Edgardo Sogno
Edgardo Sogno del Vallino di Ponzone | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Member of the National Council | |
| In office 25 September 1945 – 24 June 1946 | |
| Parliamentary group | Italian Liberal Party |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 29 December 1915 Italian Campaign Italian Civil War |
| Military awards |
|
political figure. He was born in an aristocratic family from Piedmont
.
Under Fascism
Sogno was born in
antifascist circles, which included Benedetto Croce and Giaime Pintor
.
In 1942, he was called back into military service and deployed in
Gold Medal of Military Valor for his wartime acts. During the war he also helped hundreds of Italian Jews and others seek safe haven in Switzerland.[2]
After the war
After the Liberation, he founded the Corriere Lombardo newspaper as well as Costume. In September 1945 he was named by the PLI as one of the deputies to the
Rangoon.[3] While posted to Budapest, Hungary, in 1956, he helped people flee the country after the Soviet Union invaded Hungary and crushed the Hungarian Revolution.[4]
He returned to Italy in 1971, where he founded the Comitati di Resistenza Democratica (Committee of Democratic Resistance), an
investigative magistrate declaring that he was unable to proceed in the trial. He was later completely exonerated for attempting to plot a coup.[2][5][6]
Liberal, monarchist, then admirer of
Italian Senate, in Cuneo, for the National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale) party founded by Gianfranco Fini
. Failing to be elected, he retired to private life.
In his 1998 memoirs, Sogno revealed how he had visited the
CIA station chief in Rome in July 1974 to inform him of his plans for an anti-communist coup. He wrote: "I told him that I was informing him as an ally in the struggle for the freedom of the west and asked him what the attitude of the American government would be," and then: "He answered what I already knew: the United States would have supported any initiative tending to keep the communists out of government."[7]
Honors
Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (Grand Officer - Grande Ufficiale) (OMRI) – June 2, 1974
Publications
- Guerra senza bandiera. Milan: Rizzoli. 1950.
- La minaccia comunista in Italia. Milan: Pace e libertà. 1953.
- ISBN 978-88-8248-005-9
- Due fronti (1998), memoirs ("Two Fronts", two accounts of the Spanish Civil War, one from the Francist side and Sogno, the other from ISBN 9788882700041
- La grande utopia: I confini delleconomia, della natura, della morale Sugarco (1982) ASIN: B0000ECLR6
- La storia, la politica, la istituzioni. Scritti sull'antifascismo, sulla storiografia contemporanea e sulle riforme costituzionali. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino. 1999. ISBN 88-7284-788-5.
- Testamento di un anticomunista. Dalla Resistenza al golpe bianco. Milano: Mondadori. 2000. ISBN 88-04-48824-7.
See also
- History of Italy as a monarchy and in the World Wars
- History of the Italian Republic
- Partisans
- Spanish Civil War
References
- ^ "Le onorificenze della Repubblica Italiana". quirinale.it. Retrieved 24 October 2022.
- ^ a b "Edgardo Sogno, Italian resistance fighter and fierce anti-communist, dies". Associated Press. 2000-08-06.
- ^ Stefano Baldi (27 March 2009). Scheda biografica Edgardo Sogno (in Italian). Retrieved 9 December 2021.
- ^ "Diplomat battled Italian communism". The Globe and Mail. 2000-08-09.
- ^ "Italian plot never existed". The Times. 1978-09-14.
- ^ Angelo Codevilla (1992). "A Second Italian Republic?". Foreign Affairs. 73 (3): 146–164.
- ^ Philip Willan, The Guardian, March 26, 2001 Terrorists 'helped by CIA' to stop rise of left in Italy (in English)
