Cool Zone Media.
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, your weekly reminder that when bad things are happening, we can look at how people did good things in the face of the aforementioned bad things. I'm your host and the determiner of what is both cool and bad Artur Kiljoy and my guest is Susanne Cope.
Hi.
How are you Hi?
I'm great.
Thank you, Suzanne. As people probably aware because they probably listen to part one, but I continue to always make fun of people who jump in a Part two is the author of the upcoming book Women of War, The Italian Assassin, Spies and Couriers Who Fought the Nazis, which comes out from Dutton on April twenty ninth, And you should read it. And I have it in front of me, and it is a very pretty book. And I am a sucker for books that are actually pretty.
Do you have the advanced copy or do you have the hard copy?
I have a hard copy.
The hard copies just came in.
Look at that spine, Yeah, with the lady and the spine so good.
Hell yeah, Well, if you want to know what we're talking about, you're going to be sad that this is not a video medium. But I'm gonna be happy that it's not a video medium, because I was just explaining I dropped a two by four on my head yesterday. I have a large bump and wound on my nose, and you're just gonna have to imagine that pump and wound except one person who won't have to imagine it because it is also on the call. It's Sophie. Hi, Sophie.
I'm really glad this is not a video as well, because there's something going on with my camera that makes me look like Casper the friendly Ghost, which also makes me look more like my older brother, which is fun for me.
But there were so many houseplants that you all are missing by not having it be video. Yeah, the listeners, not us. We can see each other's houseplants.
I do love to plant things inside and out, and it's almost well.
It is planting season here in Brooklyn.
Yeah, planting season here in Portland. Planting season is the best.
I tried to grow potatoes because it felt on brand, but I failed last year. But this year, well I did eat. Actually I grew a couple and I ate my sweet potatoes grew last year.
Oh nice?
Anyway, wait, what are you all going to grow this year? I swear we'll do the podcast too eventually, but first y'all grow on anything. Just houseplants. It's okay this houseplants.
Oh, I'm growing many things.
I'm part of the community garden around the corner, and so I'm part of the community beds team, and so I organize what we grow in the beds that we share with everyone. So it's many things in my neighborhood of Bedstie, Brooklyn, and so we have collars, not yet, but we'll We have some kale and some I just checked on them today. A little baby radishes, very baby like baby seedlings, and lettuce, creams, tomatoes, peas, many things.
Well, if people want to hear more about Brooklyn community gardens, they can listen to my two parter about Brooklyn community Gardens. I swear I didn't set that up on purpose.
I don't know. I need to listen to it. I bet I'm going to know some folks there.
Probably New York did a whole lot with public gardens and community gardening for reels. I know we've done a lot of New York episodes. There's a couple places in the world where a lot of episodes are based in New York City is one of them, Yeah, but entirely unrelated to that. But just me continuing the credits, is that our audio engineer is Rory Hi Rory Hi Ri Hi Roor and our theme music was written for us by on Women. And this is part two of the
two parter about women of war. The Italians, spies, assassins, couriers, but in the correct order, who fought the Nazis. And we heard about one of the assassins earlier this week, but do you want to tell us about some of the more characters that you profiled.
Sure.
So we were moving from south to north in Italy like the Allied forces were, and they liberated Rome first, and so we talked about Carla, whose picture is on the front.
Of the book.
So now Rome is free and she's actually part of kind of the new ad hoc police force that is helping to keep it safe and the Nazis actually the Axis fighters. They actually left without much of a fight, which was surprising because south in Naples, they really thought that the Italians were going to just roll over and be like, yeah, take you know, whatever you want, and then they were going to bomb all this shit and
just you know, leave the city in ruins. And there was this spontaneous uprising of the Napolese Napolis Neapolitans who came together and the Nazis were so shocked that they they bombed a few things, but then they left, and so the Romans were ready to do the same thing. They passed out guns. They had the secret code word or code phrase that.
Wait, do you know what the code phrase?
Yeah, it was something like the snow falls in the mountains or something. It's in the book.
Yeah, yeah, And so they but they didn't have to use it because the Germans actually left without much.
Of a fight.
And so now they are terrorizing Florence. So it's now summertimes in Florence. And I was in Florence in the summer and it's very hot and it kind of crowded and stuff, and they're running out of food and things are awful. Theresa Matte had been active in Florence for a while and she was the one in episode one where she was the one of the four women where they really she really was pretty actively brought up as an anti fascist.
Her parents were very active in the movement and so she.
Pretty quickly became kind of go between between some of the kind of upper leadership because she was trusted and so she was doing a lot of things. She was doing, she was bringing messages around, she was a courier, and then she became part of the APISTI in in Florence and those are the folks were doing kind of the gorilla warfare. And so she's been doing these different things, supporting these different resistance groups. She's also part of the
Youth Front. And also I failed to mention last time that there was this feminist group called abbreviated the GDD and it's a very long name in Italian, but it's like the groupie di da fasa. It's like the women who are you know, who are in defense of this and in support of that, but abbreviated the GDD.
I love a good long weird acronym.
Oh my god, it's so long. And so they were coming together.
It was really helping to educate the women, bring them together in these you know, small groups throughout the country.
So is this first, is.
This before the part? Is this like thirties and early forties having once after occupation.
So it was formed in November nineteen forty three, and so these women are now becoming politically activated.
They didn't even know any of this.
They didn't realize their own power, and the GDD is helping them find it. And it's also kind of showing them how they could recruit more people and support the partisans who are now hiding in the hills or hiding underground. And so these women, there were, you know, tens of thousands of women in the GDD that are now material support, organized material support and becoming activated themselves. So Theresa was
a leader in the GDD. We had Carla, who we talked about last time, was also part of the GDD, but that wasn't kine of one of her main things. And our other two women who will get to Bianca and Anita, were also both part.
Of the GDD. And so Treesa's Theresa is doing a number of things.
She's probably the person who of the four where she really kind of was useful in a lot of different ways. There is a dramatic story because I don't want to give all the good stories away, but she at one point it's you know, very tragic. Her brother, her older brother,
was actually a bomb maker in Rome. He was actually making bombs for Carla's crew, and he gets arrested and horrifically tortured, and so she makes her way to Rome, or tries to make her way to Rome to be with her parents who were in hiding in Rome, and to get word of his fate, and she's captured and ends up escaping in oh shit. Yeah, and it's a it's a dramatic and you know, horrific story of war. But she persevered and would later share her stories, so
there's a to read later. I don't want to give that spoiler away. But she makes her way back to Florence.
You know, everything that our audience likes. They love it. Okay, was it with a tunnel?
No, but she did do something else with the tunnel.
Okay, Okay, people like tunnels, so all right, So if you want to know more about the tunnel.
That's another tragic story too. Oh well, I mean it's war, where's.
Full of tragedy, right, and tunnels and tunnels, Yeah, a lot of good tunnels. So so yeah, she does some things with tunnels and death and perseverance.
And so she helps at the well.
An interesting dramatic story of when Florence is now going to be imminently liberated. So the Allays are relatively close and they don't seem to be moving with a lot of expedients, and so the Florentines need to do what the Folks and Naples did and what the Romans thought they maybe had to do, because it was clear that now the Germans are pissed.
They're stealing everything they can.
They're taking the lenses out of microscopes, They're stealing all any animals they could find. Maybe they'll butcher them later. I mean, they're just they're ransacking. They're stealing a lot of art, and they're afraid they're going to start, you know,
bombing shit. And so they also destroy all the bridges because and this is of course a tactical move, they don't want to make it easy for the Allies to make their way from one part of Florence to the other, and so they destroy almost all the bridges except for the ponte Vecchio. So if anyone goes to Florence, that's the only original bridge. The other ones are recreated to
look like they did. Some of them look new, but they so there's all this rubbic down right by the by the river, in by the Arnou and Florence was was destroyed. And they and what they did that people wouldn't go over the ponte Vecchio is they destroyed the buildings on either side and then they wired it with mines so that if you tried to go up over the rubble you might explode.
But for anyone who's done the you know, high.
School tour of Florence, right, you know, the tourists one oh one, you might remember that above the ponte Vecchio is the Vasari corridor. And so this was how like the fancy Medaiceese could get from one side of the river to the other without messing around with the hoay peloi. And there's a couple moments of the ponte Vecchio in the book, and I tried to have them echo each other, but this last one is during this insurrection, so Florence is in a battle between the last remaining Nazis and
the people of Florence. And there's this, you know, a longer drawn out story of they were under Basically, they could not come out of houses for days on end. It was super hot, there was like a lack of water. If someone did go out, they might get shot by the Nazis patrolling, so there might be dead bodies out there.
If the Partisans snuck out, they might find a Nazi and shoot him, and so maybe there'd be another dead body they have to bury in the in the garden, or they'd throw it in the river if they were close enough. So it's a really horrific scene in Florence. And then finally they erupt into battle, and so she is one of the leaders during this. She's helping to lead a group in honor of her brother who was killed in Rome.
And so they do have a couple day.
Battle before the Allied soldiers make their way to Florence, and they're the ones who, like Rome was ready to do, pushed actually pushed the last of the Nazis out and saved some of their infrastructure and saved some things from looting. And so I actually am writing an article about this.
I handed in a draft today because I think this is really important for the Italians and particularly the resistance members, the people who were a part of this army, but they were ruled or the government they recognized was a coalition of the different parties than non fascist parties who came together, and I think this is a good lesson that we need to come together despite our differences if
we all have this common enemy. Right, And so they came together and they really were a trusted government for those who wanted to recognize them as the hopeful potential post war government. And so they were kind of the ones who were giving the mastermind, you know, kind of top down orders, and they wanted to show the l's because, as we mentioned last episode, they didn't really trust them.
They're like, can these people rule themselves?
They haven't been prone to government. Maybe they're still fascists. Likewise, they also were like, maybe they're going to be you know, maybe they're going to become communists.
Oh this bad word, right, right?
Y are yeah?
I mean they were right, yeah, But they wanted to show that they could be trusted and that they were and that they can rule themselves and take care of themselves. And so it was very important for those reasons, not just because they didn't want their city destroyed, but because they wanted to show that they could take care of themselves and they could rule themselves. And so they were able to push them out of Florence. And so now it's Theresa was part of that and she was a trusted partisan.
And so now they're moving northward. It's now summer.
Wait wait, I want to we're well, we're still talking about Theresa. Two things. One, instead of having the high school field trip to to Fionanza, I went years ago. This is just a story I just like, so it's completely unrelated.
Hey, it's your podcast.
My first book with my name on the spine was actually an Italian not English, even though I don't speak Italian, because Italian anarchists took one of my zines and turned it into a bound book. And then I went on like a month long book tour around Italy.
Oh my god, how cool.
It was amazing. And but I speak any Italian, and so I was getting by with my terrible Spanish. I've said this like about every episode. I was like I was in France. I got by with my terrible Spanish. Everywhere I go, I just get buy a terrible Spanish. And but my experience of Fernanza was a squatted villa where I couldn't talk to anyone. But there was a party and I was at it, but I just didn't
really interact with anyone. But then I went to the art museum the the big fancy ones is maybe yeah, maybe maybe, I don't remember, but I got to see a lot of the like big important paintings of the world because we went to the back entrance and one of the employees was an anarchist and led us in and gave us a tour.
Awesome, So a little one, a little yeah, and.
So Todisa saved some of the art that I got to see. That's my that's my story about it.
You know.
I met some anarchists in Reggio, which was really fun. I had one of the archivists was taking me on a tour and he's like, here's where their anarchists have their office or have their.
Little and then someone walks U out.
He's like, oh, he got all excited because he had never been in there. And so we went in and hung out with the anarchists for a little bit cool in there, a little underground layer.
It was awesome.
Yeah fuck yeah, okay, so yes, Well, so you were talking about Todysa. The other thing I want to ask about the Florence thing. Were you moving north to Florence to then talk about one of the other people, because I wanted to ask a little bit more about Todisa.
Yeah, let's let's talk about today.
My two thoughts is, so, the big thing that comes up when you search her is that she helped write the Italian constitution. That's the sort of government body that you're talking.
About, right exactly.
And I find that so fascinating because like, that's the kind of thing that those of us who grew up in Cold War America like can't imagine that the constitution of a democratic country was written by someone who was in the Communist Party at the time.
Yeah, you know, there were there were many Communists.
I mean they were one of the five coalition groups that made up the CLN, which was that the coalition I mentioned, Yeah, but yeah, I don't think Anita kind of declared herself as part of any group, but yeah, I think three out of the four were communists. Yeah.
And then although I this is the kind of bullshit that I get really nerdy about. I looked at both Bianca and Today's I left the Communist Party in the fifties because they disagreed with Stalin, which from my point of view is like a thumbs up for both of them.
But well, when you think, when you think, what did they know about the Communist Party at the time.
I mean, first of.
All, this is the militant group that's fighting the Nazis and doing very well.
Yeah, and they knew they well, they knew very little about almost any party, right, and what they did know was, yeah, it was really about worker rights. And you know, maybe they read the Communist Manifesto, they read what Trotsky's autobiography.
Yeah, maybe not all of them.
I don't.
I mean I know that Bianca read Trotzky, and I know Karla red Marks, and you know, you can assume that I think I know Teresa Redmark. You know, so they this is what is based on and these ideals, right, they sound they sound pretty great when you're no. Yeah, and I'm thinking about this too, as I you know,
spoiler for many many years down the line. But I mean that I'm researching communism now, particularly in America, but also the larger narrative is it's so hard to kind of divorce what we know now with what people would
have known at the time. And and so that's part of the larger story that I'm interested in telling, is Yeah, and I'm finding these stories of people being so passionate about the Communist Party because it really, you know, in its ideal format, really sounds yeah, like it supports the people, right.
Yeah, no, totally and and well, okay, and then this ties into the other question I have about Tadisa is I read about that she was involved in killing one of the ideological leaders of fascism, like one of the ideals of this guy, Giovanni, and that apparently because you mentioned with Carla that some of the actions of the Gapistas was polarizing. Yeah, right, and apparently also this killing of Giovanni was incredibly polarizing, and that only the Communist
Party was like, no, it's good to blow up. They're like, I don't know. They oh, they shot him through his car window, but it's like, good to kill that guy. He's an ideological father of Nazis or fascism. But then everyone else was like, we don't know about that. I don't know.
Yeah, the debate was and so this happened before the end of the war, and it's in the book, and she did feel kind of bad about it, but you know, I don't she kind of stays away from analyzing this moment I have.
That makes sense. I probably would too, you know, I.
Do have her own report of her kind of being embarrassed because what she does is she points him out to the people who will eventually kill him. And so she knows that she's pointing him out to future assassins, but he doesn't know. And they were apparently on friendly terms. And so I think this is something she kind of had to grapple.
With, is that, Oh she knew Giovanni.
Yeah, he was her professor, and so she kind of she kind of liked him.
I mean, she thought he was a nice enough guy. He allegedly as it were, he was like, oh, well.
I'm going to help save the Jewish people, I like, you know, and so I mean, you know, he wasn't a jerk, I'm using scared.
Off, right, right, Yeah, but he also was and so but a lot.
Of people didn't like the fact because they didn't like killing for he didn't like ideological killings, right, And and so that was kind of the main debate was that was the one act maybe not the only one, but the one they really talk about of killing and it wasn't an act of war explicitly.
Right, Oh, that's fascinating. And then it like one of the things that I think is there's a disconnect from what we assume about history versus like everyone living in the United States right now is literally in the process of watching a government become a f ashist government, right And there's this disconnect where you're like, I don't know, going to the mechanic and then being like, wait a second, this guy that I'm friends with, like is moving towards fascism.
And we have this sort of Nazis as cartoon villains thing in our head, right, which is unfortunately it flattens things, so it becomes harder to understand the fact that the disconnect that I think we're all living through right now.
Yeah, you know, yeah, and I live in a bubble in Brooklyn, and so I don't encounter that, although I do. I do go upstate and my family is from a kind of purple town upstate, so and I have family members who are not blue, and so I like, you know, with those kind of interactions, you can kind of stay away from certain things. But right I don't encounter it that often as many people probably do.
And it's like, who knows what that will reach eventually, And there's a sadness to that. There's a the actual sort of brother versus brother, a conflict of high tension, you know. But you know what doesn't give me any tension. I feel completely fine about everything we advertise. All of it is amazing. Even the bad stuff that I wish we didn't advertise is amazing. And some of the ads are genuinely good. Some of them are for things that are amazing, like every now and then we get go
outside with your friends ads. I love those ads. You should do that. Here's a free ad, go outside with your friends. It's nice. Here's ads, and we're back. Okay, so we've talked about Florence, and then you said you were going to take this further north.
So now pretty much Florence. It took a little while to get all the bad guys out. They have some people up there.
The cartoon bad guys who are completely one dimensional. Yeah, exactly, I'm still fine with kicking.
Yeah, anyway, there's snipers and so anyway, it takes a little while, and then finally the Allies show up and they help out that last little bit. But now it's fall, it's autumn, and you know, the Allies are getting.
A little distracted. There's other things happening. It's now autumn, of nineteen forty four. Then the weather starts to get bad in November, and so they just announced, like over the radio, they say, all right, I'm giving you the slightly hyperbolic but only slightly hyperbolic gist of it. All right, Partisans, you guys just pack up and go home for the winner.
We're gonna we're not really going to do anything this winter. So you guys go home, and.
Then we'll start this war back up in the spring. It's like, lighit what happened?
Oh my gosh.
And so even the New York Times read this article that was like, I mean, this is it. They said, this is a death sentence for the Partisans. This is not a summer sport, is what they say.
The quote.
Yeah, and so the Nazis are psyched because they're like, oh, we don't even have to worry about the Allies, focus on rooting out all these Partisans. And now they're in a smaller space, you know, they're now farther north, and they're also mad because they kept losing.
And so now we're left.
With we have Anita who's in the mountains around Reggio, and then we have Bianca, who is in Turin. And then she keeps going to the Alps, where her boyfriend actually is stationed with a bunch of other partisans, and so they're both doing different things. And so Anita also around the time that Florence was falling, was not falling, it was rising again.
She ends up. She's been doing a lot.
Of courier work for the most part, and she gets caught or suspected, and they bring her in and they question her, and they said, all right, come back tomorrow, and so she goes and she's like, what am I supposed to do? Asking the partisan leadership, and they're like, you have to leave. They're gonna they're going to arrest you tomorrow. You have to go, and so she packs a bag. This is the first moment she tells her parents she's part of the resistance.
Oh my god.
Both of her brothers are in the resistance. In fact, even her dad has done some things for the resistance.
But he's like, I.
Never expected you a girl. But he gives her some pants and some in a blanket. Anyway, and she goes to the mountains and so she becomes one of the first women in the mountains. And this is now, yeah, like late summer fall of forty four. So now she's in the mountains and more people are coming.
But this is where she really becomes even more.
She gets a gun, and she becomes a very trusted person in the mountains, but she's also in charge of because even if you're in the mountains, they still need women who are less able to be suspected to be going from camp to camp.
And so they built all of these amazing paths.
Well, I mean, I'm sure the paths existed, but they use these existing paths, and they had their their kind of their way between the different camps and between the towns and the trusted farms maybe where they had some of that would keep them overnight or give them something to eat. And it's amazing because today these paths have been kind of cleared up in the last couple of years and you can you can hike the same paths
that the party is. That's cool and so I hiked just a very small part of it, but I would love to go back and do it again. And they have, you know, some monuments along the way, and it's a really powerful, powerful place.
And they give you a wool blanket and a rifle at the base of the path and then they like, don't mention the current state of the Italian government and just sort of leave it as exercise for the reader.
But it was really amazing.
So she's in the mountains and in the meantime she breaks up with her fascist boyfriend.
She's like, he finds out she went to the mountains. He's like, no woman of mine is going to be a.
Sled up here in the mountains with these guys. And she's like, screw you, this is my life. She'd already been talking about it, you know, getting rid of him, and so she dumps him and she maybe meets someone else. But I don't want to tell you this part because it's one of the most favorite parts of the whole book.
There's a love story in the book.
Okay, they end up having this very horrific fight because now the Nazis are like, hey, we know where all the partisans are. They're in this basically this you know, these two ridges that go down into this valley and it's part of the Appenine Mountains just outside of Reggio. And so she is her job and some of the other stuff Thatta as part of this fight is too is to be kind of bring the information between and among all of these different groups that are fighting, and
it's it's very horrific. It was very bloody and awful. I know what's crazy about this story. It's the called the Battle of monte Cayo, and that's the name of one of the mountains around there. It's very hard to find anything out about it in English. It's almost uncovered in almost any you know, history of the war, even though it's it was a pretty major battle for the for that particular region.
And you think that's just because the Allies weren't involved. Do you think it was just because it was a partisan fight?
I mean probably, yeah.
And so even the fact checker is like, I can't find this, and so I had to dig up some things in Italian because the fact checker didn't have access to everything I did, and I was like, here, here's where it's talked about. I swear it exists. I'm not making this up. But it's interesting that it's, yeah, that's really discussed so rarely, and even in histories of Italian what was happening in the war in Italian that's written.
In Italian, That's what I mean.
So Reggio, it has this brutal winner. And we have Anita, who I do love. She's super scrappy and just she just has a lot of personality. And so she's living, you know, in a camp, a freezing camp, and you can't let a fire because then they'd be like, oh.
There they are, you know, and they're just doing the best they can.
And so then they make it through to the spring, and so you know her, that was kind of the most dramatic moment. There's still some other like smaller actions that she's doing. And you know, whoever survived the Battle of monte Cayo, and then what happens with Reggio, And then I'm going to skip up to Bianca, because both of these cities are liberated one right after another at the end of the war. And so Bianca I love beyond I mean, I love all these women. It's like
they really are my children. I can't pick a favorite. So Bianca is a she quits that job where she, as I mentioned last time, she was working at a factory, and she's a social worker, right, She's a social worker, and she was connected to a lot of women, but also I think she worked with some men as well, just like the workers there, and so she really was connected to these workers and getting very activated around workers' issues.
And so now she's part of the GDD, this women's group, and she's helping to organize them, and she ends up quitting the party.
The Communist Party said we want.
To we want to pay you to be basically a partisan full time, and so she quits her job at the beginning of nineteen forty four and ends up working for them full time.
And she's but.
She's still kind of going to the factories in organizing these people and writing a lot of publications. She was our journalist of the I mean, there were many people doing this, but that was what I ended up writing about a lot, because she was really, you know, trying to get these stories out there. And she's bringing these heavy printing presses. She's just carrying them on the tram around Turin, trying not to get caught. And she also
is riding her bike from Turin to the Alps. I mean, she probably took the train part of the way, but still she is riding her bike up the Alps. And also as part of this research, I drove part of the way that she was riding her bicycle and this is treacherous and amazing. So she's bringing anything she could bring.
Her boyfriend's up there. She's good friends with this other woman, Ada Gobetti, whose son is up there, and her boyfriend and her friend AIDA's son are just a couple of years apart, and so they are friends in the same partisan band, and they're bringing information, they're bringing food, they're
bringing snacks. Sometimes she's bringing her uh huh. So she she writes in one of one of the testimonies, you know, she said, people think feminists invented sex later on, but we were having lots of sex, So I love it.
I would imagine a mixed gender partisan camp would have a lot of people being like, well, we're going to die tomorrow. It's kind of cold out.
They and also they had been totally like Anita, for example, had never even spent time alone with a man, and she's in her early twenties, and so yeah, yeah, I'm not saying that she.
Did that, there's no report of that, but.
But yeah, her boyfriend fascist boyfriend thought she.
Was exactly and so so yeah, there was a lot of a lot of snuggling happening, and and so she's Bianca's going back and forth, and she has some some close calls where she has to pretend that she is working at this like you know, a hotel basically, or she was about ready to be caught by these fascists.
Things came in in the middle of the night.
When she has to say that she is working at hotel. One of the things that is always buried in history, besides just women doing things is sex work. In particularly, is that code for doing sex work if she's worked, if she has to pretend like she's working at hotel.
No, she So she was caught after curfew and she knew of this place that where that was friendly to the partisans, and so she gets there and they allow her to come in and they're like okay, yeah. And then she had just gotten there and then the bunch of fascist knock on the door and they're like, let.
Us in for the night.
And then it's like, how are you going to explain this young woman here barely you know.
And so as she works here, she hands.
Are a yeah, hands are an apron and says now she serves all of the fascist.
Drinks like just get them drinks in. Yeah.
And then there were also partisans in the beds so the proprietor proprietress had to go and sneak all the partisans out and get the rooms ready for the fascists on beds. Yeah, and then Bianca's here is serve everyone drinks, right, and then one guy recognizes her from university and he's like, why are you here? Weren't she getting a law degree? And so yeah, it was this tense.
Tense moment.
That's the moment that would be in the movie, like instead of oh, what's the movie about killing Nazis? Or they are sitting in a bar and they count wrong.
Oh the inglorious bastards.
Yeah. Yeah, like see this, this story is better. I mean probably because it's real and partly because women get to be protagonist of stories sometimes.
But wait, can I tell you a secret?
Yeah yeah, I've never said this out loud, So hey, producers, if you're listening, I'm writing a screenplay.
Oh hell yeah.
And it's so exciting because I get to put the things I am you know, so much like different things that I imagine because you can be I'm I'm hewing as closely to the story as possible, but I get to be a little like out of.
Fat you got to do some Yeah, because.
That's what it would be. But anyway, so that's exciting. But you're right, I haven't gotten to that scene yet. It's a good one.
Hell yeah. Well, speaking of secrets, if you listen to the first word of each of these advertisements and then open up a copy of Moby Dick it has to be the right edition, and then cross reference it to that copy, you will find a secret message. That's why we have ads. Here they are and we're back. I sure enjoyed learning about I don't know anything about Moby Dick. I know the tiniest bit. Never mind, I can't continue this.
The bit is going to fall apart. But okay, yes, so she has to hide herself as a hoteller, as someone working at a hotel.
Yes, then she well, we know she makes it home eventually. You'll have to read that section to find out.
Okay, but she is.
It's amazing that she's going up and down these mountains so often, and then she makes her way back to Turin, and so she's constantly going back and forth. But her I would say, one of the two main things she's doing is publishing a lot of these papers for different groups, and then also helping to support the mostly men in the mountains.
And so now so that was Now we're getting close to the end of.
War and total, not this war, but just war in general.
I wish wouldn't that book be a bestseller? And so it's now springtime and the Allies are allowing the Nazis to fight them again, and.
Oh, because they really do kind of have to hunk her down all winter because without Allied support, there's like not a lot of point in them fighting on their own. Is that.
I mean, they did some things, but you know, it also was very brutal. It was one of the coldest winners. It wasn't I think Bianca said it wasn't. She reports at some point it wasn't super snowy, but which was a blessing.
But it was very cold.
And yeah, but what she puts her energy into in come February pretty much is she starts planning another strike. So if you recall there was a strike that influenced her political agency in episode one, and then what I didn't mention is that she actually planned I should I need to go back and mention this now because it's really bad ass, because I'm just getting to Bianca now because I think this is it's so instructive. Let's put it that way. So let's back up about a year Spring of forty four.
We are in like nothing has been literated.
We are in the depths of war, and Bianca is one of the main organizers of a general strike around occupied Italy cool and she organizes. There was a lot of factories. It was mostly factory workers, but not definitely more than just factory workers. In fact, the newspapers weren't even published for a while because they went on to strike.
Like some shopkeepers, like streets were closed, you know, with shops on them, because a lot of the women who worked in the shops and other shopkeepers just were.
Like, I'm going to go on a strike.
And so she calls for this general strike and it millions of people take part, and a lot of them, some of them, you know, protests, have placards.
Some of them just don't go to work.
In some cases, they knew about this ahead of time because they're you know, they're organizing, they're going to find out that Sometimes they close some of the they preempted the factory or preempted the strike and just said we're going to be closed.
In a holiday or you know something.
Was this unions or was this existing unions that have been underground or stayed above ground, or was this like.
I mean, they didn't have very any unions. They had were a little at hoc. Yeah, they were illegal. I mean, they just organized the hell out of it, and it's so and they had millions.
I mean, it was the the.
Biggest general strike of Nazi occupied territory during World War two, and they basically shut down the country for you know, for almost a week, and there was horrific retribution. I mean, they arrested thousands of people and many of them ended up deported in concentration camps that didn't make it home.
And I mean it's just as much a military action as like military action is, and it's just as commendable. Yeah, you know.
Yeah, But what it said was, first of all, this is how many people we have who are willing to stand up against the Nazi fascists. And so it was very powerful because so many Italians saw who was willing to put their basically their lives on the line for this cause.
Brought more people into the fold.
And then also it has been reported that a lot of these people this was the moment.
That they felt like they were part of the resistance.
So even though they were kind of ostensibly being like, I don't want because a lot of what was happening is they they were pissed that they were making things that were being sent to Germany, and they also were taking skilled workers and sending them to Germany.
So they had some specific demands.
Around don't take like no manned Germany, no machine to Germany. They didn't want things being deported. But then they also wanted more rations. But you know, they also were like, we're going to stand up for what we believe in. And so suddenly this resistance was galvanized and they saw the Nazi fascists, saw what they were up against. And so this was a very powerful moment in the resistance.
And you know, side note, I hear different things around the power of general strikes, and they can be incredibly powerful, and this is such an important example of that power. And and it was kind of I mean, it was not an easy street after that, but it was downhill.
Basically from then on out.
I mean, that's I would say that the the Italians kind of operated as if they knew they were going to win. At some point, you know, like they really felt like the side had turned at that with that general strike, and just all of the supported galvanized in March of nineteen forty four, Okay, and so now.
I'm going to move us forward.
So this is then we have Rome is liberated and Florence is liberated.
Then we have this horrific autumn. Yeah, and then now we are in.
Spring, well winter, end of winter, beginning of spring in nineteen forty five, right near the end of war. And so Bianca helps organize another strike. It's not quite as dramatic, but it was also kind of the strike that was going to happen just to kind of remind people that this is, you know, we we.
Have the power is our country, yeah.
Exactly, And so that helps galvanize people again in March, and then they organized kind of another kind of ongoing strikes.
This is what she's helping to organize. And it was just.
To you know, meet it could be just I'm going to help this factory organize this strike because they fired this woman because she was speaking out against you know, not being not having enough ration.
So it was very cool.
It's a lot of worker power stuff and organizing and this also helped them organize for the insurrection. At the end, Anita was in the mountains, and so she wasn't part of any insurrection organization in Reggio, and there wasn't really fighting around Reggio. It's a pretty small city, and so that there was. I didn't follow any woman from Bologna. But Bologna is a great revolutionary city, and so there's some interesting stories there that I would love to tell
at some point. But by now, by the spring of nineteen forty five, the Allies are pretty much marching.
They figured out how to get over.
This little mountain range, big mountain range, and now they're marching through the Po Valley towards Turin, towards the Alps and pushing.
The Nazis out.
And there was a big final insurrection, a battle in Turin and also Milan, but I didn't write about that, where Bianca helps to lead and organize just the people of Turin. There's interesting images of a lot of them. Men from the mountains came down to be soldiers in
this final insurrection. So you see these pictures of men and you know the kind of like dirty not fatigue, you know, like worker uniform and then you see a guy in a suit basically, and they're standing with guns side by side, like looking around a corner, you know, ready.
To fight for their city.
And there's women and she was pretty much a career she didn't really take up arms. But yeah, the book ends before the epilogue, but it ends kind of right before they fully succeed in getting the Nazis out.
And one of the things I like about you mentioned earlier about how in the GGP or whatever the GGD that there was like tens of thousands of women in it, you know, and because people have this sort of attitude of like, it's more fun to tell history when you pick characters and follow them through, right. But obviously the one of the big problems of this is the big
man of history theory. But then there's almost like inversion of the big Man of history theory, where people when you mention a white guy who is sort of in charge, everyone's like, oh, he did it all. But then when you mentioned like someone who's marginalized who is involved, they're like, oh, that's a token, Like oh, yeah, I guess some women were involved, right, Like, oh, you found the only four
women who actually did partisan stuff. And you're like, no, tens of thousands of women did this stuff, and even just in that one organization, let alone all of the like unpaid labor of revolution that happens behind the scenes, but you know, all of the like weird home stuff and all of the there's so much that happens. Yeah, yeah, totally exactly. And so I think it's interesting because whenever you have an informal military, there are women in it.
You know, like, this seems to be, as far as I can tell, somewhat universal, and especially if it's leftist. You know, I don't think that right wing militias are going to start letting women in anytime soon.
Now they need their treadwives doing their chadwive things. Yeah, there's some statistic at the end. I probably am not going to find the exact thing really quickly, but there's a statistic about will I will give you the rough statistic about how many for this kind of you know,
to support this kind of ad hoc army. There's something like you need statistically like seven support people per army person who you're supporting, And in the Italian situation that we just talked about, there was something like twelve or
fifteen that were supporting each army. So there was so many, exponentially more people who were you know, even if they were giving a couple lira that they desperately needed to feed their kids or they had a blanket to spare, Yeah, just any little bit also helped them feel like they were part of the resistance and like they were doing something.
And that was so much of it is not just what they could give, but feeling like they were unified because you know, as we were talking about last episode and also obviously now, is that you know, they were recreating or co creating what they wanted their country to look like. They weren't like the French, where like we just want to go back to how we were.
A little bit ago.
They didn't have a little bit of go So how are they going to come together and figure out where they want to go next?
And that's why it was so powerful.
And that's another important role of these underground papers that it sounds like you guys talked a lot about, but is unique to maybe not just to Italy, but is unique among most of you know, World War two resistance is that that's part of what the newspapers were doing too, is saying this is, you know, let's talk about where we're going to go from here, not just how we're going to do the thing right now and get back to where we were.
And I think which makes so much sense to me.
No, I was just going to say, I think that's what makes the story so unique, and yeah, yeah, it gives us so many, so many things to think about and learn historically.
But fortunately it's all just history and has absolutely no burying on the present. But if it were to have buried on the present, one of the things I like about it, you know, you're describing how there's not really I mean, there's a you can divide a mountain fighter, a city fighter, and a striker and a support person if you want, right, you can. You can make categories to understand certain things. But all of it was part
of what defeated fascism. And I love the fact that strikes and partisans are coexisting in the same movement because they seem fundamentally at odds, right, because you're like, well, if you're a striker, then that means you're friends with the terrorists in the mountains, you know, and like.
Well, if you think about it, the strikers were actually creating things for the enemy.
Yeah, and they wanted to stop, but they had no choice.
I mean they literally would starve their children with I mean it was something. And so there's so many yeah, interesting nuances about these choices that you have to make, and also about not being an absolutist.
Right.
People are doing the best they can, yeah, with where they are and what they have.
Yeah. Well, I don't know, do you have any like the final thoughts on this book, or like how it relates to things happening now or anything that you feel like talking about.
Well, I just I felt, not too long ago, this moment, many moments of what do I do? Well, how do I act? What is the thing I should do right now? Of feeling like I wanted to do something because I'm clearly a politically minded person, and I also know very acutely the issue with not acting and sitting back and letting things happen. And so I was paralyzed or somewhat. And then I thought, Yo, listen to the women. What did they do? Not just women of War, but also
my previous book of Power Hungry. And in fact I was probably nudged a little bit because Power Hungry was on a list that someone made and it was published in twenty twenty one, so it's you know, it's not that recent around what we could learn about mutual aid and how we can support others.
Well, twenty twenty one is next year. It's still twenty twenty. I don't know what you're talking about.
I wish it was twenty nineteen maybe, but.
And so I was like, Okay, people are finding this instructive. I'm the one who.
Wrote the damn book, and you know, was learned so much from all of these amazing women, and so I just listened to the women. I'm like, okay, you just none neither of these none of these movements I've written about came out fully formed. It was just one or two or ten people doing something, and then they get connected to someone else, and then they do something else, and then more people are inspired, and then they ask.
What can we do for those who need help the most?
And they are incredibly brave in the face of being scared shitless that they might get arrested, but because the alternative is that what is happening will keep happening.
And so I found their bravery inspiring.
I found it very instructive to think I've written a book about how this was, you know, started slowly, step by step, so I too can do things slowly, step by step. And that was a really wonderful thing to realize and kind of help me do something, you know. And the first thing I did was email a bunch of friends and be like, hey, let's just get together and talk and share what we know. And then I also, of course, unsurprisingly, I have been writing articles.
Most of them are coming out in the next couple of weeks.
You know.
They're talking about the power of the underground press and connecting that a little bit to today. I did write an article what we could learn from a couple of these other movements in the past, and a lot of it is around.
You know.
Again, this is right when I was learning this from my women, relearning it the power of political education, understanding that you just need to take things one step at a time, you know, just how they began their as also not feeling because this was something I was feeling at the time I was writing this. It's like feeling like, oh my god, I need to react to everything. You can specialize if this is what you could do, you're
part of the community. Garden and that's what you're really good at, and those are the people you're connected with, and think about how you could use that to further the things that you want to further. If you are working in a factory and you need this job, you can't quit it, then how can you make the most of your time working in a factory like the folks
who were just talking about. And so those were three of the lessons that I really took away from the different women throughout a couple of different books that I've been researching.
No, it makes sense. I think what people sort of forget. I think our society and the way we're taught and things that kind of strip the idea that we can do things away from us. Especially people are marginalized in this or that way. Right, But at the end of the day, everything that has happened that humans do was done by humans doing things. And we're humans and we
can do things. And it starts by talking to your friends and saying what is the problem and what are the steps that we can start taking towards that, and especially in a kind of like a step by step, you know, like and don't start with the big problem necessarily, but start with the immediate problems and learn how to
do it. And I like the examples that you end up writing about, partly because one of the things that comes up a lot on the show is that we talk about how, look, if you don't know what else to do, feed people. Yeah, you know, mutual aid is a great first step or last step towards making a better world. And when in doubt, if there's people who need stuff and you know how to organize to get them the stuff that they need to be alive, you kind of can't go wrong.
Yeah, especially, Yeah, that's going to be furthering you know, people's comfort. It's also going to be bringing people together and saying, oh, yeah, this is the way the world should be, we should take care of each other, and then helps more people realize that this.
Is what you should. So it compounds in a wonderful way.
Yeah. Yeah, well, okay, So some of the things that you will learn from this book, not you you already know it because you wrote it, but everyone else who's listening. You will get to learn a love story. You'll get to learn something about tunnels. You'll get to learn a prison escape. You'll get to learn how to coordinate drop offs of things, And probably we didn't even talk about how many bicycles are in this but that's cool, more useful than people will give them credit for. Yeah, is
there any other I don't know. People should go and read Women of War The Italian Assassin, Spies and Couriers Who Fought the Nazis by Suzanne Cope. And something that I've talked about I think on this show and also just in general, is that pre orders really matter. Preorders have it far. If you want your purchase of a book to impact positively that author's life, preorders magnify that.
Because we live in a really weird world and capitalism is the thing that controls things and literally algorithms that shouldn't run our world. Look at the number of sales of a book all at once, and so the number of sales they all hit the day that the book releases. So if you want Suzanne Cope to be a New York Times bestselling author, you should pre order this book.
Crossing those fingers.
Yeah, and then even if not, and if you want more publishers to give Suzanne even you know, more book deals and things. Pre ordering is really good, not that you clearly have written more than one book. I'm not saying it's like hanging in the balance.
But even to look more broadly, if you want more stories like this, if you then tell those publishers this is what they can put their money into. Because I had it was such an honor to tell these stories, and you know, I'm just so excited to just be.
In the beginning of my path to sharing them with people.
So I'm really excited to keep talking about them.
Hell yeah, all right, Well, well that is the end of this episode except for other plugs. Do you want people to like follow you on social media and stuff for your good?
Like?
What are you sure anything else you want to plug?
You know, I should, I should have come up with something since last time, but no, I'd love to continue this conversation. And you know, some of my social media is turning a little politically as far as like who to follow and amplify these stories. So that's what I want to plug, amplifying stories of people who are making a positive difference. So if you want to find me on blue Sky and threads and Instagram, I'm trying to do that to varying degrees.
Okay, And I hate the fact that I'm still on social media. But you can follow me at Magpie, kill Joy and or Marty or Killjoy at various things. I quit. Actually, all this left is Instagram and blue Sky, and I don't know what else to plug. Uh, Sophie, what do you want to plug?
Ah? You can follow what cool zone Media and all the things for all my projects, and if you happen to find me, you'll find pictures of my dogs. And dogs are good, very good dogs.
Margaret, this is such a pleasure. I had so much fun. Thank you, thank you, all.
Right bye everyone.
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