Historian, General Pietro Colletta chronicles the effects of the earthquakes.
• Novel interpretation from own experience of the scientific nature of energy as the source of destructive power. Factual narrative citations: Deborah appears in the Book of Judges, Hillel I Millgram’s analysis of ‘Song of Deborah’. Scientist Marcus Reiner assigns the improbability of mountains flowing to the sea a ‘Deborah number (De)’.
• Francavilla folklore develops around possible occurrences of ‘Tsunami’,childhood memories explored. The township was devastated in 1783, a rebuild was to be made elsewhere. Stories of survival and despair abound.

§ Sear With Wars, Add Nationalism, Then Stir: 1789-1849

Bosphorus Phosphorus: Part 2

• Introduction of the Vogels along with German–Austrian–Croatian ancestral connections.
• ‘The Gates of Vienna about to fall’ actual meaning is explored.
• Kara Mustafa Pasha is driven by hubris to initiate an attack on Vienna. The siege and strategies are explored. The European States come together to counter the existential threat. An unlikely hero emerges from the ranks of the French–Italian nobility, Prince Eugene of Savoy.
  Factual narrative citations: Louis XIV’s mother was Anne of Austria, the sister of the King of Spain Philip IV (1605 – 1665). Two centuries later Winston Churchill will compare Louis XIV to Hitler’s delusionary expansionary policies.
• Eugene’s military career was made at the siege of Vienna, in support of the coalition forces led by King Jan III Sobieski of Poland; ‘The Treaty of Utrecht’
• Thread through history leads to descendants of Victor Amedeo, the first, post-Roman Empire King becoming embroiled with Benito Mussolini.
• Circa 1889, Austrians are encouraged to migrate to Bosnia.
• Croatia and Serbia’s histories are summarised. Factual narrative citations: Helga Horiak Harriman’s Doctoral Thesis ‘The German Minority in Yugoslavia 1941 – 1945’.The Vogel family migrated and settled in Lukavaç to become part of the ethnic ‘Volksdeuchen’.

First the Pyramids; Then The French Revolution Happened

• A tongue-in-cheek exposé of the enlightenment movements spawning in France. Factual narrative citations: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Illuminati, persecution of the Freemasons (Liberi Muratori) in Italy.
• Napoleon Bonaparte ousts the Austrians from the Northern Italian States and tries to reform Italy.
• The Kingdom of Naples becomes pivotal in the geopolitical machinations swirling about the peninsular. Factual narrative citations: Maria Carolina daughter of the Empress of Austria, Maria Theresa, King Ferdinand as ‘Re Lazzarone’,Horatio Nelson’s part in the intrigues which evolved following Napoleon’s takeover of Naples.
• The Italian Republic movement culminates into the brief ‘Parthenopean Republic’.Factual narrative citations: Historian General Pietro Colletta, Cardinal Ruffo, French General Championnet,
• Mine own memoirs’ logic and reasons for taking sides on issues that arise.
• Factual narrative citations: historian Robert Lacey explains the troubled relationship between France and England, the two nations collaborated in the ‘Crimean War’.
• The rise of brigands facilitated by geopolitics. The Papacy insisted on picking winners and relegating the losers, the Bourbonists were preferable to a home-grown Republic. ‘Canto dei Sanfedisti’ was analysed in light of Pietro Colletta’s historical writings.
• Francavilla’s role in the war to restore the Bourbon King. The carnage wreaked on Crotone by the ‘Sanfedista Army’. The town hosted a large contingent of French soldiers after the second coming of Napoleon.
• Son of a Scotsman, Étienne MacDonald leads to a discourse about the British Crown. Factual narrative citations: the Jacobites versus the Protestant line of successions.
• French governance reform for the peninsular is the beginning of the ‘Risorgimento’,but still, it does not auger well for Calabria’s development.
• My memoirs introduced to analyse the stagnation occurring in Calabria. The basis for the discourse is the epic film ‘Gone with the Wind’based on the book by Margaret Mitchell.
• Francavilla became involved in the battle of Maida, which brought brigands into the fray against the French on the side British – Bourbanist alliance.
• Factual narrative citations: Joachim Murat’s role in the post-French occupation.
• Brigandage becomes a scourge on society; their barbarism is explored via one of these, ‘Il Bizzarro. The politico of the French versus the British-Bourbon Alliance fuelled brigand excesses.
• Mine own oral history memoirs of grownups talking about later-day outlaws as the stuff of folklore, are narrated.

Restoration Panacea Causes Heartburn 1815-1849

• Secret Societies formed to oppose the French but were unable to rally the population to revolt.
• Introduction to our ancestors which enter the discourse after 1845.
• Secret Societies initiate activism against the Austrian-backed establishment. The economic backdrop is bleak.
• The Sardinian Monarchy consolidates in Turin, conceptual Italy becoming a nation is still- a long way off. Discontent by the populace forces some concessions by the Monarchs in the South; the second French Revolution became a watershed moment forcing the King in the North to begrudgingly acquiesce to a people’s ‘Statuto’.
• The Bourbon Restoration in Naples was backed by Austria; Generals imprisoned including Pietro Colletta. Factual narrative citations: revolts by lieutenants Michele Morelli and Giuseppe Silvati eventually failed.
• Calabrian peasants’ revolt against the Bourbons. Simonetti and Attisani’s ancestors are mentioned in the context of the events. Factual narrative citations: Lorenzo Malta’s account of the battle between revolutionary General Francesco Stocco and Bourbon Gen. Nunziante’s army near Francavilla.

Place Your Bets

• Finding a political baseline from amongst the social headwinds is trial and error exercise for the fledgling Monarchy.
• Political power plays arise by the establishment of a parliament in Turin. Factual narrative citations: The rise of Count Camillo Benzo di Cavour,the Crimean War, the 1856 Paris Peace Congress, Napoleon III, Rome and the Papal States impediment to a future unification of the peninsular.

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[1] In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, a hieromartyr is a martyr (one who dies for his beliefs) who was a bishop or priest.

[2] Les livres des miracles et autres opuscules de Georges Florent Grégoire, évêque de Tours, Volume 3, Page 270, Ch XCIX

§ Adapting to Home-Made Chaos

• Explanation of ‘chaos theory’ in the scheme of things to be in the future. The example is given from personal experiences.
• Father and Zio make life decisions without proper consideration of the effects on their families.
• Discourse expanded to the Gattuso immigration experience as a means to introduce the range of social issues that evolved for men, separated from their wives.
• Gattuso family history adds a knowledge base to the pre-war immigration. The war almost makes separation permanent. An illegitimate child is born of those events providing intrigue for us entering their sphere of farming influence.
• Geroloma, the Gattuso wife left behind in Italy, gave birth after her husband had left. Another child is adopted and eventually makes for a complex family get-together in Cobram.
• Our sister, Caterina fills in the gaps of the life being lived in Francavilla. Childminding included ad hoc stays at the beach near the ‘Pontana’
• Aberrations appear in the child Caterina, in the form of separation anxiety; circumstances force the need to have her stay at a summer camp. Work on the farms needed to go on. Mother’s frugality, possibly overdone, monies being remitted from Australia could have been better used for family comforts. Our comfort in Australia was not any better.
• Doing time on the Cavallaro farm required distractions. Commanding an army of chickens would make George Orwell smirk. But what’s ‘Time’ for a child? Was it something like Einstein’s ‘Theory of Relativity’ and implemented in Dr Who’s ‘Tardis’^[1]?
• End of the 1957 school year party background to the iconic photo opportunity of my being in Gypsy costume. Then it was back to the fruit farm in Cobram.
• Simonetti expand into share farming supplying tomatoes to the ‘Kia-Ora’ food products brand. The venture leads into a humorous horsey story of Zio, Father, me and the draft horse.
• Our living conditions are comparable to Mack and the boys of “Cannery Row”.^[2]
• Shopping for food staples opens opportunities to use the loose change to buy comics and small toys. Also, a lead into a descriptor of the town layout.
• The pub sessions indulgences by the grownups, become the bane of my having to do the shopping.
• I’m taught to prep the pasta sauce for the evening meals using a kerosene camp stove.

Transitional Social Patterns

• A brief ‘Who’s Who’ of Anglo Cobram is extracted from Harold G Martindale’s book “The Plains Turn Green”. These people would form part of the Simonetti social mix in the future. One of these, Patrick Duffy will sell his sheep farm to Father and two other Italians.
• Nicola Gattuso’s immigrant settler status in Cobram provides a glimpse of the progress being made to better oneself.
• The town’s father-to-son doctoring history forms part of the Vogel’s story. Another town doctor with possible historical connections, by the name of “Schubert”will in future years provide medical support services for the birth of our sons Adam and Damien.
• Early Cobram orchardists include the Quick family. I will compete with its progeny for the affections of two girls, one of whom I married.
• R J Cornish’s main orchard was on Cottons Road up the road where we lived on the Gattuso farm. His son Geoff becomes a pivotal character in my grade 5 and 6 school years.
• The layout of the Gattuso farms sets the scene for the ongoing narratives of our communal involvement.
• Personalities that make up the social mix with whom we become involved are introduced.
• A walk-through descriptor narrative of the fateful enrolment at the Catholic School for the 1958 school year and how I decided against it.
• Crunch time at the State School came to assess my competency in basic literacy. By age, I should have been in grade four, but I ended up suitably in grade three.
• The status of Cristiano Spiller, the pre-war immigrant from the earlier discourse is updated to include his family with whom I shall interact.
• During my after-school days and weekends, I became a roustabout in the packing shed. The ‘devil made me do it’ scenario of my toying with the flywheel of the fruit grader unleashes contempt for my pitiful existence.
• Father is deemed a ‘gun picker’ making him extraordinary amongst his peers and bosses.
• Share farming sees me needing to pitch in with tomato picking. It was to be the beginning of my becoming a contributor to the family’s economic welfare.
• Pre-descriptor narrative of the tomato industrial complex and its demeaning effect on the human psyche but unavoidable to building the cash stake.
• Introduction made to the Raco complicated family structure for the upcoming narrative to my being billeted in its care, when Father goes to the asparagus harvest.
• Hazards of swimming in irrigation channels are a feature of rural living.
• The need to describe our homes as a class exercise makes for a rounding off on the living conditions in the shack. The consciousness of social standing is awakened within me.
• Father decides not to return to Mossman for the cane season. We remain in that inhospitable shack for the winter. The upside was that I got a raincoat and gumboots.
• Building the new farm dunny involves crossing paths with the Vogels.
• Father’s status in the Italian community gets a boost from his skills in grafting trees, but with minimal financial reward.
• Winter on the farm makes for a wonderland of frosty scenes and uncomfortable nights in a shack without insulation or heating.
• Making my toys from the top of a paint tin, and another from the steel ring insert forming the seal between the lid and the 44-gallon drum.
• Father sets trends in pruning techniques from his experience in Italy.
• The gathering at the other farm hut of earlier discourse, in which the intellectual discussion of brigands and other esoteric mutterings by the grownups, is put into the timeline.
• Zio Pietro returns from Mossman with news that the Galati family was planning to relocate to the Gattuso orchard.
• The plastic toy truck chance find, floods my existence with troubled waters.
• My firsthand experience with the traditional methods used to make the irrigation channels. Factual narrative citation: Harold Martindale^[3]
• Oral history provided by our sister-in-law Glenys Vogel (né McKinley) of her parent’s role in the construction of the main irrigation channels in the 1930s. Ernie McKinley was an Irish immigrant caught up in the Great Depression and one of many sent to the Cobram district to earn ‘susso pay’.^[4]
• Henry Lawson’s poem ‘Faces In The Street’ of the city folk doing it tough in Australia is quoted. His interest in revolution is compared to Italian Communist Palmiro Togliatti a generation later.
• Anglo-Australian’s xenophobic tendencies towards Italians put into perspective. Australia’s growth in GDP ameliorates Lawson’s call to arms; the growth is attributed in part to the growing population, of which Italian immigrants featured prominently.
• Ernie’s death in a car crash in town leads to other deaths experienced by migrant families. The tragic death of a mother and four children close to Cobram provides an opening to introduce the notion of organised crime existing alongside law-abiding Italian immigrants.
• Simonetti’s become aware of Josef and Veronica Vogel at Gattuso Orchard No 2. Granddaughter Erica Vogel provides an oral history of the discord underlying that event.
• Simonetti’s begin to interact socially with other Italians.
• John Steinbeck’s characters Mr and Mrs Sam Molloy’s^[5] entrepreneurship is compared to the Galati family arriving at the Gattuso orchard and being accommodated in the newly built chemicals storage shed,
• A class photograph of the St Joseph’s grade 4, has the three girls Monika Vogel, Mary Galati and Maria Kraljik all smiling, oblivious as to how they will be influencers through my teens.
• Another share tomato crop fails to get a supply contract and is abandoned.
• The Galati family moved into the purpose-built home on the orchard. Simonetti’s upgrade to the hut which has electricity connected.
• The tragedy of my being causal to damaging Zio’s mandolin.
• Headaches and migraines begin to affect my health. I would need to take analgesics. Anecdote of a migraine attack at school causing unbearable pain. There was no remedy and Father could not be contacted. Geoffrey Cornish looks out for me on the school bus to make it back to the hut.
• The 1959 season ends, Father is to head off to Gundagai for the asparagus harvest; I’m billeted out to the Giuseppe and Margarita Raco’s care. I hustle Father for worldly goods.
• Tommaso Galati provides an oral history background to Giuseppe Raco and his 1930s pickup truck.
• Background to the soldier settlement established with the POW huts being repurposed for homes on the farms, brings up interesting coincidences. I lived with the Raco Family in one of these. Factual narrative citation: The story of Cobram – A Social History.
• Memoires of the experience elucidate aspects of my time with the Raco family. I became shy and self-conscious of the social difference. Sisters whom I would catch the school bus surprised me with their kindness, they gave me a small bag of cherries.

Life Stuff – That’s Serious

• The topic of sexuality, generally taboo is introduced through my recollections as far back as school days in Francavilla. Girls’ difference from boys leads to the childish scenario of “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”which never happened. Such innocence led to my reporting back to family at mealtime that in exhibition of bravado, joined in the idle chit chat with my announcing that that I had, had sex with a girl after school. It did not end well, lessons learnt are explored.
• Introspective of my playing with friendly Anglo children for a brief afternoon in Mossman becomes a reason to miss Mother and siblings left in Italy.
• Tendency to become attached to a ‘pretty’ girl at school leads to the introduction of ‘puppy love’ affections for Julie Davies, Mary Galati and Christine Manser.
• High school offers continued scope to cast eyes over girls, Maria Kraljik stands out in my mind’s eye.
• If my emotional needs, those of a child, needed attention, then how were the young men in their prime of life handling their privation? To find an answer, without having an intention for a full study, the circumstances of several persons in our social sphere are explored.
• Why the men leave their families, whether for wars or immigration and including celibacy is headlined for the discourse at hand. Nicola Gattuso’s story leading to a child being born from a relationship with Jean Goodwin is explored.
• Giuseppe Raco’s three-way family including a de facto Margarita and a wife in Italy is pieced together from oral history notes. There is an unravelling when the Italian wife eventually comes to Australia.
• Father and Zio were on their own for months at a time. I was left alone in the shack only once.
• Mother and Zia Barbara left in Italy with young children struggling to keep the farms productive and maintain discipline and security for the children left in their care. Father and Zio should have come to grips with the separations but procrastinated.
• Our experience is held up against other close families with whom we interacted, planning more effectively. America was still an option if Father and I had returned to Italy.
• Mother makes the call to end the original plan, it was not working.

§ Steps Back To A Normality

‘Rithmatic Flint Sparks Catalytic Social Synthesis

• Narrative picks up events from the 1959 grade 4 school year onwards, at a time when my English skills had improved. Zio returns from Mossman. I’m prepared to go in front of the class to show my skills in arithmetic.
• Update on the Galati family’s whereabouts on the farms. Simonetti’s routine resumes for the coming fruit season.
• School classes for grades 5 and 6 are located at the ‘Old School’. An exercise to write a story of what we did on the weekend indicates that there is still some way to go to fit in socially. Anecdote of the attempt to express coherent sentences by resorting to phonetics and ‘Italglishisms’. Still excelled in arithmetic.
• Methods for mental fortitude begin to be developed to assist with coping with the anguish being caused by the quite evident social differences.
• New girls and boys, child characters, who would become my peers are introduced, angels and devils amongst them. The Francis brothers had a definite beginning as ‘devil’ tormentors; a solution was found.
• Jump forward to 2012, Leane Baker lays out the girl’s take on the desirable boys of early high school, quite ego-boosting stuff had I known that in the ‘60s, but then again, I think I knew that something was at play; anecdotes of Pam Cornish and Kathleen Mathews narrated.
• Fisticuffs near the toilet block between Kenny Graham and newly arrived immigrant Svetislav
• Father heads for Gundagai leaving me in the care of the Galati family, I continue at the State School and the Galati siblings go to the Catholic school. Another cohort of influential characters is introduced. These children will have influence, leading to childhood friendships, competitiveness amongst boys and in my future, the ‘first kiss’.
• Geoffrey Cornish and I established ‘best friends’ status even though there was a tattered appearance around me, heralded by the awful sandshoes I wore day in, day out.

A Place to Call Home

• Father buys a house in town. The dwelling was built from leftover material from other jobs during a downturn in the industry. It was in part built by the Vogel brothers, then working for Lou Walker.
• Descriptor of the home and the need to have it furnished, is a lead-in to describe the township and the who’s who of our neighbours including a town shire councillor. We had inadvertently stepped into the realms of the middle class.
• John Vogel owns the block next door and interacts with Father.
• Father takes in boarders, fellow travellers in need of somewhere to live.
• Zio wins a transistor radio at the Cobram Show. I need to get home to listen to the next ‘Lone Ranger’
• The International Community of Europe stirring into action will spell trouble for Australian farmers.
• Father gets his driver’s licence and eventually buys a second-hand 1958 Holden FC Special Sedan.
• Geoffrey Cornish comes-a-visiting whilst Father is at work. I offer him a sip of ‘Marsala All ‘Uovo’.
• There was something different about Scottish, Kenneth Sweeny, character portrayal. His imported bicycle and demeanour sets him apart.
• Boys talk ‘cars’ but I have my heart set on getting an air-powered slug gun. ‘Sparrows beware’ narrative diverges into Mao Zedong’s ‘Great Leap Forward’
• Ken Sweeney facilitates my getting an after-school job at Lou Walker’s Hardware store, then managed by Franz Vogel Jr.
• The after-school job eventually clashes with my need to work with the family’s share farming tomato crops.

§ Mother does not come with a User Guide

• Mother and siblings were ready to come to Australia, we needed to refresh our recognition of my sister. Father gets it wrong; he shows me a photo of our cousin.
• Father’s Catholic morally based ambitions compared with those of Joe Kennedy, whose bootlegging was used to buy the Presidency for his son. Father thought it a good idea to have his son learn to play a piano accordion.
• Need for firewood provides for a timeline introduction to Cristiano Spiller and family.
• We head for Melbourne to reunite with Mother, Caterina and Aurelio, arriving by ship from Italy.
• Antonio Prestigiacomo, who worked with Father’s cane-cutting gang in Queensland, had by then an extended family structure in Melbourne. His brother Giacinto and his wife Bettina extend hospitality to our need to have a place to stay for a few days.
• Descriptor narrative of our taking the tram to Station Pier, the atmospherics of the ship at port, anticipation to get the first glimpse of the Mother existing only in memory. Talking to a sister and brother for whom the recognition factor had faded.
• Social ambience of friendships extending back to Italy and the present reuniting in our host terraced home Brunswick just north of the city of Melbourne. Other related friendships were brought into the fore to give an expansive view of the network forming in Australia and America.
• The Gattuso family lends its assistance to facilitate the transfer, of the reunited Simonetti family, to Cobram.
• Mother had lost her child and got a teenager who had experienced for good and bad, supervision freedom.
• The new plan was to mean that all that was left behind in Italy was, to be in practical terms ‘written off’, these could not be used to support applications for a bank loan.
• Anticipation grows for goodies from Italy filling the trunks accompanying the family entourage. The luggage arrives separately as freight to the Cobram Train Station.
• Mother’s fine crockery and haberdashery accommodated amongst the Laminex and other ‘Australiana’ home furnishings.
• Introduction to Caterina’s and Aurelio’s schooling and friendships left behind, and sacrificed. Caterina will have to carry the suffocating bourdon of Calabrian cultural etiquette.
• Siblings positioned at the Catholic School against the backdrop of notable children with whom we shall interact in the future.
• Caterina is disadvantaged by her leaving a caring school structure in Francavilla. She unwittingly comes into contact with the petit ladies of my child’s past and adolescent future.
• Mother has a take ‘no prisoners’ mentality to Caterina interacting with boys from the street. Her oral history rings of sadness from such Calabrian intolerance.
• Caterina’s friendships with neighbours Stella and Mimma Oliva make for exploratory opportunities for Aurelio and me. We naively set out to find out, at separate interludes, how the ‘birds and bees’ narrative may work.
• Time was up for Caterina; she did not return to school in 1965 and began to work at a greengrocer, a mixed business.
• That Mother liked to haggle goes back to my recollections at market day in Filadelfia. Her antics came to haunt me as the anointed English speaker to translate on shopping days.
• My becoming a musician had been written in the stars once the piano accordion arrived, and was surely the making of a comedy skit. Reality hit home that an ad hoc approach to learning was not going to cut it. The need to work on the tomato crop won out in the end.
• Creating wealth was all-encompassing, fortunately, underwritten by Mother’s and Father’s good health and propensity to be efficient at the work which faced them. There was no alternative to my needing to work alongside them, whether it was the tomato crop, or picking oranges during school holidays.
• It is inevitable that family social opinions would be challenged by our exposure to the wider community. There was a legacy effect from my independence which Mother and I needed to reckon with.
• Reflection on my youth and how the quote attributed to George Bernard Shaw or Oscar Wilde that “Youth is wasted on the young” applied to my circumstances.

§ Rebrand Rendering Work In Progress

• The backdrop of my teen years between 1961 and 1965 is narrated by the pressing need to create wealth through shared farming ventures at various locations. Memoirs of my working alongside Father and Mother.
• Father and I become a job lot for becoming Australian Citizens.
• Zio Pietro takes steps to have his family join him, but things fall apart when the Australian immigration system fumbles with the documentary procedure.
• Zio Pietro’s and Zia Barbara’s family structure suffer from isolation the same as our family; perhaps a case of Robert Burns: “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men…”, Discourse leads into similarities with John Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’and Henry Lawson’s writings providing an Australian context about people facing extreme circumstances. Zio’s mental health over the nine years of separation is contextually explored.
• Father and Mother used their farming know-how to begin share farming on various farms, the first of which was on the outskirts of Cobram, on fallow land.
• Historical Cobram blended in with current events becoming part of the tomato crop enterprises. The Spiller family bridges pre-war and post-war Italians settling in the district.
• Descriptor narrative of the irrigation techniques for the tomato crop.
• The labouring schedules at the ‘coal face’ have breaks for straying to a Coca-Cola vending machine across the highway, located at the VW dealership.
• The tomato plant physiology is a curse for those picking its fruit. Cultivation by hoe just adds to the miserable experience.
• Picking and transport of the tomato crop.
• Fear of Pellagra leads to making acquaintance with Matteo Orsida when Father pays for a course of vitamin injections to be administered by the farmer’s wife.
• My migraines are put through the superstition mill and I am subjected to ‘mal’occhio’ exorcism for the first and last time.
• The after-school job, working with Frank Vogel was the making of riches for a short while. I’m exposed to people other than farmers and gaining a level of street smartness.
• Frank Vogel provides an oral history of his moonlighting as a loader of tomato crates during harvest.
• The Orsida share farming experience adds new characters Giuseppe Caridi and his wife Brigida to the Simonetti social network.
• The debilitating effects of migraines are explained in terms of the Hubble telescope’s blurred images. Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Alone” is an illustration of the dilemma I faced when left alone and suffering from a migraine. The poem is analysed in retrospect, using the skills accumulated in a life lived thus far. Why drink alcohol, a known trigger of migraine attacks? Human frailty at its best!
• Father’s bush carpentry skills are put to the test when building a makeshift lunchtime shelter to provide shade for the scorching summer sun.
• My fledgling ego is nearly derailed by Matto Orsida’s offer to school me in replacing an implement to the back of the Ferguson tractor.
• Why I hate early morning callouts goes back to the need to protect tomato plants from fungal black spot disease. The dusting needed to be performed in the moonlight from around 3 AM onwards.
• What’s worse picking or cultivating a tomato crop? The narration gives light-hearted explanations based on scaled relativities. The weeds win every time.
• Something goes bang at the packing shed. A visitor with a shotgun lets loose on the peppercorn tree teeming with noisy sparrows.
• We casually meet the Spiller family at the Orsida packing shed, soon after the mother dies.
• The summer of ’63 –’64 came to an end, leasing the Jack Gattuso orchard based on Zio Pietro remaining in Cobram rather than returning to Mossman for the cane season.
• It was the same farm worked by the Galati family and had spent time there. Character introductions university students Roy and Fred Gattuso. The Tallotta family visiting make our acquaintance, their son Alfonse a worthy play friend.
• Orchard husbandry is different to tomato cropping but more prestigious. Hazards posed by agri-chems are disregarded and begin the slow deterioration of Mother’s health.
• Boys making bows and arrows.
• Early callouts ‘take two’; need to set alight oil cans to ward off the frost from the apricot paddock.
• Christmas is synonymous with apricot harvest. Preparing for both entails allowing time to slaughter and pluck the chickens. Mother and Caterina work in the kitchen to prepare the traditional dishes and bake biscuits.
• It’s all in the taste test. Fruits from Italy are compared to similar varieties grown commercially in Australia and how genetics play a role.
• The fresh fruits sales cycle and the processing for the canning industry at a time of oversupply leads to conflict between the farm owner and lessees.
• Father uses what cash the family has to participate in a three-way plan to buy the Patrick Duffy sheep farm.
• The reason why the plan hits a snag relates to earlier decisions to buy land in Italy, now considered worthless as collateral for a bank loan. Banks have an eye to events unfolding in the setting up of the European Common Market, it would have been beneficial to the Simonetti’s had they regrouped in Italy.
• Father’s solution was to borrow some of the money needed from his sister’s family. The resulting unprecedented family politico: how it put our Aunt in a difficult situation is explored.

§ Dance Me to the Edge

• The backdrop of my teen years between 1961 and 1965 is narrated from the need to lead a fulfilling life. Leonard Cohen’s lyrics of the 1984 song “Dance Me to the End of Love”, form a retrospective ‘life markers’ list of expectations.
• Need to move on to somewhere, having more promise than the bleak existence of the five years before Mother, Caterina and Aurelio joined us.
• Cobram High School’s beginnings were only marginally better than Henry Lawson’s ‘The Old Bark School.’^[6] Both school and ‘me’ the pupil lacking any educational provenance.
• Curriculum offers an opportunity to excel, inadvertently drawing teacher attention.
• Cobram-born Harold G Martindale’s bio has him at Melbourne High School; in the due course of time, our eldest son Michael will also attend.
• Headmaster seeks out Father for a quiet word about his son. The episode became the seminal follow-up to my fateful decision to renege on my Catholic School enrolment.
• Descriptor narrative of the rural town setting and its historical makings.
• Monika Vogel becomes embedded into Cobram mesh as a marching girl, photos of her putting the Vogels into the timeline.
• The Cobram pubs, parks and sale yards and their locations form part of the town’s history.
• The Murray River and its beaches made Cobram different. Steamers were the backbone of Cobram’s economy.
• Neighbours: John Vogel’s vacant block of land is purchased by the empty nesters, the Thompsons. On the other side, another empty nester couple were the Fry’s. These together with the Rice family make for basic social integration of the Simonetti’s with Anglo-Australians.
• The World Wars and what these meant, once the Simonetti’s had to relate to patria Italia and patria Australia. Factual narrative citation: quotes from C J Dennis’ “The Moods of Ginger Mick”. Recall made to the misadventures of Giolitti, Mussolini and the discourse of errors made by the British.
• Darryl Rice’s grandfather enlisted in both wars.
• Fill-in character depiction of Darryl Rice, he is the boy with whom I attend the sermons by the visiting missionary to Cobram.
• Friendships made with Scot, Ken Sweeny and German, Uffa Reinecker who lived with their families in Housing Commission Estate, explore our teenage escapades in the townscape still crisscrossed with irrigation channels.
• The troubles caused by using slingshots to fire at grandads’ collection of radio vacuum valves, as targets.
• ‘Heaven awaits’ sermon by the preacher from ‘Sant’Antonio di Padova’ of earlier discourse put into the timeline.
• Railyard, wheat storage sheds and the sheep shearing shed, next to the Bottom Pub were stamping grounds for Darryl and me to use up playtime. References were made to the sites’ relative histories to the town’s development.
• School scorecard facilitates a friendship with Kenny Graham ‘leader of the pack’ at the ‘Old School’.
• Mother’s social circle enables me to become friends with Frank Iudica.
• Snakes pose danger in the bush of the Murray River flood plain doubling up as playgrounds.
• Fank Iudica and I practice being little men doing men’s work, shovelling and axing in our backyards. Muscle building on the cheap using a cobbler anvil and a punching bag filled with corn cobbs amuses little brother Aurelio.
• Additional character profiling of Kenny Graham to bring his skills in sport. Our friendship was strengthened by our being invited to Margo Lundie’s ’63 summer party at the family home. We go to the Orisida’s vineyard for Ken to get his fill of grapes, a bit tricky given that I had not cleared the idea with Father.
• Talking with Frank Iudica about girls and the testosterone-fuelled growing pains needing to find relief.
• In the left field were Julie Davies and Christine Manser whilst ’63 Maria Kraljick made an entry from the right field, what to do? Ken Sweeny is willing to cause mischief.
• The day of reckoning was the school dance where Darryl and I were ignorantly offbeat, taking, truly an empty plate, as specified in the circular.
• ’62 and ’63 Speech Nights settings reinforced the possibility of my continuing school to Year 12.
• Margo Lundie and I are invited to the Rotary Club’s Annual Dinner. Additional character profiling of Margo’s sport, academic abilities and her family’s connections in the Cobram community.
• The Rotary Dinner was held at the ‘Bottom Pub’, Margo and I formally spoke after dinner.
• It’s not all a sugar and spice existence, immaturity causes regretful fumbles fuelled by alcohol irrespective of knowing the consequences being migraine attacks.
• Toying with explosive powders was an exercise in crass attention-grabbing. Robert Banks-Smith’s and my fascination compared to Robert Jordan^[7] and Francesco Crispi’s exploits with explosives.
• Frank Vogel was reintroduced to the narrative via our playing in a basketball competition. His employment with the Walker Hardware business comes to an end when the business closes. He is influential in the Denson brothers extending their hardware business.
• Nazzareno (Tom) Bisogni makes a dramatic entry into my existence but unclear as to what ends, other than an after-school job at the hardware warehouse associated with his building interests.
• The who’s who, of the Vogel family network picks up the thread of that family’s settling into Cobram.
• A light-hearted review of getting into the pictures and antics Cobram Agricultural Show. Ken Graham spars sexual innuendos with Fay Kirby. We’re attracted to the girls gyrating their wares in the ‘dance off the seven veils’adults-only tent. Daryl comes good with centrefolds from Playboy magazines.
• Margo Lundie’s family move into town and have a second teenager party. The same girls from primary school looked and acted differently making for wow moments with walks along the path meandering through scrub behind the house.
• Ken Sweeny’s hyperactivity, a sign that his character had a tragic component that sat at the end of the spectrum compared to others, me included.
• Academic pursuit was much more difficult than it looked. There was a need to take heed of the components observed to be deficient, compared to those pupils, my peers, who were truly talented. Our family resources were lacking.
• What is ‘intelligence’ is explored. By finding out where I’m positioned on that scale. Factual narrative citation: Research by Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon; Jordan Peterson.^[8]
• Character and personal description of Steven Gilbert and reasons for tipping my hat to his extraordinary intelligence. The realisation that I needed assistance to improve my knowledge base led me to ask for Steve’s and Leigh Astbury’s input on how to get started.
• For purposes of objectivity my progress slips into a ‘third person’ narration of how progress was made in personal development. Factual narrative citations: John Lennon, Luc Ferry, Andrew Marvel and Lucius Annaeus Seneca.
• Remedial catchup projects, undertaken in the late ‘60s, later formed the base to build on the street sense, gained from extensive business international travel.
• Individuals’ physical and mental attributes provide each of us with advantages; peers are inclusively reviewed, adding character points of interest.
• The Astbury family arrives in Cobram for the 1965 school year, the father Barny, was to be the Headmaster and the mother, Neta was to teach English.
• In an after-class discussion Neta strays into the economics of ‘good looks and athleticism’. Joseph revisits that chance discourse via his study of economics. Factual narrative citations: N Gregory Mankiw^[9], Daniel S. Hamermesh and Jeff E Biddle.[10]
• A run-through of anecdotal memories of Cobram High School; the way it was, a mix of the ‘good’: excursions the ‘bad’ teachers living on school grounds let their hair down. Then there were those raunchy exchanges between teacher and pupil!
• Margo for Kenny or Joseph; a light-hearted opinionated, recall of the walk home from the beach.
• Rounding off the competitors in the sweetheart stakes and where all the sweethearts go!
• Adieu Kenny Graham for now, we did some silly things.
• Joseph and Caterina duo, do the baptism circuit for Italian families, thus extending family connections in the platonic ‘Godfather’ way.
• Aurelio covets the pouch knife which Joseph acquires with the help of Frank Vogel.
• The Beatles and The Rolling Stones sweep across the ‘60s youth psyche The tempo manifested by boy-girl yearnings, harmonised by the Beatles and the ‘Stones’,capturing the raw sexual emotions driven by cultural liberalism.

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[1] Time and Relative Dimension in Space

[2] Short Story by John Steinbeck

[3] The Plains Turn Green Page 15

[4] Australian slang for ‘sustenance or welfare payments

[5] Cannery Row Chapter VI

[6] Poem by Henry Lawson, 1897

[7]  Book: For Whom the Bell Tolls

[8] Jordan Bernt Peterson is a Canadian media personality, clinical psychologist, author, and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto

[9] Principles of Economics, 1998, Pages 405 -6

[10] Research Paper- “Beauty and the Labour Market”.

§ Curriculum Vitae: Forced Labourer

• Research attempts via Arolsen Archives end inconclusively but confirm the effect of Russian occupation in East Germany resulted in records being destroyed.
• Enrico Iozzelli’s essay ‘Gli Internati militari italiani in Germania 1943 – 1945’,provides definitive testimony of how the Germans ran the work camps.
• German logic for harsh treatment involved their desire to have Italian soldiers enlist to support Mussolini’s continuance of war with Germany.
• Mussolini lobbies Hitler to have Italians treated more humanely, but still with strings attached.

Province of Saxony Host Region for IMIs

• A historical summary of the region.

Junkers Werke Dessau

• A historical summary of the inventor who put his name to his works.
• Hugo Junkers Russian connections for the supply of aircraft pre-war is the beginning of a debt he accumulates with the German State which the Nazis later use to defraud him of the business he had built up.
• The effects of the sanctions imposed on Germany after WWI are explored.
• Opinions about Plato’s book The Republicas to Hugo Junkers’ study of economics is at odds with Socrates’s ideal citizen. My own experience is explored.

Labour Theft

• My own experiences from visits to Germany led to places such as Munich and Landsberg. Hitler had been imprisoned at Landsberg prison along with Emil Maurice and Rudolf Hess.
• Firsthand experience gained of what the sardonic lie ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’(Work Will Make You Free) laced ironwork sign above the entrance meant.
• Factual narrative citations: Book ‘The Dachau Concentration Camp 1933 to 1945’.The chapter ‘The deployment of prisoners in the armament industry 1942 to 1945’, provides clear accounts of what the IMIs faced as guest workers.
• Factual narrative citations: Michela Cimbalo’s Research Paper^[1] details the labour shortages faced by Germany; the IMI’s fate was sealed along with 1.9 million POWs from twenty-six countries.
• Mussolini’s RSI’s positioning alongside Germany’s war effort made the status of Italians’ internment a contradiction; something had to give. The ruse to transition the men to civilian workers was part of the answer. RSI being allowed to recruit from amongst the ranks rounded off the deception.
• Differences between the treatment of officers and soldiers are explored. Officers had it quite easy.
• The absence of the International Red Cross ensures that there is no oversight of the harshness inflicted on Italians.

Stammlager XIA Sub Camps Dessau-Junkers

• Establishing the geographical locales where the Italians in the environs of Dessau resided.
• Understanding the German nomenclature for the camps and subcamps.
• Factual narrative citations: British plans to liberate their POWs include setting up ‘The Special Allied Airborne Reconnaissance Force (SAARF)’.
• Militarism conceptually explored using ‘prions’as a
• Analysis made of Amedeo Usai’s internment papers to supplement understanding of the work camps and geographic locations of these and Junkers factories. Factual narrative citations: Booklet celebrating the Bauhaus School of Architecture titled “Dessau 1945 Modernity Destroyed”^[2]; Research Paper by Bernd G. Ulbrich, “On the history of the victims of National Socialism in Dessau-Roßlau (5): Slave labour.”^[3].
• The research finally enabled me to determine that Michele was housed at the camp in Burgkühnauer Allee.
• The sugar refinery in Dessau also produced Zyklon B, the poison used as part of the ‘Final Solution’.
• Relating the past to my own experiences in Melbourne’s industrial sector and its similarities to that in Dessau.
• Amedeo Usai and Giuseppe Summito descriptors of how they scavenged for food.

Daily Routine for IMI Life

• IMIs send postcards sent back home.
• Some Italians commit suicide because of the harshness of conditions.
• Pitches made to have soldiers switch to serve in the German army. Those who lived in the North did so only to abscond as soon as they were repatriated.
• Michele with a farming background is assigned to Junkers to work with machinery the same as the mechanic Ivo Cardini. Amedeo is sent to work on a sugar beet farm near Holland and later sent to Dessau for outdoor work. Michele told of the cold inside the factory, and Amedeo wrote of the excruciating conditions outside.
• The conditions in German camps are correlated to those that Father Zio and I experienced in Cobram in 1957.
• Light humour at Messrs Mussolini’s and Hitler’s expense recorded in a ‘barzaletta’ (joke) which Father told of the pair.
• The donkey of the joke is further explored in the context of Calabrian folklore.
• The joke about the smokers like Gian Carlo who could not give up the habit were otherwise also prisoners of their own making.
• Amedeo jumps in with his black humour of the ‘giant’ Northerners.
• Southern Italians, unlike their Northerner counterparts, did not receive mail. Michele’s family did not know whether he was still alive.

§ The War Back Home

Invasion Endurance & Liberation Pain

• Italy’s support for Germany’s Operation Barbarossa’has a high cost in lives lost. These losses were on top of those already suffered in other battlefronts.
• Britain makes a pre-emptive strike on Taranto.
• Italy was forced to join the rolling holocaust.
• Italian cities were attacked after Mussolini declared war.
• Francavilla and Simonetti farms in the firing line of Allied landings at Pizzo.
• King regained constitutional powers and used them to dismiss Mussolini but was powerless to stop the bloodletting by Italy’s people.
• The effect of war on the Simonetti family from oral history notes. Need to maintain farm productivity.
• Attisani’s continue farming and collaborate with the Simonetti family. Descriptors made of the farms and agricultural procedures.
• Mine own memories of family life mixed in with known anecdotes of day-to-day living in Francavilla.
• Allies target women with propaganda to have them agitate to hasten Italy’s pulling out of the war. Food shortages affected all.

Political Remix Gestates the Resistance 1943-45

• A retrospective look at the Nationalism of 1910 which delivered Libya to Italy, followed by a scrabble to join WWI to share in the spoils of war.
• Cracks in Italy’s economic model for waging war were evident from the onset based on an opportunity cost-benefit analysis. Factual narrative citation: Claudio Sommaruga memoirs.
• Partisan resistance or was it a civil war that took hold in the North, is explored. The communists receive a ‘get out of jail free’ card after Party Secretary Palmiro Togliatti returns from Moscow. Factual narrative citation: Christopher Duggan.
• Other resistance movements in Greece and Yugoslavia become prominent amidst Monarchs having to take refuge elsewhere. The allies need to sift through these to determine their real intentions.

§ The War Back East

The Hopscotch War Goes On

• Russian POWs virtually exterminated by neglect leading to petechial typhus in camps.
• Claudio Sommaruga and others transferred to Poland to a camp where Russian POWs were seen living in dugouts and moving about on hands and knees in temperatures of minus 15^o
• The cost of IMIs saying “NO” included possibly settling the debt with one’s life. Some do succumb to German promises for the restoration of worldly comforts. Claudio Sommaruga suffers misadventures at the hands of his jailers.
• The status of ‘civilian worker’is explored. Factual narrative citations: Research Papers by Michela Cimbalo^[4] and Marco Paolini.^[5]
• The effect that the ‘civilian worker’classification had on the IMIs was best summed up laconically by Giuseppe Summito.
• Hope surfaces that the IMIs will not spend another winter in Germany but alas it was not to be. More of the same for Amedeo Usai and Michele Simonetti but for the officers such as Gian Carlo Turchetto, they are now required to work; rosters are announced. The ‘cold’ of that time becomes the classic by-line used by Michele to joke about the cold experienced in Cobram.
• Michele’s takeaway from the Germans is that his experience did not leave him bitter. He even tells of a German having the surname ‘Simonetti’ which he encountered by chance at the Junkers factory.
• German housing and standard of living in stark contrast with IMI’s still in the clothes they arrived in from Greece. Michele and Amedeo relate their experiences.

Franz Vogel’s Crossfire War

• Known campaigns of the Waffen SS ‘Prince Eugene Division’ form the background to Franz Vogel’s participation in the war.
• Greece is out of the war; a tenuous peace is administered by resistance groups.
• In Croatia there is a reorganisation of German-backed military divisions. An attempt is made to capture Tito.
• Tito Partisans were taking control of townships and began rounding up Swabians, inflicting genocidal murder and rape. Factual narrative citation: Dr Valentin Oberkersch.^[6]
• Swabian’s Sepp Janko^[7] and his deputy Josif Beer had duplicitously convinced many ethnic Germans to stay put in Croatia.
• The end of the ‘Prince‘Eugene Division’ occurs at Celje, in Slovenia.
• The Vogel family amongst those refugees fleeing Croatia, their lands being confiscated by the Tito Regime. Josef Vogel Jr dies in war.
• Criminal activities by the ‘Prince‘Eugene Division’ are made reference to at the Nuremberg trials. Who is to blame is explored with references made to Queen Victoria ordering Charles Edward to assume the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Bombardment Rages On Dessau

• The Allies targeted Dessau because of its importance to Germany’s armament production. Some brief stats are quoted.
• Happenings to Italians in Dessau detailed by ‘our eyewitness reporter’, Amadeo Usai. are compared to actual historical documentation of events.
• Survival for IMIs meant running for open fields when air sirens were sounded. A short piece extract from Amedeo’s memoirs is translated to provide a firsthand account of the air raids.
• Another account is given by Dr Petr Jaroslav the Czech prisoner held in the Dessau II. He has still adequate pathos to help save children from a burning house.
• Michele’s oral history is supplementary to the written accounts by Amedeo and Petr.
• Refugees seen streaming in from the East, fear of the Russians spreads. Even Russian POWs did not want to be liberated by their kind.
• If that were possible, food becomes even scarcer,
• SS squads set up defence positions around Dessau. Italians were arbitrarily rounded up to become human shields.

IMIs Share Temporal Space with Hitler’s “Final Solution”

• Silvia Pascale’s book based on Gian Carlo Turchetto’s diary makes mention of the Wannsee Conference. The Jews in Greece had been left alone by the Italians; that changed after the armistice. Factual narrative citation: Institute for the Study of Rescue and Altruism in the Holocaust (ISRAH).
• Amedeo is befriended by a Jewish girl whilst on-site at a camp he worked at. Her disappearance leads to the discourse of evidence of the Nazi’s ‘Final Solution’in the environs of Dessau. Factual narrative citation: ‘Inside the Concentration Camps, Eyewitness Accounts of Life in Hitler’s Death Camps’
• Italians with a hot temper ill advised to display their feelings otherwise even more brutal camps would dampen their spirits.
• Understanding of the ‘Konzentrationslagers (KLs also known as KZs)’is given by a declassified report^[8] prepared for the Allied Expeditionary Forces.
• Buchenwald Concentration Camp; a brief case study.
• Michele’s oral history and Amedeo’s memoirs about the V1 and V2 Rockets put into historical context.
• Wars, the Treaty of Westphalia and later the Geneva Convention are explored.
• Palpable hatred in German military ranks led to the massacre of Italians at Treuenbrietzen.

§ Liberation from Servitude to the Third Reich

• The Elbe and Mulde Rivers in the environs of Dessau were to the demarcation lines between Western Allied Forces and the Russians. Mine own thoughts of ‘destiny’. Factual narrative citation: Forrest C. Pogue.^[9]
• The ‘Battle of the Bulge’is Germany’s last hurrah! This was followed by Hitler issuing the ‘Nero Decree’.
• Giuseppe Summito sums up with laconic sharpness of the confronting desperation.
• The Western Allies, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) planned to avoid starvation of their POWs in Germany and set up SAARF.^[10]
• Things go ‘pear shape’ for the collaborative spirit between Russians and British on-site at the POW camp at Altengrabow.
• Catch up on Montgomery’s belated arrival in Germany. The difference of opinion between Churchill-Montgomery and Eisenhower ultimately delivers Berlin to the Soviets. Eisenhower’s telegram to Stalin, a noted misstep.
• President Roosevelt’s death was announced amidst a ‘cat and mouse’ battle of wits between the Western Allies and Stalin.
• The Nazi stash of treasure discovered new the village of Merkers.
• Concentration camps are found by the advancing Western armies.
• Brief overview of battles taking place en route to Dessau. Factual narrative citations: Book ‘The Last Offensive’ by Charles B MacDonald,Professor Victor Davis Hansen provides opinions of Churchill being accepting of his General’s advice, compared to Hitler’s ‘never retreat’.Stalin is forced to begrudgingly accept advice from the only Generals left after he had executed his best ones.
• German Commanders attempt army regroupings to slow down the Allied advance. Last gasp counter offensive battles by Germany in the environs of Dessau.
• Oral history of Michele being liberated by the Russians is put into historical perspective of documented events of the liberation of Dessau.
• The spoils of war were made up of the Junker’s technical advances in aircraft design. The scientists and engineers, including, Professor Wernher von Braun were living assets that needed to be taken out of the Russian zone of occupation. Russians left with enough booty of what remained of Junkers.
• American field units offer material assistance to liberated Italians. Michele’s oral history is merged with Amedeo Usai’s memoirs of Italians showing their relief in song.
• Amedeo becomes aware of the social changes occurring by his seeing American women in uniform.
• The German people were left to struggle without men making do with women working alongside fathers and children to repair dwellings. Dessau was doomed to be part of the German Democratic Republic’, a puppet state of the Soviets.

Repatriation Out of Dessau

• The Italian sanctuary at Kochstedt just out of Dessau is the holding area where the IMIs waited for transport across Germany to make their way home.
• Notes from Amedeo Usai and Gian Carlo Turchetto’s testimonial memoirs are used to map the paths for the Italians from Dessau and others from further east to the Brenner Pass, across the Alps back into Italy.
• The frenzied post-war Allied activity must contend with transport shortages. German POW camps are repurposed into hostels for short-term accommodation whilst transport assets are juggled.
• Adding further misery to their humdrum existence, Italians are subject to fumigation with DDT at various points of their transit.
• The French can’t wait to vent their spleens on the Italians, conveniently forgetting their history of invasions and occupations.

Repatriation Blues for the Officer Class

• Gian Carlo Turchetto had been initially sent to Oflag 73, Benianminow near Warsaw and later sent to Stalag XB also known as Sandbostel Camp.
• His final residency is another hell hole called Wietzendorf Stalag XD.
• Some of the camp histories are explored based on Gian Carlo’s testimonials.
• Closure to Gian Carlo’s story comes about through circumstances reflecting the mayhem occurring at the end of the war.
• Closure for Claudio Sommaruga is truly telling of his being a victim of the principles he had set himself to defy the Germans. His incarceration eventually has him at the same camp as Gain Carlo.
• The hunger experienced during captivity is explored. Factual narrative citations: Tonino Guerra^[11], Odysseus (Ulysses in Roman mythology) following his raft wreck on Skheria Island. ^[12]
• A politico update of the goings on in Italy; Pietro Badoglio is replaced as PM by Ivanoe Bonomi.
• Camp hierarchy for Italian officers is explored including their resourcefulness to gathering intelligence.
• Rogue SS units are still a threat to camp residents waiting for transport out. These were able to disrupt food deliveries.
• The call to move out came eventually; Claudio Sommaruga near death is propped up to make it to the rail head.
• The German residents of a town were expelled to make way for incoming POWs. The homes were not bombed and it is noted that such Germans maintained a high standard of living during the war.
• The priority of ordinary soldiers compared to the officer class is noted, however still well below the Allies giving much higher priority to their own.
• The British show signs of being crass arbiters in their adjudication of Italian ‘civilian workers’.
• Italians rally to the idea of repurposing their IMI label to ‘Iternati Martiri Innocente’and in so doing, conveniently relegating their being ‘Fascists’ credentials to the dustbin. Only history cannot be so easily discarded. Gian Carlo exhibits signs of elitism, and Claudio Sommaruga eventually does come to grips with his Fascist past.
• News received that politics in Italy continue to be unstable, hunger and vendettas go hand in hand. The Vatican and the International Red Cross are the only bright spots to assist with incoming expatriates.
• Gian Carlo’s diary notes enable mapping his transit out of Germany.

Patria Welcomes All With Arms Crossed

• Germans returning from Italy cross paths with Italians at Innsbruck, Austria. They exchange currencies.
• Entry points into Italy at Bolzano and Pescantina are set up with aid stations to provide food and clothing. Testimonials are taken in attempts to determine the deaths of comrades.
• Evidence of the Allied bombings makes for a constant reminder of how Italy suffered during the war. Infrastructure destroyed, limits transport to take people to their home destinations.
• Amedeo Usai’s memoirs fill in the gaps in Michele’s repatriation. Amedeo is making the same way south to take a ferry to Sardinia.
• Even through the destruction of Michele and Amedeo see the wonderful standard of living in the Northern cities.

§ The Reds Collect on Debts Owed

Franz Vogel’s Gulag Misery

• The Vogel family becomes fragmented by the edict for ethnic Germans in Croatia-Yugoslavia to be relocated to Austria and Germany.
• The Desanka Çarević family is ethnic Serbian and their fate was controlled by other political factors, including the transformation of Tito’s Communist Partisans into the Yugoslav Army.
• The Communists target retribution on the Swabian population, Croats, Serb monarchists and Hungarians; pogroms responsible for 100,000 being executed.
• The Red Army arrives on the scene to take its revenge on what is left.
• The anecdote retold by Michael Kovacs of an event passed down by his parents shows the brutality that the Russians were capable of.
• Franz Vogel caught up in the dragnet to have POWs work in Russia. Factual narrative citation: Fletcher School, Tufts University.
• How Franz Vogel survived is based on the slimmest of opportunities in a nation that had very few commodities for maintaining life, to share.
• Codifying suffering if it were possible!
• Coming out of the Gulags alive had a chronic cost, Franz’s daughter will in the future ask “Why does dad drink so much that he has to go to bed?”
• Vogel family lands and properties became part of assets to set up the Communist utopia which was never realised.

Vogel’s Austrian Hiatus

• Vogel archive photos tell a story of the family becoming refugees in Austria.
• Vogel – Çarević family politics revisited to explain the stratification that occurred once Desanka left for Austria. Her father Pavao was killed by the Ustaša.
• Desanka’s talents in dressmaking give her an advantage in the booming economic conditions prevalent in Croatia before the war. Her skills will differentiate her post the family’s arrival in Australia.
• A causal comparison of the economics of Croatia and those prevailing in Calabria at about the same time indicate differences in living standards.
• Michele and Franz become POWs for different reasons; the effect on the Vogels family having been active participants in the war is compared in brief to the Simonetti -Attisani family’s lot in Francavilla.
• The International Red Cross (IRC) assists with Russian POWs released; Franz returns to his family in Austria to begin the rebuilding of finances.
• Family politics surface with Steve Vogel marrying Magdalena Bonigut.
• Strife among, sisters-in-law leads to Magdalena becoming involved in a bicycle–automobile accident, her unborn child suffers lifelong injuries.
• Vogel oral history of their life in Salzberg and later in Wels. Sisters Anna, Erica and Rosalia and their cousins Monika and Maree were born in Pernau. Narratives made of the dates in documents in the family archives fit in with oral history.
• Cousins Franz Jr and Josef Jr, attend school and play around the farms in Pernau.
• Applications made to immigrate to the US and Australia; Australia came through first.
• Franz and John Vogel families immigrate to Australia. Steve and his family stay behind with Veronica and Josef. Steve and Magdelena build a DIY modest house. Magdelena, partly of her own making, must contend with the lingering bad blood with her in-laws. Ill will continue to plague family unity even once grandparents reunite in Australia.

§ Pull up a Chair, We need to Talk

Theory of Relativities

• Italy looking, for a ‘free lunch’, is led into the abyss by adventurous politicians and a gullible populace. Italy’s arrival at the ‘trough’ was well after other European States had taken their fill through colonisation.
• Attention is focused on the period when Germany took over the reins in Italy after the armistice was signed. Germany remains committed for the long haul. Italy did not have the capabilities to prevent the short-term outcome.
• Claudio Sommaruga’s testimonial is scathing of the attitude displayed by the military leaders tasked with the safety of their soldiers.
• Who controlled what became a mad scramble for political influence, the church included? There is no apparent interest in analysing why Italy had erred so badly.
• References made to similarities to an earlier time when the Sanfedistas backed by the church dismantled the makings of a Republic. Garibaldi had fought in South America against the very colonisations that some decades later the united Italy tried to implement in North Africa.
• Giuseppe Mazzini was the messenger, to have Italy heed the calls for social change. The Monarchs in the North and South, aided by the Papacy weren’t having any of that.
• The appeal of Fascism to a populace left wanting by revolving foreign rule has some merit for Italians to hope for sympathy from the rest of Europe; Churchill said as much. Italians, however, going into denial about their indiscretions, committed to fulfilling their greed, at the expense of others, is also reprehensible. Michele knew something was not quite right.
• The North-South divide gets a makeover by the lyrics ‘O Italiella, o Itali�in which the South still grieves that the Unification of Italy was the cause of the ‘today’ ills faced by the South. The relativities of European expansion are explored.
• Britain’s slave trade sets the tone for such relativities. Factual narrative citations: John Locke, English doctor and philosopher, and historian Robert Lacey.
• Gian Carlo Turchetto indulges in nostalgia for his Patria; Enrico Iozzelli writes about the pathetic response to the IMI’s return. Michele’s discharge papers analysed and Amedeo reflects on the destruction which had occurred in Naples and his native Sardinia.
• The allure of joining in the ‘feel-good’ times is explored using crass decisions to join the ‘get rich’ stock market phenomenon of 1987. There was a price to pay. Character building from the ashes is compared to Prime Minister Robert Menzies.
• Soul search of what was the Italian state of mind post WWII. Factual narrative citations: Francesco Lamendola.^[13] dispels any idea that the resistance movement was the ‘secondo Risorgimento’.
• Italy is not out of the woods; the return of the IMIs is overshadowed by the anguish at the Border States between Italy and Yugoslavia. Factual narrative citation: historian Roberto Spazzali uses the irredentism movement to prove his point about saying ‘yes’ to The Second Risorgimentocoming into effect; acrimony continues to this day.
• The Italian Partisan Resistance operating in the North of Italy is put under the microscope. Factual narrative citation: historian Christopher Duggan

Theorem Test

• No possibility of heroes; some altruism exhibited by individuals towards their kind comes to the fore.
• Political affiliations are being crafted in the officer camps.
• Claudio Sommaruga accepts that his fate was to ‘be a good Fascist’; he agonises over ending his allegiance to the cause. Gian Carlo Turchetto can quickly reconcile to the new paradigm, and Emanuele Caffiero is very reflective of his commitment to the Fascist cause.
• Fascism is compared to other events which enriched Britain, Spain, France and other states.
• From a soldier’s perspective, Amedeo Usai volunteered, as did Australian Charlie Gilbert to get off the treadmill of poverty. Charlie’s story continues in which he barely survived during the defence of New Guinea.
• The treatment of Allied POWs by the Japanese is as bad as that meted out by the Germans. Japan’s forced labourers are a result of a dragnet cast over occupied S-E Asian territories.
• The non-volunteer Italian draftees had no choice. All the Simonetti men were called up for active duty. Had they been casualties of war the Simonetti family would have been devastated.
• Claudio Sommaruga draws attention to the poor treatment of the returning IMIs. The reason was the need to keep Germany out of the communist clutches through the formation of NATO. NATO acted in the interests of the member states. Italy wanted to avoid being implicated in the Holocaust.
• The feeble attempts to reconcile IMI’s needs for recognition become the collective aftermath blotch, many years later.
• Closure for Claudio Sommaruga and Gian Carlo Turchetto is representative of their officer class. Giuseppe Summito sums up that the common Italian soldiers were handled as a ‘job lot’, they had little choice. Historian Christopher Duggan concludes that the Italian Resistance was a ruse by the Communists to gain influence out of the turmoil of the invading Allies.
• Those who did join the Repubblica Sociale Italiana – RSI under Field Marshal, Rodolfo Graziani. Some were classmates of Claudio Sommaruga; these had no qualms about taunting him for his stance; it added up to nothing. He writes that he is even persecuted by his government, ‘stab in the back’, as payback for the loyalty he had shown.

Reds Under the Bed

• The death toll of WWII is overshadowed by Communist expansionism.
• Allies take stock of the duplicity being posed by resistance movements which had to be supported. Democracy must be bastioned against the tides eroding its foundations.
• Italian politics prove to be particularly difficult to gauge and to harness. The disparate wartime coalition entities vie for influence. Churchill regrets having put effort into improving Sforza’s political capital.

Let’s Wrap This Up

• Attempts for all to bathe in ‘Liberation Glory’ need to be tempered by the factual realities of the previous two decades. Why the IMI phenomenon even existed is just cause, to be sceptical of anyone’s need, to claim glory.
• Value adding to Italy’s declaration of war onto a base of sand adds up to naught. The IMI “NO” stance must contend with the other “NO” or “ochi – Όχι”, the Greek response to Italian demands to relinquish territory.
• Germany was the beneficiary of the Italian “NO”, manpower was badly needed for armament production.
• The Volksdeutche’of Eastern Europe was to provide the cannon fodder for Germany desperately remaining in the war. Germany sucked manpower like an insatiable vortex. The Italian “NO” was inconsequential to the existential ‘big picture’ that Germany faced.
• Italy lost talented scientists such as Enrico Fermi because Italy became aligned with Germany’s racial laws.
• Amedeo Usai makes note of Germany possessing a ‘secret weapon’.
• Germany lacking a long-range bomber limited its effectiveness in the Russian campaign. The development of the jet engine is explored.
• IMI incarceration was not unique, it had parallels throughout Europe, China and the Pacific theatre of war. The killing fields continued to be propagated by the Ustaša, the Chetniks, Tito’s Partisans and the Russians.
• Michele’s oral history of the war and written memoirs by Amedeo Usai and Claudio Sommaruga point to the neglect by Italian politicians to acknowledge the failures of the military to safeguard its soldiers. It would be therapeutic to have some form of public acknowledgment of IMI suffering; men, through no fault of their own, were cut off from the International Red Cross and family.
• The ‘Marshall Plan’and how money was allocated is explored. Factual narrative citation: Professor Michela Giorelli (UCLA) and Nicola Bianchi (Kellogg School of Management) present a paper ‘The Role of the Marshall Plan in the Italian Post-WWII Recovery’.
• Quick revisit of the occupations of the peninsular by foreign powers seeking to replace their versions of the Roman Empire, often the Church of Rome being complicit.
• Summing up Italy’s misadventures, one bright spot is Giuseppe Attisani retaining some wealth from his expeditions to North Africa. Italy’s cash burn resulted in the impoverishment of the Italian people.
• The Bolshevik Revolution affected Italy’s politico; Communism could find a niche alongside the Pope and the Mafia.
• Italy should have been amongst the loser states and been occupied just like Germany. Factual narrative citation: Edward C Banfield.^[14]

---

[1] Gli internati militari italiani nei Lager del Terzo Reich

[2] Editor: Philipp Oswalt et al for the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation

[3] Zur Geschichte der Opfer des Nationalsozialismus in Dessau-Roßlau (5):Zwangsarbeiter

[4] Gli internati militari italiani nei Lager del Terzo Reich

[5] I.M.I. Internati Militari Italiani nati nel Comune di Pistoia. Deportati Nei Lager Nazisti 1943 – 1945

[6] Book: Die Deutschen in Syrmien, Slavonien, Kroatien und Bosnien” Translated by Henry A. Fischer

[7] Dr. Sepp Janko, the leader of the Kulturbund and the ‘Führer’ of the Danube Swabians as recognised by Heinrich Himmler, attained an asylum visa out of Yugoslavia from the Red Cross and, under the pseudonym Jose Petri, fled to Nazi-sympathetic Argentina.

[8] Document Reference K-86936, Supreme Headquarters Allied Evaluation and Dissemination Section, German Concentration Camps

[9] Book: COMMAND DECISIONS, Chapter 22, The Decision To Halt at the Elbe

[10] Acronym for: ‘Special Allied Airborne Reconnaissance Force’

[11] Antonio “Tonino” Guerra (16 March 1920 – 21 March 2012) was an Italian poet, writer and screenwriter who collaborated with some of the most prominent film directors in the world.

[12] Homer: The Odyssey, translated by Robert Fitzgerald, Everyman’s Library Page117

[13] ‘The Courier of the Regions’ (23/11/2015).

[14] The Moral Basis of a Backward Society Page 23

§ Mining Memory

• Our Father and uncles were called up and survived WWII. The Australian Charlie Gilbert enlisted to escape the pervasive poverty after the Great Depression. The Vogels connected the German immigration into the Balkans post the Ottoman retreat. Elements for the composition of a remarkable story.
• The basis for conviction in one’s capabilities to explore is established.
• Methodology developed to be the foundational logic of the book’s structure.
• Working with memory, connecting the dots is not easy but doable if important enough.
• Foundations to forming opinions explored.
• The limitation perceived with genealogical research leads to a table to provide a simple understanding of genetic dilution over several generations.
• The importance of knowing where we come from supported by Luc Ferry^[1]

Michele & Maria Concetta Pre WWII

• Known oral history of our Mother and Father blended into the documented historical narrative of the times.
• Father’s paternal aunt, Caterina had gone to North Africa North Africa to better herself.
• Another known adventurism was that Francesco Ielapi going to join in the Spanish Civil War.
• Contextual review made of the Spanish Civil War and its relationship to the Nazi ‘Final Solution’ with reference made to Ernest Hemmingway’s book ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’.There is also a dovetailing into Father’s being interned in Germany to work for the Junkers aircraft factories in Dessau.
• Fascist education implemented; Father participates in the young Fascist movement but is aware that something is not quite right. Older folks participated in Fascist social events; nationalism grew.
• Brigands attend church services in Francavilla.
• Class structures at the grassroots level. Day-to-day living in Francavilla. Father’s life is in contrast with one more socially privileged: Claudio Sommaruga^[2] another who shall become interned courtesy of the Germans.
• Mother benefited from the mandatory education enforced by Fascism. She grew up whilst her father went to Abyssinia. Life was harsh on a female, Mother suffered from the cultural customs of the times.

A Macro View: Poor Logic and Neurotic Reasons

• My capacity to interpret the goings on around my life is narrated.
• Factual narrative citations: Personal interpretation of John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’to light-heartedly explore a ‘thought bubble’ concept of ‘fate’.
• Introduction to Historian, Professor Victor Davis Hansen (AKA VDH) and his narrating empiric logic and reasons for the escalation of German border wars to a Global Conflict.
• VDH’s packaging of the power plays makes for a sombre tutorial of the resulting worldwide carnage. VDH says that from Hitler’s point of view, it was a matter of it “seemed like a good idea at the time”.
• Dots between all major participants of the war are connected taking prior related events into account.
• German hubris caused it to miss out on the lesson which history provides ‘gratis’ as one of Murphy’s Laws to the effect, that ‘anything which can go wrong will go wrong’. The Japanese weren’t much smarter.
• The Pacific war is compared to Achilles’ struggle with his nemesis Asteropaeus of Greek mythology aided and abetted Zeus and his wife Hera taking opposing sides.
• Factual narrative citations: Sir Robert Menzies about leadership and VDH ‘Therapeutic Society’, one that emphasizes pacifism.
• Factual narrative citations: Joshua Philipp’s essay ‘Nazism, Fascism, and Socialism Are All Rooted in Communism’.
• Summary of strategically critical events of the war.
• The war draws to an eventual end in Europe, and attention is drawn to the difficulties of managing the peace. Stalin’s duplicity was finally revealed, and Churchill pronounced the establishment of the ‘Iron Curtain’.
• Hitler was representative of Germans resenting post-WWI imposts, however, the reality was that Germany was not occupied nor were its cities bombed. Supposed punitive sanctions were not poorly implemented. Post-WWII was managed much differently, Germany was occupied but the Communist spectre forced an overarching agenda; NATO was formed.
• Italy post-war became an oddity for having sacked its leader. The allies deemed that it had suffered enough. The threat of communism ameliorated the possibility of imposing harsher actions.
• VDH cuts across the debates that raged about Japan holding out and that the nukes saved an invasion. He offers that the firepower in place included 2200 B29 bombers. If necessary, these would have rained an incendiary apocalypse on all Japanese cities.
• Antiwar sentiment explored. Factual narrative citations: Edwin Starr’s song War “What Is It Good For?”: VDH cites military history recorded by Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Polybius through the studies of the Persian Wars, Peloponnesian Wars and the Punic Wars. VDH’s opinion that understanding is paramount to deterring aggressors is explored via more contemporary geopolitics.
• Bitter end of the War in which the US and Britain end up with the ‘albatrosses’ of Italy, Japan and Germany as their ‘booty’ for winning the war. Communism rebranded as United Soviet Socialist Russia (USSR) is ascending.
• Has the West lost its way by university emphasis on “Gender and Peace Studies”?

§ War Unravels Fascism

Simonetti Family Surface Into Flaming Waters

• Hitler withdrew from the League of Nations,war was coming, Churchill knew.
• The Spanish Civil War was a training ground for Messer’s Hitler and Mussolini. Their skills in battle planning however did not improve. Ernest Hemingway ‘reports’ from the other side of that war.
• Italy has win in Libya became the high-water mark for Fascism. Italy lacked natural resources for further adventurism.
• Simonetti’s extended family braces for war.

Volksdeuchen Vogels Collide With Nazis

• The logic for conceptually exploring ‘Bosphorus Phosphorus’; Eastern Europe’s troubled past comes into view contemporarily melded with toxic German ‘Aryan Race’ideology and the duplicitous relationship between the Nazis and Yugoslav Monarchy.
• Factual narrative citations: Helga Horiak Harriman looks at the classification of people with German heritage concerning the spreading of war fronts. A US Army pamphlet and an Australian Government Research Paper explain the Balkan quandary.
• The ‘Volksdeutschen’ reviewed in light of their Hapsburg past. In the war, the complex nature of their ethnic existence is explored.
• Franz Vogel, a Catholic, marries a Serbian Orthodox, Desanka Çarević.
• Known oral history of the Vogels is blended into the documented historical narrative of the times. Franz Vogel became embroiled in the military of both Yugoslavia and later the Waffen SS.
• Atrocities abound, perpetrated by Ustashi military units including the killing of Franz Vogel’s father-in-law Pavao Çarević.
• Factual narrative citations: Dr Valentin Oberkersch^[3] reviews Yugoslavia’s entry into the war. Helga Horiak Harriman explores the obligations being forced on ‘Volksdeutschen’, critical in this is the formation of the Waffen SS 7th SS-Volunteer Mountain Division Prince Eugene’.
• My anecdote of the ‘Ustaša’relates to an acquaintance made in Melbourne; his family was executed by the group.

North Africa: Pietro, Bruno, Chic’Antuoini and Charlie Gilbert

• Simonetti brothers and their brother-in-law make up their participation in the North Africa battles. Australian, Charlie Gilbert is the in the clean-up crew which eventually dislodges Italy and Germany from that theatre of war.
• Pietro ends up in Cobram and Charlie and his family settle in a hamlet west of the town in Northern Victoria.
• Bruno and Chic’Antuoini are interned by the British in South Africa.

§ Greek Occupation Turmoil & Resistance Movements

• Retelling of Father’s war memoirs, begin in the awful shack in which we lived. The setting has eerie similarities to the conditions, he experienced as a POW in Dessau.

Fellow Travellers: Amedeo, Emanuele, Gian Carlo, Giuseppe & Michele

• Introduction of those Italians caught up in the German dragnet after Italy signed the Armistice with the Allies.

Greeks’ Aggravated Courting & Shotgun Wedding

• What Greece was, socially and politically, a tutorial.
• Greeks say ‘no’ to Italy’s overtures. Prime Minister of Greece, Ioannis Metaxas had what it took to snub his nose at the Italians; unlike Hitler and Mussolini, he had military training.
• The Italian Campaign falters, eyewitness accounts are telling that the invasion of Greece was lost before it started. Theatres of war are explored from various perspectives: British, Spain’s neutrality and German intent.
• Australian Prime Minister, Robert Menzies was haunted by the Battle of Gallipoli, the first of Churchill’s, not so better moments, in the opening of the Eastern Front during WWI.
• Menzies has his ghost to deal with as a result of Australia’s sending pig iron to Japan. Factual narrative citations: Menzies book: ‘Afternoon Light’, some memoirs of men and events.

Michele, the Australian and Andartiko Greek Resistance

• Germany distracted from other matters to complete the invasion of Greece dubbed ‘Operation Marita’.
• Charlie Gilbert’s war waxes and wanes and spends a brief time as a POW of the Germans in Greece. That battle is documented by The Australian War Memorial.
• Greece is maltreated by the Bulgarian occupational army. Britain finds it difficult to react to the advancing Germans in Greece; all made worse by the splinter partisan paramilitary groups backed by disparate political ideologies.
• Greek resistance has the hallmarks of a civil war in which the Communist EAM/ELAS is pitted against EDES under Colonel Napoleon Zervas.
• The Italian occupation of Greece is related to the film Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’ set on the island of Kefalonia. The island is also the setting for atrocities inflicted by Wehrmacht’s 104 Jäger Division on the Italian Acqui Division (33ª Divisione Acqui) after the armistice.
• Michele’s induction and assignment to Greece are explored in the melee of events that had occurred before his arrival. He was stationed in Ioannina and an area under threat from Colonel Napoleon Zervas. Factual narrative citations: Inside Hitler’s Greece: The experience of occupation, 1941-1944 by Mark Mazower and, Department of the Army Pamphlet, No. 20-243, Pages 28-29, US Army Centre for Military History website.
• Greek political turmoil during the occupation is put into perspective of the times including the civil revenge killings going on.
• Charlie Gilber is reassigned to fight in the Pacific War.

Balkan Calamities with Fascists, Royalists & Communists

• Postage stamp summary of the state of the war.
• Himmler targets Volksdeutschenmen to fill the ranks of the infamous Waffen-SS newly formed ‘7th SS-Volunteer Mountain Division Prince Eugene’. Franz Vogel’s transition into the group is explored.
• The rise of two diametrically opposing movements, that of Mihailović’s Chetnik and Tito’s (Josip Broz) partisan is explored.
• German intelligence fails to distinguish between the two movements leading to dire consequences for its war effort. The Fascists concocted Ustaša also in the wings to wreak savagery on Serbs.
• Michele and Franz Vogel on the same side for a brief time.
• Franz Vogel’s participation in ‘Prince Eugene’is explored through documented battles. The Vogel family’s exit from Croatia due to security risks faced by ethnic Germans from the Ustaše death squads is followed as part of the mass exodus. Factual narrative citations: Dr Valentin Oberkersch.^[4]

§ Did Anyone See That Coming?

Pre-Armistice Quandary

• The Italian body politics’ immaturity is dramatically displayed by the sequence of events that followed the dismal planning and reasons for going to war.

Italian Campaign via Pizzo 3 September 1943

• Allies launch ‘Operation Husky’ invasion through Sicily. The Italian mainland is breached at Pizzo by Montgomery’s Eighth Army across the straits of Messina code-named ‘Operation Baytown.
• Simonetti farm ‘Farco’is bombed. Maria Concetta recalls ‘ee’mericani’camping along the Angitola River skirting the Attisani ‘Pontana’
• The Government and Monarchy abandoning Rome is interpreted by comparison with the British Royal Family remaining in London.
• Winston Churchill’s influence over the future of Italy is explored.
• Mussolini by then frail, formed the Republic of Salò retaining the confidence of only General, Rodolfo Graziani.

Italian Mainland Sitting Ducks Army

• Father’s oral history is augmented by diarised accounts by Amedeo Usai, Gian Carlo Turchetto, Claudio Sommaruga and finally by Giuseppe Sammito’s brief but laconic observations of his internment.
• Claudio Sommaruga’s account of the fiasco of his Garrison being dismantled by the Germans makes for a grim realisation of the pathetic chain of command in the Royal Italian Army.

Armistice Turbulence Causes Catastrophic Risk Management

• The British deceptions, amongst which, one was code-named ‘Operation Mincemeat’ are explored. Factual narrative citations: Mark Mazower^[5] connects the dots to Churchill’s failed attempt to open a war front through the Dardanelles in WWI.
• A memoir connection for Charlie Gilbert’s dislike of Germans is made via General Löhr’s capture of Crete in May 1941.
• Michele’s war service is put in the context of Greek partisan attacks on German patrols.
• Italian occupation at odds with German intent for brutality to maintain control.
• Germans dupe General Carlo Vecchiarelli into believing that there would be orderly demobilisation of the Italian Army in Greece and possibly allowed to return home.
• Antonio Gandin commander of 12,000 strong Italian 33ª Divisione Acquiresists German demands, resulting in massacres of Italians Michele could well have been in that Division. The atrocities were committed by 104. Jäger-Division’ which earlier in the year, had been engaged with ‘Einsatzstaffel der Deutsche Mannschaft (ES d. DM)’ to which Franz Vogel, was assigned to, in Croatia. Factual narrative citations: Mark Mazower in a chapter headed ‘This Heroic Madness’.
• Factual narrative citations: The number of Italians interned is given by Gerhard Schreiber.^[6]
• Propaganda initiated for Germany to recruit Italians for Mussolini’s RSI army.
• The Greek partisan war of attrition summarised by Winston Churchill in parliament and blogger Jack Ray, provides a less political opinion.

§ Michele Simonetti Caught in Armistice Heartburn

Royal Italian Army Besieged in Greece

• The big picture narration shifts to detailed individual accounts of the effects of war on the soldiers.
• Italian POWs were known as Internati Militari Italiani (IMIs).
• Factual narrative citations: Silvia Pascale’s book “Una Candella Illumina Il Lager,the diarised testimonial written by Lieutenant General Gian Carlo Turchetto is read and interpreted in Italian. Some passages quoted are personal translations.
• The Italian and German occupation of Greece is explored. Factual narrative citations: Mark Mazower^[7]
• Andartes at war with Italians vacillates between hate and tolerance.
• The Greek Spartan amongst us, George Spiliotacoploulos in contemporary times; his father was in the Hellenic Navy. Greek politico effects on the family forced his grandfather to immigrate to Egypt. Oral history thereafter matches events from a Greek perspective.
• Eyewitness account of his harrowing internment process by Fiorelli Angiolini. Ivo Cardini, a mechanic confirms the poor state of Italian mechanisation. Ivo tries to join the Albanian resistance, but their desperate state forces a rethink.

Diarised Transportation Journeys: Greece-to-Germany

• Routes out of Greece mapped on Google Earth.
• Conditions on board livestock rail wagons deteriorate over time.
• Michele’s passage out of Giannina is diarised by Emanuele Caffiero.^[8] The diary is translated and a synopsis narrates key events.
• Introduction to Hungarian Mike Kovacs’ family’s oral history of the refugees streaming out of the Eastern European countries.
• Amedeo Usai and Giuseppe Sammito who also ended up in Dessau are introduced into the narrative. Ivo Cardini was another of those who was sent to Dessau. Their collective inputs enabled piecing together the Stammlagersystems and the conditions suffered by the Italians.

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[1] French philosopher, politician, and a proponent of secular humanism. Former Minister for Youth, National Education and Research of France

[2] Claudio Sommaruga Memoirs “L’Altra Resistenza; (“The Other Resistance”; purposely translated by the author)

[3] Book: Die Deutschen in Syrmien, Slavonien, Kroatien und Bosnien” Translated by Henry A. Fischer

[4] Book: Die Deutschen in Syrmien, Slavonien, Kroatien und Bosnien” Translated by Henry A. Fischer

[5] Inside Hitler’s Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44

[6] Book: The Italian soldiers interned in the concentration camps of the Third Reich 1943-1945

[7] Inside Hitler’s Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44

[8] Quaderni, del Centro di Studi Sulla Deportazione e ‘Linternimento Volume 9, Rome ANEI. Translated by the author, from original Italian text.