Central Europe Germany Italy Spain (Spanish Civil War) Albania Austria Baltic states Belgium Bulgaria Burma China Czechia Denmark France Germany Greece Italy Japan Jewish Luxembourg Netherlands Norway Poland Romania Slovakia Spain Soviet Union Yugoslavia Germany Italy Netherlands Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom United States The organization officially known as Volante Rossa "Martiri Partigiani" (Red Quick-intervention [Team] "Partisan Martyrs"), often mentioned simply as Volante Rossa, was a clandestine antifascist paramilitary organization active in and around Milan in the postwar to the Second World War, from 1945 to 1949.
The Volante Rossa had its roots in the organizational apparatus of the Gruppi di Azione Patriottica ("Groups of Patriotic Action", GAP), small-scale nuclei within the wartime Italian Resistance Movement which saw official action until 25 April 1945, and took its moniker from a section of the Stalinist-affiliated Brigate Garibaldi operating around Ossola, near the Alps: after the Allied High Command ordered the partisan formations to give up Republican Fascist prisoners, Paggio's men started murdering individuals identified as political adversaries.
[4] The murders of former Fascists led the latter to close ranks and to start taking the initiative,[4] and on 5 November 1945 the posters at Odeon movie theater publicizing Rossellini's film Roma città aperta were set on fire.
On 17 January 1947 in via San Protaso, downtown Milan, the former Xth MAS Flotilla ausiliaria Brunilde Tanzi, also a member of the Partito Democratico Fascista was shot dead.
[1] De Agazio was considered guilty in that he had taken part in the RSI and because the newspaper he was currently directing, the Meridiano d'Italia, he had published an investigation into the treasure of Dongo (a hoard of gold purportedly carried by Mussolini which was never recovered) skeptical of the "official" version of events.
[9] On 29 October 1947 an attempt was made to bomb the MSI headquarters in via Santa Radegonda and on November 4 Volante Rossa members broke into the house of General Ferruccio Gatti's, formerly Lieutenant-General of the Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale,[9] a recipient of the Medal of Military Valour,[4] and indicated by L'Unità (the main Communist newspaper) as one of the leaders of the fledgling Neo-Fascist movements.
[13] During the Italian general election of 1948, the Volante Rossa performed security tasks for Communist candidates, but when Palmiro Togliatti came to Milan during his electoral tour, some sources state that he didn't let them approach him.
The three leading organizers - Giulio Paggio, Paolo Finardi and Natale Buratto, sentenced to life in prison - were all helped in fleeing to Czechoslovakia and were finally all pardoned by President Sandro Pertini in 1978.