Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, your
Speaker 2: weekly reminder that when bad things are happening, we can
Speaker 2: look at how people did good things in the face
Speaker 2: of the aforementioned bad things. I'm your host and the
Speaker 2: determiner of what is both cool and bad Artur Kiljoy
Speaker 2: and my guest is Susanne Cope.
Speaker 3: Hi.
Speaker 2: How are you Hi?
Speaker 4: I'm great.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Suzanne. As people probably aware because they probably
Speaker 2: listen to part one, but I continue to always make
Speaker 2: fun of people who jump in a Part two is
Speaker 2: the author of the upcoming book Women of War, The
Speaker 2: Italian Assassin, Spies and Couriers Who Fought the Nazis, which
Speaker 2: comes out from Dutton on April twenty ninth, And you
Speaker 2: should read it. And I have it in front of me,
Speaker 2: and it is a very pretty book. And I am
Speaker 2: a sucker for books that are actually pretty.
Speaker 4: Do you have the advanced copy or do you have
Speaker 4: the hard copy?
Speaker 2: I have a hard copy.
Speaker 4: The hard copies just came in.
Speaker 5: Look at that spine, Yeah, with the lady and the
Speaker 5: spine so good.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, Well, if you want to know what we're
Speaker 2: talking about, you're going to be sad that this is
Speaker 2: not a video medium. But I'm gonna be happy that
Speaker 2: it's not a video medium, because I was just explaining
Speaker 2: I dropped a two by four on my head yesterday.
Speaker 2: I have a large bump and wound on my nose,
Speaker 2: and you're just gonna have to imagine that pump and
Speaker 2: wound except one person who won't have to imagine it
Speaker 2: because it is also on the call. It's Sophie. Hi, Sophie.
Speaker 1: I'm really glad this is not a video as well,
Speaker 1: because there's something going on with my camera that makes
Speaker 1: me look like Casper the friendly Ghost, which also makes
Speaker 1: me look more like my older brother, which is fun
Speaker 1: for me.
Speaker 2: But there were so many houseplants that you all are
Speaker 2: missing by not having it be video. Yeah, the listeners,
Speaker 2: not us. We can see each other's houseplants.
Speaker 5: I do love to plant things inside and out, and
Speaker 5: it's almost well.
Speaker 4: It is planting season here in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: Yeah, planting season here in Portland. Planting season is the best.
Speaker 2: I tried to grow potatoes because it felt on brand,
Speaker 2: but I failed last year. But this year, well I
Speaker 2: did eat. Actually I grew a couple and I ate
Speaker 2: my sweet potatoes grew last year.
Speaker 4: Oh nice?
Speaker 2: Anyway, wait, what are you all going to grow this year?
Speaker 2: I swear we'll do the podcast too eventually, but first
Speaker 2: y'all grow on anything. Just houseplants. It's okay this houseplants.
Speaker 4: Oh, I'm growing many things.
Speaker 5: I'm part of the community garden around the corner, and
Speaker 5: so I'm part of the community beds team, and so
Speaker 5: I organize what we grow in the beds that we
Speaker 5: share with everyone. So it's many things in my neighborhood
Speaker 5: of Bedstie, Brooklyn, and so we have collars, not yet,
Speaker 5: but we'll We have some kale and some I just
Speaker 5: checked on them today. A little baby radishes, very baby
Speaker 5: like baby seedlings, and lettuce, creams, tomatoes, peas, many things.
Speaker 2: Well, if people want to hear more about Brooklyn community gardens,
Speaker 2: they can listen to my two parter about Brooklyn community Gardens.
Speaker 2: I swear I didn't set that up on purpose.
Speaker 4: I don't know. I need to listen to it. I
Speaker 4: bet I'm going to know some folks there.
Speaker 2: Probably New York did a whole lot with public gardens
Speaker 2: and community gardening for reels. I know we've done a
Speaker 2: lot of New York episodes. There's a couple places in
Speaker 2: the world where a lot of episodes are based in
Speaker 2: New York City is one of them, Yeah, but entirely
Speaker 2: unrelated to that. But just me continuing the credits, is
Speaker 2: that our audio engineer is Rory Hi Rory Hi Ri
Speaker 2: Hi Roor and our theme music was written for us
Speaker 2: by on Women. And this is part two of the
Speaker 2: two parter about women of war. The Italians, spies, assassins, couriers,
Speaker 2: but in the correct order, who fought the Nazis. And
Speaker 2: we heard about one of the assassins earlier this week,
Speaker 2: but do you want to tell us about some of
Speaker 2: the more characters that you profiled.
Speaker 4: Sure.
Speaker 5: So we were moving from south to north in Italy
Speaker 5: like the Allied forces were, and they liberated Rome first,
Speaker 5: and so we talked about Carla, whose picture is on
Speaker 5: the front.
Speaker 4: Of the book.
Speaker 5: So now Rome is free and she's actually part of
Speaker 5: kind of the new ad hoc police force that is
Speaker 5: helping to keep it safe and the Nazis actually the
Speaker 5: Axis fighters. They actually left without much of a fight,
Speaker 5: which was surprising because south in Naples, they really thought
Speaker 5: that the Italians were going to just roll over and
Speaker 5: be like, yeah, take you know, whatever you want, and
Speaker 5: then they were going to bomb all this shit and
Speaker 5: just you know, leave the city in ruins. And there
Speaker 5: was this spontaneous uprising of the Napolese Napolis Neapolitans who
Speaker 5: came together and the Nazis were so shocked that they
Speaker 5: they bombed a few things, but then they left, and
Speaker 5: so the Romans were ready to do the same thing.
Speaker 5: They passed out guns. They had the secret code word
Speaker 5: or code phrase that.
Speaker 2: Wait, do you know what the code phrase?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was something like the snow falls in the
Speaker 4: mountains or something. It's in the book.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, And so they but they didn't have to
Speaker 5: use it because the Germans actually left without much.
Speaker 3: Of a fight.
Speaker 5: And so now they are terrorizing Florence. So it's now
Speaker 5: summertimes in Florence. And I was in Florence in the
Speaker 5: summer and it's very hot and it kind of crowded
Speaker 5: and stuff, and they're running out of food and things
Speaker 5: are awful. Theresa Matte had been active in Florence for
Speaker 5: a while and she was the one in episode one
Speaker 5: where she was the one of the four women where
Speaker 5: they really she really was pretty actively brought up as
Speaker 5: an anti fascist.
Speaker 4: Her parents were very active in the movement and so she.
Speaker 5: Pretty quickly became kind of go between between some of
Speaker 5: the kind of upper leadership because she was trusted and
Speaker 5: so she was doing a lot of things. She was doing,
Speaker 5: she was bringing messages around, she was a courier, and
Speaker 5: then she became part of the APISTI in in Florence
Speaker 5: and those are the folks were doing kind of the
Speaker 5: gorilla warfare. And so she's been doing these different things,
Speaker 5: supporting these different resistance groups. She's also part of the
Speaker 5: Youth Front. And also I failed to mention last time
Speaker 5: that there was this feminist group called abbreviated the GDD
Speaker 5: and it's a very long name in Italian, but it's
Speaker 5: like the groupie di da fasa. It's like the women
Speaker 5: who are you know, who are in defense of this
Speaker 5: and in support of that, but abbreviated the GDD.
Speaker 2: I love a good long weird acronym.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, it's so long. And so they were
Speaker 4: coming together.
Speaker 5: It was really helping to educate the women, bring them
Speaker 5: together in these you know, small groups throughout the country.
Speaker 4: So is this first, is.
Speaker 2: This before the part? Is this like thirties and early
Speaker 2: forties having once after occupation.
Speaker 5: So it was formed in November nineteen forty three, and
Speaker 5: so these women are now becoming politically activated.
Speaker 4: They didn't even know any of this.
Speaker 5: They didn't realize their own power, and the GDD is
Speaker 5: helping them find it. And it's also kind of showing
Speaker 5: them how they could recruit more people and support the
Speaker 5: partisans who are now hiding in the hills or hiding underground.
Speaker 5: And so these women, there were, you know, tens of
Speaker 5: thousands of women in the GDD that are now material support,
Speaker 5: organized material support and becoming activated themselves. So Theresa was
Speaker 5: a leader in the GDD. We had Carla, who we
Speaker 5: talked about last time, was also part of the GDD,
Speaker 5: but that wasn't kine of one of her main things.
Speaker 5: And our other two women who will get to Bianca
Speaker 5: and Anita, were also both part.
Speaker 4: Of the GDD. And so Treesa's Theresa is doing a
Speaker 4: number of things.
Speaker 5: She's probably the person who of the four where she
Speaker 5: really kind of was useful in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 5: There is a dramatic story because I don't want to
Speaker 5: give all the good stories away, but she at one
Speaker 5: point it's you know, very tragic. Her brother, her older brother,
Speaker 5: was actually a bomb maker in Rome. He was actually
Speaker 5: making bombs for Carla's crew, and he gets arrested and
Speaker 5: horrifically tortured, and so she makes her way to Rome,
Speaker 5: or tries to make her way to Rome to be
Speaker 5: with her parents who were in hiding in Rome, and
Speaker 5: to get word of his fate, and she's captured and
Speaker 5: ends up escaping in oh shit. Yeah, and it's a
Speaker 5: it's a dramatic and you know, horrific story of war.
Speaker 5: But she persevered and would later share her stories, so
Speaker 5: there's a to read later. I don't want to give
Speaker 5: that spoiler away. But she makes her way back to Florence.
Speaker 2: You know, everything that our audience likes. They love it. Okay,
Speaker 2: was it with a tunnel?
Speaker 5: No, but she did do something else with the tunnel.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, people like tunnels, so all right, So if
Speaker 2: you want to know more about the tunnel.
Speaker 4: That's another tragic story too. Oh well, I mean it's war, where's.
Speaker 5: Full of tragedy, right, and tunnels and tunnels, Yeah, a
Speaker 5: lot of good tunnels. So so yeah, she does some
Speaker 5: things with tunnels and death and perseverance.
Speaker 4: And so she helps at the well.
Speaker 5: An interesting dramatic story of when Florence is now going
Speaker 5: to be imminently liberated. So the Allays are relatively close
Speaker 5: and they don't seem to be moving with a lot
Speaker 5: of expedients, and so the Florentines need to do what
Speaker 5: the Folks and Naples did and what the Romans thought
Speaker 5: they maybe had to do, because it was clear that
Speaker 5: now the Germans are pissed.
Speaker 4: They're stealing everything they can.
Speaker 5: They're taking the lenses out of microscopes, They're stealing all
Speaker 5: any animals they could find. Maybe they'll butcher them later.
Speaker 5: I mean, they're just they're ransacking. They're stealing a lot
Speaker 5: of art, and they're afraid they're going to start, you know,
Speaker 5: bombing shit. And so they also destroy all the bridges
Speaker 5: because and this is of course a tactical move, they
Speaker 5: don't want to make it easy for the Allies to
Speaker 5: make their way from one part of Florence to the other,
Speaker 5: and so they destroy almost all the bridges except for
Speaker 5: the ponte Vecchio. So if anyone goes to Florence, that's
Speaker 5: the only original bridge. The other ones are recreated to
Speaker 5: look like they did. Some of them look new, but
Speaker 5: they so there's all this rubbic down right by the
Speaker 5: by the river, in by the Arnou and Florence was
Speaker 5: was destroyed. And they and what they did that people
Speaker 5: wouldn't go over the ponte Vecchio is they destroyed the
Speaker 5: buildings on either side and then they wired it with
Speaker 5: mines so that if you tried to go up over
Speaker 5: the rubble you might explode.
Speaker 4: But for anyone who's done the you know, high.
Speaker 5: School tour of Florence, right, you know, the tourists one
Speaker 5: oh one, you might remember that above the ponte Vecchio
Speaker 5: is the Vasari corridor. And so this was how like
Speaker 5: the fancy Medaiceese could get from one side of the
Speaker 5: river to the other without messing around with the hoay peloi.
Speaker 5: And there's a couple moments of the ponte Vecchio in
Speaker 5: the book, and I tried to have them echo each other,
Speaker 5: but this last one is during this insurrection, so Florence
Speaker 5: is in a battle between the last remaining Nazis and
Speaker 5: the people of Florence. And there's this, you know, a
Speaker 5: longer drawn out story of they were under Basically, they
Speaker 5: could not come out of houses for days on end.
Speaker 5: It was super hot, there was like a lack of water.
Speaker 5: If someone did go out, they might get shot by
Speaker 5: the Nazis patrolling, so there might be dead bodies out there.
Speaker 5: If the Partisans snuck out, they might find a Nazi
Speaker 5: and shoot him, and so maybe there'd be another dead
Speaker 5: body they have to bury in the in the garden,
Speaker 5: or they'd throw it in the river if they were
Speaker 5: close enough. So it's a really horrific scene in Florence.
Speaker 5: And then finally they erupt into battle, and so she
Speaker 5: is one of the leaders during this. She's helping to
Speaker 5: lead a group in honor of her brother who was
Speaker 5: killed in Rome.
Speaker 4: And so they do have a couple day.
Speaker 5: Battle before the Allied soldiers make their way to Florence,
Speaker 5: and they're the ones who, like Rome was ready to do,
Speaker 5: pushed actually pushed the last of the Nazis out and
Speaker 5: saved some of their infrastructure and saved some things from looting.
Speaker 5: And so I actually am writing an article about this.
Speaker 5: I handed in a draft today because I think this
Speaker 5: is really important for the Italians and particularly the resistance members,
Speaker 5: the people who were a part of this army, but
Speaker 5: they were ruled or the government they recognized was a
Speaker 5: coalition of the different parties than non fascist parties who
Speaker 5: came together, and I think this is a good lesson
Speaker 5: that we need to come together despite our differences if
Speaker 5: we all have this common enemy. Right, And so they
Speaker 5: came together and they really were a trusted government for
Speaker 5: those who wanted to recognize them as the hopeful potential
Speaker 5: post war government. And so they were kind of the
Speaker 5: ones who were giving the mastermind, you know, kind of
Speaker 5: top down orders, and they wanted to show the l's because,
Speaker 5: as we mentioned last episode, they didn't really trust them.
Speaker 4: They're like, can these people rule themselves?
Speaker 5: They haven't been prone to government. Maybe they're still fascists. Likewise,
Speaker 5: they also were like, maybe they're going to be you know,
Speaker 5: maybe they're going to become communists.
Speaker 4: Oh this bad word, right, right?
Speaker 2: Y are yeah?
Speaker 5: I mean they were right, yeah, But they wanted to
Speaker 5: show that they could be trusted and that they were
Speaker 5: and that they can rule themselves and take care of themselves.
Speaker 5: And so it was very important for those reasons, not
Speaker 5: just because they didn't want their city destroyed, but because
Speaker 5: they wanted to show that they could take care of
Speaker 5: themselves and they could rule themselves. And so they were
Speaker 5: able to push them out of Florence. And so now
Speaker 5: it's Theresa was part of that and she was a
Speaker 5: trusted partisan.
Speaker 4: And so now they're moving northward. It's now summer.
Speaker 2: Wait wait, I want to we're well, we're still talking
Speaker 2: about Theresa. Two things. One, instead of having the high
Speaker 2: school field trip to to Fionanza, I went years ago.
Speaker 2: This is just a story I just like, so it's
Speaker 2: completely unrelated.
Speaker 4: Hey, it's your podcast.
Speaker 2: My first book with my name on the spine was
Speaker 2: actually an Italian not English, even though I don't speak Italian,
Speaker 2: because Italian anarchists took one of my zines and turned
Speaker 2: it into a bound book. And then I went on
Speaker 2: like a month long book tour around Italy.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, how cool.
Speaker 2: It was amazing. And but I speak any Italian, and
Speaker 2: so I was getting by with my terrible Spanish. I've
Speaker 2: said this like about every episode. I was like I
Speaker 2: was in France. I got by with my terrible Spanish.
Speaker 2: Everywhere I go, I just get buy a terrible Spanish.
Speaker 2: And but my experience of Fernanza was a squatted villa
Speaker 2: where I couldn't talk to anyone. But there was a
Speaker 2: party and I was at it, but I just didn't
Speaker 2: really interact with anyone. But then I went to the
Speaker 2: art museum the the big fancy ones is maybe yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe maybe, I don't remember, but I got to see
Speaker 2: a lot of the like big important paintings of the
Speaker 2: world because we went to the back entrance and one
Speaker 2: of the employees was an anarchist and led us in
Speaker 2: and gave us a tour.
Speaker 5: Awesome, So a little one, a little yeah, and.
Speaker 2: So Todisa saved some of the art that I got
Speaker 2: to see. That's my that's my story about it.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: I met some anarchists in Reggio, which was really fun.
Speaker 5: I had one of the archivists was taking me on
Speaker 5: a tour and he's like, here's where their anarchists have
Speaker 5: their office or have their.
Speaker 4: Little and then someone walks U out.
Speaker 5: He's like, oh, he got all excited because he had
Speaker 5: never been in there. And so we went in and
Speaker 5: hung out with the anarchists for a little bit cool
Speaker 5: in there, a little underground layer.
Speaker 4: It was awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah fuck yeah, okay, so yes, Well, so you were
Speaker 2: talking about Todysa. The other thing I want to ask
Speaker 2: about the Florence thing. Were you moving north to Florence
Speaker 2: to then talk about one of the other people, because
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask a little bit more about Todisa.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's let's talk about today.
Speaker 2: My two thoughts is, so, the big thing that comes
Speaker 2: up when you search her is that she helped write
Speaker 2: the Italian constitution. That's the sort of government body that
Speaker 2: you're talking.
Speaker 4: About, right exactly.
Speaker 2: And I find that so fascinating because like, that's the
Speaker 2: kind of thing that those of us who grew up
Speaker 2: in Cold War America like can't imagine that the constitution
Speaker 2: of a democratic country was written by someone who was
Speaker 2: in the Communist Party at the time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, there were there were many Communists.
Speaker 5: I mean they were one of the five coalition groups
Speaker 5: that made up the CLN, which was that the coalition
Speaker 5: I mentioned, Yeah, but yeah, I don't think Anita kind
Speaker 5: of declared herself as part of any group, but yeah,
Speaker 5: I think three out of the four were communists. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then although I this is the kind of bullshit
Speaker 2: that I get really nerdy about. I looked at both
Speaker 2: Bianca and Today's I left the Communist Party in the
Speaker 2: fifties because they disagreed with Stalin, which from my point
Speaker 2: of view is like a thumbs up for both of them.
Speaker 5: But well, when you think, when you think, what did
Speaker 5: they know about the Communist Party at the time.
Speaker 4: I mean, first of.
Speaker 2: All, this is the militant group that's fighting the Nazis
Speaker 2: and doing very well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and they knew they well, they knew very little
Speaker 5: about almost any party, right, and what they did know was, yeah,
Speaker 5: it was really about worker rights. And you know, maybe
Speaker 5: they read the Communist Manifesto, they read what Trotsky's autobiography.
Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe not all of them.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 5: I mean I know that Bianca read Trotzky, and I
Speaker 5: know Karla red Marks, and you know, you can assume
Speaker 5: that I think I know Teresa Redmark. You know, so
Speaker 5: they this is what is based on and these ideals, right,
Speaker 5: they sound they sound pretty great when you're no. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and I'm thinking about this too, as I you know,
Speaker 5: spoiler for many many years down the line. But I
Speaker 5: mean that I'm researching communism now, particularly in America, but
Speaker 5: also the larger narrative is it's so hard to kind
Speaker 5: of divorce what we know now with what people would
Speaker 5: have known at the time. And and so that's part
Speaker 5: of the larger story that I'm interested in telling, is Yeah,
Speaker 5: and I'm finding these stories of people being so passionate
Speaker 5: about the Communist Party because it really, you know, in
Speaker 5: its ideal format, really sounds yeah, like it supports the people, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, totally and and well, okay, and then this
Speaker 2: ties into the other question I have about Tadisa is
Speaker 2: I read about that she was involved in killing one
Speaker 2: of the ideological leaders of fascism, like one of the
Speaker 2: ideals of this guy, Giovanni, and that apparently because you
Speaker 2: mentioned with Carla that some of the actions of the
Speaker 2: Gapistas was polarizing. Yeah, right, and apparently also this killing
Speaker 2: of Giovanni was incredibly polarizing, and that only the Communist
Speaker 2: Party was like, no, it's good to blow up. They're like,
Speaker 2: I don't know. They oh, they shot him through his
Speaker 2: car window, but it's like, good to kill that guy.
Speaker 2: He's an ideological father of Nazis or fascism. But then
Speaker 2: everyone else was like, we don't know about that. I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the debate was and so this happened before the
Speaker 5: end of the war, and it's in the book, and
Speaker 5: she did feel kind of bad about it, but you know,
Speaker 5: I don't she kind of stays away from analyzing this
Speaker 5: moment I have.
Speaker 2: That makes sense. I probably would too, you know, I.
Speaker 5: Do have her own report of her kind of being
Speaker 5: embarrassed because what she does is she points him out
Speaker 5: to the people who will eventually kill him. And so
Speaker 5: she knows that she's pointing him out to future assassins,
Speaker 5: but he doesn't know. And they were apparently on friendly terms.
Speaker 5: And so I think this is something she kind of
Speaker 5: had to grapple.
Speaker 2: With, is that, Oh she knew Giovanni.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he was her professor, and so she kind of
Speaker 5: she kind of liked him.
Speaker 4: I mean, she thought he was a nice enough guy.
Speaker 4: He allegedly as it were, he was like, oh, well.
Speaker 5: I'm going to help save the Jewish people, I like,
Speaker 5: you know, and so I mean, you know, he wasn't
Speaker 5: a jerk, I'm using scared.
Speaker 4: Off, right, right, Yeah, but he also was and so
Speaker 4: but a lot.
Speaker 5: Of people didn't like the fact because they didn't like
Speaker 5: killing for he didn't like ideological killings, right, And and
Speaker 5: so that was kind of the main debate was that
Speaker 5: was the one act maybe not the only one, but
Speaker 5: the one they really talk about of killing and it
Speaker 5: wasn't an act of war explicitly.
Speaker 2: Right, Oh, that's fascinating. And then it like one of
Speaker 2: the things that I think is there's a disconnect from
Speaker 2: what we assume about history versus like everyone living in
Speaker 2: the United States right now is literally in the process
Speaker 2: of watching a government become a f ashist government, right
Speaker 2: And there's this disconnect where you're like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: going to the mechanic and then being like, wait a second,
Speaker 2: this guy that I'm friends with, like is moving towards fascism.
Speaker 2: And we have this sort of Nazis as cartoon villains
Speaker 2: thing in our head, right, which is unfortunately it flattens things,
Speaker 2: so it becomes harder to understand the fact that the
Speaker 2: disconnect that I think we're all living through right now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, yeah, and I live in a bubble
Speaker 5: in Brooklyn, and so I don't encounter that, although I do.
Speaker 5: I do go upstate and my family is from a
Speaker 5: kind of purple town upstate, so and I have family
Speaker 5: members who are not blue, and so I like, you know,
Speaker 5: with those kind of interactions, you can kind of stay
Speaker 5: away from certain things. But right I don't encounter it
Speaker 5: that often as many people probably do.
Speaker 2: And it's like, who knows what that will reach eventually,
Speaker 2: And there's a sadness to that. There's a the actual
Speaker 2: sort of brother versus brother, a conflict of high tension,
Speaker 2: you know. But you know what doesn't give me any tension.
Speaker 2: I feel completely fine about everything we advertise. All of
Speaker 2: it is amazing. Even the bad stuff that I wish
Speaker 2: we didn't advertise is amazing. And some of the ads
Speaker 2: are genuinely good. Some of them are for things that
Speaker 2: are amazing, like every now and then we get go
Speaker 2: outside with your friends ads. I love those ads. You
Speaker 2: should do that. Here's a free ad, go outside with
Speaker 2: your friends. It's nice. Here's ads, and we're back. Okay,
Speaker 2: so we've talked about Florence, and then you said you
Speaker 2: were going to take this further north.
Speaker 5: So now pretty much Florence. It took a little while
Speaker 5: to get all the bad guys out. They have some
Speaker 5: people up there.
Speaker 2: The cartoon bad guys who are completely one dimensional. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: I'm still fine with kicking.
Speaker 5: Yeah, anyway, there's snipers and so anyway, it takes a
Speaker 5: little while, and then finally the Allies show up and they
Speaker 5: help out that last little bit. But now it's fall,
Speaker 5: it's autumn, and you know, the Allies are getting.
Speaker 4: A little distracted. There's other things happening. It's now autumn,
Speaker 4: of nineteen forty four. Then the weather starts to get
Speaker 4: bad in November, and so they just announced, like over
Speaker 4: the radio, they say, all right, I'm giving you the
Speaker 4: slightly hyperbolic but only slightly hyperbolic gist of it. All right, Partisans,
Speaker 4: you guys just pack up and go home for the winner.
Speaker 5: We're gonna we're not really going to do anything this winter.
Speaker 5: So you guys go home, and.
Speaker 4: Then we'll start this war back up in the spring.
Speaker 4: It's like, lighit what happened?
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 5: And so even the New York Times read this article
Speaker 5: that was like, I mean, this is it. They said,
Speaker 5: this is a death sentence for the Partisans. This is
Speaker 5: not a summer sport, is what they say.
Speaker 2: The quote.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so the Nazis are psyched because they're like, oh,
Speaker 5: we don't even have to worry about the Allies, focus
Speaker 5: on rooting out all these Partisans. And now they're in
Speaker 5: a smaller space, you know, they're now farther north, and
Speaker 5: they're also mad because they kept losing.
Speaker 4: And so now we're left.
Speaker 5: With we have Anita who's in the mountains around Reggio,
Speaker 5: and then we have Bianca, who is in Turin. And
Speaker 5: then she keeps going to the Alps, where her boyfriend
Speaker 5: actually is stationed with a bunch of other partisans, and
Speaker 5: so they're both doing different things. And so Anita also
Speaker 5: around the time that Florence was falling, was not falling,
Speaker 5: it was rising again.
Speaker 4: She ends up. She's been doing a lot.
Speaker 5: Of courier work for the most part, and she gets
Speaker 5: caught or suspected, and they bring her in and they
Speaker 5: question her, and they said, all right, come back tomorrow,
Speaker 5: and so she goes and she's like, what am I
Speaker 5: supposed to do? Asking the partisan leadership, and they're like,
Speaker 5: you have to leave. They're gonna they're going to arrest
Speaker 5: you tomorrow. You have to go, and so she packs
Speaker 5: a bag. This is the first moment she tells her
Speaker 5: parents she's part of the resistance.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 5: Both of her brothers are in the resistance. In fact,
Speaker 5: even her dad has done some things for the resistance.
Speaker 4: But he's like, I.
Speaker 5: Never expected you a girl. But he gives her some
Speaker 5: pants and some in a blanket. Anyway, and she goes
Speaker 5: to the mountains and so she becomes one of the
Speaker 5: first women in the mountains. And this is now, yeah,
Speaker 5: like late summer fall of forty four. So now she's
Speaker 5: in the mountains and more people are coming.
Speaker 4: But this is where she really becomes even more.
Speaker 5: She gets a gun, and she becomes a very trusted
Speaker 5: person in the mountains, but she's also in charge of
Speaker 5: because even if you're in the mountains, they still need
Speaker 5: women who are less able to be suspected to be
Speaker 5: going from camp to camp.
Speaker 4: And so they built all of these amazing paths.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, I'm sure the paths existed, but they
Speaker 5: use these existing paths, and they had their their kind
Speaker 5: of their way between the different camps and between the
Speaker 5: towns and the trusted farms maybe where they had some
Speaker 5: of that would keep them overnight or give them something
Speaker 5: to eat. And it's amazing because today these paths have
Speaker 5: been kind of cleared up in the last couple of
Speaker 5: years and you can you can hike the same paths
Speaker 5: that the party is. That's cool and so I hiked
Speaker 5: just a very small part of it, but I would
Speaker 5: love to go back and do it again. And they have,
Speaker 5: you know, some monuments along the way, and it's a
Speaker 5: really powerful, powerful place.
Speaker 2: And they give you a wool blanket and a rifle
Speaker 2: at the base of the path and then they like,
Speaker 2: don't mention the current state of the Italian government and
Speaker 2: just sort of leave it as exercise for the reader.
Speaker 4: But it was really amazing.
Speaker 5: So she's in the mountains and in the meantime she
Speaker 5: breaks up with her fascist boyfriend.
Speaker 4: She's like, he finds out she went to the mountains.
Speaker 4: He's like, no woman of mine is going to be a.
Speaker 5: Sled up here in the mountains with these guys. And
Speaker 5: she's like, screw you, this is my life. She'd already
Speaker 5: been talking about it, you know, getting rid of him,
Speaker 5: and so she dumps him and she maybe meets someone else.
Speaker 5: But I don't want to tell you this part because
Speaker 5: it's one of the most favorite parts of the whole book.
Speaker 2: There's a love story in the book.
Speaker 5: Okay, they end up having this very horrific fight because
Speaker 5: now the Nazis are like, hey, we know where all
Speaker 5: the partisans are. They're in this basically this you know,
Speaker 5: these two ridges that go down into this valley and
Speaker 5: it's part of the Appenine Mountains just outside of Reggio.
Speaker 5: And so she is her job and some of the
Speaker 5: other stuff Thatta as part of this fight is too
Speaker 5: is to be kind of bring the information between and
Speaker 5: among all of these different groups that are fighting, and
Speaker 5: it's it's very horrific. It was very bloody and awful.
Speaker 5: I know what's crazy about this story. It's the called
Speaker 5: the Battle of monte Cayo, and that's the name of
Speaker 5: one of the mountains around there. It's very hard to
Speaker 5: find anything out about it in English. It's almost uncovered
Speaker 5: in almost any you know, history of the war, even
Speaker 5: though it's it was a pretty major battle for the
Speaker 5: for that particular region.
Speaker 2: And you think that's just because the Allies weren't involved.
Speaker 2: Do you think it was just because it was a
Speaker 2: partisan fight?
Speaker 4: I mean probably, yeah.
Speaker 5: And so even the fact checker is like, I can't
Speaker 5: find this, and so I had to dig up some
Speaker 5: things in Italian because the fact checker didn't have access
Speaker 5: to everything I did, and I was like, here, here's
Speaker 5: where it's talked about. I swear it exists. I'm not
Speaker 5: making this up. But it's interesting that it's, yeah, that's
Speaker 5: really discussed so rarely, and even in histories of Italian
Speaker 5: what was happening in the war in Italian that's written.
Speaker 4: In Italian, That's what I mean.
Speaker 5: So Reggio, it has this brutal winner. And we have Anita,
Speaker 5: who I do love. She's super scrappy and just she
Speaker 5: just has a lot of personality. And so she's living,
Speaker 5: you know, in a camp, a freezing camp, and you
Speaker 5: can't let a fire because then they'd be like, oh.
Speaker 4: There they are, you know, and they're just doing the
Speaker 4: best they can.
Speaker 5: And so then they make it through to the spring,
Speaker 5: and so you know her, that was kind of the
Speaker 5: most dramatic moment. There's still some other like smaller actions
Speaker 5: that she's doing. And you know, whoever survived the Battle
Speaker 5: of monte Cayo, and then what happens with Reggio, And
Speaker 5: then I'm going to skip up to Bianca, because both
Speaker 5: of these cities are liberated one right after another at
Speaker 5: the end of the war. And so Bianca I love
Speaker 5: beyond I mean, I love all these women. It's like
Speaker 5: they really are my children. I can't pick a favorite.
Speaker 5: So Bianca is a she quits that job where she,
Speaker 5: as I mentioned last time, she was working at a factory,
Speaker 5: and she's a social worker, right, She's a social worker,
Speaker 5: and she was connected to a lot of women, but
Speaker 5: also I think she worked with some men as well,
Speaker 5: just like the workers there, and so she really was
Speaker 5: connected to these workers and getting very activated around workers' issues.
Speaker 5: And so now she's part of the GDD, this women's group,
Speaker 5: and she's helping to organize them, and she ends up
Speaker 5: quitting the party.
Speaker 4: The Communist Party said we want.
Speaker 5: To we want to pay you to be basically a
Speaker 5: partisan full time, and so she quits her job at
Speaker 5: the beginning of nineteen forty four and ends up working
Speaker 5: for them full time.
Speaker 4: And she's but.
Speaker 5: She's still kind of going to the factories in organizing
Speaker 5: these people and writing a lot of publications. She was
Speaker 5: our journalist of the I mean, there were many people
Speaker 5: doing this, but that was what I ended up writing
Speaker 5: about a lot, because she was really, you know, trying
Speaker 5: to get these stories out there. And she's bringing these
Speaker 5: heavy printing presses. She's just carrying them on the tram
Speaker 5: around Turin, trying not to get caught. And she also
Speaker 5: is riding her bike from Turin to the Alps. I mean,
Speaker 5: she probably took the train part of the way, but
Speaker 5: still she is riding her bike up the Alps. And
Speaker 5: also as part of this research, I drove part of
Speaker 5: the way that she was riding her bicycle and this
Speaker 5: is treacherous and amazing. So she's bringing anything she could bring.
Speaker 5: Her boyfriend's up there. She's good friends with this other woman,
Speaker 5: Ada Gobetti, whose son is up there, and her boyfriend
Speaker 5: and her friend AIDA's son are just a couple of
Speaker 5: years apart, and so they are friends in the same
Speaker 5: partisan band, and they're bringing information, they're bringing food, they're
Speaker 5: bringing snacks. Sometimes she's bringing her uh huh. So she
Speaker 5: she writes in one of one of the testimonies, you know,
Speaker 5: she said, people think feminists invented sex later on, but
Speaker 5: we were having lots of sex, So I love it.
Speaker 2: I would imagine a mixed gender partisan camp would have
Speaker 2: a lot of people being like, well, we're going to
Speaker 2: die tomorrow. It's kind of cold out.
Speaker 5: They and also they had been totally like Anita, for example,
Speaker 5: had never even spent time alone with a man, and
Speaker 5: she's in her early twenties, and so yeah, yeah, I'm
Speaker 5: not saying that she.
Speaker 4: Did that, there's no report of that, but.
Speaker 2: But yeah, her boyfriend fascist boyfriend thought she.
Speaker 5: Was exactly and so so yeah, there was a lot
Speaker 5: of a lot of snuggling happening, and and so she's
Speaker 5: Bianca's going back and forth, and she has some some
Speaker 5: close calls where she has to pretend that she is
Speaker 5: working at this like you know, a hotel basically, or
Speaker 5: she was about ready to be caught by these fascists.
Speaker 4: Things came in in the middle of the night.
Speaker 2: When she has to say that she is working at hotel.
Speaker 2: One of the things that is always buried in history,
Speaker 2: besides just women doing things is sex work. In particularly,
Speaker 2: is that code for doing sex work if she's worked,
Speaker 2: if she has to pretend like she's working at hotel.
Speaker 5: No, she So she was caught after curfew and she
Speaker 5: knew of this place that where that was friendly to
Speaker 5: the partisans, and so she gets there and they allow
Speaker 5: her to come in and they're like okay, yeah. And
Speaker 5: then she had just gotten there and then the bunch
Speaker 5: of fascist knock on the door and they're like, let.
Speaker 4: Us in for the night.
Speaker 5: And then it's like, how are you going to explain
Speaker 5: this young woman here barely you know.
Speaker 2: And so as she works here, she hands.
Speaker 5: Are a yeah, hands are an apron and says now
Speaker 5: she serves all of the fascist.
Speaker 4: Drinks like just get them drinks in. Yeah.
Speaker 5: And then there were also partisans in the beds so
Speaker 5: the proprietor proprietress had to go and sneak all the
Speaker 5: partisans out and get the rooms ready for the fascists
Speaker 5: on beds. Yeah, and then Bianca's here is serve everyone drinks, right,
Speaker 5: and then one guy recognizes her from university and he's like,
Speaker 5: why are you here? Weren't she getting a law degree?
Speaker 5: And so yeah, it was this tense.
Speaker 4: Tense moment.
Speaker 2: That's the moment that would be in the movie, like
Speaker 2: instead of oh, what's the movie about killing Nazis? Or
Speaker 2: they are sitting in a bar and they count wrong.
Speaker 4: Oh the inglorious bastards.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, like see this, this story is better. I
Speaker 2: mean probably because it's real and partly because women get
Speaker 2: to be protagonist of stories sometimes.
Speaker 4: But wait, can I tell you a secret?
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, I've never said this out loud, So hey, producers,
Speaker 5: if you're listening, I'm writing a screenplay.
Speaker 2: Oh hell yeah.
Speaker 5: And it's so exciting because I get to put the
Speaker 5: things I am you know, so much like different things
Speaker 5: that I imagine because you can be I'm I'm hewing as
Speaker 5: closely to the story as possible, but I get to
Speaker 5: be a little like out of.
Speaker 2: Fat you got to do some Yeah, because.
Speaker 5: That's what it would be. But anyway, so that's exciting.
Speaker 5: But you're right, I haven't gotten to that scene yet.
Speaker 5: It's a good one.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah. Well, speaking of secrets, if you listen to
Speaker 2: the first word of each of these advertisements and then
Speaker 2: open up a copy of Moby Dick it has to
Speaker 2: be the right edition, and then cross reference it to
Speaker 2: that copy, you will find a secret message. That's why
Speaker 2: we have ads. Here they are and we're back. I
Speaker 2: sure enjoyed learning about I don't know anything about Moby Dick.
Speaker 2: I know the tiniest bit. Never mind, I can't continue this.
Speaker 2: The bit is going to fall apart. But okay, yes,
Speaker 2: so she has to hide herself as a hoteller, as
Speaker 2: someone working at a hotel.
Speaker 5: Yes, then she well, we know she makes it home eventually.
Speaker 5: You'll have to read that section to find out.
Speaker 4: Okay, but she is.
Speaker 5: It's amazing that she's going up and down these mountains
Speaker 5: so often, and then she makes her way back to Turin,
Speaker 5: and so she's constantly going back and forth. But her
Speaker 5: I would say, one of the two main things she's
Speaker 5: doing is publishing a lot of these papers for different groups,
Speaker 5: and then also helping to support the mostly men in
Speaker 5: the mountains.
Speaker 4: And so now so that was Now we're getting close
Speaker 4: to the end of.
Speaker 2: War and total, not this war, but just war in general.
Speaker 5: I wish wouldn't that book be a bestseller? And so
Speaker 5: it's now springtime and the Allies are allowing the Nazis
Speaker 5: to fight them again, and.
Speaker 2: Oh, because they really do kind of have to hunk
Speaker 2: her down all winter because without Allied support, there's like
Speaker 2: not a lot of point in them fighting on their own.
Speaker 2: Is that.
Speaker 5: I mean, they did some things, but you know, it
Speaker 5: also was very brutal. It was one of the coldest winners.
Speaker 5: It wasn't I think Bianca said it wasn't. She reports
Speaker 5: at some point it wasn't super snowy, but which was
Speaker 5: a blessing.
Speaker 4: But it was very cold.
Speaker 5: And yeah, but what she puts her energy into in
Speaker 5: come February pretty much is she starts planning another strike.
Speaker 5: So if you recall there was a strike that influenced
Speaker 5: her political agency in episode one, and then what I
Speaker 5: didn't mention is that she actually planned I should I
Speaker 5: need to go back and mention this now because it's
Speaker 5: really bad ass, because I'm just getting to Bianca now
Speaker 5: because I think this is it's so instructive. Let's put
Speaker 5: it that way. So let's back up about a year
Speaker 5: Spring of forty four.
Speaker 4: We are in like nothing has been literated.
Speaker 5: We are in the depths of war, and Bianca is
Speaker 5: one of the main organizers of a general strike around
Speaker 5: occupied Italy cool and she organizes. There was a lot
Speaker 5: of factories. It was mostly factory workers, but not definitely
Speaker 5: more than just factory workers. In fact, the newspapers weren't
Speaker 5: even published for a while because they went on to strike.
Speaker 5: Like some shopkeepers, like streets were closed, you know, with
Speaker 5: shops on them, because a lot of the women who
Speaker 5: worked in the shops and other shopkeepers just were.
Speaker 4: Like, I'm going to go on a strike.
Speaker 5: And so she calls for this general strike and it
Speaker 5: millions of people take part, and a lot of them,
Speaker 5: some of them, you know, protests, have placards.
Speaker 4: Some of them just don't go to work.
Speaker 5: In some cases, they knew about this ahead of time
Speaker 5: because they're you know, they're organizing, they're going to find
Speaker 5: out that Sometimes they close some of the they preempted
Speaker 5: the factory or preempted the strike and just said we're
Speaker 5: going to be closed.
Speaker 4: In a holiday or you know something.
Speaker 2: Was this unions or was this existing unions that have
Speaker 2: been underground or stayed above ground, or was this like.
Speaker 5: I mean, they didn't have very any unions. They had
Speaker 5: were a little at hoc. Yeah, they were illegal. I mean,
Speaker 5: they just organized the hell out of it, and it's
Speaker 5: so and they had millions.
Speaker 4: I mean, it was the the.
Speaker 5: Biggest general strike of Nazi occupied territory during World War two,
Speaker 5: and they basically shut down the country for you know,
Speaker 5: for almost a week, and there was horrific retribution. I mean,
Speaker 5: they arrested thousands of people and many of them ended
Speaker 5: up deported in concentration camps that didn't make it home.
Speaker 2: And I mean it's just as much a military action
Speaker 2: as like military action is, and it's just as commendable. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, But what it said was, first of all, this
Speaker 5: is how many people we have who are willing to
Speaker 5: stand up against the Nazi fascists. And so it was
Speaker 5: very powerful because so many Italians saw who was willing
Speaker 5: to put their basically their lives on the line for
Speaker 5: this cause.
Speaker 4: Brought more people into the fold.
Speaker 5: And then also it has been reported that a lot
Speaker 5: of these people this was the moment.
Speaker 4: That they felt like they were part of the resistance.
Speaker 5: So even though they were kind of ostensibly being like,
Speaker 5: I don't want because a lot of what was happening
Speaker 5: is they they were pissed that they were making things
Speaker 5: that were being sent to Germany, and they also were
Speaker 5: taking skilled workers and sending them to Germany.
Speaker 4: So they had some specific demands.
Speaker 5: Around don't take like no manned Germany, no machine to Germany.
Speaker 5: They didn't want things being deported. But then they also
Speaker 5: wanted more rations. But you know, they also were like,
Speaker 5: we're going to stand up for what we believe in.
Speaker 5: And so suddenly this resistance was galvanized and they saw
Speaker 5: the Nazi fascists, saw what they were up against. And
Speaker 5: so this was a very powerful moment in the resistance.
Speaker 5: And you know, side note, I hear different things around
Speaker 5: the power of general strikes, and they can be incredibly powerful,
Speaker 5: and this is such an important example of that power.
Speaker 5: And and it was kind of I mean, it was not
Speaker 5: an easy street after that, but it was downhill.
Speaker 4: Basically from then on out.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's I would say that the the Italians
Speaker 5: kind of operated as if they knew they were going
Speaker 5: to win. At some point, you know, like they really
Speaker 5: felt like the side had turned at that with that
Speaker 5: general strike, and just all of the supported galvanized in
Speaker 5: March of nineteen forty four, Okay, and so now.
Speaker 4: I'm going to move us forward.
Speaker 5: So this is then we have Rome is liberated and
Speaker 5: Florence is liberated.
Speaker 4: Then we have this horrific autumn. Yeah, and then now
Speaker 4: we are in.
Speaker 5: Spring, well winter, end of winter, beginning of spring in
Speaker 5: nineteen forty five, right near the end of war. And
Speaker 5: so Bianca helps organize another strike. It's not quite as dramatic,
Speaker 5: but it was also kind of the strike that was
Speaker 5: going to happen just to kind of remind people that
Speaker 5: this is, you know, we we.
Speaker 2: Have the power is our country, yeah.
Speaker 5: Exactly, And so that helps galvanize people again in March,
Speaker 5: and then they organized kind of another kind of ongoing strikes.
Speaker 4: This is what she's helping to organize. And it was just.
Speaker 5: To you know, meet it could be just I'm going
Speaker 5: to help this factory organize this strike because they fired
Speaker 5: this woman because she was speaking out against you know,
Speaker 5: not being not having enough ration.
Speaker 4: So it was very cool.
Speaker 5: It's a lot of worker power stuff and organizing and
Speaker 5: this also helped them organize for the insurrection. At the end,
Speaker 5: Anita was in the mountains, and so she wasn't part
Speaker 5: of any insurrection organization in Reggio, and there wasn't really
Speaker 5: fighting around Reggio. It's a pretty small city, and so
Speaker 5: that there was. I didn't follow any woman from Bologna.
Speaker 5: But Bologna is a great revolutionary city, and so there's
Speaker 5: some interesting stories there that I would love to tell
Speaker 5: at some point. But by now, by the spring of
Speaker 5: nineteen forty five, the Allies are pretty much marching.
Speaker 4: They figured out how to get over.
Speaker 5: This little mountain range, big mountain range, and now they're
Speaker 5: marching through the Po Valley towards Turin, towards the Alps
Speaker 5: and pushing.
Speaker 4: The Nazis out.
Speaker 5: And there was a big final insurrection, a battle in
Speaker 5: Turin and also Milan, but I didn't write about that,
Speaker 5: where Bianca helps to lead and organize just the people
Speaker 5: of Turin. There's interesting images of a lot of them.
Speaker 5: Men from the mountains came down to be soldiers in
Speaker 5: this final insurrection. So you see these pictures of men
Speaker 5: and you know the kind of like dirty not fatigue,
Speaker 5: you know, like worker uniform and then you see a
Speaker 5: guy in a suit basically, and they're standing with guns
Speaker 5: side by side, like looking around a corner, you know, ready.
Speaker 4: To fight for their city.
Speaker 5: And there's women and she was pretty much a career
Speaker 5: she didn't really take up arms. But yeah, the book
Speaker 5: ends before the epilogue, but it ends kind of right
Speaker 5: before they fully succeed in getting the Nazis out.
Speaker 2: And one of the things I like about you mentioned
Speaker 2: earlier about how in the GGP or whatever the GGD
Speaker 2: that there was like tens of thousands of women in it,
Speaker 2: you know, and because people have this sort of attitude
Speaker 2: of like, it's more fun to tell history when you
Speaker 2: pick characters and follow them through, right. But obviously the
Speaker 2: one of the big problems of this is the big
Speaker 2: man of history theory. But then there's almost like inversion
Speaker 2: of the big Man of history theory, where people when
Speaker 2: you mention a white guy who is sort of in charge,
Speaker 2: everyone's like, oh, he did it all. But then when
Speaker 2: you mentioned like someone who's marginalized who is involved, they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's a token, Like oh, yeah, I guess some women
Speaker 2: were involved, right, Like, oh, you found the only four
Speaker 2: women who actually did partisan stuff. And you're like, no,
Speaker 2: tens of thousands of women did this stuff, and even
Speaker 2: just in that one organization, let alone all of the
Speaker 2: like unpaid labor of revolution that happens behind the scenes,
Speaker 2: but you know, all of the like weird home stuff
Speaker 2: and all of the there's so much that happens. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: totally exactly. And so I think it's interesting because whenever
Speaker 2: you have an informal military, there are women in it.
Speaker 2: You know, like, this seems to be, as far as
Speaker 2: I can tell, somewhat universal, and especially if it's leftist.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't think that right wing militias are
Speaker 2: going to start letting women in anytime soon.
Speaker 5: Now they need their treadwives doing their chadwive things. Yeah,
Speaker 5: there's some statistic at the end. I probably am not
Speaker 5: going to find the exact thing really quickly, but there's
Speaker 5: a statistic about will I will give you the rough
Speaker 5: statistic about how many for this kind of you know,
Speaker 5: to support this kind of ad hoc army. There's something
Speaker 5: like you need statistically like seven support people per army
Speaker 5: person who you're supporting, And in the Italian situation that
Speaker 5: we just talked about, there was something like twelve or
Speaker 5: fifteen that were supporting each army. So there was so many,
Speaker 5: exponentially more people who were you know, even if they
Speaker 5: were giving a couple lira that they desperately needed to
Speaker 5: feed their kids or they had a blanket to spare, Yeah,
Speaker 5: just any little bit also helped them feel like they
Speaker 5: were part of the resistance and like they were doing something.
Speaker 5: And that was so much of it is not just
Speaker 5: what they could give, but feeling like they were unified
Speaker 5: because you know, as we were talking about last episode
Speaker 5: and also obviously now, is that you know, they were
Speaker 5: recreating or co creating what they wanted their country to
Speaker 5: look like. They weren't like the French, where like we
Speaker 5: just want to go back to how we were.
Speaker 4: A little bit ago.
Speaker 5: They didn't have a little bit of go So how
Speaker 5: are they going to come together and figure out where
Speaker 5: they want to go next?
Speaker 4: And that's why it was so powerful.
Speaker 5: And that's another important role of these underground papers that
Speaker 5: it sounds like you guys talked a lot about, but
Speaker 5: is unique to maybe not just to Italy, but is
Speaker 5: unique among most of you know, World War two resistance
Speaker 5: is that that's part of what the newspapers were doing too,
Speaker 5: is saying this is, you know, let's talk about where
Speaker 5: we're going to go from here, not just how we're
Speaker 5: going to do the thing right now and get back
Speaker 5: to where we were.
Speaker 2: And I think which makes so much sense to me.
Speaker 5: No, I was just going to say, I think that's
Speaker 5: what makes the story so unique, and yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 5: gives us so many, so many things to think about
Speaker 5: and learn historically.
Speaker 2: But fortunately it's all just history and has absolutely no
Speaker 2: burying on the present. But if it were to have
Speaker 2: buried on the present, one of the things I like
Speaker 2: about it, you know, you're describing how there's not really
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a you can divide a mountain fighter,
Speaker 2: a city fighter, and a striker and a support person
Speaker 2: if you want, right, you can. You can make categories
Speaker 2: to understand certain things. But all of it was part
Speaker 2: of what defeated fascism. And I love the fact that
Speaker 2: strikes and partisans are coexisting in the same movement because
Speaker 2: they seem fundamentally at odds, right, because you're like, well,
Speaker 2: if you're a striker, then that means you're friends with
Speaker 2: the terrorists in the mountains, you know, and like.
Speaker 5: Well, if you think about it, the strikers were actually
Speaker 5: creating things for the enemy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they wanted to stop, but they had no choice.
Speaker 5: I mean they literally would starve their children with I
Speaker 5: mean it was something. And so there's so many yeah,
Speaker 5: interesting nuances about these choices that you have to make,
Speaker 5: and also about not being an absolutist.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: People are doing the best they can, yeah, with where
Speaker 5: they are and what they have.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I don't know, do you have any like
Speaker 2: the final thoughts on this book, or like how it
Speaker 2: relates to things happening now or anything that you feel
Speaker 2: like talking about.
Speaker 5: Well, I just I felt, not too long ago, this moment,
Speaker 5: many moments of what do I do? Well, how do
Speaker 5: I act? What is the thing I should do right now?
Speaker 5: Of feeling like I wanted to do something because I'm
Speaker 5: clearly a politically minded person, and I also know very
Speaker 5: acutely the issue with not acting and sitting back and
Speaker 5: letting things happen. And so I was paralyzed or somewhat.
Speaker 5: And then I thought, Yo, listen to the women. What
Speaker 5: did they do? Not just women of War, but also
Speaker 5: my previous book of Power Hungry. And in fact I
Speaker 5: was probably nudged a little bit because Power Hungry was
Speaker 5: on a list that someone made and it was published
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty one, so it's you know, it's not
Speaker 5: that recent around what we could learn about mutual aid
Speaker 5: and how we can support others.
Speaker 2: Well, twenty twenty one is next year. It's still twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 5: I wish it was twenty nineteen maybe, but.
Speaker 4: And so I was like, Okay, people are finding this instructive.
Speaker 4: I'm the one who.
Speaker 5: Wrote the damn book, and you know, was learned so
Speaker 5: much from all of these amazing women, and so I
Speaker 5: just listened to the women. I'm like, okay, you just
Speaker 5: none neither of these none of these movements I've written
Speaker 5: about came out fully formed. It was just one or
Speaker 5: two or ten people doing something, and then they get
Speaker 5: connected to someone else, and then they do something else,
Speaker 5: and then more people are inspired, and then they ask.
Speaker 4: What can we do for those who need help the most?
Speaker 5: And they are incredibly brave in the face of being
Speaker 5: scared shitless that they might get arrested, but because the
Speaker 5: alternative is that what is happening will keep happening.
Speaker 4: And so I found their bravery inspiring.
Speaker 5: I found it very instructive to think I've written a
Speaker 5: book about how this was, you know, started slowly, step
Speaker 5: by step, so I too can do things slowly, step
Speaker 5: by step. And that was a really wonderful thing to
Speaker 5: realize and kind of help me do something, you know.
Speaker 5: And the first thing I did was email a bunch
Speaker 5: of friends and be like, hey, let's just get together
Speaker 5: and talk and share what we know. And then I also,
Speaker 5: of course, unsurprisingly, I have been writing articles.
Speaker 4: Most of them are coming out in the next couple
Speaker 4: of weeks.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: They're talking about the power of the underground press and
Speaker 5: connecting that a little bit to today. I did write
Speaker 5: an article what we could learn from a couple of
Speaker 5: these other movements in the past, and a lot of
Speaker 5: it is around.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: Again, this is right when I was learning this from
Speaker 5: my women, relearning it the power of political education, understanding
Speaker 5: that you just need to take things one step at
Speaker 5: a time, you know, just how they began their as
Speaker 5: also not feeling because this was something I was feeling
Speaker 5: at the time I was writing this. It's like feeling like,
Speaker 5: oh my god, I need to react to everything. You
Speaker 5: can specialize if this is what you could do, you're
Speaker 5: part of the community. Garden and that's what you're really
Speaker 5: good at, and those are the people you're connected with,
Speaker 5: and think about how you could use that to further
Speaker 5: the things that you want to further. If you are
Speaker 5: working in a factory and you need this job, you
Speaker 5: can't quit it, then how can you make the most
Speaker 5: of your time working in a factory like the folks
Speaker 5: who were just talking about. And so those were three
Speaker 5: of the lessons that I really took away from the
Speaker 5: different women throughout a couple of different books that I've
Speaker 5: been researching.
Speaker 2: No, it makes sense. I think what people sort of forget.
Speaker 2: I think our society and the way we're taught and
Speaker 2: things that kind of strip the idea that we can
Speaker 2: do things away from us. Especially people are marginalized in
Speaker 2: this or that way. Right, But at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, everything that has happened that humans do was
Speaker 2: done by humans doing things. And we're humans and we
Speaker 2: can do things. And it starts by talking to your
Speaker 2: friends and saying what is the problem and what are
Speaker 2: the steps that we can start taking towards that, and
Speaker 2: especially in a kind of like a step by step,
Speaker 2: you know, like and don't start with the big problem necessarily,
Speaker 2: but start with the immediate problems and learn how to
Speaker 2: do it. And I like the examples that you end
Speaker 2: up writing about, partly because one of the things that
Speaker 2: comes up a lot on the show is that we
Speaker 2: talk about how, look, if you don't know what else
Speaker 2: to do, feed people. Yeah, you know, mutual aid is
Speaker 2: a great first step or last step towards making a
Speaker 2: better world. And when in doubt, if there's people who
Speaker 2: need stuff and you know how to organize to get
Speaker 2: them the stuff that they need to be alive, you
Speaker 2: kind of can't go wrong.
Speaker 5: Yeah, especially, Yeah, that's going to be furthering you know,
Speaker 5: people's comfort. It's also going to be bringing people together
Speaker 5: and saying, oh, yeah, this is the way the world
Speaker 5: should be, we should take care of each other, and
Speaker 5: then helps more people realize that this.
Speaker 4: Is what you should. So it compounds in a wonderful way.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, well, okay, So some of the things that
Speaker 2: you will learn from this book, not you you already
Speaker 2: know it because you wrote it, but everyone else who's listening.
Speaker 2: You will get to learn a love story. You'll get
Speaker 2: to learn something about tunnels. You'll get to learn a
Speaker 2: prison escape. You'll get to learn how to coordinate drop
Speaker 2: offs of things, And probably we didn't even talk about
Speaker 2: how many bicycles are in this but that's cool, more
Speaker 2: useful than people will give them credit for. Yeah, is
Speaker 2: there any other I don't know. People should go and
Speaker 2: read Women of War The Italian Assassin, Spies and Couriers
Speaker 2: Who Fought the Nazis by Suzanne Cope. And something that
Speaker 2: I've talked about I think on this show and also
Speaker 2: just in general, is that pre orders really matter. Preorders
Speaker 2: have it far. If you want your purchase of a
Speaker 2: book to impact positively that author's life, preorders magnify that.
Speaker 2: Because we live in a really weird world and capitalism
Speaker 2: is the thing that controls things and literally algorithms that
Speaker 2: shouldn't run our world. Look at the number of sales
Speaker 2: of a book all at once, and so the number
Speaker 2: of sales they all hit the day that the book releases.
Speaker 2: So if you want Suzanne Cope to be a New
Speaker 2: York Times bestselling author, you should pre order this book.
Speaker 4: Crossing those fingers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then even if not, and if you want
Speaker 2: more publishers to give Suzanne even you know, more book
Speaker 2: deals and things. Pre ordering is really good, not that
Speaker 2: you clearly have written more than one book. I'm not
Speaker 2: saying it's like hanging in the balance.
Speaker 5: But even to look more broadly, if you want more
Speaker 5: stories like this, if you then tell those publishers this
Speaker 5: is what they can put their money into. Because I
Speaker 5: had it was such an honor to tell these stories,
Speaker 5: and you know, I'm just so excited to just be.
Speaker 4: In the beginning of my path to sharing them with people.
Speaker 5: So I'm really excited to keep talking about them.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, all right, Well, well that is the end
Speaker 2: of this episode except for other plugs. Do you want
Speaker 2: people to like follow you on social media and stuff
Speaker 2: for your good?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: What are you sure anything else you want to plug?
Speaker 5: You know, I should, I should have come up with
Speaker 5: something since last time, but no, I'd love to continue
Speaker 5: this conversation. And you know, some of my social media
Speaker 5: is turning a little politically as far as like who
Speaker 5: to follow and amplify these stories. So that's what I
Speaker 5: want to plug, amplifying stories of people who are making
Speaker 5: a positive difference. So if you want to find me
Speaker 5: on blue Sky and threads and Instagram, I'm trying to
Speaker 5: do that to varying degrees.
Speaker 2: Okay, And I hate the fact that I'm still on
Speaker 2: social media. But you can follow me at Magpie, kill
Speaker 2: Joy and or Marty or Killjoy at various things. I quit. Actually,
Speaker 2: all this left is Instagram and blue Sky, and I
Speaker 2: don't know what else to plug. Uh, Sophie, what do
Speaker 2: you want to plug?
Speaker 1: Ah? You can follow what cool zone Media and all
Speaker 1: the things for all my projects, and if you happen
Speaker 1: to find me, you'll find pictures of my dogs. And
Speaker 1: dogs are good, very good dogs.
Speaker 4: Margaret, this is such a pleasure. I had so much fun.
Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you, all.
Speaker 2: Right bye everyone.
Speaker 3: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 3: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media,
Speaker 3: visit our website coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 3: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 2: You get your podcasts.