00:00:00.000How you doing? And why is that such a loaded question? I've actually stopped asking people
00:00:11.040how they're doing because I just don't think any of us can answer it that honestly right now0.98
00:00:17.120without just, you know, dumping all our shit on people. So now I mostly just ask people what they0.58
00:00:23.840had for lunch. And that is a really good conversation starter, to be honest. Really
00:00:29.220good. We should all just be talking about food all the time from here on out. No more politics,
00:00:35.580no more what's in the news, just food. That's it. Yeah. Today's episode is a little bit of a
00:00:42.300departure from what we usually do here on Under the Influence, but also not totally. Because
00:00:48.280today we're talking about badass women who history just hasn't celebrated enough. Badass women who1.00
00:00:55.740history has not given their due, and I do think that that is very much in our lane. You all know1.00
00:01:02.820that I love untold stories, especially the ones about women who did things that they weren't
00:01:08.680supposed to be doing. The kinds of women who didn't wait for permission to fight for something0.55
00:01:13.920bigger than themselves. And this week, I got to sit down with Suzanne Cope. She's the author of1.00
00:01:19.400the phenomenal new book called Women of War. It tells the story of four women in Italy who were
00:01:25.560part of the anti-fascist resistance during World War II. These are women who bombed Nazi trucks
00:01:32.100while wearing perfect lipstick, who organized underground strikes while pretending to host0.97
00:01:36.860tea parties, who smuggled weapons and wrote radical newspapers and changed the fate of an
00:01:42.440entire country. All while a lot of men were hiding out in the mountains, trying not to fight.
00:01:50.000I keep thinking about these women like they're characters in a novel, but they weren't. They
00:01:54.780were very, very real. And until Suzanne wrote this book, most of us had never heard their names.
00:02:01.940Today we're going to talk about why these women were able to lead in a war when a lot of men
00:02:06.100couldn't, why they were underestimated, and how they used that underestimation to their advantage.
00:02:12.440We also talk about what lessons we can take from them for the resistance that we have to lead today.
00:02:18.000When fascism doesn't always show up in a uniform, but in court decisions, propaganda, and policies aimed directly at our bodies.
00:02:27.100If you've ever wondered what you would have done during a moment of crisis, a time when it felt like the whole world was sliding backward, I think you're really going to like this episode.
00:05:20.920And now their nation is thrust into war.
00:05:25.500It was a very unpopular war and the country really wasn't ready for war.
00:05:30.280Oh yeah, the country wanted, they wanted nothing to do with this war.
00:05:33.340And I mean, I only know about it from Sicily's standpoint, but I mean, so many men were hiding
00:05:38.540in the mountains in Sicily so that they wouldn't have to fight.
00:05:42.040I mean, they were not fans of Germans.
00:05:44.320They didn't really understand even what they were fighting for.0.95
00:05:46.540So this is just a ridiculous war in their opinion.
00:05:50.680And suddenly they're being sent to work these long hours and everything they're making is being taken out of the country and for this cause that they didn't believe in.
00:06:00.020And of course, they've had these decades of not being paid very well.
00:06:02.700And now they don't really have enough to eat.
00:06:05.420And so these women are, you know, they're realizing that they're not happy, but they don't really know what to do.
00:06:11.380And so Italy as a whole, they decide to say, you know, forget this.
00:06:18.620And then there's this 45-day period where they are kind of figuring out how they're going to move on and surrender to the Allies.
00:06:30.760And it took them so long that the Germans just kind of came into Italy and occupied it during those 45 days.
00:06:36.900And as soon as that surrender was announced in September, they were fully occupied, well, not fully, but for most of Italy was occupied by the Germans north of where the Allies had landed in the bottom of the boot.
00:06:49.120And so these women were kind of thrust into the resistance.
00:06:56.600And the interesting thing about the resistance is they had to, it didn't really exist before then.
00:07:00.900There was a little bit happening very deep underground, but suddenly a few leaders kind of rose up and said, all right, this is how we're going to create this resistance step by step. And so that has been very inspirational to me of late where I think, what do I do? And I'm like, Suzanne, you've just been reading and writing about these women.
00:07:20.360You've literally just written a book about what to do. But I mean, again, it's hard to think,
00:07:28.160all right, are we ready to literally become just resistance fighters at this point? Is that where
00:07:34.600we're at in our timeline? I know. And to think, what would you truly risk everything for? And
00:07:42.440that's what these women did. And I think that's such a hard question. It's come up at some of my
00:07:46.400events, you know, and people look around, they're like, I'm not, you know, ready to risk my job or
00:07:52.860my life or my, you know, for, for a cause that's, you know, beyond something very personal. And
00:07:59.120it's amazing to me that these women, that's what they did. Well, and I mean, in so many ways,
00:08:04.440right now, we are dealing with a very fascist system that does want to turn women into baby
00:08:13.100making factories. So at what point will we feel like, you know, it is time to join a kind of
00:08:21.460resistance that does put everything that we care about in danger? I mean, that is the question I've
00:08:27.400been asking for the across my last two books and beyond. You know, what's interesting about these
00:08:33.960women is that their stories are so dramatic, but really, they were among the, you know, relative,
00:08:39.160very few actually, who were actually on the front lines of fighting. And so there were more people
00:08:45.300who joined the resistance and support roles, which are extremely important. There's a statistic at
00:08:50.080the end of my book that something like there needed to be 15 people supporting every individual
00:08:54.920partisan fighter. And in some ways, you know, there was, of course, a gray area. Some of these
00:08:59.340women were maybe considered fighters or some were considered support. But, you know, to think of1.00
00:09:04.640how many people needed to support them. That was the main role of the members of the resistance,
00:09:09.780but still most people were doing nothing. They were just kind of biding their time and hoping
00:09:14.200that the war just passed and that they made it out on the other side. So I don't know the answer.
00:09:21.220Maybe we could figure it out. Well, I mean, I just think it's fascinating
00:09:25.020that these women's stories haven't been told. And maybe I shouldn't be surprised any longer
00:09:30.960because it has been men writing history for so long. And yet, and yet, and yet, women have been0.97
00:09:38.080so integral to every major historical moment that you could think of. And yet they're just1.00
00:09:45.680left out of the narrative. Exactly. And what I've been interested in for this book, and also
00:09:50.800for my previous book, Power Hungry, was the ways that women could show their leadership and also
00:09:56.160because they were oppressed. And so they were so underestimated that that's actually what gave0.99
00:10:02.100them power. Not that we want people to be underestimated, but they found the ways that
00:10:05.980they could wrest power despite having so many things stacked against them. And so that's what
00:10:11.040these women did. Women were so underestimated both by the Germans and by the Italian fascists1.00
00:10:16.240that they weren't thought of to be political at all. And so while these men, as you noted,
00:10:22.200were hiding. They didn't want to be drafted. They didn't want to go to war. The women were
00:10:27.160the only ones who could safely walk around and deliver information, deliver arms, deliver1.00
00:10:34.100underground newspapers. And so without the women, the resistance would not have existed.0.93
00:10:39.920And so these women also, in addition to being Stafete, which are couriers, but of course,
00:10:45.220you know, that sounds so much milder than what they actually did. They were also, one woman,
00:10:49.840Bianca was writing the underground newspapers. She was doing massive organizing in the factories.
00:10:55.140The women who were working in the factories were so integral into these mass strikes that happened0.52
00:11:00.940in the spring of 1944, but also have happened at other times because that was the moment where0.65
00:11:06.160they really showed the power of the people. And that's a story that I'm also surprised is not
00:11:11.300told very much because you hear these rumblings of a general strike nowadays. And that is a moment
00:11:18.020where it absolutely turned the tide of war. And it really took a lot of people, millions were
00:11:24.960involved. And that was the moment that the people in power realized, wow, there are a lot of folks
00:11:31.340who are willing to step up for the resistance. And they started to get scared, which is amazing.
00:11:37.340But the other great thing about the general strike in spring of 1944, which is the largest
00:11:41.880strike in Nazi-occupied territory was that people who took part also felt this ownership
00:11:48.660of the resistance. This might've been one of their first acts, but suddenly they're like,
00:11:52.540oh, I'm all in because they felt the power as well. So it worked in two directions and it was
00:11:59.000such an important moment and it was almost entirely organized by women.0.99
00:12:04.440Yeah. Yeah. Almost entirely organized by women. And so my question is, are these women's names0.89
00:12:10.920better known in Italy? They are. Carla Caponi and Teresa Mete, they were both in the post-war
00:12:20.500government. And Teresa helped write the post-war constitution. And so she's known as the godmother
00:12:27.080of the constitution. And they both were pretty well known as fighting for women's rights and1.00
00:12:33.260children's rights. Bianca, she was a relatively famous lawyer. Maybe she was known more in her0.96
00:12:39.640home city of Turin. But she was pretty well known as well. And then Anita Malavasi was probably known
00:12:44.900the least, although she's pretty well known in her territory. Reggio, which is near Parma and0.94
00:12:53.100also near Bologna, that was considered the Red Belt. They were known as being this revolutionary
00:12:57.900area. And so she had hours of testimony that I could draw from. And so I needed women who
00:13:05.620were somewhat in the public eye so that I was able to hear their stories that they were already1.00
00:13:11.640recorded. And that's what helped be able to tell this. I tried to make this story as narrative as
00:13:18.000possible where we could really get into their experiences and how they felt in this moment
00:13:24.100and their transformation from being someone who knew they wanted to help, but they weren't fully
00:13:29.520committed to becoming totally committed to this cause. Yeah. And I think that transformation
00:13:34.720is so interesting. I want to dig in a little bit to one woman's story,
00:13:40.760Carla Capone, when we get back from a quick break.
00:13:52.160Okay, we are back. Let's talk about Carla Capone for a second. I just, I love this image of her
00:14:00.580in her lipstick. You know that I love a bold lip, okay? Love a bold lip.
00:14:07.220You know, shuttling things behind enemy lines. What was her transformation?
00:14:14.820So she, like most of these women, Teresa was probably brought up to be most anti-fascist
00:14:23.080in that her parents were very outspoken anti-fascist. But the other three, like most of
00:14:27.780Italy, they did not even talk to their children about their political leanings, especially
00:14:31.820if they didn't agree with the regime, because they were afraid their children might say
00:14:37.760And so Carla was, she didn't really, she kind of knew how her parents felt, but they just,
00:14:44.000people weren't very political because they were so afraid.
00:14:46.720And then her father refused to join this elite fascist group when she was a teen.
00:14:51.520And in retribution, he was sent away and he was killed in a mining accident.
00:14:57.540He was a mining executive, pretty much. And so that was the moment that she's like, yep,
00:15:03.300I hate fascism, but she didn't really know what to do about it. So she tried to find some books
00:15:08.460about it, but they were pretty much under lock and key. And then it wasn't until this 45 days
00:15:15.100where she began to meet people that she had known, but they kind of came out of the woodwork and
00:15:20.120asked to use her apartment because she had a very nice apartment that was also in a place that was
00:15:23.820near a Termini station. And so it felt like people could come and go and it wouldn't be
00:15:27.840really risky. And so people started to meet there and she started to meet other people.
00:15:32.180And at first in this, I love this. I do love the scene where she was asked to play Chopin to cover
00:15:39.380the voices of the illicit meeting that was happening in the other room. So at first,
00:15:44.800she's kind of on the outside of these meetings, and then she becomes engaged. And so much of this
00:15:49.160is about, of course, political education, just understanding what these options are, understanding
00:15:53.900why you should take control of, you know, your own destiny. And so she became more educated
00:16:00.000through these women who were leaders already deep underground and starting to bring more
00:16:04.820people together, in particular women. So there were a lot of, there were women's groups that
00:16:10.020were starting where they would pretend to drink tea and play canasta, and then they kind of have
00:16:14.540it all in front of them. And then, you know, they wouldn't be playing cards at all. And then they
00:16:18.740would just be if someone knocked on the door, they'd be like, oh, yes, I'm just having a little
00:16:21.820party. We're just gossiping. No big deal. And so in that way-
00:16:25.900We're just women doing women things.0.99
00:16:29.900Exactly. But meanwhile, they're planning the revolution, which is amazing. They're0.98
00:16:34.780literally making bombs and making these plans to attach them to Nazi trucks and things like that.
00:16:42.720So she became slowly, not, I mean, I say slowly, but it really happened over the course of a couple of weeks. So not that slowly, but she became activated along with these other folks. And then there was this, she was part of this guerrilla group, the Gabisti in Rome. And at first they didn't want women involved. And then they realized, oh, again, women things.
00:17:03.160it would be so great if you could pretend to be someone's girlfriend so that way they could be
00:17:08.480scoping out the enemy and just pretend that they're on the bench, you know, whispering sweet
00:17:14.740nothings to their girlfriend. And so she was happy she could help, but then she's like, no, I want to
00:17:19.100be more involved. And so she very quickly proved her worth by helping to bomb a bunch of Nazi0.85
00:17:25.880trucks that were in front of the Roman opera. And she and Rosario, who was her partner at the time,
00:17:32.740And they did a bunch more, you know, bombings and assassinations and a bunch of other actions together. And women then were seen by the Capisti as being, you know, equal partners in this guerrilla warfare.
00:17:47.200And one of the things that I didn't know was that women were very integral in creating the new constitution. And it feels like something I should know as someone who has studied Italian history before, but I didn't. I was so surprised.
00:18:04.080these women weren't just fighting in the resistance. They were really changing the
00:18:09.020fate of women in Italy a lot. They were creating a new breed of feminism that I do think was0.97
00:18:15.200simmering before Mussolini. And then he tried to put a stop to it. What kind of changes did
00:18:22.080they put in place because of their willingness to step up and speak out?
00:18:27.360Yeah, exactly. The women were so primed for this, but they didn't really know what to do.1.00
00:18:32.820There was no form that they realized they could take. There was no organization because Mussolini had done such, you know, a powerful job of just squelching any resistance.
00:18:42.600And so once they had this opportunity, first, I think there's, you know, this came up in one of my events that I thought this was a really great point,0.74
00:18:50.280is the fact that the provisional government that was formed during the resistance, so under Nazi
00:18:58.260occupation, the five disparate non-fascist groups came together and really got along to create this
00:19:06.560government trying to represent all these different viewpoints so that they could have a strong
00:19:12.020government post-Italy or post-World War II, because they really were afraid that if they
00:19:17.900didn't have the strong leadership, and they didn't show that they could get together and lead that
00:19:21.520other countries like the US or Britain would would try to just, you know, take over Italy and tell
00:19:26.540them what to do. And so, you know, I think, in our very divided moment today, that's something to
00:19:31.780note that these very, you know, every everything from the far left communists, which, of course,
00:19:36.660at the time, communism is such a naughty word for some people, but, you know, they really saw this
00:19:41.240as worker power, they didn't, you know, all the ills that we think we know about communism, that
00:19:46.300was not what they were thinking of at the time, all the way to the centrist parties.
00:19:50.440And so they really worked together and they involved women from the very start in all
00:20:01.160But she made sure that women were represented in all of these different agitation groups,0.96
00:20:06.160as they called them, whether they were in the factories or part of the government.
00:20:10.560And of course, it was still mostly men who were in the government and, you know, providing this leadership, but there were still a lot of women involved. And then, you know, they, even in the resistance, women had, you know, not completely egalitarian roles, but for the most part, if they were in the mountains, it wasn't as if they made, and there was women there, more and more women had to escape as they were being suspected, and they joined the men in the mountains.
00:20:37.920it's not as if they made the women do all the cooking and cleaning. You know, there was a pretty
00:20:42.640even distribution of tasks in the mountain, which was pretty unheard of. And, you know,
00:20:47.960there were always some people who wanted the women to, you know, kind of act the way they
00:20:52.040would have in the last 20 years. But for the most part, these women were already kind of
00:20:55.900showing them that they could fight just as well as the men. And so post-war, they were really
00:21:02.860primed to have, you know, some representation in the government, they went from zero representation,
00:21:09.160women couldn't vote, but there actually wasn't very much voting under fascism anyway. And now
00:21:13.740all of a sudden, you know, even having a certain percentage of the people in parliament and in the
00:21:19.340government, you know, that was still such a huge difference from the way it had been.
00:21:24.480Huge, huge. Well, I mean, and I keep thinking about post World War Two, America, where women,0.70
00:21:30.900you know, did get to enter the workforce. And then all of a sudden, there's all this propaganda
00:21:35.480trying to shove them back in the home. I mean, literal political propaganda to try to prime
00:21:42.400women to be housewives and say, Oh, my gosh, no, the workforce, you didn't like that, right?
00:21:48.900Was there anything similar in Italy? Or were the women better integrated into society post-war?0.99
00:21:55.580I would say I am not an expert on post-war, but I do know plenty. But, you know, there is criticism about the way Italy didn't really deal with and reconcile with their fascist past that I think we have seen has allowed a lot of fascist thinking and gender, you know, gender roles have kind of persisted in many ways.
00:22:22.500I mean, I'm from an Italian-American family. I could certainly speak to that, that even though
00:22:26.720my grandmother, my nani, was very much a feminist, she still did all the cooking. The women did all1.00
00:22:32.380the cleaning. And so, yeah, certainly there was a lot that was not reconciled. And it was almost
00:22:38.980as if women, they got more power, but they still had to do a lot of the things that they were doing1.00
00:22:44.820before. And it's interesting. I think a lot of feminists would say that there should have been1.00
00:22:49.880more reckoning. And a lot of times it's because this is what some people argue is that everyone1.00
00:22:55.420looked to the Germans and Hitler as being like, oh, we weren't as bad as them. And so they felt
00:23:02.640that, um, and I'm making a broad statement, but they felt that they didn't have to, um,
00:23:08.840feel as guilty because they weren't as, um, they, they weren't, you know, killing quite as many
00:23:15.320people. Things aren't great for you when the bar is I'm not as bad as a Nazi. Exactly. As a German
00:23:24.880Nazi, right? Exactly. Yeah. So I think a lot of things did persist for that reason. And yeah,0.73
00:23:32.720Italy, Italian politics got complicated. There are a couple great waves of feminism where women1.00
00:23:38.640made a lot of strides. But, you know, as I think we, we know, just anecdotally from our own
00:23:45.600families is that there's also a lot of persistent, you know, in equal gender roles that just doesn't
00:23:52.860seem to have totally gone away. Yeah, I mean, honor killing was legal in Italy, I'm pretty
00:23:59.580sure until the 80s. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, yeah. I mean, just chew on that for a hot second.
00:24:08.640You know, and it's interesting, too, that's reflected this kind of back and forth feeling of, you know, we're giving, you know, women are getting all these equal rights.0.91
00:24:17.540But then, oh, wait, we we need to kind of claw back some sense of who the Italian man is.0.75
00:24:23.220And and I think so much of this is like, oh, we need we need to bolster our our men.0.94
00:24:28.220And this this happened to a sense where where the men had to feel like they could be providers.
00:24:34.420And so then, of course, that means that someone else has to not be the provider or could not be making more money than the man in the family.
00:24:42.640And so this happened kind of it was a back, a push pull in the years after the war.0.97
00:24:48.320And so we saw that with these different waves of Italian feminism.
00:24:51.720And but the women that I've spoken to, they certainly would say, oh, we we have a ways to go.
00:24:58.100I mean, I think we all have a ways to go.
00:25:00.200But what you're saying is so interesting, because we're seeing that right now, right? Like men are just desperate to claw back the power that they have been losing, as women have gotten more autonomy, more agency over our own bodies.
00:25:15.220And I was talking about this last night, and it does feel a little bit like the extinction bubble, right? Like these men have had power, you know, in a certain way for so long, and they're just desperate. They're just desperate to hold on to it. And I'm like, do we wait it out? Like, will they go extinct? Like, are they already endangered, even though they're being propped up?
00:25:40.680I mean, I want to talk a little bit about what lessons you think we can take from these four
00:25:46.300extraordinary women to start fighting more today, because I'm trying to fight with words, right?1.00
00:25:54.780And, but just by packaging a thrilling beach read full of ways to take down the patriarchy1.00
00:26:01.860when you least expect it. But yeah, let's take one more quick break. And when we get back,
00:26:06.900let's talk about like what lessons we can learn from these women.1.00
00:28:06.240Hopefully we do not need to, right? But I mean, I think keeping information out there,
00:28:12.420transmitting information, keeping these stories at the top of people's minds,1.00
00:28:18.160that's something these women did. So I mean, what else should we be taking away from them?0.96
00:28:22.520Exactly. Yeah. And the time leading up to the book, the book was published just a couple weeks
00:28:27.060ago. And of course I had from end of January until then where I was like, what do I do? Okay.
00:28:32.780I'm, and I'm, you know, so deep into these women's stories. And I realized that they
00:28:36.460did provide us so many, um, like a path forward and so many ways to move forward. You know,
00:28:42.100first of all, I felt that I, I just felt like I, I didn't know what to do. I felt paralyzed.
00:28:47.240And I realized, of course they would have felt the same way. They did feel the same way,
00:28:50.780but we could look back and it looks as if they were stepping into a movement that was fully
00:28:55.120formed. And they weren't, they helped create that movement step by step. And so when I walked back
00:28:59.940and, you know, kind of was in their heads again, as I had been when I was writing it, I realized
00:29:04.500some of the first steps were, okay, this just feels like the right thing to do is to give food
00:29:09.180to this person or, you know, help this person out in another way, delivering something. So finding
00:29:14.480those small ways of connection with people who are particularly vulnerable is, you know, definitely
00:29:19.580important. And then political education. In fact, I was just writing an article about it right now.
00:29:25.120So these women were, you know, were very uninformed because that's what fascism did to the school system.0.96
00:29:32.380They eradicated any sense of this larger history of other options beyond fascism, took a lot of books out of circulation.
00:29:42.000And so reading things that really expand our minds, that help us understand what we're fighting for.
00:29:48.900And that's what's really interesting about these women is that they were unique.
00:29:53.260They were part of a resistance that was unique among Nazi occupation because they weren't fighting to go back to what they were before the war, like France or Belgium.
00:30:02.500They were fighting for something different.
00:30:04.360And so they had to create this new understanding of what they were fighting for.
00:30:09.920And so I was just, you know, looking up quotes of what, you know, Anita, for example, was saying, you know, we needed a consciousness of why we wanted to be part of the resistance, not just because it was the right thing to do to save another woman's son.
00:30:23.260And so that understanding of what we want, I think we all think we know or kind of know,
00:30:29.440but to, and this is the writer in me, I'm sure you feel the same way, Joe, is like,
00:30:33.340by putting something in words, you understand it so much better, you know?