Journalist and writer, born in Fucecchio, Tuscany, W Italy. He made his name as a journalist in the daily Corriere della Sera, then founded Il Giornale in 1974 and edited it until 1994. He was one of Italy's leading political commentators. He wrote a number of popular history books, such as Padri della patria (1948), Storia di Roma (1957), the Storia d'Italia series from 1966, and a number of essays (Controcorrente, 197880), novels (Il generale Della Rovere, 1959) and plays (I sogni muoiono all'alba, 1960).
Indro Montanelli (April 22, 1909, Fucecchio, province of Florence - July 22, 2001, Milan) was an Italian journalist and historian, known for his new approach to writing history in books such as History of the Greeks and History of Rome.
Born in Fucecchio, near Florence, Montanelli lived through two world wars and the cold war.
Going against the current
Throughout his career he retained an idiosyncratic and particularly undiplomatic style, never shying away from speaking his mind, even when this made him very unpopular among his peers and employers. This is particularly well illustrated in his book 'La Stecca nel coro' (which translates as 'Going against the current') which is a list of leading articles he composed between 1974 and 1994 in the newspaper Il Giornale ('The Newspaper') which he was forced to found and direct after being sacked from the very prestigious Corriere della Sera, in October 1973.
When Silvio Berlusconi, the proprietor of Il Giornale, entered politics and founded the new right-wing party, Forza Italia, Montanelli came under heavy pressure to switch his editorial line to a position favourable to Berlusconi. Montanelli never hid his bad opinion of Berlusconi: "He lies as he eats", the journalist declared. La Voce, always an elitist paper, folded after about a year, and Montanelli returned to Corriere della Sera.
From 1995 to 2001 he was the chief letters editor of Corriere della Sera, answering a letter a day on a page of the newspaper known as ‘La Stanza di Montanelli’ (‘Montanelli’s Room’). In spite of having been a renowned anti-Communist all his life, Montanelli spent his last years vigorously opposing Silvio Berlusconi’s politics. The following day, Corriere della Sera published a letter on its front page: Indro Montanelli's farewell to his readers.
The 1920s and 30s
Montanelli's career began with a Law degree from the University of Florence in the early 1920s, where he wrote a thesis on the electoral reform of Mussolini's fascism.
Montanelli began his journalistic career by writing for the fascist newspaper Il Selvaggio ('The savage'), then directed by Mino Maccari, and in 1932 for the Universale, a magazine published only once fortnightly and which offered no pay. Montanelli admitted that in those days he saw in fascism the hope of a movement that could potentially create an Italian national conscience that would have resolved the economic and socioeconomic differences between the north and the south.
But it was in 1934, in Paris that Montanelli began to write for the crime pages of the daily newspaper Paris Soir, then as foreign correspondent in Norway and later in Canada (where he ended up working in a farm in Alberta!). It was on this occasion that Montanelli conducted his first interview with a celebrity: Henry Ford - who surprised Montanelli by admitting he did not own a driving license.
The war in Abyssinia
When Mussolini declared war on Abyssinia with the intent of making Italy an empire, Montanelli immediately abandoned his collaboration with the United Press and became a voluntary conscript for this war. He believed then, along with many Italians of the time, that this was the chance for Italy to bring civilization to the 'savage' world of Africa, an enthusiasm that Montanelli blamed also on his passion for the works of Rudyard Kipling. In spite of these initial passions, it was this very experience that led to Montanelli's biggest change of mind with regards to Italian fascism.
This amounted to the realisation that the Abyssinia experience was none other than a pretext to elevate Mussolini on an ever higher pedestal, a show more than the substance of a revolutionary change of the colonization and civilization of Africa.
Montanelli began writing about the war to his father who - in Montanelli's total ignorance - sent the letters to one of the most famous journalists of those times, Ugo Ojetti, who published them regularly on the most prestigious Italian newspaper: Il Corriere della Sera.
The Spanish Civil War
On his return from Abyssinia, Montanelli became foreign correspondent in Spain for the daily newspaper Il Messaggero, where he experienced the Spanish Civil War on the side of Franco's troops. One day he disappeared, taking with him Montanelli's socks and other underwear. After the capture of the city of Santander, Montanelli wrote that '(...) it had been a long military walk with only one enemy: the heat'.
Foreign correspondent with the Corriere della Sera
The ambiguous nature of the Italian fascist dictatorship manifested itself once again when, in 1938, the then minister of culture, Bottai, offered Montanelli the job of director of the Institute of Culture in Tallinn, Estonia, and lecturer in Italian at the University of Dorpat. In this period the then director of the Corriere della Sera, Aldo Borelli, asked Montanelli to engage in a 'collaboration' as foreign correspondent (he could not be employed as journalist, because this had been forbidden by the fascist regime). Montanelli began to correspond for this newspaper from Estonia and Albania (during the Italian annexation of this country).
1939 The German invasion of Poland and the interview with Hitler
In August 1939 the Corriere della Sera needed a tall and blond reporter to be sent to the German Alps to report on a propagandistic cycling tour where Italian fascists and exponents of the Hitlerjugend demonstrated their brotherly attitudes to each other. Do much so that Montanelli - who needed to send a daily piece to his newspaper - invented the story that on seeing peasants ploughing the fields, the cyclists had abandoned their bikes and had begun ploughing alongside the peasants.
In Berlin the newspapers were buzzing with outraged articles about killings of Germans in Poland and about how force should be used to protect oppressed German minorities in that country. The news then came that Molotov and Ribbentrop had signed a non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany, and shortly afterwards Germany declared war on Poland and began the invasion. Montanelli was sent to report from the front in a Mercedes accompanied by German state functionaries. On one of these stood Hitler himself, but a few feet from Montanelli. When Hitler was told that the only person in casual clothes was Italian, he jumped out of the tank and eyeing Montanelli like a madman, began a ten minute hysterical speech followed by military salute and exit. Apart from this episode - which Montanelli was forbidden to report - there had been little to report because the invasion of Poland was completed so rapidly that it was over within a week.
1939-40 Back to the Baltic countries and Finland
Montanelli was not welcome in Italy, and decided to move to Lithuania. At this point Montanelli continued to travel towards Tallinn as it was his wish to see the last of a free and democratic Estonia. At this point, Montanelli was not popular in Italy, nor Germany because of his pro-Estonian and pro-Polish articles and had been expelled by the Soviet Union for being a foreigner.
In Finland Montanelli began writing articles about the Lapps and the reindeer, although this was not for long as Molotov had made requests on the Finnish government for the annexation of part of the Finnish land to the Soviet Union. Montanelli was not able to write about the details of the talks between the Soviet and Finnish delegations, as they were shrouded in strict secrecy, although he was able to interview Paasikivi, who was happy to fill him in on everything except for the content of the talks. The exchange had been a good premonition for events to follow because when the Soviet invasion began, on 30th November 1939, the sparse Finnish army began a truly bloodthirsty massacre of the soviet troops.
Throughout the 'Winter War', Montanelli wrote hotly pro-Finnish articles both from the front and from bomb-stricken Helsinki writing about the almost mythical enterprises of the battle of Tolvajarvi, and of men like captain Pajakka who with 200 Lapps successfully confronted 40,000 Russians in the region of Petsamo. Back in Italy Montanelli's stories had been followed with great enthusiasm by the public, but not so enthusiatic was the response of the fascist leaders who were committed to an alliance with the Soviet Union. When Borelli, director of the Corriere della Sera, had been ordered to censor Montanelli's articles, he had had the courage to reply that "thanks to his articles the "Corriere" increased its sales from 500,000 to 900,000 copies: are you going to reimburse me?". When the Winter War was over, and the non-aggression pact was signed between the Soviet Union and Finland, Montanelli was personally thanked by the elusive Mannerheim himself, for writing in favour of the Finnish cause.
The Norway invasion
Before his return to Italy Montanelli witnessed the invasion of Norway, was arrestad by the German army for his hostility towards the German-Italian alliance, escaped with the help of his friend Quisling, and made a run for the north of the country where the English and the French were disembarking their troops at Narvik.
1944 Condemned to death
After witnessing war and destruction in the Balkans (where the Soviet Red Army slaughtered the Hungarian and Romanian population), and the disastrous Italian invasion of Greece, Montanelli decided to join the partisan movement against the fascist regime, by joining the Partito d'Azione. After the war Montanelli was to devote a book to this incident (Il Generale Della Rovere, 1959, Ed.
Montanelli continued his career at the Corriere della Sera newspaper in Milan, famously authoring deeply sympathetic articles from Hungary, during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
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