[4][5][6] Beginning as a protégé of Alcide De Gasperi, Andreotti achieved cabinet rank at a young age and occupied all the major offices of state over the course of a 40-year political career, being seen as a reassuring figure by the civil service, business community, and Vatican.

Domestically, he contained inflation following the 1973 oil crisis, founded the National Healthcare Service (Sistema Sanitario Nazionale) and combated terrorism during the Years of Lead.

[13][14][15] Andreotti's personal support within the Christian Democrats was limited, but he could see where the mutual advantage for apparently conflicting interests lay and put himself at the centre of events as mediator.

[14] In this period he became a member of the Italian Catholic Federation of University Students (FUCI), the only non-fascist youth organization which was allowed by the regime of Benito Mussolini.

[20] During World War II, Andreotti wrote for the Rivista del Lavoro, a fascist propaganda publication, but was also a member of the then-clandestine newspaper Il Popolo.

The measures aimed to prevent American productions from dominating the market against Neorealist films, a genre that exhibitors complained lacked stars and was held in low esteem by the public.

Andreotti persuaded De Gasperi not to establish a political alliance with the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, as Pope Pius XII asked, to prevent a Communist victory.

[32] In the early 1960s Andreotti was Minister of Defence, and was widely considered the de facto leader of the right-wing Christian Democratic opposition to Fanfani and Moro's strategy.

His first cabinet failed in obtaining the confidence vote and he was forced to resign after only 9 days; this government has been the one with the shortest period of fullness of powers in the history of the Italian Republic.

[36] A snap election was called for May 1972, and Christian Democracy, led by Andreotti's ally Arnaldo Forlani, remained stable with around 38% of the votes, as did the Communist Party, with the same 27% as in 1968.

It put the country on a more secular basis: abolishing Roman Catholicism as the state religion, making religious instruction in public schools optional, and having the Church accept Italy's divorce law in 1971.

Andreotti, known as a staunch anti-communist, was called in to lead the first experiment in that direction: his new cabinet, formed in July 1976, included only members of his own Christian Democratic party but had the indirect support of the communists.

[47] As premier, Andeotti's urging of fellow leaders in the European Community was influential in the creation of an EU Regional Development Fund, which the south of Italy was to greatly benefit from.

In March, the crisis was overcome by the intervention of Moro, who proposed a new cabinet, again formed only by DC politicians, but this time with positive confidence votes from the other parties, including the PCI.

On the morning of 16 March 1978, the day on which the new Andreotti cabinet was supposed to have undergone a confidence vote in Parliament, the car of Aldo Moro, then-president of Christian Democracy, was assaulted by a group of Red Brigades (Italian: Brigate Rosse, or BR) terrorists in Via Fani in Rome.

[48] On 9 May 1978, Moro's body was found in the trunk of a Renault 4 in Via Caetani after 55 days of imprisonment, during which he was submitted to a political trial by the so-called "people's court" set up by the Brigate Rosse and the Italian government was asked for an exchange of prisoners.

On 7 October 1985, four men representing the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) hijacked the Italian MS Achille Lauro liner off the coast of Egypt, as she was sailing from Alexandria to Ashdod, Israel.

As President of the European Council, Andreotti co-opted Germany by making admittance to the single market automatic once the criteria had been met and committing to a rigorous overhaul of Italian public finances.

After the disappointing result in the 1992 general election (29.7%) and two years of mounting scandals (which included several Mafia investigations which notably touched Andreotti), the Christian Democracy party was disbanded in 1994.

In Sicily, Lima cooperated with a Palermo-based Mafia, which operated below the surface of public life by controlling large numbers of votes to enable mutually beneficial relationships with local politicians.

[66] After January 1992 upholding of the Maxi Trial verdicts as definitive convictions by the supreme court, Riina embarked on a renewed campaign which claimed the lives of the prosecuting magistrates, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, and their police guards.

[64][68] In the aftermath of Riina's capture, there were further Mafia bomb outrages that included terror attacks on art galleries and churches, which killed ten among the audience and led to a weakening of rules on the evidence which prosecutors could use to bring charges.

[69][70] The prosecution accused the former prime minister of "[making] available to the mafia association named Cosa Nostra for the defence of its interests and attainment of its criminal goals, the influence and power coming from his position as the leader of a political faction".

[82] The case was circumstantial and based on the word of Mafia turncoat Tommaso Buscetta, who had not originally mentioned the allegation about Andreotti when interviewed by Giovanni Falcone and had recanted it by the time of the trial.

On 6 April 1993, Mafia turncoat Tommaso Buscetta told Palermo prosecutors that he had learnt from his boss Gaetano Badalamenti that Pecorelli's murder had been carried out in the interest of Andreotti.

[86][87] Many failed to understand how the court could convict Andreotti of orchestrating the killing, yet acquit his co-accused, who supposedly had carried out his orders by setting up and committing the murder.

This theory posited control of elements ranging from the neo-fascist Valerio Fioravanti to Rome gangsters the Banda della Magliana and to Operation Gladio, a clandestine NATO organisation that was intended to fight a Soviet conquest of Europe through an armed resistance movement.

Andreotti was also accused of having a hand in the death of Aldo Moro and terrorist massacres in a strategy of tension aimed at precipitating a coup,[94] as well as banking scandals and various high-profile assassinations.

[99] A joke about Andreotti (originally seen in a strip by Stefano Disegni and Massimo Caviglia) had him receiving a phone call from a fellow party member, who pleaded with him to attend judge Giovanni Falcone's funeral.

In 2008, Andreotti became the subject of Paolo Sorrentino's film Il Divo, which portrayed him as a glib, unsympathetic figure, in whose orbit people tended to meet untimely and unnatural deaths.