The history of republican Italy is often summarized through a few essential references: the anti-fascist Resistance, Christian Democracy, the Italian Communist Party, the Years of Lead, the Moro case, and then the political and financial scandals of the late twentieth century. Yet behind this official chronology lies another history, more subterranean and less institutional, in which intelligence services, clandestine structures and parallel networks played a decisive role in the very construction of the post-war Italian state.
This interpretation is based on the work of Italian historian Aldo Giannuli, Ombre sulla Repubblica. Italia, 1945-1948: una guerra civile latente (Ponte alle Grazie, 2026). Giannuli, a historian specializing in secret services, the strategy of tension, the Moro case and the clandestine structures of the Italian state, studies the founding years of the Republic not merely as an institutional transition from monarchy to democracy, but as the moment when the deep structure of Italian power was fixed.
Giannuli was not only an academic historian. He worked as a technical consultant for several Italian judicial investigations into the Piazza Fontana, Brescia and Bologna massacres, terrorist attacks that marked Italy between the late 1960s and the early 1980s. He also worked with the Palermo Prosecutor’s Office on the disappearance of journalist Mauro De Mauro, who vanished in 1970 in a context involving mafia, oil, intelligence services and politics. He also used material from parliamentary commissions on the massacres and the Aldo Moro case, Moro being the president of Christian Democracy who was kidnapped and killed by the Red Brigades in 1978. This experience gives his work a particular character: it is not merely political history, but an investigation into the deep structures of the state.
His central idea is that Italy between 1945 and 1948 was crossed by a latent civil war, later transformed into a cold civil war, parallel to the international Cold War. Italy did not fall into open civil war as Greece did, but for decades it lived in a state of underground conflict, controlled and displaced into state apparatuses, parties, clandestine networks and intelligence services.
It is within this framework that the proliferation of parallel or adjacent bodies to the official services must be understood. Republican Italy did not merely have a military intelligence service. From the end of the Second World War onward, it saw the development of a plurality of structures: old networks of the fascist SIM, the military intelligence service of the fascist regime; services linked to industrialists; anti-communist groups supported by the Anglo-Americans; apparatuses of the Ministry of the Interior; Polish networks of Anders’ Army, the anti-communist Polish army placed under British command; organizations of the White Resistance, meaning Catholic and anti-communist networks born from the Resistance; monarchist circles; structures coming from the Italian Social Republic, Mussolini’s fascist state installed in northern Italy between 1943 and 1945; and reserved bodies linked to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.
The Noto servizio, or Anello: the nameless service
The “Noto servizio”, later called “Anello”, is perhaps one of the most revealing structures in Italian republican history. It was not born as an office, had no founding law, no stable organizational chart, not even an official name. According to Giannuli’s reconstruction, it was an external and collateral body of military intelligence, activated when necessary, dissolved when it became cumbersome, then reconstituted whenever a new operation required it.
“Noto servizio” was not the real name of the structure. It was a bureaucratic formula from police language. “Anello”, instead, was the name chosen by Massimo Giraudo, a Carabinieri officer tasked in the 1990s with investigating this structure for the judiciary, in his report to the magistracy, because “Noto servizio” sounded too generic.
The first phase goes back to Roatta’s milieu. Mario Roatta, an Italian general, former head of the SIM between 1934 and 1939 and a central figure in fascist military intelligence, had gathered around him a core of men accustomed to aggressive espionage, political warfare and clandestinity: Giuseppe Pièche, a Carabinieri officer and senior security official; Santo Emanuele, an officer linked to military intelligence structures; Pompeo Agrifoglio, a military intelligence colonel; Roberto Navale, a soldier belonging to intelligence circles; Enrico Boncinelli, an intelligence officer later connected to anti-communist industrial networks; and Carlo Maltecca, a military intelligence officer.
After 1945, many of these names, or the circles around them, re-emerged in external services, industrial apparatuses and anti-communist networks.
Another key figure is Hotimsky, a military man or agent linked to Polish anti-communist networks present in Italy after the war. For years his name was mistakenly read as “Otimsky”, complicating research. When the correct spelling was identified, the picture changed: Hotimsky had not arrived in Italy with the Soviets, but with the Poles of General Anders, namely Władysław Anders, commander of the anti-communist Polish army that fought alongside the British in Italy. This means that the Noto servizio also had roots in Eastern European anti-communism.
In the mid-1950s, another phase concerned the effort to pull the PSI away from its alliance with the PCI. The PSI, the Italian Socialist Party, was still close to the PCI, the Italian Communist Party, and Western circles wanted to encourage its separation from communism. This is where Luigi Cavallo entered the picture: a political militant, trade unionist and organizer of the anti-communist movement “Pace e Libertà”. The objective was not military in the strict sense, but political, psychological and propagandistic.
A third phase involved the absorption of men coming from the former secret service of the Italian Social Republic: Giorgio Pisanò, journalist, neo-fascist militant and future MSI parliamentarian; Father Enrico Zucca, a religious figure linked to anti-communist circles; and Enrico De Boccard, journalist and far-right militant. This group was connected to the organization of the 1965 Parco dei Principi conference, a Roman meeting that became famous because it helped formulate the ideological themes of the strategy of tension.
Then, between 1972 and 1973, Giulio Andreotti, a central leader of Christian Democracy, several times prime minister and a fundamental figure of Italian power throughout the Cold War, allegedly liquidated the service. Yet part of it seems to have survived around Adalberto Titta, a figure linked to clandestine networks and cited for his alleged role in the escape of Herbert Kappler and in obscure areas of the Moro case. Herbert Kappler was the former head of Nazi police in Rome, responsible for the 1944 Ardeatine Caves massacre, who escaped from the Celio military hospital in 1977.
The Border Zones Office: the reserved laboratory of the Republic
The Ufficio Zone di Confine, the Border Zones Office, was not a simple administrative office. In Giannuli’s reconstruction, it appears as one of the most delicate hinges of the emerging Republic: a place where politics, intelligence, reserved funding, management of the eastern frontier, relations with clandestine groups and control of areas most exposed to Yugoslav and communist pressure intersected.
The central element is that this office was linked to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and that Giulio Andreotti dealt with it directly. In October 1953, the chief of staff of the Ministry of Defence sent Andreotti a SIFAR report, SIFAR being the Armed Forces Intelligence Service, the Italian military secret service created after the war, on the activity of right-wing parties in Trieste, especially the MSI. The MSI, the Italian Social Movement, was the neo-fascist party founded in 1946 by former cadres of the Italian Social Republic. It was accused of preparing attacks against Allied installations.
Trieste was then one of Europe’s most explosive points: a frontier between Italy and Tito’s Yugoslavia, the communist regime led by Josip Broz Tito, together with Anglo-American presence, Italian nationalism, Yugoslav communism, Istrian-Dalmatian refugees and local neo-fascist networks.
In this context, the Border Zones Office for a long time administered subsidies intended for clandestine groups in Venezia Giulia. Giannuli cites contributions to “Avion”, a clandestine structure linked to patriotic and anti-communist circles, to PRIDA, a clandestine political network on the eastern frontier, and to the Italian Liberation Army, a nationalist and anti-communist formation active in the border area. He also notes traces of collaboration with the Croatian Ustaše, far-right Croatian nationalists linked to the former collaborationist Croatian regime during the Second World War.
The most revealing case was the meeting of 19 December 1953 between a representative of the Office and three representatives of the FIAT. Here FIAT does not mean the Turin automobile company, but Triestine armed Italian formations, largely close to the MSI. These representatives asked for 200 submachine guns, 40 heavy machine guns, 100 pistols, 10 mortars, 5 radios, 1,000 hand grenades, a truck, a fast car and 2 million lire. The request was rejected.
This episode shows that the Border Zones Office was perceived by clandestine circles as a possible operational channel, not only a financial one. But it also shows that Andreotti’s management imposed a limit: financing, guiding and controlling, yes; heavily arming Triestine neo-fascists, no.
Giannuli also shows that the Office enjoyed very broad discretion. It even paid a monthly “office allowance” to undersecretaries and ministers. Among the undersecretaries mentioned were Giorgio La Pira, a Christian Democratic politician, mayor of Florence and figure of social Catholicism; Bernardo Mattarella, Sicilian Christian Democratic minister and father of future President Sergio Mattarella; Emilio Colombo, Christian Democratic leader and future prime minister; and Luigi Meda, Christian Democratic politician. Among the ministers were Amintore Fanfani, Christian Democratic head of government; Aldo Moro, Christian Democratic leader, future prime minister, assassinated in 1978; Antonio Segni, future president of the Republic; Ivan Matteo Lombardo, social democrat; Randolfo Pacciardi, republican, former Resistance fighter and defence minister; Giuseppe Pella, prime minister in 1953; Guido Gonella, Christian Democrat, minister and jurist; Carlo Sforza, anti-fascist diplomat and foreign minister; Giuseppe Saragat, social democrat and future president of the Republic; and Ezio Vanoni, economist and Christian Democratic minister.
This means that the Office was not a marginal body. It was known, used and tolerated at the top of the state.
Even more significantly, on 18 October 1952 Andreotti informed the mother superior of the Poor Clares convent of Santa Rosa in Viterbo of the granting of 300,000 lire as an extraordinary contribution. Other payments followed: wine producers from the Sicilian islands, the Circolo Canottieri in Rome, and the archiepiscopal seminary of Trento. The office responsible for border zones was therefore also funding realities far removed from its geographical mission.
The most important connection concerns the relationship between the Border Zones Office and the Noto servizio. In 1998, Massimo Giraudo met Paolo Emilio Taviani, a Resistance fighter, Christian Democratic leader and several times minister, especially of the Interior and Defence. When asked about the existence of that secret service, Taviani replied that it would be useful to investigate the Office directed by Andreotti.
Aldo Aniasi, socialist Resistance fighter, mayor of Milan, minister and important figure of Italian anti-fascism, also asked Taviani whether he knew anything about the “Noto servizio”. Taviani answered: “The Noto servizio? You mean the Service!”, suggesting that it was not an invention, but a branch or real function of military intelligence.
Giannuli does not say that the Border Zones Office coincided with the Noto servizio. He says something subtler: the Office operated in the same space as the triangle formed by Italian military intelligence, the industrialists’ service and the American service.
Here lies Andreotti’s real strength: not visible command, but the management of intersections. Border Zones Office, Presidency of the Council, Defence, SIFAR, Trieste, clandestine groups, industrialists, Americans, the frontier right. These elements did not coincide, but they touched one another.
In short, the Border Zones Office was one of the places where the Republic learned to govern what it could not publicly acknowledge. And Andreotti, already at that time, was one of its most lucid interpreters: not the man who extinguished the parallel apparatuses, but the one who tried to keep them within a political perimeter before they became a fire.
Why parallel services were born: the Republic of fear and necessity
According to Aldo Giannuli, Italian parallel services were not born as a simple criminal deviation of disloyal apparatuses. They emerged from a combination of fear, institutional vacuum, latent civil war, international pressure and political calculation. The expression “deviated services”, used later, risks being misleading: for Giannuli, many of these structures were rather external agencies of the official services, created or tolerated to do what the state could not do in broad daylight.
The first reason: the vacuum of official military intelligence
After the war, the Italian military secret service no longer formally existed. The SIM had been dissolved by the Allies and the new military service would only be reconstituted in 1949, first as SIFA and then as SIFAR. But the political war had already begun. The state therefore found itself without a fully operational official centre precisely when it most needed tools of control, information and prevention.
This is the first contradiction: before the official service was reborn, parallel services proliferated. They were not a later degeneration. They were an immediate response to the vacuum.
The second reason: the legacy of 8 September
8 September 1943 broke the Italian state. One part of the apparatus remained with the Kingdom, another passed to the Italian Social Republic, another survived by adapting. Police, armed forces, ministries and the central bank had to choose between clandestinity, collaboration or ambiguous neutrality. From this rupture emerged networks, double loyalties, hidden archives and recyclable men.
The post-war period did not rebuild a state from scratch. It recomposed fragments. And when a state is born from fragments, parallel apparatuses become almost inevitable.
The third reason: avoiding open civil war
Giannuli reads the period 1945-1948 as a latent civil war. Italy was not pacified. There were hidden weapons, former partisans, clandestine fascists, monarchists, communists, armed Catholics, foreign networks, social tensions and fear of a coup. The Greek model was in everyone’s mind.
The parallel services served to prepare for the worst-case scenario without declaring it. They had to monitor, infiltrate, disarm some groups, support others, gather information, prevent insurrection or, if necessary, organize the reaction.
The fourth reason: Western anti-communism
Italy was the decisive country in the Mediterranean. It had the strongest Communist Party in Western Europe, a large Socialist Party still close to the PCI and a deeply rooted workers’ movement in the factories. For Washington and London, losing Italy would have meant opening a huge breach in the Western system.
Giannuli recalls that as early as 1944 a disagreement developed between American military leaders and the State Department: the former wanted to keep troops in Europe and considered repressive measures against communist parties; the latter preferred political instruments, the Marshall Plan, cultural penetration, support for democratic parties and campaigns in friendly newspapers.
Parallel services were born within this double logic: possible repression and permanent political influence.
The fifth reason: the need for deniability
A democratic government could not say: I finance clandestine groups, use former fascists, support anti-communist networks, arm centrist militias, monitor the socialists, interfere in trade unions. But it could allow “external” structures to do so.
This was the decisive function: deniability. If the operation succeeded, the state benefited. If it failed, the state denied responsibility. The parallel service was born precisely to stand between inside and outside: close enough to be useful, distant enough not to compromise the government.
The sixth reason: using unpresentable men
Many useful men were politically unpresentable: former fascist officials, veterans of the Italian Social Republic, monarchist soldiers, Eastern European agents, anti-communist industrialists, far-right circles. The official state could not integrate them openly. Parallel services could use them.
The case of the Noto servizio is exemplary: its history includes the Roatta current, the Italian Army of Liberty, Luigi Cavallo with Pace e Libertà, men from the former secret service of the Italian Social Republic, Giorgio Pisanò, Father Enrico Zucca, Enrico De Boccard, and finally the group around Adalberto Titta.
The anti-fascist Republic, in order to fight communism, often ended up using men who came from moderate anti-fascism, monarchism, but also from the old fascist world.
The seventh reason: the role of industrialists
Industrial associations were not spectators. According to Giannuli, among the poles of the parallel services there were also initiatives by industrialists. Their interest was clear: control the workers’ movement, prevent the communist advance, monitor trade unions and left-wing parties, defend the social order inside the factories.
Here intelligence became internal economic warfare. It was not only a matter of national security, but of defending the industrial and property-owning bloc.
The eighth reason: conditioning politics
The parallel services did not merely serve to prevent coups. They also served to orient the political system. The Pace e Libertà phase of Luigi Cavallo, in the mid-1950s, shows precisely this: pulling the PSI away from its alliance with the PCI, changing the balance of the left, preparing the ground for the centre-left.
Parallel intelligence, therefore, was not only defence. It was also political engineering.
The ninth reason: the eastern border
Trieste, Venezia Giulia, Istria, Yugoslavia: here the Republic was playing an explosive game. The Border Zones Office, linked to Andreotti, became a control room of the Italian intelligence system in the following decades. It was not merely an administrative office: it was a power node, a point of connection between the Presidency of the Council, SIFAR, the frontier right, clandestine groups and Western interests.
In an area where ordinary administration was not enough, a reserved administration of the crisis was born.
The tenth reason: the Allies wanted reliable networks
Americans, British and Poles intervened directly or indirectly in the construction of these networks. For them, Italy was too important to be entrusted only to the fragile institutions of the Republic. They needed trusted channels, selected men, networks not exposed to ordinary political control.
The parallel service was therefore also born from Italy’s limited sovereignty after the war: formally free, but strategically supervised.
Conclusion
According to Giannuli, the parallel services were born because the Italian Republic was built in an exceptional condition: a broken state, latent civil war, absent or weak official services, strong communism, an incendiary eastern border, Allied pressure, industrialists’ fear and the need for non-attributable operations.
They were not merely the product of deviation. They were the dark compromise of Italian stabilization.
The Republic avoided open civil war, but accepted an administered civil war. It built democratic institutions, but tolerated structures that did not fully answer to democracy. It defended constitutional legality, but often using instruments placed at its margins.
Here lies the paradox: those parallel services were created to protect the state, but they also ended up deforming it. They were conceived as a barrier against chaos, but they introduced into the heart of the Republic a permanent culture of opacity.
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