An Italian War Diary 1943-1944
Iris Origo’s book is very well known in the English speaking world but much less so in Italy which is a shame because most non-fiction Italian books covering the period from the Italian capitulation in September 1943 to the end of the war seem to focus on either the combatants, the battles, the atrocities committed by German forces or the often controversial actions of the partigiani.
Some of these books can be hard work like Claudio Pavone’s ‘A Civil War’, a 700 page tome that frames the events of these years as in fact being three different wars: a class war, a civil war and a patriotic war.
War in Val d’Orcia however is a completely different kind of book because it was written in 1947 entirely from Iris Origo’s weekly and often daily diary entries covering the period from January 30 1943 to to July 5 1944 when her part of Tuscany was finally liberated.
It’s a very personal account of how the war impacted her, her family and the 57 farms on the large estate at La Foce that were still operating under the same mezzadria system of sharecropping that had existed virtually unchanged for hundreds of years. It was very much a paternalistic system of agricultural organization that created a co-dependency between owners and tenants and it imbued a huge responsibility on the part of Iris and Antonio Origo to look out for the welfare of the entire population on the estate in extremely difficult circumstances that quickly degenerated into anarchy and terror as Italy fell apart.
Most first hand accounts of dramatic and controversial historical events are written after the fact from incomplete memories and subjective opinions, often also adulterated to protect the reputation of the writer, but the advantage of a strict diarized account of events is that the incidents are recorded in real time and no facts are included that weren’t known at the time of writing. A personal diary of this sort also makes it easier to relate to the everyday chaos and confusion that were experienced by the Origo family and everyone with whom they came into contact.
Iris Origo was English by birth but in childhood had also spent time in Ireland and America, the two home countries of her parents. Many of her formative years however were spent living in the Medici villa in Fiesole close to Florence and by the time Italy declared war in 1940 she had been married to Marquis Antonio Origo for 16 years and together they had restored a dilapidated 7,000 acre estate a few miles south-east of Montepulciano in the Val d’Orcia. She had a newborn daughter at the outbreak of war and would go on to have a second just as the situation in Italy became difficult so her two infant children only exacerbated her family’s problems.
Iris Origo’s book survives as a fascinating historical document by a first hand witness to all three simultaneous wars, to use Claudio Pavone’s definition of this period, and there are many observations in the book that also make more sense when viewed through the lens of Pavone. Iris Origo however was not just a recorder of events and thoughts but in fact a very active participant in the events that played out in her small area of Italy because as the front line drew ever closer she was responsible for all sorts of people.
There were numerous young refugees from heavily bombed cities like Turin that she took in and for whom she provided food, clothing, schooling and shelter among the estate farms. There was also a continual stream of escaped Allied POWs who passed through the Val d’Orcia on their way to the front, many of whom had specifically sought out La Foce as news spread that vital assistance and supplies could be found here; this was a very dangerous activity by Iris and Antonio especially after the Germans had assumed full control from the Italian fascists.
As the Allies made their slow progress up the Italian peninsular the partigiani were emboldened and in fact actively encouraged by the Allies to disrupt German supply lines and they also became frequent visitors to La Foce for equipment, food and medical needs. Later on there also developed a further category of person to hide, the young sons of their farm workers who were needed by Germany when their manpower became increasingly short and who sought to imprison and execute their parents if they didn't report for duty as instructed.
Balancing the needs of all these desperate people without being caught red-handed by the increasingly frequent German patrols required tremendous resourcefulness on the part of Iris Origo as well as tactical visits by Antonio Origo to local officials to protest their innocence as they came under growing suspicion.
Iris Origo's diary entries show that there were never easy answers. Everything was a judgement call with regard to the greater good - who could be trusted? Who was pretending to be a partisan but was really a fascist spy? How much food and clothing could they realistically share with desperate POWs and partigiani without compromising the primary responsibility to their tenants?
The book has more than its fair share of heroes and villains but the lasting impression when you reach the end of the book is to marvel at the selflessness and generosity of the Italian contadini who had nothing to gain and everything to lose by helping complete strangers, despite the fact that many of these strangers were the same nationality as those who continued to drop bombs on Italy. A fact not lost on Iris Origo who commented more than once on this cruel irony of the war in Italy.
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