The kidnapping of Aldo Moro in 1978 changed Italy forever.
For 55 days, the Red Brigades held the former Prime Minister prisoner. It caused a national crisis and a fierce debate: Should the state negotiate with terrorists?
We discuss the kidnapping, the controversial decisions, and the rumours that foreign spies helped make it happen.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today it’s part two of our three-part mini-series on Gli Anni Di Piombo, The Years of Lead.
[00:00:32] In case you missed part one, we set the scene, reminded ourselves of some modern Italian history, talked about the various political groups involved, and the tragic bombing at Milan’s Piazza Fontana in December 1969.
[00:00:48] Today, we are going to move into the next, bloody stage: the Red Brigades and the kidnapping of Aldo Moro.
[00:00:57] And next up, we’ll talk about how it all came to a close, with the bombing of the train station at Bologna, and the shadow this period still casts over the Italy of today.
[00:01:09] This mini-series is the sort of one that will be much easier to follow if you listen to it all in order, so just in case you haven’t listened to part one yet, now is probably the time to press pause and catch up on that one.
[00:01:25] Ok, let’s not waste a minute, and learn about Le Brigate Rosse, the Red Brigades.
[00:01:33] There is a quote that’s often attributed to Abraham Lincoln that goes “You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time”.
[00:01:51] As a politician, and indeed, pretty much anyone in any position of power, clearly it’s true.
[00:01:58] People have different opinions and beliefs, they want different things. Sometimes these interests overlap; some people may always approve of what you do, but not everyone will always agree with you.
[00:02:14] And in the deeply fragmented environment of post-war Italy, this was especially true. Communists, fascists, nationalists, the Vatican, Americans, rich, poor, north and south.
[00:02:31] Finding common ground between all of these often competing interest groups was, well, not impossible, according to one man.
[00:02:43] Aldo Moro had been Prime Minister of Italy five times: three times during the 1960s, and twice during the 1970s.
[00:02:54] He was a senior figure within the Christian Democrat party, the centrist political party that dominated Italian politics for most of the second half of the 20th century.
[00:03:07] The second most powerful party at the time was the communist party.
[00:03:12] It had been gaining strength and popularity throughout the 1970s, and in the 1976 election — the first election after the voting age was reduced from 21 to 18 — it won 34% of the vote, only narrowly trailing the Christian Democrats’ 39%.
[00:03:34] And the remaining 27% was split between smaller parties, from the neo-fascist MSI to the socialists and republicans.
[00:03:46] Finding any viable majority seemed completely unworkable.
[00:03:52] For the Christian Democrats, this would mean working with a coalition of smaller parties with completely opposing positions.
[00:04:01] Or it would mean getting into bed with the communists.
[00:04:06] Again, completely unworkable. The Christian Democrats, or we can just call them DC, for short, were the continuity party: church, family, traditional, conservative values.
[00:04:21] The communists, the Partito Communista Italiano, or PCI for short, well, they were communists supported by Moscow.
[00:04:31] And this was the middle of the Cold War.
[00:04:34] It was never going to work. Or so most people thought.
[00:04:40] There was one person who thought it could: Aldo Moro.
[00:04:45] He had been working with the leader of the communist party on something called the “historic compromise”, a way to work with the communists, making them a partner in the heart of government.
[00:05:02] This had, if it’s possible, the complete opposite effect of that Lincoln quote we started with.
[00:05:10] It pleased none of the people all the time.
[00:05:15] Moscow hated it because it brought the Italian communists closer to the West.
[00:05:20] The US hated it because it gave the communists a seat at the G7 table.
[00:05:27] Domestically, the left opposed it because it was seen as compromising on key positions, and the right opposed it for the same reason.
[00:05:38] The then US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, even had a warning for Moro, reportedly telling him, “You stop doing this thing–this collaboration–or you will be badly punished.”
[00:05:53] Moro did not stop. And he almost got there.
[00:05:58] However, on the morning of 16th March, 1978, as he was leaving for a meeting, his car was ambushed.
[00:06:07] Moro was dragged away and held for 55 days. The perpetrators were Le Brigate Rosse, the Red Brigades.
[00:06:17] Or at least, that is the official verdict.
[00:06:21] The episode has gone down as the darkest in the years of lead, the kidnapping of one of the country’s longest serving leaders in broad daylight, and has been called Italy’s 9/11 moment.
[00:06:37] It is also to this day the subject of controversy and intrigue, with many theories suggesting that the official verdict may be omitting the influence of everyone from the CIA, the Stasi, the KGB, Mossad, Palestinians, Masonic Lodges, and even the Mafia.
[00:06:59] So, let’s return to that morning of March 16th, 1978, the day now remembered as the day of the strage di via Fani — the Via Fani massacre.
[00:07:14] Moro’s car was on its way through a quiet Roman street when, at 9 am, a Fiat 128 blocked the convoy.
[00:07:24] A group of armed Red Brigades members, disguised as Alitalia crew members, jumped out.
[00:07:32] Within seconds, gunfire erupted.
[00:07:36] Ninety-one shots in less than two minutes.
[00:07:40] When it all stopped, all five of Moro’s bodyguards were dead.
[00:07:46] Moro himself was bundled into a waiting car.
[00:07:51] It was an attack carried out with chilling precision.
[00:07:56] The Red Brigades weren’t just street thugs; they were a highly organised terrorist group, with cells, weapons training, and an ideology that saw themselves as soldiers in a revolutionary war against the Italian state.
[00:08:12] A couple of days after the kidnapping, the Red Brigades released their first communication, claiming credit for Moro’s kidnapping, and sending a picture proving he was still alive, the famous image of him in front of the Brigate Rosse sign.
[00:08:30] In this communication, they declared that he would be put on a “People’s Trial”, where he would answer the charges of his crimes against the proletariat.
[00:08:43] For the next almost two months, 55 days in total, the Red Brigades would release a series of communications, including letters written by Moro: to his political colleagues, to his wife, and even to the pope.
[00:09:01] In these letters, he begged for a deal to be made, pleading for his life.
[00:09:09] In them, he sounded like a broken man, terrified, abandoned, convinced that his colleagues were sacrificing him for political principle.
[00:09:21] These communications kept the public up to date with the “trial” and their demands for Moro’s release.
[00:09:31] Initially, the kidnappers demanded the release of 13 imprisoned members of The Red Brigades, but this was later reduced to one.
[00:09:42] And this was all played out very publicly, with the entire country watching on tenterhooks.
[00:09:50] And it was, of course, the subject of great debate, from the inner circles of government to the pensioners playing cards in the village bar: what could be done to get him home? Should the state negotiate with terrorists?
[00:10:08] On one side was the so-called linea della fermezza, the “hard line,” championed by the Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, and his Interior Minister, Francesco Cossiga.
[00:10:21] Their position was clear: the Republic must not bow to violence.
[00:10:27] To make a deal would only encourage more kidnappings, more bloodshed. And there was already more than enough.
[00:10:36] On the other side were those who favoured the linea della trattativa, the “soft line.”
[00:10:43] They argued that Moro’s life was more important than abstract principles, that saving him was worth compromise. Among them were several members of his own Christian Democratic Party, figures in the Socialist Party, and, of course, his desperate family.
[00:11:04] Even the Vatican tried to intervene. Pope Paul VI, who was a personal friend of Moro, made a heartfelt public appeal: “I beg you on my knees,” he said to the kidnappers, “give Aldo Moro back to his family, unharmed.”
[00:11:25] Yet the state’s position was clear: we will not negotiate with terrorists.
[00:11:32] While all of this was going on, there was a frantic search to find the kidnappers' whereabouts. It was clearly a large job, with multiple people involved in the planning and execution of the kidnapping.
[00:11:46] Moro had been snatched from the streets of the capital. This had been going on for almost two months, and someone, somewhere, must have heard something.
[00:11:58] The police looked for clues in Moro’s letters, thinking he might have left hidden secret messages beneath the innocent-looking words.
[00:12:08] Whatever tip the authorities followed, it led to nothing.
[00:12:12] And as the days went by, the so-called “People’s Trial” came to a close.
[00:12:20] In their ninth and final communication, the Red Brigades announced that Aldo Moro had been found guilty and would be sentenced accordingly. In other words, he was about to be executed.
[00:12:35] Still, the state remained resolute. It did nothing. Its policy was clear: we do not negotiate with terrorists.
[00:12:46] And on the 9th of May 1978, the waiting came to an end.
[00:12:53] Moro’s trusted assistant, Francesco Tritto, received a phone call from a man who said he was from The Red Brigades.
[00:13:02] Moro was dead, he told him.
[00:13:05] Go to via Caetani in central Rome. There’s a red Renault. Look in the boot. You’ll find him there.
[00:13:13] The police rushed to the scene. They opened the boot and found Moro’s lifeless body, still wearing the suit he had been kidnapped in.
[00:13:25] The location had been chosen with deliberate cruelty: halfway between the headquarters of the Christian Democrats and those of the Communist Party, as if to symbolise the death of Moro’s dream of compromise.
[00:13:41] The shock was immense.
[00:13:44] Leaders of all parties condemned the murder. Italians wept in the streets.
[00:13:51] There were offers of a state funeral, but in a very public statement against a country they felt had abandoned him, his family refused, instead opting for a private funeral, to which no politicians were invited.
[00:14:07] And there, the grief was mixed with fury; fury at the Red Brigades, fury at the state’s refusal to negotiate, fury at the sense that something essential had died along with him.
[00:14:22] And for the Red Brigades, even though they might have achieved their stated goal by putting Aldo Moro on trial and humiliating the state, this whole saga would be a disaster.
[00:14:37] After killing Moro, they lost all public sympathy, even among radical workers and students, people who may have shared some similar political ideologies but who saw kidnapping and murder as entirely beyond the pale, utterly unjustified.
[00:14:57] The communist party denounced them outright; the left turned its back.
[00:15:03] The state was galvanised to crush them, and within three years, 32 members of the Red Brigades, including most of its leadership, were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for their role in the Moro affair.
[00:15:19] And Aldo Moro’s dream of the “historic compromise”, well, without its key architect and proponent, it was out of the window.
[00:15:30] But not everyone lost out from the affair.
[00:15:36] For the Christian Democrats, especially the right of the party, it meant continuity, a continuation of the system that Moro had been pushing to change, as well as greater public support for a crackdown against left-wing extremism.
[00:15:53] This also played out nicely for Italy’s Western allies, who had been fearful of communists getting a seat at the table, as Moro had been proposing.
[00:16:05] And domestically, anyone who opposed communism probably also benefited, whether this was elements of Masonic Lodges such as the infamous P2 [P2 in English], or even the mafia.
[00:16:21] And, like in Piazza Fontana and the Bologna bombing that we’ll talk about in the next episode, this has given rise to theories that the official explanation might not be telling the whole story.
[00:16:37] In the case of Aldo Moro, there are many things that don’t add up, and some that are just plain weird.
[00:16:46] There was a séance, of all things, a kind of spiritual meeting where people try to communicate with the dead. This was held by a group of professors at the University of Rome, who claimed to receive messages from the beyond about Moro’s location.
[00:17:06] Absurd as it sounds, their cryptic clues were actually passed to the police, and some of them eerily pointed to places connected with the kidnapping.
[00:17:19] So you either believe in the supernatural, or you believe that this was a way for someone to pass information “unofficially” to the police.
[00:17:30] And one of the people at this séance was Romano Prodi, a name you may remember because he has served twice as Italian Prime Minister, in the late 1990s and late 2000s.
[00:17:45] What’s more, there were reports of missed opportunities, bungled searches, and phone calls that were ignored.
[00:17:53] It would later turn out that Moro never left Rome, yet somehow the Italian police, with all their resources, never found him, even though they raided hundreds of apartments.
[00:18:06] How could the kidnappers have moved him around a city swarming with checkpoints and surveillance?
[00:18:14] And then there’s the international angle.
[00:18:16] Some accounts suggest that foreign intelligence agencies, the CIA, the KGB, and even the Stasi, all had their eyes on Italy at the time.
[00:18:28] A Communist party joining the government of a NATO country was unthinkable to Washington.
[00:18:34] To Moscow, the compromise looked like betrayal. Did these superpowers have an interest in seeing Moro silenced?
[00:18:45] There are no definitive answers.
[00:18:47] And that’s exactly the point. The kidnapping of Aldo Moro remains an open wound in Italy because the official story leaves too many gaps.
[00:18:59] When the state cannot, or will not, explain fully what happened, conspiracy theories rush in to fill the void.
[00:19:07] And to this day, the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro remain one of the darkest chapters in modern Italian history. Not just because of the violence, but because of the questions that still linger.
[00:19:22] Did the government really do all it could to save him?
[00:19:26] Did foreign powers play a hidden role?
[00:19:29] Was the state itself complicit in letting him die to prevent the Communists from entering power?
[00:19:36] In all likelihood, the full truth will never come to light. But what is certain is that Moro’s death marked something of a turning point in the Years of Lead.
[00:19:48] And just two years later, Italy would be shaken again by an atrocity deadlier than anything that had come before, the bombing of Bologna train station in 1980, an attack that remains the worst act of terrorism in Italian history.
[00:20:06] And that, my friends, is what we’ll explore in the third and final part of this mini-series.
[00:20:14] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on the kidnapping of Aldo Moro.
[00:20:19] I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learnt something new.
[00:20:22] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode. Italy is one of our most popular countries, and this was not even 50 years ago.
[00:20:31] So, for the Italians, or indeed anyone, who might remember this period. What are your memories of it from the time, and how do you remember it now, looking back on it five decades later?
[00:20:44] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:20:47] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:20:56] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:21:01] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today it’s part two of our three-part mini-series on Gli Anni Di Piombo, The Years of Lead.
[00:00:32] In case you missed part one, we set the scene, reminded ourselves of some modern Italian history, talked about the various political groups involved, and the tragic bombing at Milan’s Piazza Fontana in December 1969.
[00:00:48] Today, we are going to move into the next, bloody stage: the Red Brigades and the kidnapping of Aldo Moro.
[00:00:57] And next up, we’ll talk about how it all came to a close, with the bombing of the train station at Bologna, and the shadow this period still casts over the Italy of today.
[00:01:09] This mini-series is the sort of one that will be much easier to follow if you listen to it all in order, so just in case you haven’t listened to part one yet, now is probably the time to press pause and catch up on that one.
[00:01:25] Ok, let’s not waste a minute, and learn about Le Brigate Rosse, the Red Brigades.
[00:01:33] There is a quote that’s often attributed to Abraham Lincoln that goes “You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time”.
[00:01:51] As a politician, and indeed, pretty much anyone in any position of power, clearly it’s true.
[00:01:58] People have different opinions and beliefs, they want different things. Sometimes these interests overlap; some people may always approve of what you do, but not everyone will always agree with you.
[00:02:14] And in the deeply fragmented environment of post-war Italy, this was especially true. Communists, fascists, nationalists, the Vatican, Americans, rich, poor, north and south.
[00:02:31] Finding common ground between all of these often competing interest groups was, well, not impossible, according to one man.
[00:02:43] Aldo Moro had been Prime Minister of Italy five times: three times during the 1960s, and twice during the 1970s.
[00:02:54] He was a senior figure within the Christian Democrat party, the centrist political party that dominated Italian politics for most of the second half of the 20th century.
[00:03:07] The second most powerful party at the time was the communist party.
[00:03:12] It had been gaining strength and popularity throughout the 1970s, and in the 1976 election — the first election after the voting age was reduced from 21 to 18 — it won 34% of the vote, only narrowly trailing the Christian Democrats’ 39%.
[00:03:34] And the remaining 27% was split between smaller parties, from the neo-fascist MSI to the socialists and republicans.
[00:03:46] Finding any viable majority seemed completely unworkable.
[00:03:52] For the Christian Democrats, this would mean working with a coalition of smaller parties with completely opposing positions.
[00:04:01] Or it would mean getting into bed with the communists.
[00:04:06] Again, completely unworkable. The Christian Democrats, or we can just call them DC, for short, were the continuity party: church, family, traditional, conservative values.
[00:04:21] The communists, the Partito Communista Italiano, or PCI for short, well, they were communists supported by Moscow.
[00:04:31] And this was the middle of the Cold War.
[00:04:34] It was never going to work. Or so most people thought.
[00:04:40] There was one person who thought it could: Aldo Moro.
[00:04:45] He had been working with the leader of the communist party on something called the “historic compromise”, a way to work with the communists, making them a partner in the heart of government.
[00:05:02] This had, if it’s possible, the complete opposite effect of that Lincoln quote we started with.
[00:05:10] It pleased none of the people all the time.
[00:05:15] Moscow hated it because it brought the Italian communists closer to the West.
[00:05:20] The US hated it because it gave the communists a seat at the G7 table.
[00:05:27] Domestically, the left opposed it because it was seen as compromising on key positions, and the right opposed it for the same reason.
[00:05:38] The then US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, even had a warning for Moro, reportedly telling him, “You stop doing this thing–this collaboration–or you will be badly punished.”
[00:05:53] Moro did not stop. And he almost got there.
[00:05:58] However, on the morning of 16th March, 1978, as he was leaving for a meeting, his car was ambushed.
[00:06:07] Moro was dragged away and held for 55 days. The perpetrators were Le Brigate Rosse, the Red Brigades.
[00:06:17] Or at least, that is the official verdict.
[00:06:21] The episode has gone down as the darkest in the years of lead, the kidnapping of one of the country’s longest serving leaders in broad daylight, and has been called Italy’s 9/11 moment.
[00:06:37] It is also to this day the subject of controversy and intrigue, with many theories suggesting that the official verdict may be omitting the influence of everyone from the CIA, the Stasi, the KGB, Mossad, Palestinians, Masonic Lodges, and even the Mafia.
[00:06:59] So, let’s return to that morning of March 16th, 1978, the day now remembered as the day of the strage di via Fani — the Via Fani massacre.
[00:07:14] Moro’s car was on its way through a quiet Roman street when, at 9 am, a Fiat 128 blocked the convoy.
[00:07:24] A group of armed Red Brigades members, disguised as Alitalia crew members, jumped out.
[00:07:32] Within seconds, gunfire erupted.
[00:07:36] Ninety-one shots in less than two minutes.
[00:07:40] When it all stopped, all five of Moro’s bodyguards were dead.
[00:07:46] Moro himself was bundled into a waiting car.
[00:07:51] It was an attack carried out with chilling precision.
[00:07:56] The Red Brigades weren’t just street thugs; they were a highly organised terrorist group, with cells, weapons training, and an ideology that saw themselves as soldiers in a revolutionary war against the Italian state.
[00:08:12] A couple of days after the kidnapping, the Red Brigades released their first communication, claiming credit for Moro’s kidnapping, and sending a picture proving he was still alive, the famous image of him in front of the Brigate Rosse sign.
[00:08:30] In this communication, they declared that he would be put on a “People’s Trial”, where he would answer the charges of his crimes against the proletariat.
[00:08:43] For the next almost two months, 55 days in total, the Red Brigades would release a series of communications, including letters written by Moro: to his political colleagues, to his wife, and even to the pope.
[00:09:01] In these letters, he begged for a deal to be made, pleading for his life.
[00:09:09] In them, he sounded like a broken man, terrified, abandoned, convinced that his colleagues were sacrificing him for political principle.
[00:09:21] These communications kept the public up to date with the “trial” and their demands for Moro’s release.
[00:09:31] Initially, the kidnappers demanded the release of 13 imprisoned members of The Red Brigades, but this was later reduced to one.
[00:09:42] And this was all played out very publicly, with the entire country watching on tenterhooks.
[00:09:50] And it was, of course, the subject of great debate, from the inner circles of government to the pensioners playing cards in the village bar: what could be done to get him home? Should the state negotiate with terrorists?
[00:10:08] On one side was the so-called linea della fermezza, the “hard line,” championed by the Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, and his Interior Minister, Francesco Cossiga.
[00:10:21] Their position was clear: the Republic must not bow to violence.
[00:10:27] To make a deal would only encourage more kidnappings, more bloodshed. And there was already more than enough.
[00:10:36] On the other side were those who favoured the linea della trattativa, the “soft line.”
[00:10:43] They argued that Moro’s life was more important than abstract principles, that saving him was worth compromise. Among them were several members of his own Christian Democratic Party, figures in the Socialist Party, and, of course, his desperate family.
[00:11:04] Even the Vatican tried to intervene. Pope Paul VI, who was a personal friend of Moro, made a heartfelt public appeal: “I beg you on my knees,” he said to the kidnappers, “give Aldo Moro back to his family, unharmed.”
[00:11:25] Yet the state’s position was clear: we will not negotiate with terrorists.
[00:11:32] While all of this was going on, there was a frantic search to find the kidnappers' whereabouts. It was clearly a large job, with multiple people involved in the planning and execution of the kidnapping.
[00:11:46] Moro had been snatched from the streets of the capital. This had been going on for almost two months, and someone, somewhere, must have heard something.
[00:11:58] The police looked for clues in Moro’s letters, thinking he might have left hidden secret messages beneath the innocent-looking words.
[00:12:08] Whatever tip the authorities followed, it led to nothing.
[00:12:12] And as the days went by, the so-called “People’s Trial” came to a close.
[00:12:20] In their ninth and final communication, the Red Brigades announced that Aldo Moro had been found guilty and would be sentenced accordingly. In other words, he was about to be executed.
[00:12:35] Still, the state remained resolute. It did nothing. Its policy was clear: we do not negotiate with terrorists.
[00:12:46] And on the 9th of May 1978, the waiting came to an end.
[00:12:53] Moro’s trusted assistant, Francesco Tritto, received a phone call from a man who said he was from The Red Brigades.
[00:13:02] Moro was dead, he told him.
[00:13:05] Go to via Caetani in central Rome. There’s a red Renault. Look in the boot. You’ll find him there.
[00:13:13] The police rushed to the scene. They opened the boot and found Moro’s lifeless body, still wearing the suit he had been kidnapped in.
[00:13:25] The location had been chosen with deliberate cruelty: halfway between the headquarters of the Christian Democrats and those of the Communist Party, as if to symbolise the death of Moro’s dream of compromise.
[00:13:41] The shock was immense.
[00:13:44] Leaders of all parties condemned the murder. Italians wept in the streets.
[00:13:51] There were offers of a state funeral, but in a very public statement against a country they felt had abandoned him, his family refused, instead opting for a private funeral, to which no politicians were invited.
[00:14:07] And there, the grief was mixed with fury; fury at the Red Brigades, fury at the state’s refusal to negotiate, fury at the sense that something essential had died along with him.
[00:14:22] And for the Red Brigades, even though they might have achieved their stated goal by putting Aldo Moro on trial and humiliating the state, this whole saga would be a disaster.
[00:14:37] After killing Moro, they lost all public sympathy, even among radical workers and students, people who may have shared some similar political ideologies but who saw kidnapping and murder as entirely beyond the pale, utterly unjustified.
[00:14:57] The communist party denounced them outright; the left turned its back.
[00:15:03] The state was galvanised to crush them, and within three years, 32 members of the Red Brigades, including most of its leadership, were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for their role in the Moro affair.
[00:15:19] And Aldo Moro’s dream of the “historic compromise”, well, without its key architect and proponent, it was out of the window.
[00:15:30] But not everyone lost out from the affair.
[00:15:36] For the Christian Democrats, especially the right of the party, it meant continuity, a continuation of the system that Moro had been pushing to change, as well as greater public support for a crackdown against left-wing extremism.
[00:15:53] This also played out nicely for Italy’s Western allies, who had been fearful of communists getting a seat at the table, as Moro had been proposing.
[00:16:05] And domestically, anyone who opposed communism probably also benefited, whether this was elements of Masonic Lodges such as the infamous P2 [P2 in English], or even the mafia.
[00:16:21] And, like in Piazza Fontana and the Bologna bombing that we’ll talk about in the next episode, this has given rise to theories that the official explanation might not be telling the whole story.
[00:16:37] In the case of Aldo Moro, there are many things that don’t add up, and some that are just plain weird.
[00:16:46] There was a séance, of all things, a kind of spiritual meeting where people try to communicate with the dead. This was held by a group of professors at the University of Rome, who claimed to receive messages from the beyond about Moro’s location.
[00:17:06] Absurd as it sounds, their cryptic clues were actually passed to the police, and some of them eerily pointed to places connected with the kidnapping.
[00:17:19] So you either believe in the supernatural, or you believe that this was a way for someone to pass information “unofficially” to the police.
[00:17:30] And one of the people at this séance was Romano Prodi, a name you may remember because he has served twice as Italian Prime Minister, in the late 1990s and late 2000s.
[00:17:45] What’s more, there were reports of missed opportunities, bungled searches, and phone calls that were ignored.
[00:17:53] It would later turn out that Moro never left Rome, yet somehow the Italian police, with all their resources, never found him, even though they raided hundreds of apartments.
[00:18:06] How could the kidnappers have moved him around a city swarming with checkpoints and surveillance?
[00:18:14] And then there’s the international angle.
[00:18:16] Some accounts suggest that foreign intelligence agencies, the CIA, the KGB, and even the Stasi, all had their eyes on Italy at the time.
[00:18:28] A Communist party joining the government of a NATO country was unthinkable to Washington.
[00:18:34] To Moscow, the compromise looked like betrayal. Did these superpowers have an interest in seeing Moro silenced?
[00:18:45] There are no definitive answers.
[00:18:47] And that’s exactly the point. The kidnapping of Aldo Moro remains an open wound in Italy because the official story leaves too many gaps.
[00:18:59] When the state cannot, or will not, explain fully what happened, conspiracy theories rush in to fill the void.
[00:19:07] And to this day, the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro remain one of the darkest chapters in modern Italian history. Not just because of the violence, but because of the questions that still linger.
[00:19:22] Did the government really do all it could to save him?
[00:19:26] Did foreign powers play a hidden role?
[00:19:29] Was the state itself complicit in letting him die to prevent the Communists from entering power?
[00:19:36] In all likelihood, the full truth will never come to light. But what is certain is that Moro’s death marked something of a turning point in the Years of Lead.
[00:19:48] And just two years later, Italy would be shaken again by an atrocity deadlier than anything that had come before, the bombing of Bologna train station in 1980, an attack that remains the worst act of terrorism in Italian history.
[00:20:06] And that, my friends, is what we’ll explore in the third and final part of this mini-series.
[00:20:14] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on the kidnapping of Aldo Moro.
[00:20:19] I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learnt something new.
[00:20:22] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode. Italy is one of our most popular countries, and this was not even 50 years ago.
[00:20:31] So, for the Italians, or indeed anyone, who might remember this period. What are your memories of it from the time, and how do you remember it now, looking back on it five decades later?
[00:20:44] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:20:47] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:20:56] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:21:01] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today it’s part two of our three-part mini-series on Gli Anni Di Piombo, The Years of Lead.
[00:00:32] In case you missed part one, we set the scene, reminded ourselves of some modern Italian history, talked about the various political groups involved, and the tragic bombing at Milan’s Piazza Fontana in December 1969.
[00:00:48] Today, we are going to move into the next, bloody stage: the Red Brigades and the kidnapping of Aldo Moro.
[00:00:57] And next up, we’ll talk about how it all came to a close, with the bombing of the train station at Bologna, and the shadow this period still casts over the Italy of today.
[00:01:09] This mini-series is the sort of one that will be much easier to follow if you listen to it all in order, so just in case you haven’t listened to part one yet, now is probably the time to press pause and catch up on that one.
[00:01:25] Ok, let’s not waste a minute, and learn about Le Brigate Rosse, the Red Brigades.
[00:01:33] There is a quote that’s often attributed to Abraham Lincoln that goes “You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time”.
[00:01:51] As a politician, and indeed, pretty much anyone in any position of power, clearly it’s true.
[00:01:58] People have different opinions and beliefs, they want different things. Sometimes these interests overlap; some people may always approve of what you do, but not everyone will always agree with you.
[00:02:14] And in the deeply fragmented environment of post-war Italy, this was especially true. Communists, fascists, nationalists, the Vatican, Americans, rich, poor, north and south.
[00:02:31] Finding common ground between all of these often competing interest groups was, well, not impossible, according to one man.
[00:02:43] Aldo Moro had been Prime Minister of Italy five times: three times during the 1960s, and twice during the 1970s.
[00:02:54] He was a senior figure within the Christian Democrat party, the centrist political party that dominated Italian politics for most of the second half of the 20th century.
[00:03:07] The second most powerful party at the time was the communist party.
[00:03:12] It had been gaining strength and popularity throughout the 1970s, and in the 1976 election — the first election after the voting age was reduced from 21 to 18 — it won 34% of the vote, only narrowly trailing the Christian Democrats’ 39%.
[00:03:34] And the remaining 27% was split between smaller parties, from the neo-fascist MSI to the socialists and republicans.
[00:03:46] Finding any viable majority seemed completely unworkable.
[00:03:52] For the Christian Democrats, this would mean working with a coalition of smaller parties with completely opposing positions.
[00:04:01] Or it would mean getting into bed with the communists.
[00:04:06] Again, completely unworkable. The Christian Democrats, or we can just call them DC, for short, were the continuity party: church, family, traditional, conservative values.
[00:04:21] The communists, the Partito Communista Italiano, or PCI for short, well, they were communists supported by Moscow.
[00:04:31] And this was the middle of the Cold War.
[00:04:34] It was never going to work. Or so most people thought.
[00:04:40] There was one person who thought it could: Aldo Moro.
[00:04:45] He had been working with the leader of the communist party on something called the “historic compromise”, a way to work with the communists, making them a partner in the heart of government.
[00:05:02] This had, if it’s possible, the complete opposite effect of that Lincoln quote we started with.
[00:05:10] It pleased none of the people all the time.
[00:05:15] Moscow hated it because it brought the Italian communists closer to the West.
[00:05:20] The US hated it because it gave the communists a seat at the G7 table.
[00:05:27] Domestically, the left opposed it because it was seen as compromising on key positions, and the right opposed it for the same reason.
[00:05:38] The then US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, even had a warning for Moro, reportedly telling him, “You stop doing this thing–this collaboration–or you will be badly punished.”
[00:05:53] Moro did not stop. And he almost got there.
[00:05:58] However, on the morning of 16th March, 1978, as he was leaving for a meeting, his car was ambushed.
[00:06:07] Moro was dragged away and held for 55 days. The perpetrators were Le Brigate Rosse, the Red Brigades.
[00:06:17] Or at least, that is the official verdict.
[00:06:21] The episode has gone down as the darkest in the years of lead, the kidnapping of one of the country’s longest serving leaders in broad daylight, and has been called Italy’s 9/11 moment.
[00:06:37] It is also to this day the subject of controversy and intrigue, with many theories suggesting that the official verdict may be omitting the influence of everyone from the CIA, the Stasi, the KGB, Mossad, Palestinians, Masonic Lodges, and even the Mafia.
[00:06:59] So, let’s return to that morning of March 16th, 1978, the day now remembered as the day of the strage di via Fani — the Via Fani massacre.
[00:07:14] Moro’s car was on its way through a quiet Roman street when, at 9 am, a Fiat 128 blocked the convoy.
[00:07:24] A group of armed Red Brigades members, disguised as Alitalia crew members, jumped out.
[00:07:32] Within seconds, gunfire erupted.
[00:07:36] Ninety-one shots in less than two minutes.
[00:07:40] When it all stopped, all five of Moro’s bodyguards were dead.
[00:07:46] Moro himself was bundled into a waiting car.
[00:07:51] It was an attack carried out with chilling precision.
[00:07:56] The Red Brigades weren’t just street thugs; they were a highly organised terrorist group, with cells, weapons training, and an ideology that saw themselves as soldiers in a revolutionary war against the Italian state.
[00:08:12] A couple of days after the kidnapping, the Red Brigades released their first communication, claiming credit for Moro’s kidnapping, and sending a picture proving he was still alive, the famous image of him in front of the Brigate Rosse sign.
[00:08:30] In this communication, they declared that he would be put on a “People’s Trial”, where he would answer the charges of his crimes against the proletariat.
[00:08:43] For the next almost two months, 55 days in total, the Red Brigades would release a series of communications, including letters written by Moro: to his political colleagues, to his wife, and even to the pope.
[00:09:01] In these letters, he begged for a deal to be made, pleading for his life.
[00:09:09] In them, he sounded like a broken man, terrified, abandoned, convinced that his colleagues were sacrificing him for political principle.
[00:09:21] These communications kept the public up to date with the “trial” and their demands for Moro’s release.
[00:09:31] Initially, the kidnappers demanded the release of 13 imprisoned members of The Red Brigades, but this was later reduced to one.
[00:09:42] And this was all played out very publicly, with the entire country watching on tenterhooks.
[00:09:50] And it was, of course, the subject of great debate, from the inner circles of government to the pensioners playing cards in the village bar: what could be done to get him home? Should the state negotiate with terrorists?
[00:10:08] On one side was the so-called linea della fermezza, the “hard line,” championed by the Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, and his Interior Minister, Francesco Cossiga.
[00:10:21] Their position was clear: the Republic must not bow to violence.
[00:10:27] To make a deal would only encourage more kidnappings, more bloodshed. And there was already more than enough.
[00:10:36] On the other side were those who favoured the linea della trattativa, the “soft line.”
[00:10:43] They argued that Moro’s life was more important than abstract principles, that saving him was worth compromise. Among them were several members of his own Christian Democratic Party, figures in the Socialist Party, and, of course, his desperate family.
[00:11:04] Even the Vatican tried to intervene. Pope Paul VI, who was a personal friend of Moro, made a heartfelt public appeal: “I beg you on my knees,” he said to the kidnappers, “give Aldo Moro back to his family, unharmed.”
[00:11:25] Yet the state’s position was clear: we will not negotiate with terrorists.
[00:11:32] While all of this was going on, there was a frantic search to find the kidnappers' whereabouts. It was clearly a large job, with multiple people involved in the planning and execution of the kidnapping.
[00:11:46] Moro had been snatched from the streets of the capital. This had been going on for almost two months, and someone, somewhere, must have heard something.
[00:11:58] The police looked for clues in Moro’s letters, thinking he might have left hidden secret messages beneath the innocent-looking words.
[00:12:08] Whatever tip the authorities followed, it led to nothing.
[00:12:12] And as the days went by, the so-called “People’s Trial” came to a close.
[00:12:20] In their ninth and final communication, the Red Brigades announced that Aldo Moro had been found guilty and would be sentenced accordingly. In other words, he was about to be executed.
[00:12:35] Still, the state remained resolute. It did nothing. Its policy was clear: we do not negotiate with terrorists.
[00:12:46] And on the 9th of May 1978, the waiting came to an end.
[00:12:53] Moro’s trusted assistant, Francesco Tritto, received a phone call from a man who said he was from The Red Brigades.
[00:13:02] Moro was dead, he told him.
[00:13:05] Go to via Caetani in central Rome. There’s a red Renault. Look in the boot. You’ll find him there.
[00:13:13] The police rushed to the scene. They opened the boot and found Moro’s lifeless body, still wearing the suit he had been kidnapped in.
[00:13:25] The location had been chosen with deliberate cruelty: halfway between the headquarters of the Christian Democrats and those of the Communist Party, as if to symbolise the death of Moro’s dream of compromise.
[00:13:41] The shock was immense.
[00:13:44] Leaders of all parties condemned the murder. Italians wept in the streets.
[00:13:51] There were offers of a state funeral, but in a very public statement against a country they felt had abandoned him, his family refused, instead opting for a private funeral, to which no politicians were invited.
[00:14:07] And there, the grief was mixed with fury; fury at the Red Brigades, fury at the state’s refusal to negotiate, fury at the sense that something essential had died along with him.
[00:14:22] And for the Red Brigades, even though they might have achieved their stated goal by putting Aldo Moro on trial and humiliating the state, this whole saga would be a disaster.
[00:14:37] After killing Moro, they lost all public sympathy, even among radical workers and students, people who may have shared some similar political ideologies but who saw kidnapping and murder as entirely beyond the pale, utterly unjustified.
[00:14:57] The communist party denounced them outright; the left turned its back.
[00:15:03] The state was galvanised to crush them, and within three years, 32 members of the Red Brigades, including most of its leadership, were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for their role in the Moro affair.
[00:15:19] And Aldo Moro’s dream of the “historic compromise”, well, without its key architect and proponent, it was out of the window.
[00:15:30] But not everyone lost out from the affair.
[00:15:36] For the Christian Democrats, especially the right of the party, it meant continuity, a continuation of the system that Moro had been pushing to change, as well as greater public support for a crackdown against left-wing extremism.
[00:15:53] This also played out nicely for Italy’s Western allies, who had been fearful of communists getting a seat at the table, as Moro had been proposing.
[00:16:05] And domestically, anyone who opposed communism probably also benefited, whether this was elements of Masonic Lodges such as the infamous P2 [P2 in English], or even the mafia.
[00:16:21] And, like in Piazza Fontana and the Bologna bombing that we’ll talk about in the next episode, this has given rise to theories that the official explanation might not be telling the whole story.
[00:16:37] In the case of Aldo Moro, there are many things that don’t add up, and some that are just plain weird.
[00:16:46] There was a séance, of all things, a kind of spiritual meeting where people try to communicate with the dead. This was held by a group of professors at the University of Rome, who claimed to receive messages from the beyond about Moro’s location.
[00:17:06] Absurd as it sounds, their cryptic clues were actually passed to the police, and some of them eerily pointed to places connected with the kidnapping.
[00:17:19] So you either believe in the supernatural, or you believe that this was a way for someone to pass information “unofficially” to the police.
[00:17:30] And one of the people at this séance was Romano Prodi, a name you may remember because he has served twice as Italian Prime Minister, in the late 1990s and late 2000s.
[00:17:45] What’s more, there were reports of missed opportunities, bungled searches, and phone calls that were ignored.
[00:17:53] It would later turn out that Moro never left Rome, yet somehow the Italian police, with all their resources, never found him, even though they raided hundreds of apartments.
[00:18:06] How could the kidnappers have moved him around a city swarming with checkpoints and surveillance?
[00:18:14] And then there’s the international angle.
[00:18:16] Some accounts suggest that foreign intelligence agencies, the CIA, the KGB, and even the Stasi, all had their eyes on Italy at the time.
[00:18:28] A Communist party joining the government of a NATO country was unthinkable to Washington.
[00:18:34] To Moscow, the compromise looked like betrayal. Did these superpowers have an interest in seeing Moro silenced?
[00:18:45] There are no definitive answers.
[00:18:47] And that’s exactly the point. The kidnapping of Aldo Moro remains an open wound in Italy because the official story leaves too many gaps.
[00:18:59] When the state cannot, or will not, explain fully what happened, conspiracy theories rush in to fill the void.
[00:19:07] And to this day, the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro remain one of the darkest chapters in modern Italian history. Not just because of the violence, but because of the questions that still linger.
[00:19:22] Did the government really do all it could to save him?
[00:19:26] Did foreign powers play a hidden role?
[00:19:29] Was the state itself complicit in letting him die to prevent the Communists from entering power?
[00:19:36] In all likelihood, the full truth will never come to light. But what is certain is that Moro’s death marked something of a turning point in the Years of Lead.
[00:19:48] And just two years later, Italy would be shaken again by an atrocity deadlier than anything that had come before, the bombing of Bologna train station in 1980, an attack that remains the worst act of terrorism in Italian history.
[00:20:06] And that, my friends, is what we’ll explore in the third and final part of this mini-series.
[00:20:14] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on the kidnapping of Aldo Moro.
[00:20:19] I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learnt something new.
[00:20:22] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode. Italy is one of our most popular countries, and this was not even 50 years ago.
[00:20:31] So, for the Italians, or indeed anyone, who might remember this period. What are your memories of it from the time, and how do you remember it now, looking back on it five decades later?
[00:20:44] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:20:47] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:20:56] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:21:01] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
