Italian Communist Party 1945
Source: L'Unita, April 26, 1945;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor.
Hunted down in his lair by the glorious armies of the United Nations, the Nazi beasts are groaning in their death agony. The flag of liberty flies over Vienna. It’s only a question of days and it will be the turn of Berlin; the barbarian’s arrogance will be definitively annihilated in the proud Nazi capitol.
While the soldiers of freedom impetuously advance on all fronts, overrunning the surviving and demoralized Hitlerite divisions, a strict obligation falls on the popular patriotic forces of our country: RISE UP! CHASE OUT THE HATED INVADER! DESTROY THE FASCIST TRAITORS!
The Allied troops have begun the offensive on the Appenine front. It’s necessary to bring the decisive assistance of the national popular uprising to our brave allies.
The hour of the general offensive on the entire patriotic front has arrived! It’s necessary to attack and upset the rear of the retreating enemy with strikes, street demonstrations, and armed actions! It’s necessary to turn his retreat into a rout! It’s necessary to prevent the Nazi-Fascists from carrying out their criminal plans of destruction! It’s necessary to put the enemy in such a state that he must either capitulate or be wiped out!
Railway workers, drivers, communication specialists! Abandon work! Strike! Refuse to serve the enemies of our people! Paralyzing traffic and communication will worsen the crisis in which the enemy finds himself, and will assist the allied armies and the insurgent people to more quickly put an end to the hated invader and his base lackeys.
Workers, technicians and employees! Strike! Chase from the factories the Germans and the Fascists! Make every factory a fortress of the nation! Cry out your disgust at the slave drivers who starve you and kill you! Join en masse the Squadre d'Azione Patriottica! Arm yourselves by disarming the enemy! Block by force the planned destruction of our technical equipment! Defend the patrimony of the Nation, the instruments of your labor, the source of your life! Rally around your Comitati di Agitazione and your Comitati di Liberazione Nazionale and be ready to unleash the insurrectionary general strike!
Heroic youth of the mountains and the cities, partisans, Gapisti and Sapisti [1]! Attack on all fronts! Multiply military actions! Attack and destroy the enemy columns in retreat! Destroy the enemy’s means of transport! Defend the power stations, the factories, the public services, our homes, our women, our children! Put this dilemma before the Germans and the Fascists: surrender or perish! Physically destroy as many Fascists and Germans as you can! Above all, strike the hierarchs and the collaborators of the Nazis, the plutocrats, those who financed fascism, those who fornicated with the Germans, who are the cause of all the misery and the misfortune that have fallen upon our people! Place yourself at the head of the popular insurrection in the cities and the countryside! With the force of your arms, smash the apparatus of fascist oppression! Liberate as much territory, farm and city, as you can, from which will arise the organisms of popular power.
All Italians! Rally even more around the Comitati di Liberazione Nazionale! All united behind the tricolor banner, symbol of the unity of our people! Onward to the insurrectionary battle! From the Alps to Padania; from the smallest village to the big cities arises one sole cry: TO ARMS! INTO COMBAT FOR THE SALVATION AND THE FREEDOM OF THE FATHERLAND! Above all, let the redemption of the Fatherland be our labor!
Long live the insurrectionary general strike! Long live the national popular insurrection! Chase out of Italy the hated German! Let the base Fascists and the profiteering plutocrats die the deaths of traitors!
Long live free, democratic and progressive Italy! Long live the conquering and glorious armies of the United Nations!
Eternal glory to the heroes who fall for the freedom and independence of the Fatherland!
THE ITALIAN COMMUNIST PARTY
1. Members of resistance groups.