Anticommunism, John B. Connally, Italian Americans, and the Threat of the 1976 Sorpasso in Italy

Against the backdrop of Italy’s relevance in Washington's Cold War strategy, this article investigates the efforts of John B. Connally and his Citizens Alliance for Mediterranean Freedom to involve Italian Americans in a letter-writing campaign that aimed to prevent the Communist Party from winning the 1976 parliamentary elections in their native or ancestral country. Contrary to Italian Americans' mass participation in a similar initiative in 1948, twenty-eight years later, many were impervious to that anticommunist initiative. They had stressed the risk of a Red takeover in Rome in 1948 to legitimize their lobbying activities on behalf of Italy and had participated in the anticommunist drive out of expediency. Their purpose was to enable Italy to regain its prewar standing as a mid-sized Mediterranean power. By 1976, however, Italy had won several concessions from the United States (inclusion in the Marshall Plan in 1948, admission to NATO in 1949 and to the United Nations in 1955, invitation to the 1975 summit of the most industrialized Western countries in Rambouillet) that had trengthened its international status. Therefore, Italian Americans could discontinue their prior scheme and appeasement of Washington’s anticommunism.