Further on the ‘Good Italian Soldier’” – Luigi Carmagnani: Lettere Dalla Guerra (1940–1941). Campagne Militari di Jugoslavia e Russia

Abstract

The article, in light of the study of the myth of the good Italian soldier–the so-called autostereotype and heterostereotype that seeks to portray the Italian soldier in occupied territories during the Second World War as a friendly antimilitarist forced into military uniform–focuses on the wartime journey of Italian lieutenant Luigi Carmagnani, reconstructed through letters he sent to his parents in 1940 and 1941 from the Yugoslav and Russian fronts. The narrative of this one-way correspondence with his parents can be thematically and stylistically interpreted through the lens of epistolary writing from the period of the Italian occupation of Dalmatia, during which the war is experienced as a distant conflict. In this context, the thesis put forward by some Italian historians about the absence of exoticisation and dehumanisation of the enemy in the early months of the war seems justified. This contrasts with the letters sent from the Russian front, from the very centre of the war zone, where–after experiencing personal danger–Carmagnani’s ideological convictions come to the fore, shaped by the idea of a liberating and civilising mission in Russia. Particular attention is given to the editor of the epistolary collection, Giorgio Soffiantini, who represents an important mediating instance in the enunciation process and, consequently, in the perception of the published letters. Soffiantini’s commentary on Carmagnani’s wartime journey is grounded in the axiom of love for the homeland as the sole imperative, whereby the criteria enabling the experience of a given historical period are not based on rational knowledge, but rather on mythical thinking– the very fuel of the myth of the good Italian soldier.