page_title: Indro Montanelli
section_title: Eastern and Northern Europe
hierarchical_section_title: Indro Montanelli / Biography / Journalistic activity during the second world war / Eastern and Northern Europe
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Montanelli nella sede del Corriere della Sera o appena tornato dalla Finlandia nel 1940 o al ritorno da Budapest nel 1970.
context_page_description: Indro Alessandro Raffaello Schizogene Montanelli Knight Grand Cross OMRI was an Italian journalist, historian and writer, and one of the 50 World Press Freedom Heroes according to the International Press Institute.
  Initially an admirer of Benito Mussolini's dictatorship and a fascist supporter, at the end of the war, in 1943 Montanelli decided to join a liberal resistance group, Giustizia e Libertà, but in 1944 he was discovered and arrested along with his wife by Nazi authorities. Sentenced to death, he was able to flee to Switzerland the day before his scheduled execution by firing squad thanks to a secret service double-agent.
  In the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, Montanelli came under scrutiny for his fascist and colonialist youth and protesters asked to remove his statue in Milan. Montanelli bought and married a 12 year old Eritrean girl, whom he later sold to a general, during the Ethiopian War. In many interviews he called her 'a small docile animal". While working at the fascist magazine "Civiltà Fascista", Montanelli wrote many articles expressing racist ideas, declaring the superiority of the white race and supporting colonialistic ideas.
context_section_description: The position taken against fascism led him to first serious disagreements. He was taken off the ticket of the Party and he did nothing to get it back. So to avoid the worst, in 1938, the then minister of culture, Giuseppe Bottai, offered Montanelli the job of director of the Institute of Culture in Tallinn, Estonia, and lecturer in Italian at the University of Tartu. In this period the then director of the Corriere della Sera, Aldo Borelli, asked Montanelli to engage in a 'collaboration' as foreign correspondent (he could not be employed as journalist, because this had been forbidden by the fascist regime). Montanelli began to correspond for this newspaper from Estonia and Albania (during the Italian annexation of this country).
  On 1 September 1939 Germany invaded Poland. Montanelli was sent to report from the front in a Mercedes accompanied by German state functionaries. In the vicinity to the city of Grudziądz the car was stopped by a convoy of German tanks. On one of these stood Hitler himself, but a few feet from Montanelli. When Hitler was told that the only person in casual clothes was Italian, he jumped out of the tank and eyeing Montanelli like a madman, began a ten-minute hysterical speech followed by military salute and exit. Albert Speer, who had also been in the convoy with fellow artist Arno Breker, corroborated the story in 1979.  Apart from this episode – which Montanelli was forbidden to report – there had been little to report because the invasion of Poland was completed so rapidly that it was over within weeks. It was allegedly him who reported about the Skirmish of Krojanty and created a myth from it.
  Montanelli was not welcome in Italy, and decided to move to Lithuania. The joint German-Russian invasion of Poland instinctively told him that more was brewing on the Soviet Union border. His instinct was correct because shortly after his arrival in Kaunas – the seat of Lithuanian government – the Soviet Union declared an Ultimatum to the Baltic Republics. At this point Montanelli continued to travel towards Tallinn as it was his wish to see the last of a free and democratic Estonia, which was soon invaded by Soviet Union. At this point, Montanelli was not popular in Italy, nor Germany because of his pro-Estonian and pro-Polish articles and had been expelled by the Soviet Union for being a foreigner. So he was forced by the events to cross the Baltic sea and reach Helsinki.
  In Finland Montanelli began writing articles about the Lapps and the reindeer, although this was not for long as Molotov had made requests on the Finnish government for the annexation of part of the Finnish land to the Soviet Union.  The Finnish delegation, headed by Paasikivi, had refused to give in to these requests and on their return it was clear that war was in the air.  Montanelli was not able to write about the details of the talks between the Soviet and Finnish delegations, as they were shrouded in strict secrecy, although he was able to interview Paasikivi, who was happy to fill him in on everything except for the content of the talks.
  Throughout the so-called Winter War which ensued, Montanelli wrote hotly pro-Finnish articles both from the front and from bomb-stricken Helsinki writing about the almost mythical enterprises of the battle of Tolvajärvi, and of men like captain Pajakka who with 200 Lapps successfully confronted 40,000 Russians in the region of Petsamo. Back in Italy Montanelli's stories had been followed with great enthusiasm by the public, but not so enthusiastic was the response of the fascist leaders who were committed to an alliance with the Soviet Union. When Borelli, director of the Corriere della Sera, had been ordered to censor Montanelli's articles, he had had the courage to reply that "thanks to his articles the Corriere increased its sales from 500,000 to 900,000 copies: are you going to reimburse me?". When the Winter War was over, and the non-aggression pact was signed between the Soviet Union and Finland, Montanelli was personally thanked by the elusive Mannerheim himself, for writing in favour of 
caption: Montanelli in 1940 with an Olivetti MP1 typewriter, later replaced by his trademark Lettera 22.
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