There was an Italy which, even in the last and terrible months of the Second World War, despite being on the “wrong side of history”, did not resign itself, did not give in, managing, in some way, to transform certain defeat into an epic, albeit tragic one. An Italy so different from the petty-bourgeois and caricatured one which is often referred to to underline the negative characteristics of our people and which, however, was dramatically real. This is the Italy that Adriano Romualdi, brilliant intellectual son of the founder of the MSI Pino (but who from a very young age had decided to break with a culture, that of certain MSI neo-fascism, which he perceived as stereotyped and decadent), with his lucid and passionate pen, brought to life in some chapters dedicated to the Italian front which only appeared in an “integral” edition of “Europe’s last hours“, published by Ciarrapico in 1988 and then disappeared.
Chapters that are now coming back to light, enriched by the preface by Ernesto Zucconi and the afterword by Maurizio Rossi, as well as by a rich photographic apparatus and republished with the title of “The last days of Italy”text proposed by Cinabro Editions in the series “Evola Regeneration”. A book which, in 134 pages, gives a clear insight into those who, in the tragedy of 1943-45, did not surrender to the inevitable, who advanced at a brisk pace, but who continued to fight for an idea.
Romualdi, a pupil of De Felice, a disciple of Evola and who died prematurely at the age of just 33 in 1973 (due to a serious road accident), does not simply tell the story of the war, but of the twilight of a civilisation. The American invasion, the last lines of defense, the tragedy of Salò become the symbolic theater of a broader sunset. There is, in these pages, a pride that clashes with the systematic removal of memory (or, worse, its coloring exclusively in negative terms) and restores dignity to a “forgotten” part of our history: that of the vanquished, who, weapons in hand, were not ashamed of being such.