In 1940, at age 20, Meoli began his service in the Italian Army fighting in World War II, and, three years later, with the Resistance after the 1943 armistice between Italy and the Allied armed forces.
For example, Giovanni Gonelli, a barely literate jail keeper at Palazzo Giusti in Padua and a member of the Banda Carità, apparently enjoyed dehumanizing his prisoners by refusing their requests for food or blankets.
[3][4] Meoli was briefly a Communist, and after graduating, he worked for a time in the trade unions (Camera del Lavoro) in Vicenza, but he was soon at odds with the rigid militancy of organized labor.
By 1970, Meoli became Professor of the History of Economic Thought at Camera del Lavoro, and shortly afterwards was invited to occupy a similar chair at the University of Venice.
In addition to his chair positions, from 1992 to 1998 Umberto Meoli was president of the Italian Association for the History of Economic Thought (L'Associazione Italiana per la Storia del Pensiero Economico, AISPE).