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“The Nation and its Risorgimento First and Foremost”: Pirelli and the Fight for Liberation, 1943-1945

“The nation and its Risorgimento first and foremost”: these were the words that Cesare Merzagora used when reminding the shareholders’ meeting of 11 December 1945 of Pirelli’s priorities in the dramatic period of the Nazi occupation of Italy after the armistice was signed on 8 September 1943. The German military authorities took control of the factory in Bicocca, which was still operating despite the bombings. On 16 September, the company set up its “Ufficio T”, which saw to relations with the Germans concerning production and plant discipline, and which reported to the central management of the Cables and Rubber departments. But everyone in the company, from the Pirelli family to the management and the workers, were opposed to this situation, and there was constant sabotage within the factory and active support was given to the Resistance. The documents preserved in the Historical Archive of the Foundation testify to the continuous sabotage of production, particularly aiming at items needed by the Germans for military use. Letters sent by the Germans in the summer of 1944 denounce “the lack of goodwill of those responsible” as the main cause for the low production levels of flexible couplings for motor vehicles. And a note dated 7 June 1944 on the meeting between the company and the Germans concerning Pirelli’s failure to deliver seals for breathing apparatus ends with the words: “the German authorities are extremely irritated with Pirelli and its bosses because they are convinced that nothing is being done to meet their needs.” Even the attempt to send workers to Germany for the Nazi regime was hindered, as we read in the “Memorandum concerning the actions taken to prevent the transfer of our employees to Germany” dated 14 June 1945 and signed by the engineer Paolo Trotto: the request to provide 20% of the workers and 50% of the foremen in the rubber department and 10% of the workers in the cable branch for transfer to Germany was never implemented, thanks to the intervention of Alberto Pirelli, the managing director. “The resistance carried out by the Pirelli company”, the memorandum says, “achieved the desired result for, in the face of continuous opposition, the German authorities eventually stopped applying further pressure for the transfer of personnel”. Along with the sabotage and the opposition to the demands of the Germans, the company gave considerable support to the Resistance in the form of food, vehicles, tyres and financial assistance, which ultimately reached a total of 60 million lire. To go back to Cesare Merzagora’ speech, of all the companies in Lombardy, Pirelli was “one of the most important centres in the fight for liberation”. The fight also involved strikes and workers’ struggles, in which the Milanese company was always a protagonist. In March 1943, a wave of strikes spread out from Turin to all of northern Italy, giving the working class a voice after twenty years of Fascism. This was the first in a series of strikes that culminated in the insurrectionary general strike of 25 April 1945. During this period, the workers were savagely repressed and, especially from the factories in the Sesto San Giovanni and Milano Greco areas, there were mass deportations to Nazi concentration camps. On 23 November 1944, the strike called by the workers at Pirelli Bicocca in response to the execution by firing squad of 15 anti-Fascists in Piazzale Loreto on 10 August – which included two Pirelli workers, Libero Temolo and Eraldo Soncini – led to the arrest of 183 people. The company management and Alberto Pirelli himself contacted the German authorities to request the workers’ release but, as we see in the archival documents, the reply was that “the SS deemed it necessary to set an example” and “chose Pirelli workers rather than those of other companies on strike because the Pirelli workers are the best looked after and yet they are the ones who have been on strike the most.” And, what is more, “the company has always refrained from giving even a single name when asked for the names of the agitators.” After rejecting 27 people because they were physically unfit, the other 156 workers were deported to Nazi labour camps. 14 of them died. As Giuseppe Valota writes in his book Streikertransport. La deportazione politica nell’area industriale di Sesto San Giovanni, this was the “most important mass deportation carried out by the Nazi-Fascists from a single company, second only to that of 1,500 workers, who were taken from four factories in Genoa – San Giorgio, SIAC, Piaggio and the Cantieri Navali – on 16 June 1944.” The sacrifice paid by Pirelli workers in the struggle for liberation is commemorated in a plaque that was placed on the wall of Building 95, the gatehouse of the Bicocca plant, on 23 November 1945. It is dedicated to the “fellow workers who on the shining path to freedom were struck down by Nazi-Fascist barbarity”. Still today it is inside the Bicocca Headquarters, next to the plaque in memory of the workers who died during the First World War.

“The nation and its Risorgimento first and foremost”: these were the words that Cesare Merzagora used when reminding the shareholders’ meeting of 11 December 1945 of Pirelli’s priorities in the dramatic period of the Nazi occupation of Italy after the armistice was signed on 8 September 1943. The German military authorities took control of the factory in Bicocca, which was still operating despite the bombings. On 16 September, the company set up its “Ufficio T”, which saw to relations with the Germans concerning production and plant discipline, and which reported to the central management of the Cables and Rubber departments. But everyone in the company, from the Pirelli family to the management and the workers, were opposed to this situation, and there was constant sabotage within the factory and active support was given to the Resistance. The documents preserved in the Historical Archive of the Foundation testify to the continuous sabotage of production, particularly aiming at items needed by the Germans for military use. Letters sent by the Germans in the summer of 1944 denounce “the lack of goodwill of those responsible” as the main cause for the low production levels of flexible couplings for motor vehicles. And a note dated 7 June 1944 on the meeting between the company and the Germans concerning Pirelli’s failure to deliver seals for breathing apparatus ends with the words: “the German authorities are extremely irritated with Pirelli and its bosses because they are convinced that nothing is being done to meet their needs.” Even the attempt to send workers to Germany for the Nazi regime was hindered, as we read in the “Memorandum concerning the actions taken to prevent the transfer of our employees to Germany” dated 14 June 1945 and signed by the engineer Paolo Trotto: the request to provide 20% of the workers and 50% of the foremen in the rubber department and 10% of the workers in the cable branch for transfer to Germany was never implemented, thanks to the intervention of Alberto Pirelli, the managing director. “The resistance carried out by the Pirelli company”, the memorandum says, “achieved the desired result for, in the face of continuous opposition, the German authorities eventually stopped applying further pressure for the transfer of personnel”. Along with the sabotage and the opposition to the demands of the Germans, the company gave considerable support to the Resistance in the form of food, vehicles, tyres and financial assistance, which ultimately reached a total of 60 million lire. To go back to Cesare Merzagora’ speech, of all the companies in Lombardy, Pirelli was “one of the most important centres in the fight for liberation”. The fight also involved strikes and workers’ struggles, in which the Milanese company was always a protagonist. In March 1943, a wave of strikes spread out from Turin to all of northern Italy, giving the working class a voice after twenty years of Fascism. This was the first in a series of strikes that culminated in the insurrectionary general strike of 25 April 1945. During this period, the workers were savagely repressed and, especially from the factories in the Sesto San Giovanni and Milano Greco areas, there were mass deportations to Nazi concentration camps. On 23 November 1944, the strike called by the workers at Pirelli Bicocca in response to the execution by firing squad of 15 anti-Fascists in Piazzale Loreto on 10 August – which included two Pirelli workers, Libero Temolo and Eraldo Soncini – led to the arrest of 183 people. The company management and Alberto Pirelli himself contacted the German authorities to request the workers’ release but, as we see in the archival documents, the reply was that “the SS deemed it necessary to set an example” and “chose Pirelli workers rather than those of other companies on strike because the Pirelli workers are the best looked after and yet they are the ones who have been on strike the most.” And, what is more, “the company has always refrained from giving even a single name when asked for the names of the agitators.” After rejecting 27 people because they were physically unfit, the other 156 workers were deported to Nazi labour camps. 14 of them died. As Giuseppe Valota writes in his book Streikertransport. La deportazione politica nell’area industriale di Sesto San Giovanni, this was the “most important mass deportation carried out by the Nazi-Fascists from a single company, second only to that of 1,500 workers, who were taken from four factories in Genoa – San Giorgio, SIAC, Piaggio and the Cantieri Navali – on 16 June 1944.” The sacrifice paid by Pirelli workers in the struggle for liberation is commemorated in a plaque that was placed on the wall of Building 95, the gatehouse of the Bicocca plant, on 23 November 1945. It is dedicated to the “fellow workers who on the shining path to freedom were struck down by Nazi-Fascist barbarity”. Still today it is inside the Bicocca Headquarters, next to the plaque in memory of the workers who died during the First World War.