Background
Pietro Nenni on February 9, 1891 was born in Faenza, in Emilia-Romagna. After his peasant parents died, he was placed in an orphanage by an aristocratic family.
Pietro Nenni on February 9, 1891 was born in Faenza, in Emilia-Romagna. After his peasant parents died, he was placed in an orphanage by an aristocratic family.
He became a Socialist and in 1911 was jailed along with Mussolini for taking part in riots against the Italo-Turkish War. After serving in the army in World War I, he became the editor of Avanta, the official organ of the Italian Socialist Party, until it was suppressed by Mussolini's Fascist government. Emigrating to France, he worked in the Socialist movement, increasingly cooperating with the Communist Party, and from 1936 to 1939 was leader of the Garibaldi Brigade of Italian volunteers fighting with Loyalist Spain against Franco's forces. In World War II he was arrested in Vichy France and turned over to the Italian Fascist government, which imprisoned him until Italy capitulated in 1943. In August 1944 Nenni became secretary-general of the Italian Socialist Party and served in the coalition government as vice premier (1945 - 1946) and then as foreign minister (1946 - 1947). At this time the right-wing Socialists, who opposed Nenni's policy of "unity of action" with the Communists and his pro-Soviet leanings, broke with him to form the Social Democratic Party. But Nenni cooled toward Moscow and Communism during the de-Stalinization campaign, and in 1959 his party broke its ties with the Communists. In 1962 a major shift took place in Italian political alignments, resulting in a center-left government that needed the parliamentary support of the Socialists. The Socialists were included in the government in 1963 and Nenni became vice premier. The following year he declined to run as the Communists' choice for president, and the Social Democrats' leader Giuseppe Saragat was elected. In 1965 Nenni's party voted to merge again with the Social Democrats, and early in 1966 the Social Democrats agreed to unite. Nenni served as deputy premier in the Moro cabinet until May 1968 and as foreign minister in the first Rumor cabinet in early 1969. He died on January 1, 1980, in Rome.
He married Carmen Emiliani. They had four children.