Ugo Mazzucchelli

Ugo Mazzucchelli (5 June 1903 – 6 January 1997) was an Italian anarchist, anti-fascist and wartime partisan leader. He is best remembered as the commander of the Lucetti Battalion which became known as a tough opponent for the German and Fascist forces, when Italy became a critical battleground between 1943 and 1945, following the arrest of Mussolini.

Biography Provenance and early years Ugo Mazzucchelli was the second of his parents' five sons, born into a large working-class family in Tuscany at Carrara, a prosperous midsized town, well known for the marble quarries in the surrounding hills and, among the politically engaged, as a long-standing hotbed of anarchism. Ariodante Mazzucchelli, his father, was a quarryman and a powerful influence throughout and beyond his childhood. After completing his basic schooling, Ugo Mazzucchelli was sent to work in the quarries nearby. He would already have been conscious of the intensifying social and political conflicts of the immediate post-war period, since the marble quarries of Carrera had long been powerfully politicised: it is apparent that his political awareness was further raised through his contacts with Meschi. By the time he was eighteen, Mazzucchelli had moved with his family to Nazzano, which at that time was a separate municipality just outside Carrara (into which it has subsequently been subsumed). It is not clear whether it was before or after meeting Giuseppina that in desperation Ugo Mazzucchelli tried to escape along the coast into France. However, he had evidently failed to obtain the necessary permits, since after someone betrayed him to the authorities, he was stopped and repatriated.

In the mountains During the first part of 1944, the little resistance groups based in and around Carrara became more closely networked. The "Mazzucchelli unit" co-ordinated, in particular, with the neighbouring group headed up by Ismaele Macchiarini. Mazzucchelli now reorganised his unit and renamed it as the "formazione autonoma Lucetti" - more frequently identified more simply as the "Gino Lucetti brigade".

The Lucetti brigade now pursued a modest guerrilla war, possibly constrained by the still limited availability of weapons and munitions. Within the brigade, there was much discussion, given the massive imbalance of forces active in the field, on the advisability of carrying out individualised attacks on "Nazi", whether picked off individually or in small groups. There was a powerful need to try to avoid triggering brutal German reprisals. Mazzucchelli seems to have favoured a cautious approach, acutely aware of the number of "hostages" being held by the enemy. These included not only young people suspected of partisan activities, but also civilians with no obvious involvement in resistance activism.

Liberation of Carrara During the summer of 1944, Mazzucchelli's Lucetti Battalion worked closely with other partisan units, notably the "Ugo Muccini" and "Gino Menconi" brigades. It is not clear whether anything so formal as a merger between the groupings ever occurred, but by November 1944, substantially strengthened by Mazzucchelli's training and fund raising, they were co-ordinating together as a single Carrara region "Garibaldi brigade". For three or four days the operation could be seen as a major success. An urgent invitation to the "Allied Armies" that they should come and consolidate the partisans' remarkable military achievement was ignored. With the Germans expelled from Rome, the Americans and British were quietly diverting troops to France and saw no immediate need to push further north through the formidable German "Gothic Line" defences, at a season when the mountain terrain of Tuscany and Umbria would put them at a disadvantage when facing German, forces most of which were better accustomed to fighting though rain, snow and mountain terrain. Meanwhile, in Carrara, where the city streets provided opportunities for the partisans to achieve quick victories using guerrilla tactics, the Nazi-Fascist armies launched a counteroffensive. After four days, Carrara's partisan liberators were forced to retreat back up the mountains. who had been arrested in 1931 on strong suspicion of plotting to assassinate the leader, and executed in May following a brief trial rapidly organised and conducted earlier that month before the Special Tribunal for the Defence of the State. During March 1945 the Anglo-American armies finalised preparations for what proved to be the final assault on the German "Gothic line" defences. The 15th Army Group launched their attack on 6 April 1945. Massa was liberated on 10 April 1945. The next day it was the turn of Carrara. The invading armies arrived accompanied by several units of partisans from the mountains behind the city, including Mazzucchelli's. During the days following liberation approximately 710 German soldiers were captured by the partisans and handed over to the allied military authorities. The later 1940s and early 1950s were a period of optimism and recovery for the Carrara anarchist movement. Dozens of new local groups were formed, and Ugo Mazzucchelli was a major driver of the new awakening. Following the liberation of Carrara, Mazzucchelli and Meschi both returned to the "Chamber of Labour", giving rise, briefly, to hopes that control of it might be recovered for the Carrara anarchist, but these were shattered by a fierce closing of ranks among Communist members and others hostile to anarchism.

During the early 1980s, despite being well past the conventional retirement age, Ugo Mazzucchelli continued to exercise his formidable organisational and campaigning skills. Much of his energy was now devoted to the uses of marble, which in other cities might have been a niche concern, but in Carrara was at the core of the city's being. It was also the material on which Mazzucchelli himself principally depended for his livelihood. Nevertheless, it is apparent that during the last fifteen or so years of his life, Mazzucchelli's still considerable energies and leadership talents were no longer focussed principally on the mainstream concerns of the anarchist movement. (The circumstances of Serantini's death remain unclear.) The belief became widespread both within and far beyond the anarchist movement that he fell into a coma from which he never recovered. After being shot multiple times and/or savagely beaten by police.

Ugo Mazzucchelli was an octogenarian when he launched "the last great battle of his life". It was not the first anarchist assassination attempt against Umberto I, but it was the first that succeeded. For many commentators, a particularly noteworthy aspect of the affair was that Bresci became identified as the first European convicted regicide offender not to be executed: capital punishment had been abolished in 1889. In June 1985, Mazzucchelli convened a meeting in Carrara of activists, interested citizens and well-regarded university professors, including the nationally known historians Enzo Santarelli (whose own political proclivities could in no way be construed as radical) and Pier Carlo Masini. They put together a cogent case for Bresci's historical importance, and therefore for erecting the proposed memorial to him by the entrance to the city's main cemetery. It was the first of many committee meetings over the next five years. At one stage a court case was even launched against Carrara's Communist mayor, the city councillors and members of the committee that, by authorizing the memorial, had "condoned the crime of attacking the head of state". However, the twenty-nine accused were all acquitted at the court of first instance and then acquitted again when the matter was appealed. Towards the end of a quiet evening early in May 1990, shortly after sunset, the memorial to Gaetano Bresci was finally set in its place by an entrance to the Turigliano Cemetery, a tribute both to the man who killed the king in 1901 and to the determination and campaigning flair of Ugo Mazzucchelli through the 1980s. Nor had he ever seen the need to learn the art of the gentle answer. An affectionate and broadly supportive obituary by his friend Paolo Finzi nevertheless recalls that during his final years, especially when engaged in discussion with comrades in Carrara, he did not hold back from arguing his case "harshly", in a way that in too many cases led to cooling or breakage of sometimes longstanding political and personal friendships". By the time he died, on 6 January 1997, Ugo Mazzucchelli's resignation from the FAI had been accepted.

Old age and re-evaluation Although a number of sources describe aspects of Mazzucchelli's evident divergence from mainstream anarchism during his final years, most appear to be at a loss to explain it. One commentator who rises to the challenge is Franco Bertolucci. He describes Mazzucchelli's gradual evolution away from the vision of anarchism that he held as a young man and during his middle years. Progressively, having himself become the owner of a quarrying concession, Mazzucchelli came to see anarchism as a blend of social doctrine and political action which should, without further procrastination, create the necessary conditions for a radical transformation of society based on equality and liberty. That gave the recipe for a society founded on "libertarian democracy" and an uncompromising abandonment of the revolutionary goal, at least if revolution were to be interpreted as a violent breaking apart of social and economic relationships. From this broadly coherent if somewhat homespun personal philosophy of anarchism, Mazzucchelli in his old age extrapolated the need for a clear separation from (and stigmatization of) that section of the movement that rejected his own evolving vision.