The Most Glorified Day: Memory and Narratives on the Normandy Landings in the Italian Daily Press

Ever since the end of the conflict, the memory of World War II (WWII) has been a key element in the reconstruction and redefinition of collective identities in both Eastern and Western Europe and even further afield. ¹ Historians have been investigating this subject for many years: they have shown how in the USA this war was widely identified as the paradigm of the ‘good war’, ² they have underlined the role of the conflict as a national myth of resistance and cohesion in the UK, ³ and they have analysed how the narratives of the ‘Great Patriotic War’ shaped (and reshaped) national identities in the USSR and Russia. ⁴ The German case has, unsurprisingly, been the most widely researched and examined, since in no other country did the war years, with all their tragic and criminal burden, become so pivotal in defining and redefining the national consciousness. ⁵

The Italian case – i.e. the object of this article – is characterized by an entanglement of different memories, which are the consequences of the complex history of the country during the war. In fact, Italy entered the war on one side and ended it on the other; it held the role of an invader and endured that of the invaded (by both the Germans and the Allies); it was a theatre of military operations for almost 2 years; it experienced a 20-month (anti-fascist as well as anti-German) civil war.

Such a variety of experiences inevitably resulted in a multiple amalgam of memories, both public and private, which interacted and competed with one another. ⁶ In the past two decades, scholars have comprehensively investigated many aspects of this collision of memories: the changing role assigned to the Resistance ⁷ ; the recollection of Nazi crimes and of Allied bombings ⁸ ; the deletion of conflictual or painful episodes, such as the expulsion of many Italians from the eastern border, ⁹ the Russian campaign, ¹⁰ and the internment camps ¹¹ ; and the way that trauma and mourning shaped a new acceptation of` citizenship. ¹²

However, historians have almost always focused on the national level, both when considering the objects of memory and when dealing with those who produced them. In fact, they have seldom paid attention to the memory of WWII as a world conflict or to narratives from other countries. Given the authentic global nature of the war and of its outcomes, ¹³ this is a gap that deserves to be filled.

This article investigates the Italian memory of WWII as a global war in which Italy played only a limited role. Put another way, it focuses on how parts of the conflict that took place outside of Italy were remembered and narrated in the national public discourse.

In conducting this investigation, I have selected one of the pivotal moments in the WWII narrative – the Normandy landings – and researched how these were treated in Italian daily newspapers of different political allegiance. I have settled on five publications that represent three different perspectives on international affairs and internal politics: the pro-western Il Corriere della Sera and La Stampa; the communist L’Unità and the socialist (and pro-Russian until 1956) Avanti!; and the right-wing Il Tempo, which was strongly anti-communist and also deeply influenced by a patriotic and even nationalist rhetoric. Given that the role played by La Stampa and Il Corriere in building the image of the landings is by far the most important, I will analyse them first before turning to the other dailies for examples of different ways of thinking.

The timespan of the article is limited to two decades – from 1945 to around 1968 – because the subsequent Italian public's attitude to international affairs, the USA, the USSR and war in general changed radically, as did the way WWII was remembered.

Before delving into the analysis in earnest, it is important to linger briefly on the key concept of ‘memory’. As it is impossible to provide exhaustive definitions or bibliographic references on such a wide subject, I will limit myself to explaining how the word is used in this study.

The concept of memory is used solely in reference to the acceptation of collective memory ¹⁴ : the object of the analysis is therefore not the individual memory ‘incorporated’ in a single brain but rather the inter-individual representations of the common past. Memories of this kind have much in common with narratives, as they both ‘live’ in the public discourse and involve a process of transmission and communication. ¹⁵ An important consequence is that collective memories that are not embedded in individuals can be exported and imported from one community (of memory) to another. ¹⁶ As we will see, this is exactly what happened to the memories (and/or the narratives) of the Normandy landings. Furthermore, memories of this kind frequently perform an important function in building collective identities. In this respect, their historical accuracy is less important than the meaning they communicate, the values they convey and the ways of behaving they foster. Consequently, they can, to some extent, be compared to myths.

1. A myth in the making: the transnational memory of the Normandy landings

In western countries, the Normandy landings of 6 June 1944 probably constitute the most famous single event of the war, although the memory of it was shaped differently in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. ¹⁷ In Italy, despite the fact that the country was not directly affected by them, the landings enjoyed widespread fame and were considered to be of great importance – or at least this is what can be inferred from the analysis of La Stampa and Il Corriere. Both newspapers, in fact, paid great attention to these events from the very beginning of the post-war period.

In as early as June 1946, the Italian writer and journalist Giulio Caprin sent a report to La Stampa from Normandy that immediately treated the area as a key lieu de mémoire ¹⁸ and incorporated many elements of the rapidly developing D-Day myth. Caprin described the beaches that were returning to their traditional touristic uses while still bearing the marks of the war (sunken ships, German bunkers and even dangerous mines). He then recalled the landings, in lyric tones and not without irony:

West of Rivabella lays a coastline of sea resorts, stretching almost uninterruptedly for twenty kilometers, which is called, quite pretentiously, the nacre coast. Beyond Courselles the comforts and luxuries for bathers are scattered and dispersed up to Isigny, on the Vire's mouth. All together, they make sixty kilometers of open and sandy coastline where, two years ago, on the 6^th of June, the unprecedented might of the Anglo-American landing appeared and took ground through the ruins of the ‘unconquerable’ Atlantic wall, which had been torn down by ‘endless lines of bombers’. ¹⁹

In short, these articles contain the three main elements of the representation of D-Day in the so-called ‘independent press’ (i.e. the private newspapers that were not owned by any party but tended to support the Christian Democrat government): D-Day as the turning point of the war; the invasion as a liberation, which implied the idea of the just war; and the celebration of the power of the western allies, especially of the United States. In 1946, such a narrative was not yet clearly established, and some of its central conclusions were still to be drawn. This happened in the following years and resulted in the creation of a genuine myth, whose culmination can be dated to 1962–1964. Before describing the outcomes of that process, however, it is important to take note of how it worked and what sources it drew upon.

The first key aspect that should be noted is the transnational dimension of this phenomenon. Most of the memories of the Normandy landings conveyed by La Stampa and Il Corriere were imported to Italy from abroad via book reviews, ²² reports from foreign correspondents ²³ and articles acquired from the international press and literary agencies. The distinction is mainly analytic and the three categories often overlapped: an article from a foreign correspondent could deal with a recent publication on the subject, pieces from literary agencies were frequently excerpts from books and news from abroad seems often to have been based on reports from news agencies. Moreover, many articles written by Italian journalists drew on foreign news reports and publications.

As a whole, these wide-ranging sources worked together to bring to Italian readers an echo of British, American and, sometimes, French public discourses: celebrations, controversies, odd facts and even gossip concerning the war and its protagonists. To give some examples, in 1946, Il Corriere quoted a report by Montgomery, published in the London Gazette that glorified the ‘exceptional precision of Allied plans’ ²⁴ ; in 1951, the ‘special correspondent’ Indro Montanelli sent from Paris a panegyric of Eisenhower, in which he outlined the career and praised the exceptional organizational abilities (clearly evident on D-Day) of the newly appointed supreme NATO commander ²⁵ ; 7 years later, the newspaper reported the ‘warm message’ sent by Churchill to De Gaulle ‘on the occasion of the 14^th anniversary of the landing’. ²⁶

Among the different kinds of articles that took inspiration from foreign sources, translations of books or interviews seem to have played a prominent role. Although not numerous, these were usually published over many days, weeks or even months and were always given pride of place in the newspapers, which also publicized them enthusiastically. ²⁷ Their authors were primarily famous scholars or protagonists of the war, and their names were widely known: La Stampa published the excerpts from Defence of the West: Some Riddles of War and Peace by Basil Liddel Hart (London 1950), ²⁸ while Il Corriere acquired the exclusive rights to Bernard Montgomery’s memoirs ²⁹ and, even more importantly, those of Winston Churchill, the publication of which lasted for more than 5 years. ³⁰ The Normandy landings were in these cases placed in the context of a wider narrative, which probably boosted their impact on the reader.

Translations were not the only way foreign narratives entered the Italian public discourse. In fact, Italian journalists writing about the event often drew upon studies, memoirs and official reports published abroad and thereby took inspiration from British, ³¹ American, ³² French ³³ and even German works. This was probably a direct consequence of the minor attention for the landings shown by Italian historiography in the early post-war years ³⁴ ; but this is an aspect that falls out of the scope of this article.

The presence of German-produced narratives, which is far from infrequent, shows that the importation of memories was a more complex process than a mere ‘Americanization’ (or ‘Anglo-Americanization’). In fact, such complexity is a second key aspect of the creation of a standard narrative on the D-Day. It was especially in the late 1940s and the 1950s that a number of memoirs, diaries and interviews by German protagonists of the war appeared in Italian newspapers (with the notable exception of left-wing ones). For example, La Stampa published the memoirs of Heinz Linge, ‘the former Führer's waiter’, ³⁵ Il Tempo printed those of Franz Von Papen ³⁶ and Il Corriere featured a series of articles dedicated to Rommel by Lutz Koch. ³⁷ German generals featured most prominently: Il Corriere obtained the exclusive Italian rights to interviews of them conducted and collected by Liddel Hart ³⁸ ; La Stampa, in turn, published excerpts from Rommel's memoirs, ³⁹ which were published simultaneously in Britain – again by Liddel Hart ⁴⁰ – and had already been partially translated into Italian. ⁴¹

German memories (or at least the kind of German memoirs quoted before) offered a slightly different representation of the landings. First, the event was obviously portrayed as a defeat and not a victory; secondly, responsibility for the defeat was attributed to Hitler's decision-making, which prevented the field commanders from defending against the invasion with any effectiveness. ⁴² However, this narrative was not directly opposed to the Allied one as it did not question its basic assumptions regarding the bravery of the soldiers, the ability of the leaders, the power of the Anglo-American armies as a whole and, above all, the righteousness of the anti-Nazi cause. Naturally, there was some room for tension between western and German representations. Should the success of the landings be blamed on Hitler or credited to the Allies? Was it a triumph or a tragedy? However, there was also potential for complimentary views and mutual confirmations: both narratives considered the landings a turning point ⁴³ ; both denounced Hitler and his regime (albeit from different standpoints) ⁴⁴ and, above all, both sides recognized the strength and determination of the other ⁴⁵ and, in doing so, indirectly talked up their own qualities.

In fact, complementarities apparently prevailed over differences, and the two narratives seem to have merged into a shared representation that was richer and more complex than the original ones. The basic Anglo-American elements of the memory of D-Day were integrated with the ‘German’ point of view, and the merger added many details to the story and, most importantly, confirmed the faults, guilt and perversions of Hitler and the Nazis. Put another way, the combination provided the basic justification for the notion of a just war. This was not fortuitous, but rather the result of two crucial factors, namely, the general ‘rehabilitation’ of Germany that took place during the Cold War and the way such narratives were received and interpreted by the Italian press.

The first factor is an issue that goes far beyond the scope of this article: after 1947, the political priorities of the struggle against communism gave rise to a general shift in the western approach to Germany. One of the most important changes led to the diffusion of the myth of the ‘clean Wehrmacht’, as opposed to the criminal Nazi regime, a legend originally fashioned by German officers (and soldiers) ⁴⁶ that received strong support in both the USA and the UK. ⁴⁷ The contraposition between a ‘clean’ Wehrmacht and a hideous regime was easily incorporated into western narratives, including those about the Normandy landings.

Moreover, this process took place in the Italian press. In 1950, an Il Corriere reporter wrote about ‘good fortune’ of meeting Franz Halder, a former army chief of staff and ‘the last German general who had the courage to tell Hitler, who insisted on the Atlantic Wall, some truths that the ex-corporal did not like to hear’. ⁴⁸

The Italian newspapers autonomously blended the two narratives. For instance, the title given to an excerpt from Churchill's memoirs published by Il Corriere was taken from General von Rundstedt's blunt plea to General Keitel – ‘Make peace, you idiots!’ – despite the fact that the Germans’ role in Churchill's account was minor. It was the newspaper's decision to focus on them and thus to provide its own interpretation. ⁴⁹ This was a process of reception and adaptation of foreign narratives, which is a third key aspect of the creation of a standard memory of D-Day in the Italian press. Far from merely translating imported views, this gave an active role to the Italian readership and especially to the journalists who served as intermediaries between foreign cultural products and the general public in Italy.

The process worked in different ways. The merging of Anglo-American and German narratives was one, but there were others. Firstly, choices had to be made about which episodes of the war to focus on, and here, we discern a distinction between the moderate press (La Stampa and Il Corriere) and the right- and left-wing press (Il Tempo, L’Unità, and Avanti!). Whereas the former devoted tens, if not hundreds, of articles to the Normandy landings, the latter paid much less attention to them, preferring to concentrate on other wartime events. Il Tempo opted for the great deeds of Italian armies in Russia and Africa, and the socialist and communist newspapers focused on the Soviet War, especially the Battle of Stalingrad. Writers from the three papers also made careful selections in order to highlight happenings and experiences that best suited the political leaning of their respective publications, as we shall see later.

Secondly, there was a tendency to use events, images and concepts that were well known to Italy in order to make foreign narratives easier to understand. In the case of the Normandy landings, this is apparent in the Italian journalists’ use of the expressions vallo atlantico (‘Atlantic wall’) and fortezza Europa (‘Fortress Europe’) to describe the German defence system in the west. ⁵⁰ Echoing Axis wartime propaganda, such terms must have been widely remembered in Italy while also often used mockingly in ironic reference to their bombast (‘the unconquerable wall’ ⁵¹ ; ‘the famous “Atlantic wall” that seemed unconquerable’ ⁵² ). Similarly, the profusion of German generals in the memories of the events in Normandy can be read as a way of bringing the landings ‘closer’ to the reader, as such figures (above all Rommel) had become familiar to the Italian public during the fascist war. Indeed, Italian journalists never felt the need to explain the identity and role of German high commanders but did when referring to their Russian counterparts. ⁵³ Even in as late as 1961, when introducing an interview with field marshal Eremenko, a journalist for L’Unità wrote that ‘I do not know whether this name means anything to the reader’ but used the names of Paulus and Manstein without further clarification. ⁵⁴

Thirdly, foreign narratives were modified and/or integrated to better fit national ones. For example, great attention was paid to violence inflicted by Germans on civilians, which was an important element in the Italian memories of the war: the narrative on the Normandy campaign was therefore merged with remembrances of the massacres perpetrated by the Germans at Tulle and Oradour-sur-Glaine a few days after the landings. ⁵⁵ At the same time, the use of air power by the Allies was handled with care (as we have seen before), as it was a delicate and controversial issue in post-war Italy.

It should be noted, furthermore, that foreign narratives that directly contradicted Italian ones were normally rejected. This was the case, for example, with the depiction of Italian soldiers as incompetent, which was widespread in both Anglo-American and German memories: Italian journalists (except for left-wing ones) forcefully and openly argued against this image. ⁵⁶ There was also considerable distance between Italian and Anglo-American accounts of the Italy campaign, which was complicated to deal with. In this case, Italian journalists were clearly more critical of the Allies, who were accused of being slow to recognize the anti-Nazi outlook of the Italian people ⁵⁷ and of having allowed, because of their inner divisions, the Germans to maintain their position in the country for years ⁵⁸ and thereby pointlessly delaying the liberation of the country while imposing a ‘long, heavy martyrdom’ on the population. ⁵⁹ The easy acceptance of the memories of the Normandy landings was therefore neither the standard nor a simple matter of chance. Rather, it was the consequence of the fact that they did not convey anything that directly challenged widespread national narratives but instead filled an ‘empty space’ of memory.

2. Definition and triumph of the myth

The process described above reaffirmed and consolidated the three main elements of the representation of D-Day identified in this article. The idea that the event was the turning point of the war was repeatedly stated, for instance, by defining the operation as ‘crucial’ ⁶⁰ and ‘historic’, ⁶¹ or by describing the day as ‘the decisive twenty-four hours in contemporary history’. ⁶² The military power of the Allies, especially of the Americans, was constantly underlined, in words (‘the colossal operation’ that ‘overwhelmed the Germans’ ⁶³ ; ‘infinite technical resources’ ⁶⁴ ), and in numbers (‘9,000 ships and landing craft, 11,000 aeroplanes, 862 gliders and 190,000 men […] in the most colossal war operation in history’ ⁶⁵ ). The idea that the conflict was a war of liberation was strengthened by talk of the ‘famous landing’ ⁶⁶ or of the ‘American parachutists who have come to give France and Europe their long-awaited freedom’. ⁶⁷

Most of all, the key themes were enhanced and enriched by what might be called sub-themes. Thus, some articles underlined the skill of the military commanders, ⁶⁸ others celebrated political leaders (especially Churchill), ⁶⁹ some centred on the complex technical and logistical issues faced by the Allies ⁷⁰ and yet others preferred to remember the sacrifices of the soldiers. ⁷¹ The most interesting, perhaps, were the articles that focused on the conflicts and disagreements between British and American leaders on the feasibility and timing of the landings ⁷² or on the ensuing campaign. ⁷³ They referred to these articles not so much because of their actual content as for their political relevance. In fact, what journalists were really interested in was the impact that the Allies’ decisions had on post-war settlements: the Americans and Roosevelt, above all, were accused of having underestimated Soviet ambitions and thus of having allowed the USSR to occupy half of Europe. ⁷⁴ Conversely, the British and especially Churchill were normally credited with greater foresight, ⁷⁵ which was unfortunately unheeded by others. In this case, the memory of the landings was directly connected with the present and with the Cold War atmosphere, and its political function was apparent. Moreover, the interest shown by the Italian independent press for these themes (and, as we shall see later, by Il Tempo; things were unsurprisingly different for the left-wing press) is another example of the selective way that foreign narratives were adopted in the country.

All the themes and variations described above eventually came together in a structured, consistent and coherent narrative. The process culminated in two events that took place in the early 1960s, namely, the release of the all-star Hollywood movie The Longest Day in 1962 and the celebrations, 2 years later, of the 20th anniversary of the landings. The Longest Day, a blockbuster that continued to be shown for years, was inspired by the book of the same name by Cornelius Ryan. ⁷⁶ Its most distinctive feature, besides its length and cost, was its accuracy or, more precisely, its claim to accuracy: the movie was advertised as a highly trustworthy and authentic reconstruction of the landings, ⁷⁷ and in fact, great attention (and a lot of money) was expended to produce faithful representations of historical elements, such as uniforms, buildings, ships and weapons. The movie, of course, was in no way a documentary: not only did it perpetuate all the stereotypes of the war genre, ⁷⁸ but it also displayed all the principal topoi of the western memory of the landings. On the release of the film, La Stampa and Il Corriere presented it as a genuine ‘event’ ⁷⁹ and provided ample coverage of its Paris premiere. ⁸⁰ Most of all, the two papers wholeheartedly adopted the movie's point of view as they referred to the ‘glorious Allies’ action’, the ‘event on which the fate of the world depended’ ⁸¹ and the ‘heroes of the landings’. ⁸²

If The Longest Day aided the diffusion of a standard narrative, the 20th-anniversary celebrations, which was organized and sponsored by national governments, ⁸³ sanctioned its official nature. The Italian independent press paid great attention to the celebrations, publishing many articles and reports to thereby evoke almost all the themes identified above: D-Day as the decisive event of the war, ⁸⁴ the British and Americans as the liberators, ⁸⁵ the heroism and sacrifice of the soldiers, ⁸⁶ the military and technological power of the Allies, ⁸⁷ the mistakes made by the German generals ⁸⁸ and the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis. ⁸⁹ Moreover, the journalists frequently took direct inspiration from Ryan's book or the movie adaptation. In order to better outline the features of the memory that was established, I will consider two prime examples: a series of articles by Il Corriere devoted to the last year of the war and the commemoration of the landings published in La Stampa on 6 June 1964.

Accompanied by a map of the English Channel, the La Stampa article was lengthy and highly rhetorical and made use of all the topoi on the subject:

The first British landed in France from the sky, launched from planes or brought by gliders, on 00:20 of the 6^th of June, 1944. It was the first act of the invasion. In the same days, four years before, the Navy and the Raf had rescued from nearby Dunkerque what remained of a defeated army; now the sixth airborne division was the spearhead of an army of unprecedented might, gathered throughout eighteen months of exceptional efforts for the decisive assault on Nazi empire. ⁹⁰

The article not only perfectly encapsulates all the main elements of what, by then, had become a genuine myth, but it also shows how the potential tension between differing narratives might be overcome: not by resolving the contradictions but simply by ignoring them. Thus, the Germans’ errors and weaknesses are mentioned, but so too are their strength and determination to fight (‘the Nazi fortifications [were] incomplete but still powerful’). Similarly, the article emphasizes the enormous technological power of the Allies, as well as the courage of the soldiers, the risks that they ran and, above all, the uncertainty of success: things might have gone wrong, and indeed failure might have been just around the corner. The elements were finally brought together in an epic narrative in which everyone played a part (that of the villain being reserved for Hitler), and through which potential conflicts of memory were overcome and the tragedy of war was mitigated by a triumphant and righteous victory.

The same approach is apparent in the series of articles devoted by Il Corriere to the last year of the war, although these were able to incorporate additional elements into their narrative due to their greater length. First of all, the series deliberately focused on the bravery and heroism of the common people, celebrating how the British endured the German bombing campaign, which was ‘not very different than [the bombing] of many Italian cities’ (which is thus somehow explained and ‘justified’). ⁹¹ The British people were ‘the true heroes of the war’, ⁹² and the articles underlined how D-Day ‘was a battle of soldiers, not of generals’ ⁹³ , while collecting together the memories of French people who had assisted the invasion while yearning to be free. ⁹⁴ In doing so, the articles presented the landings as a collective experience, a feat that united citizens, soldiers and leaders in a common struggle for freedom.

Secondly, the articles were highly rhetorical, for instance, in their description of how a French journalist had kissed ‘the native soil’, ⁹⁵ their telling of the names and stories of the ‘heroes of Omaha’ ⁹⁶ and their exposition of a commemorative plaque that defines the Normandy beaches ‘the gates of freedom’. ⁹⁷

Last, but definitely not least, the series was as meaningful for what it omitted as for what it included: out of seven episodes, six were devoted to the Normandy landings and one to the liberation of Rome, but none (in a series dedicated to ‘the last year of war’) dealt with the eastern front. The liberation of Europe was depicted as an exclusively western achievement, and the Russians were barely mentioned: the adoption of the Anglo-American narrative was complete. And yet there is more: the seventh article ended by stating that ‘one hundred and fifty-six thousand, at the dawn of June 6, 1944, came from the sea to bring us freedom’. ⁹⁸ The collective pronoun ‘us’ clearly reveals the ultimate purpose of the adoption of the Normandy myth in Italy: to include the Italians among the liberated (just as the Anglo-Americans were identified as the liberators) and among the victims of the Nazi regime and by implication expunge the country's role as Germany's most important ally from the national memory. ⁹⁹

3. The counter melody: left- and right-wing newspapers

In La Stampa and Il Corriere, the narratives surrounding the Normandy landings tended to become increasingly standardized in both content and style. In some specific aspects (of the heroic soldiers, the day the war changed, the gratitude of the Europeans and so forth) and also in general, the accepted way of dealing with the subject was to adopt an epic tone that was sorrowful and triumphal in equal measure.

This was indeed rhetoric, not history (not even ‘objective’ journalism, in fact); as such, it was guided more by the authors’ objectives and perspectives than by historical truth. This is apparent if we consider the approach to the subject adopted by the left- and right-wing newspapers, which was quite different than that of the ‘independent press’. L’Unità and Avanti! were unsurprisingly highly critical of the USA and their Cold War allies. Thus, in the first decade after 1945, they paid scant attention to the event that was fast becoming the pivotal element of western war narratives. L’Unità barely mentioned the landings before 1961 ¹⁰⁰ and did not devote a single article to them. A few more mentions can be found in Avanti!, but they are nevertheless few and far between and, above all, disapproving. In one case, the destruction of Caen is used to criticize the Allies ¹⁰¹ ; in another, the Hollywood movie Breakthrough (Seiler, 1950) is dismissed as an example of the triviality of war movies. ¹⁰²

However, in 1956, the Socialist party did not renew its alliance with the communists and instead openly condemned the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Correspondingly, at the end of the decade, Avanti! published two non-controversial articles on the Normandy landings, ¹⁰³ although the real change came at the beginning of the 1960s, when the publication of The Longest Day and the release of the movie finally caught the attention of both L’Unità and Avanti!. The latter, although strongly dismissing the movie's artistic value, generally accepted the basis of the narrative it conveyed: it spoke of ‘the 24 hours that decided […] the outcome of the conflict and above all the fate of humanity’, and ‘the greatest army ever seen’. ¹⁰⁴ The former, more unexpectedly, not only published a positive review of Ryan's book ¹⁰⁵ but even devoted a whole page to reprinting excerpts from it. ¹⁰⁶ Some months later, the paper carried an advertisement for the movie (which featured a picture of John Wayne) that spoke of ‘a battle that changed the world’ and ‘crucial moments’. ¹⁰⁷ It even praised the movie itself as an ‘exceptional illustrated reportage’, whose only flaw was ‘failing to pay tribute to the anti-fascist war’. ¹⁰⁸

In the following years, Avanti! basically adopted the western narrative, especially on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the landings, when it published an article clearly inspired by Ryan's Longest Day:

Dawn of June 6, 1944. From a bunker turret, artillery major Pluskat scans with a telescope the Normandy Sea. He is not particularly nervous, no enemy action is expected for that night and day, especially not in Normandy. First of all, the weather is bad, and secondly Normandy is not the closest point from the English coast. […] It is only because of a Teutonic meticulousness that Pluskat takes a last glance of the sea along the arch of the embrasure. And at that moment, he makes the dreadful discovery: he can hardly see the sea, he only sees a huge fleet, the biggest fleet he had ever seen sailing the seas […] Now no more doubts are possible, now everyone must believe it, in front of that flood that is sweeping over the Germans. ¹⁰⁹

L’Unità, for its part, continued to give scant attention to the events in Normandy but was quick to define them as ‘decisive for the result of the war’ ¹¹⁰ and as a ‘fateful date’. ¹¹¹ What is important, however, is that there were very few traces of an alternative narrative, even though it might have been opportune to develop one since the western memories had basically concealed the role played by the USSR in defeating the Nazis. Apart from making some occasional comparisons to the eastern front, ¹¹² both newspapers made little effort to call into question the importance of the landings or their liberating purpose. For Avanti!, such an attitude was likely connected to the definitive estrangement of the Partito Socialista (PSI) from the USSR. L’Unità's reasons were probably different. The daily did in fact make many criticisms of the western allies (starting as early as 1946 ¹¹³ ) and, with regard to the Normandy landings, it presented the delay in opening the ‘second front’ as proof of western resistance to waging an out-and-out anti-fascist war. ¹¹⁴ Yet, for that same reason, L’Unità could hardly question the importance and positive contribution of the Normandy landings: they represented the moment when the western powers finally fulfilled the promise made to Stalin and when the needs of the anti-fascist war prevailed over imperialist goals. Among all the elements that made up the Anglo-Saxon memory of the conflict, D-Day was the one that best fit with the celebration of the Grand Alliance, which was, in turn, a primary source of legitimacy for the foreign policies and international status of the Soviet Union. This was the reason why the communist newspaper was unable to directly counter the western memory of the landings and so resorted to under-representing it. In doing so, however, it implicitly confirmed the memory and failed to halt its spread into the Italian public discourse.

As for the right-wing and strongly anti-communist Il Tempo, we find similar outcomes constructed on a very different basis. Like Avanti! and L’Unità, Il Tempo showed little interest in the Normandy landings, although this stemmed of course from its nationalist stance rather than any sympathy towards the Soviets. The war that it was interested in was the Italian one, and the episodes it focused on were those that directly involved Italians. As part of a challenging effort to combine a defence of the country's past (including the fascist war) and its international position in the post-war period (which it firmly supported), Il Tempo developed a complex and sometimes contradictory memory of the conflict, which was made up of certain basic elements: a celebration of the heroism and sacrifice of Italian soldiers ¹¹⁵ ; a description of the Italian (fascist) war as a ‘correct’ and legitimate one ¹¹⁶ ; a clear distinction between the Italians and the Germans (with the latter depicted as cruel and criminal) ¹¹⁷ and a denunciation of the Soviet threat, which was often backdated to the early years of the war.

A detailed analysis of this memory would be beyond the scope of this article, but what is important to underline is that the Normandy landings played only a minor role in its development, as the events did not involve the Italians. On the one hand, this resulted in a lack of interest in the landings, and on the other, it meant that the newspaper had no reason to oppose the western portrayal of them. The few articles that dealt with the subject were based on foreign narratives, such as Eisenhower's memoirs, ¹¹⁸ and celebrated the ‘great Allied offensive that would lead to the defeat of Nazi Germany’. ¹¹⁹

However, as in the case of the other dailies, Il Tempo's acceptance of western narratives was also an interpretation. This is apparent if we consider the article that celebrates the 20th anniversary of the landings – which was the moment, along with the publication of The Longest Day 2 years before, ¹²⁰ when the landings received the greatest attention from the newspaper.

The article paid tribute to the standard representation of the event by defining it as ‘the final act of Hitler's tragedy’, describing the overwhelming power of the Allies, talking of the ‘myth of the European fortress’ and recalling details such as the Mulberry harbours and the favourable weather conditions. However, its main focus was the disagreement between Churchill and Roosevelt on the matter of the ‘second front’. The piece made use of a widespread topos, that of Churchill's opposition to the operation, in order to praise him for his foresight and criticize the US president for his lack of it. According to the author, Churchill had already understood the threat posed by the USSR and tried to mitigate against it by pushing through northern Italy to the Balkans. Had Roosevelt not opposed the plan, the Red Army would not have succeeded in occupying half of Europe, and the longest day would not have resulted in ‘a longer night, that still goes on’. ¹²¹

In this case, the same element that prevented the communists from criticizing the Normandy landings (i.e. it being symbolic of the cooperation between the USSR and the Anglo-Americans) was used to devalue the event: it was the day that brought freedom to Europe, but not as much as it might have done. In a word, the newspaper adapted the narrative to its principal raison d’être: anti-communism.

4. Conclusions

At the end of 1967, an interesting point of view appeared in the Avanti!: an article on the Vietnam War asserted that ‘all along their history […] Americans have always been “the liberators”. All their landings on distant beaches […] from Italy to Normandy, during the Second World War, resulted in a victory for democracy and freedom. Now, in Vietnam, things appear to be completely different’. ¹²² The point could hardly have been better stated: the Vietnam War was encouraging a profound change in attitude towards the USA, especially among the younger generation and the culture of the left. At the same time, the radical criticisms of traditional politics and values challenged all the key elements that composed the myth of the Normandy landings. The idea of a just war, the celebration of military power and heroism and the image of the Americans as liberators were all at odds with the pacifist, anti-imperialist and anti-rhetoric attitudes of the new generations. The way that the landings were remembered and evaluated was thus bound to change, and it is for this reason that I have chosen the late 1960s as the terminus ad quo of the analysis.

By the end of the decade, in fact, the myth of the ‘longest day’ was well-defined and established, and even L’Unità did not hesitate to talk of ‘the crucial date of June 6’. ¹²³ Its main features, as well as the way they were selected and combined, have been the object of the foregoing analysis. Now, in conclusion, it is important to focus on the impact of the memory and the effect it had on Italian imagination and public discourse. Although it is hard, if not impossible, to determine how an audience (in this case, the readers) interpreted a cultural product, some considerations (albeit highly hypothetical) can be made.

First, the Normandy landings became one of the most celebrated events of the war, and, what is more, the narrative about them was transformed into shared knowledge. To give an example, the expression ‘the longest day’ came to be used in all the newspapers, even in articles that had nothing to do with the landings. ¹²⁴ This was by no means because of the work of newspapers alone: movies and books also played a key role in the adoption of the term. Nonetheless, the contribution of the former (more precisely, that of the independent press) was far from irrelevant. The Italian newspapers disseminated certain details that turned the landings into a complex narrative that is rich in characters, incidents, and stories: the generals and soldiers, the acts of heroism, the technological advances, the strategy, and the places all became well known and were described repeatedly. In a word, the Normandy landings were not a simple event but rather a complex tale or, more precisely, an epic.

Moreover, the memory of the landings helped to circulate the knowledge of the western allies – the USA above all – in Italy, although obviously this could also be said of the memories of WWII as a whole when we bear in mind that memories of D-Day represent only one case study. Somehow, the narratives about the great feat of the Anglo-Americans contributed to making them better known and appreciated by audience beyond the pro-western ones because, as we have seen, those narratives were not directly opposed by any newspaper.

For all these reasons, the most important effect of the myth of the Normandy landings was probably its contribution to the profound redefining of national public discourse. As myths tend to do – and this is why it is appropriate to use such a definition, it had three different and equally essential functions: it explained the origins of present-day conditions (the Allied victory, that ‘brought us freedom’ ¹²⁵ ), it established a set of values (principally freedom and democracy), and it provided models of behaviour (heroism and a sense of duty, as well as the will to resist aggression).

It is important to underline that these elements were all but absent in the Italian political discourse – after all, had it not been so, the myth would not have been so readily accepted. The rejection of nationalism and belligerence, as well as the importance of civil rights and political liberties, were especially key components of the new republican ‘ethos’, which was under construction and drew on multiple sources, from the Resistance to Catholic culture. Thus, the influence of the myth should not be exaggerated. Its most important role, I believe, was to connect the Italian public discourse and the new democratic values on which it centred to that of the western powers. The identification of the Italians with the Allies (or with the oppressed people waiting for the Allies to free them), which was a recurrent theme in articles about the landings, ¹²⁶ had precisely this meaning: the new Italian Republic was, spiritually and politically, part of the free world and shared its basic values. The celebration of the Normandy landings, therefore, was also a celebration of Italy's reintegration into the democratic world.

Of course, the myth of the Normandy landings could easily be used as a propaganda weapon in the context of the Cold War, and so it was. Allegations that Roosevelt had ignored or misjudged Stalin's expansionist ambitions carried out this function. More generally, the idea of the just war, which implied the right to resist an aggressor, could easily serve as a justification for a strongly anti-communist approach. In this perspective, narratives of the landings were an effective propaganda instrument for the US and its Italian supporters. The flood of western narratives, and their ability to incorporate the (west) German ones, was an effective instrument for the creation of a cultural hegemony, which is different from cultural colonialism: as we have seen, the reception of narratives tends to involve, and perhaps always involves, reinterpretation. Obviously, the case of the Normandy landings, an exclusively Anglo-American feat, is extreme to some extent: things are much more complex if we look at the memory of WWII as a whole, as is illustrated by the fact that the communists could make a similar case for Stalingrad. However, this does not negate the fact that the memory of D-Day powerfully fostered pro-western feelings among the audience.

In any case, even during the ‘hotter’ Cold War years, its meaning was by no means limited to American propaganda. The communist difficulties in dealing with narratives on the landings highlight their many facets, many of which were directly connected to the shared values of the great anti-fascist alliance. In fact, the story of D-Day had a role in establishing the international, social and political post-war order, an order that neither communists nor anti-communists (with the partial exception of neo-fascists) wanted to call into question. This is probably also why the myth of the landings survived the wave of anti-Americanism and pacifism of the 1970s, and even outlived the Cold War era. ¹²⁷ This point is beyond the scope of the present research, although it might well point to a worthwhile object of future study.