Families of Colorado-based troops who liberated Italian mountain regions in World War 2 visit the area and talk with locals about fascism on the 80th anniversary of the war’s end.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I’m Ailsa Chang.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
And I’m Juana Summers. Descendants of American soldiers who helped liberate Italy in World War II have been visiting the places where their fathers and grandfathers fought. Eighty years after the end of the war, some worry their own country is sliding into a fascism similar to the kind that their family members helped defeat. Colorado Public Radio’s Stina Sieg reports.
STINA SIEG, BYLINE: Deep in the Tuscan hill country, the summit of Mount Belvedere is lush and overgrown with a thick carpet of green trees. Nearly 100 descendants of American World War II soldiers gather around a stone monument honoring America’s role in the liberation of Italy. Local Mayor Barbara Franchi smiles before them.
BARBARA FRANCHI: You are always welcome here in this land that will never forget your father and grandfathers.
SIEG: Who stormed this and other nearby peaks and helped win World War II.
FRANCHI: On this mountain, they wrote a page of history that belongs not only to America, but also to Italy, to Europe and to all free peoples.
SIEG: And may their memory inspire more peace and togetherness in the future, she says.
FRANCHI: Thank you very much.
(APPLAUSE)
SIEG: Mayor Franchi says she’s sad to see fascism creeping back into governments across the globe, including Italy’s.
FRANCHI: I think that the fascism is coming. It means that humanity is falling down, and we have not learned about the past.
SIEG: Eighty years ago, this verdant region was ravaged by tanks and bombs. The Nazis massacred locals. Now, these tiny towns are quaint and serene, like Lizzano in Belvedere, where American descendant Peggy Hall sits in a shaded piazza. She’s on the trip to honor her dad, William Parker, who left his small Utah town to enlist.
PEGGY HALL: We are here because we believe in defending our freedoms.
SIEG: Everyone on this trip is descended from men in an elite fighting force called the 10th Mountain Division, which trained in Colorado’s mountains to fight in Italy’s. Rikki Swedhin’s father, Lloyd, was an Army postal clerk here during the war.
RIKKI SWEDHIN: Americans don’t understand. They’re spoiled. They don’t understand.
HALL: My father, our fathers, fought against fascism. And we have a government, a presidency that is trying to take our country to fascism.
SIEG: The Trump administration has long dismissed the fascism label as baseless and dangerous rhetoric by its opponents. Hall and Swedhin’s dads were both lifelong Republicans, and both women have voted Republican in the past, but not for years. They think this president is a threat to democracy and hope their fathers would, too.
SWEDHIN: Oh, I think Dad would be completely – based on what he went through in World War II, he’d be totally anti-fascist.
SIEG: And Hall is so scared for her country’s future that at her home in Colorado, she’s flying her American flag upside down. She’s especially disturbed by American troops being deployed to U.S. cities. She sees it as troops being used against their own people.
HALL: I never thought I would see that. I don’t care what political party you belong to. That is not something that should happen in our country.
SIEG: But other descendants on this trip have different fears about America.
ROSS RANEY: The climate right now in the country is not in any way fascist.
SIEG: Ross Raney says Americans crying fascism don’t even know what that means.
RANEY: But the climate in the country is more akin to pre-Civil War.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
SIEG: He’s breathing heavily on a steep trail near Lizzano, the last place his grandfather, Roy Moore, described in his diary before being killed. A conservative, Raney sees dangerous divisions in America and says the assassination of right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk is proof.
RANEY: The correction to speech that you don’t like is more speech, not killing the speaker. And that’s where we’re at, and that scares the h*** out of me.
SIEG: Raney says it’s not fascism for Trump to float ideas like seeking a third term or taking guns away from transgender people. It’s trolling. And Raney says Americans wouldn’t stand for their leader becoming a dictator.
RANEY: Whether it’s from Trump or from Biden, the people would not have allowed a takeover of government because we are the power.
(CROSSTALK)
SIEG: After several days of touring battle sites, the descendants are celebrated with a party in Vidiciatico, a village almost completely destroyed in the war. They’re sitting at long tables in a piazza, right next to a medieval bell tower that somehow survived. Barbara Franchi, mayor of a neighboring town, say she’s forever grateful for Americans’ help.
FRANCHI: They crossed the ocean, and they came here to save us. And this is very important, and we have to continue maintain this memory.
UNIDENTIFIED MILITARY SINGERS: (Singing in Italian).
SIEG: As military singers serenade the descendants, Mayor Franchi says while she’s afraid of fascism around the world, she doesn’t know the state of politics in the United States.
FRANCHI: But I believe in America’s soul.
SIEG: And she says it’s forever linked to this place. For NPR News, I’m Stina Sieg in Vidiciatico, Italy.
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