Renzo De Felice,the resistance and the historian' task

Abstract

The Cesare Barbieri Endowment for Italian Culture sponsored a two‐day conference in April 1998: ‘Behind enemy lines in World War II, the Resistance and the OSS in Italy’. On this occasion William Corvo of Middletown, Connecticut, donated the wartime papers of his father, Max Corvo. Max Corvo played a principal role in Organization of Strategic Services operations in Sicily and Italy during the war, linking the OSS and the Italian Resistance. Veterans of both the OSS and the Italian Resistance attended the symposium. We present here some of the papers that focused on the principal theme of the meeting: ‘The Resistance, war of liberation or civil war?’. Authors are: Borden Painter, Department of History at Trinity College; Vittorio Gozzer, partisan veteran and liaison for the conference with Italian partisan organizations; James Miller, historian at the State Department; Roy Domenico, Department of History at the University of Scranton; David Ward, Department of Italian at Wellesley College; Steven White, Department of History at Mount St Mary's College (Maryland); Spencer Di Scala, Department of History at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Borden Painter and John Alcorn organized the conference for the Barbieri Endowment.