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U.S. Involvement in Italy’s Elections
Covert operations & millions of dollars spent to ensure no left-wing groups came to power
The Cold War was up and running throughout Europe, with the Soviet Union and the U.S. both fighting for influence within the war-ravaged continent. Due to the destruction of the Second World War, Europe became more willing to adopt left-wing thought. So, within Europe, there was a surge of popularity for democratic-socialist and communist parties, from Britain with the election of Clement Attlee, a democratic-socialist whose government founded the National Health Service; to France, with the French Communist Party (PCF) gaining tremendous popularity for their armed resistance against the Nazi occupation and becoming one of the single largest parties in France, in 1945.
Italy also saw a major shift to the left side of the political spectrum — having one of the largest communists parties in the world, outside of the Soviet Union — but as for the rest of Europe, Washington made sure that it would not see the prevalence of socialists or communists in European politics and initiated a purge against all left-wing parties and actors.
In 1948, following the years of governance of the Christian Democracy Party (DC) who were in coalition with the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and the Italian…
