ABSTRACT
Manlio Calegari's Comunisti e partigiani reconstructs the history of the anti-fascist Resistance in the province of Genoa during the last three years of the Second World War. 1 The historical narration begins on 11 October 1942 when the Fascist police arrest Giacomo Buranello and twenty-five other Communist conspirators. It ends on 21 May 1945, less than a month after the end of the Second World War, in Northern Italy, when the partisan commander Bisagno (Aldo Gastaldi) dies in a car accident. 2 Both these events have a strictly local meaning, as they affect solely the Genoese Resistance. Historians, on the other hand, usually focus on events of national significance, such as the fall of Mussolini's government or the end of military operations in Italy, as the temporal boundaries of the War of Liberation from Fascism. Thus, beginning with its chronological limits, Comunisti e partigiani sets itself apart from most historical works regarding the Resistance. Calegari's choice of particular temporal limits for his work bespeaks a bottom-up approach to the Resistance. In Comunisti e partigiani, in fact, social issues, political options, and military problems are considered from the point of view of the actual protagonists of the events: mostly partisans, but also political leaders, industrial managers, clergy, and, from the other side of the line, a few German officers.
