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248 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
those of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Anyone who owned
property or a business was fair game. The ensuing reign of terror
has been described by Luigi Villari, former lecturer at the University
of Virginia and official of the Italian Foreign Office, in
The Liberation of Italy. He quotes Carlo Simiani's "I giustiziati
fascisti dell 'aprile 1945":
"The first days in Milan were terrible. Many citizens talked
of the probability that a new reign of terror was being prepared.
. . . Executions were carried out in double-quick time.
Firing squads were rare; machine gun volleys were simpler. . . .
No one troubled about illegality. People's courts existed, but in
many cases only in name. . . . Quick and cruel forms of justice
produce morbid effects on simple minds in times of revolutionary
frenzy. . . . Murder reached its culminating point after the
slaughter of Mussolini and the other Fascist leaders. . . . In
many cases the murders were the result of love affairs, or vendettas,
without a shadow of a political motive; poor wretches
meeting with an unscrupulous commander were put to death.
There were cases of persons seized merely in order to extort
money from them, after which they were released even if deserving
punishment.
"Thousands of persons were put to death without having
undergone any form of trial, without any possibility of appeal,
nearly always without religious rites. Very rarely were they
allowed to send farewell messages to their families. . . . A foreign
official stated that at Sesto San Giovanni (near Milano)
4,000 persons had been killed, while a French paper put the
number in that town as high as 10,000.
"Any attempt to arrive at the truth is impossible, as all witnesses
are afraid of speaking out.
"When the German and Fascist authorities had disappeared,
innumerable armed brigades and armed bands of partisans arose,
searching for a nonexistent enemy. The older and authentic partisans
were flabbergasted, but could do nothing. At first, the partisans
were very few, but now they were innumerable. It was a
hodgepodge of uniforms, ranks and weapons of all kinds. . . .
"Many industrial experts, engineers, et al., all excellent men,
were murdered, such as Ugo Gobbati of the Alfa Romeo, Sili-