34 Facts About Gaetano Salvemini

Gaetano Salvemini offered significant leadership to political refugees in the United States.

In post-war Italy, Gaetano Salvemini advocated a third way between the Italian Communist Party and Christian Democracy.

Gaetano Salvemini was born in the town of Molfetta, Apulia, in the poor south of the Kingdom of Italy, in an extended family of farmers and fishermen of modest means.

Gaetano Salvemini's father, Ilarione Salvemini, was a carabiniere and part-time teacher.

Gaetano Salvemini had been a radical republican who had fought as a Redshirt following Giuseppe Garibaldi in his fight for Italian unification.

Gaetano Salvemini's mother, Emanuela Salvemini, was a socialist.

Gaetano Salvemini was admitted at the University of Florence, where he met students of northern Italy and engaged with young socialists who introduced him to Marxism, the ideas of philosopher and revolutionary Carlo Cattaneo, and the Italian socialist journal Critica Sociale edited by Italy's foremost Marxist Filippo Turati.

In 1901, after years of teaching in secondary schools, Gaetano Salvemini was appointed as Professor of Medieval and Modern History at the University of Messina.

Gaetano Salvemini became increasingly concerned with Italian politics and adhered to the Italian Socialist Party.

Gaetano Salvemini reproached Giolitti for exploiting the backwardness of Southern Italy for short-term political goals by appeasing the landlords while engaging with corrupt political go-betweens with ties to the underworld.

Gaetano Salvemini opposed Italy's costly military campaign in Libya during Italo-Turkish War.

Gaetano Salvemini thought that the war did not meet the real needs of the country in need of far-reaching economic and social reforms, but was a dangerous collusion between unrealistic nationalism and corporate interests.

In 1911, Gaetano Salvemini left the PSI because of what he described as "the silence and indifference" on the war by the party.

Gaetano Salvemini criticised the government's aspirations to build an Italian Empire and its designs in Africa as chauvinist foolishness.

Gaetano Salvemini did favour Italy's entry in the First World War on the side of the Entente powers against the 'anachronistic' character of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires and calling for their defeat in the interests of Italy, as Austria-Hungary still occupied regions considered to be Italian.

Gaetano Salvemini supported the Fourteen Points, the internationalist programme of self-determination of United States president Woodrow Wilson that envisioned a readjustment of the frontiers of Italy along clearly-recognisable lines of nationality, in contrast to the Italian irredentist policy of the foreign minister Sidney Sonnino.

Gaetano Salvemini joined the opposition after the murder of the socialist politician Giacomo Matteotti on 10 June 1924, when it became clear that Mussolini wanted to establish a one-party dictatorship.

Gaetano Salvemini worked to maintain a strong network of contacts among anti-fascist intellectuals throughout Italy while much of the Italian academic world bowed to the regime.

Gaetano Salvemini's name was on top of the list of the fascist death squads during raids on 4 October 1925 in Florence.

Gaetano Salvemini was dismissed from the University of Florence, and his Italian citizenship was revoked in 1926.

In exile, Gaetano Salvemini continued to actively organize resistance against Mussolini in France, England, and finally the United States.

Gaetano Salvemini first toured the United States in January 1927 and lectured with a clear anti-fascist agenda.

Gaetano Salvemini's forced exile nevertheless gave him a "sense of freedom, of spiritual independence".

Gaetano Salvemini published The Fascist Dictatorship in Italy, contradicting the widely held belief that Mussolini had saved Italy from Bolshevism.

In 1934, Gaetano Salvemini accepted a position created especially for him, to teach Italian civilization at Harvard University, where he would remain until 1948.

Gaetano Salvemini wrote articles in important journals like Foreign Affairs and travelled around the country to warn American public opinion against the dangers of fascism.

Gaetano Salvemini joined the Italian Emergency Rescue Committee, which raised money for Italian political refugees and worked to convince American authorities to admit them.

Gaetano Salvemini obtained United States citizenship in 1940 in the belief that he would have greater opportunity to influence American policies toward Italy.

Gaetano Salvemini was a familiar figure in the younger years of Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

Gaetano Salvemini hoped that the Action Party, a post-war political party that emerged from Giustizia e Liberta, could provide a third force, a socialist-republican coalition uniting reformist socialists and genuine democrats as an alternative for the Italian Communist Party and Christian Democracy.

Gaetano Salvemini spent the last period of his life in Sorrento, in the Campania southern Italian region, and never ceased to denounce the ancient Italian evils: inefficiency, scandals, and the lengthy justicial procedures that continued to favour the powerful.

Gaetano Salvemini lamented the public schools, which he considered not to be forming a real critical conscience.

Gaetano Salvemini was among the first and most effective opponents of fascism.

Nevertheless, Gaetano Salvemini was an imperative force who left a permanent mark on Italian politics and historiography.