 Cover of the first Italian edition, 1965, Prezzo Libri. | |
| Author | Edouard-Marcel Sumbu |
|---|---|
| Original title | Il sangue dei leoni |
| Language | Italian |
| Subject | Politics Unconventional warfare |
Publication date | 1965 |
Blood of the Lions (Italian : Il sangue dei leoni) is a 263-page book published in 1965 by Prezzo Libri and republished in 1969 by Feltrinelli. [1] [2]
The book contributed to the training of violent non-state actors in Italy during the "Sessantotto" and the Years of Lead, and also abroad, such as in the case of the Italian Red Brigades and the Palestinian Fatah. [3] [4] [5] [6]
On October 1, 1978, men from a special unit led by General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa raided a Milanese apartment on Via Monte Nevoso, used as a hideout by the Red Brigades, finding, along with other books and documents, a copy of Blood of the Lions. [7] Blood of the Lions was also one of the books in the personal library of Valerio Verbano, a young militant of Autonomia Operaia who was assassinated by a neo-fascist commando on February 22, 1980. [8]
The work is composed of two political writings by Edouard-Marcel Sumbu, a former Congolese rebel exiled in Cuba – "A Call from the Fighters to All the Congolese People for a Mass Revolt Against the Kinshasa Reaction" and "Speech at the Cultural Congress of Havana: Culture and National Independence" – and the Italian translation of a special text or military manual written for the United States Army Special Forces, titled ST 31-180 Special Forces Handbook, [9] which summarizes various tactics and techniques of unconventional warfare, guerrilla warfare, sabotage, and artisanal production of various types of explosive and incendiary devices.
According to an article published in the South African magazine Chimurenga , and republished by the Italian magazine Internazionale : [5] [10]
The publication of Il sangue dei leoni (Blood of the Lions), the most popular book ever published by the Italian leftist publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, is a good example of the intricate machinery of global circulation at the end of the 1960s. Originally written in French by a former Congolese rebel exiled in Cuba, and then translated into Italian for its publication by Feltrinelli, Il sangue dei Leoni is a narrative of the armed struggle in eastern Congo, and as such it was part of the effort to establish the relevance of the conflict and gather international support for the Congolese revolution. Edouard-Marcel Sumbu’s text did not constitute the entirety of the book. It was followed by a very long document, presented as the manual of the US army’s special forces, used for the secret training of counter-insurrection commandos at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. It is not very clear how the manual reached Feltrinelli or if it was part of Sumbu’s original manuscript, but Il sangue dei leoni remains a milestone in the history of the acceleration of the cycles of violence in the Italian Sessantotto and beyond. The reason for the success of the book was its very practical and detailed explanations of the organisation of guerrillas, which even included a whole section on the making of bombs. Reportedly, Il sangue dei leoni ended up on the bedside table of every Red Brigade member. Furthermore, some sources indicate that Israeli forces found copies of its Arabic translation on the dead bodies of Palestinian Al Fatah fighters in 1970 – a surprising testimony to the far-reaching repercussions of the intellectual labour of the young Congolese who advertised the post-Lumumbist revolution to the world in the global 1960s.
— How Third World Students Liberated the West, Chimurenga
The structure of Blood of the Lions is organized according to the following table of contents: [11]
Alla luce della lettura dei comunicati brigatisti divulgati nel corso dei cinquantacinque giorni non meraviglia la presenza della biografia di Aldo Moro scritta da Aniello Coppola, dal momento che il profilo dell'uomo politico contenuto nel secondo messaggio sembrò agli osservatori piú attenti ripreso proprio da quel libro. E neppure stupisce, se si fa riferimento alle parti dell'interrogatorio in cui Moro fu costretto a rispondere sulle attività di antiguerriglia della Nato in Italia e sulla cosiddetta strategia della tensione, il rinvenimento di una relazione sulla «Rosa dei Venti», e di una copia del libro Il sangue dei leoni, edito nel 1969 da Feltrinelli. Il volume pubblicava nella prima parte un lungo discorso del leader congolese Édouard-Marcel Sumbu, ma dissimulava al suo interno il ben piú intrigante «Manuale delle Special Forces», in cui erano riassunte le principali tecniche di antiguerriglia e di sabotaggio messe in pratica dai «Berretti verdi» statunitensi nei quadri bellici non convenzionali della guerra fredda. [In light of the Red Brigades' communiqués released during the fifty-five days [of Aldo Moro's imprisonment], the presence of Aniello Coppola's biography of Aldo Moro is not surprising, since the profile of the politician contained in the second message seemed to attentive observers to be taken from that very book. Nor is it surprising, considering the parts of the interrogation in which Moro was forced to answer questions about NATO's counterinsurgency activities in Italy and the so-called strategy of tension, to find a report on the «Rosa dei Venti» [a secret Italian neo-fascist organization] and a copy of the book Il sangue dei leoni, published in 1969 by Feltrinelli. The volume published in its first part a long speech by the Congolese leader Édouard-Marcel Sumbu, but concealed within it the much more intriguing «Special Forces Manual», which summarised the main counter-guerrilla and sabotage techniques put into practice by the US «Green Berets» in the unconventional warfare context of the Cold War.]
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