Randolfo Pacciardi (1 January 1899 – 14 April 1991) was an Italian politician.
He was a long-time member of the secular, centre-left Italian Republican Party.
An ardent anti-fascist, he lived in exile for many years and was an officer of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. He was later politically active in post-war Italy. His support for various plans to install a presidential republic in Italy during the Cold War has been a source of controversy.
Randolfo Pacciardi was born in Giuncarico, in the province of Grosseto, in southern Tuscany. In 1915 he became a member of the Italian Republican Party. A supporter of Italy's participation in World War I, he enrolled in the officers' school of the Italian Army and took part in the hostilities, receiving two Silver Medals and one Bronze Medal of Military Valor, as well as a British Military Cross and a French Croix de guerre.
Resistance to Fascism and exile
In 1921 he received a law degree from the University of Siena, and later collaborated with the local newspaper L'Etruria Nuova. He moved to Rome the following year. He was a staunch opponent of the growing violence of Fascist squads and in 1923 established Italia Libera, an anti-fascist veterans' organization. Italia Libera would be one of the few groups to plan for armed resistance to Benito Mussolini in the wake of the assassination of Socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti, and one of the first opposition group to be banned by the government, in January 1925. As a lawyer he successfully defended the party newspaper La Voce Repubblicana against a defamation lawsuit, after an article had accused high-ranking Fascist Italo Balbo of having ordered the assassination of anti-fascist priest Giovanni Minzoni.
When the Fascists outlawed all rival parties in November 1926, Pacciardi was sentenced to five years of internal exile, but was able to escape to Austria and then to Lugano, Switzerland, with the help of Ernesta Battisti, the widow of Italian patriot Cesare Battisti. While in Switzerland he maintained contacts with the Giustizia e libertà group and offered logistical support to various anti-fascists, including Sandro Pertini, to whom he procured a counterfeit passport, and Giovanni Bassanesi and Gioacchino Dolci, who flew over Milan in July 1930 to throw propaganda leaflets.
In 1933 the Italian government pressured Switzerland to expel all anti-fascist refugees, forcing Pacciardi to relocate to Mulhouse, in the Alsace region of France.
Participation in the Spanish Civil War
With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War he helped organize and took the command of the Italian Legion, later renamed Garibaldi Battalion and integrated in the International Brigades, a unit of Italian volunteers fighting in support of the Spanish Republic. Pacciardi's original intent was to organize a non-political volunteer group at direct disposal of the Popular Front government, on the model of the Garibaldi Legion which had helped France in the early phases of World War I. Through the good offices of other exiled anti-fascists like Socialist Pietro Nenni and Communist Luigi Longo he received a hearing from Francisco Largo Caballero in early September 1936, but the Spanish Prime Minister wasn't interested in the proposal and only changed his mind when the Comintern decided to establish the more sizeable and better-funded International Brigades. On 27 October the representatives of the main anti-fascist parties in the exile signed an agreement in the Paris for the establishment of the Garibaldi Battalion. The choice of commander fell on Pacciardi largely due to his military qualifications and a desire to project an image of unity through reliance on a non-Marxist with impeccable anti-fascist credentials.
With the Garibaldi Battalion he took part in the defense of Madrid, the battle of Jarama – where he was wounded – and the final stages of the battle of Guadalajara, and he was considered a successful commander and respected by his men. The battle of Guadalajara, which saw Republicans defeat Italian troops sent by Mussolini, was the first instance of Italians taking part on opposite side of an engagement during the civil war.
While the International Brigades were Communist-dominated, having been organized by the Comintern and strictly supervised by political commissars, in the months of Pacciardi's leadership the Garibaldi Battalion (later Garibaldi Brigade) developed a reputation for political tolerance, hosting communists, socialists, and republicans. It was also the only unit within the Brigades to have a substantial number of anarchists. In May 1937, when the "Garibaldi" was asked to suppress anarchist and POUM fighters in Barcelona as part of internal purges of the Republican camp, Pacciardi instructed acting commander Carlo Penchienati to refuse. His persistent refusal to accept discipline within the normal chain of command, including the authority of political commissars over the appointment of subordinates, and frequent criticism of his superiors, exacerbated differences and fueled attempts to remove him from command or otherwise prevent contacts with his subordinates. Pacciardi also showed little interest in the mixed-nationality nature of most International Brigades, having always preferred a self-sufficient all-Italian unit to "the anonymity of internationalism". Lamenting the lack of autonomy in the face of the integration of all International Brigades in the regular Spanish Army he requested a temporary leave for all Italian volunteers to give them the opportunity to go abroad and recruit among members among Italian emigrants in France and elsewhere, but this was rejected.
During a brief absence Communists tried to engineer his replacement with political commissar Ilio Barontini, but couldn't find enough support within the Spanish government to do so. They also offered him a promotion to division staff, which he turned down. Finally, at the urging of Penchienati and Nenni, Pacciardi accepted the post of vice divisional commander for the duration of the next offensive, as a gesture to improve the unity and morale of the brigade. He finally left Spain for good in October 1937.
Sources more sympathetic to the Communist point of view have also blamed his departure on his adherence to traditional models of military leadership, like the separation between officers' and troops' quarters, as well as the leave request, which has been interpreted as unviable in the context of the war effort or even as an outright proposal to dissolve the brigade rather than accept a reduction of personal authority.
Moving to Paris he founded a weekly magazine, La Giovine Italia (named after the Young Italy movement established by Giuseppe Mazzini in the 19th century). Between March and May 1938 he also held a round of lectures in the United States about anti-fascism, with the goal of raising funds for the Spanish Republic.
Forced to flee by the German invasion of France, he and his wife finally reached New York aboard the liner Serpa Pinto on 26 December 1941, after traveling through Algiers, Casablanca and Mexico with false documents. In the United States Pacciardi supported the unsuccessful efforts of the Italian-American Mazzini Society, of which he had been a member since its founding in 1939, to organize volunteer groups to take part in World War II on the Allied side. He also tried to contact Charles de Gaulle, via Pierre Mendès-France, to ask him to attach the prospective units to the Free French Forces. Plans for an Italian Legion however were seriously hampered by recruitment difficulties: the Mazzini Society couldn't count on the same base as De Gaulle, who enjoyed the loyalty of a part of the French military and controlled territory in some French colonies; nor it could hope to recruit most Italian Americans, who would be drafted in the US Armed Forces. Despite his growing dislike of Communism, during this time Pacciardi pursued a line of cooperation and unity between all anti-fascist forces, which was a cause of friction with the rest of the Society and ultimately prompted him to resign his membership.