Alcide Amedeo Francesco De Gasperi (Italian: [alˈtʃiːde de ˈɡasperi]; 3 April 1881 – 19 August 1954) was an Italian politician and statesman who founded the Christian Democracy party and served as prime minister of Italy in eight successive coalition governments from 1945 to 1953.
De Gasperi was the last prime minister of the Kingdom of Italy, serving under both Victor Emmanuel III and Umberto II. He was also the first prime minister of the Italian Republic, and also briefly served as provisional head of state after the Italian people voted to end the monarchy and establish a republic. His eight-year term in office remains a landmark of political longevity for a leader in modern Italian politics. De Gasperi is the fifth longest-serving prime minister since the unification of Italy.
A devout Catholic, De Gasperi was one of the founding fathers of the European Union along with fellow Italian Altiero Spinelli.
De Gasperi was born in 1881 in Pieve Tesino in Tyrol, now part of the Italian region of Trentino-Alto Adige, which had been part of Austria-Hungary for more than 500 years. His father was a local police officer of limited financial means. From 1896, De Gasperi was active in the Social Christian movement. In 1900 he joined the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy in Vienna, where he played an important role in the inception of the Christian student movement. He was very much inspired by the Rerum novarum encyclical issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. In 1904, he took an active part in student demonstrations in favour of an Italian-language university. During the inauguration of the Italian Faculty of Law in Innsbruck, he was imprisoned with a number of other protesting students, but was released after twenty days. In 1905, De Gasperi obtained a degree in philology.
In 1905, he began to work as editor of the newspaper La Voce Cattolica (The Catholic Voice) which was replaced in September 1906 by Il Trentino and he soon became its editor. In his newspaper, he often took positions in favour of cultural autonomy for Trentino and in defence of Italian culture in Trentino, in contrast to the Germanisation planned by the German nationalists in Tyrol. At the time, in disagreement with other politicians like Cesare Battisti, he did not seek unification with Italy. From 1908 to 1912, he was vice-president and one of the three executive board members of the Banca Industriale di Trento, a local investment bank supported by the Catholic movement.
In 1911, he became a member of Parliament for the Popular Political Union of Trentino (UPPT) in the Austrian Reichsrat, a post he held for six years. At the beginning of World War I, he was politically neutral, sympathizing with the ultimately unsuccessful efforts of Pope Benedict XV and Karl I of Austria to obtain an honourable peace and stop the war. Ultimately, he sided with Italy.
In 1919, he was among the founders of the Italian People's Party (PPI), with Luigi Sturzo. He served as a deputy in the Italian Parliament from 1921 to 1924, a period marked by the rise of Fascism. He initially supported the participation of the PPI in Benito Mussolini's first government in October 1922.
As Mussolini's hold on the Italian government grew stronger, he soon diverged with the Fascists over constitutional changes to the powers of the executive and to the election system (the Acerbo Law), and over Fascist violence against the constitutional parties, culminating in the murder of Giacomo Matteotti. The PPI split, and De Gasperi became secretary of the remaining anti-Fascist group in May 1924. In November 1926, in a climate of overt violence and intimidation by the Fascists, the PPI was dissolved.
De Gasperi was arrested in March 1927 and sentenced to four years in prison. The Vatican negotiated his release. A year and a half in prison nearly broke De Gasperi's health. After his release in July 1928, he was unemployed and in serious financial hardship, until in 1929 his ecclesiastical contacts secured him a job as a cataloger in the Vatican Library, where he spent the next fourteen years until the collapse of Fascism in July 1943.
During the 1930s, De Gasperi wrote a regular international column for the review L'Illustrazione Vaticana in which he depicted the chief political battle as one between communism and Christianity. In 1934, he rejoiced in the defeat of the Austrian Social Democrats, whom he condemned for "de-Christianizing" the country, and in 1937 he declared that the German Church was correct in preferring Nazism to Bolshevism.
During World War II, he organized the establishment of the first (and at the time, illegal) Christian Democracy (DC) party, drawing upon the ideology of the PPI. In January 1943, he published "Ideas for Reconstruction" (Italian: Idee per la Ricostruzione), which amounted to a program for the party. He became the first general secretary of the new party in 1944.
De Gasperi was the undisputed head of the Christian Democrats, the party that dominated Parliament for decades. Although his control of the DC appeared almost complete, he had to carefully balance different factions and interests, especially with regard to relations with the Vatican, social reform, and foreign policy.
When Southern Italy was liberated by the Allies, he became one of the main representatives of DC in the National Liberation Committee. During the government led by Ivanoe Bonomi, De Gasperi was appointed minister without portfolio and, in Ferruccio Parri's cabinet, he became minister of foreign affairs.
Prime Minister of Italy, 1945–1953
From 1945 to 1953, he was the prime minister of eight successive DC-led governments. His eight-year rule remains a landmark of political longevity for one leader in modern Italian politics. During his successive governments, Italy became a republic (1946), signed a peace treaty with the Allies (1947), joined NATO in 1949 and became an ally of the United States, which helped to revive the Italian economy through the Marshall Plan. During that time, Italy became a member of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which later evolved into the European Union (EU). Crucial in this regard was the contribution of Defense Minister Randolfo Pacciardi, a 30th degree Mason of the Scottish Rite, who had been personally chosen by De Gasperi.
De Gasperi became prime minister because few others had political experience without being Fascist. He was not too old, and moderate enough between the left and right. In December 1945, De Gasperi became prime minister for the first time, succeeding Ferruccio Parri and leading a coalition government that included both Italian Communist Party (PCI) and Italian Socialist Party (PSI), along with other minor parties like Italian Republican Party (PRI), Italian Liberal Party (PLI) and Action Party (PdA). Communist leader Palmiro Togliatti acted as deputy prime minister. He tried to soften the terms of the pending Allied peace treaty with Italy and secured financial and economic aid through the European Recovery Program (Marshall Plan) – which was opposed by the Communists.
In June 1946, a constitutional referendum to decide whether Italy would remain a monarchy or become a republic resulted in 54% of the vote favouring a republic. De Gasperi served as provisional head of state from 12 June 1946 until the Constituent Assembly elected Liberal politician Enrico De Nicola provisional head of state on 28 June 1946.
As chief of the Italian delegation at the World War II peace conference in Paris, De Gasperi harshly criticized the sanctions imposed on Italy, but obtained concessions from the Allies that guaranteed Italian sovereignty. Under the Treaty of Peace with Italy, 1947, the eastern border area was lost to Yugoslavia and the free territory of Trieste was divided between the two states.