Giovanni Agnelli resigned as chairman of Fiat in 1996, after 30 years at the helm of the Italian automobile manufacturer. His career paralleled the Cold War history of Italy and the rest of Western Europe: From the ashes of World War II he helped guide Fiat to international success. The COLD WAR production team interviewed him in February 1996.

On the critical 1948 Italian elections:

The Communists at that moment were very strong in Italy, and the Italian Communist Party was the biggest Communist Party outside the Soviet Union. There's no doubt about that. It was very well led by a man called Togliatti, who had been a very important man in the international Comintern in Moscow. And that election could have been a touch-and-go election between Italy staying on one side of the world or the other side of the world. ...

I have the impression that the Communists knew that after Yalta, Italy did not belong to [the Soviet] sphere. And [the Communists] would much prefer having a political success and being the leaders of the opposition for many years ... to eventually winning the election and having a military intervention -- as happened in Greece just before. I believe that we were very, very lucky that it went that way. But I don't think that the Communists tried [to win] all the way through [the election], because [they] would not have been allowed to take power. The American position [was] for us; there was obviously the Vatican in Italy and all the religious positions for us; and there was Yalta, which had divided the world in these two pieces, these two blocs.

On what would have happened if the Communists had won the 1948 elections:

Well, I think a disaster. I mean, if it had been a [Communist] victory, and if [Italy] had gone over to the eastern part of the world -- a disaster. ... I mean, we saw what happened [in Czechoslovakia]. And Czechoslovakia in 1939 was a very advanced industrial country.

I think it would have been a tragedy for Italy; I think it would have been a tragedy for Europe; I think it would have been a tragedy for the Mediterranean; and it would have been a setback for America. [But] I don't think it was conceivable after the Yalta pact.

On the Marshall Plan:

Well, in 1947 ... in Europe and in Italy especially, we thought of America as all-powerful. I mean, they'd won the war for us, they had 50 percent of the world GNP, they had all the modern technology, they'd beaten the Nazi system. And I don't say that we didn't expect it, but we were pleasantly surprised to see the generosity of their foreign policy; and the generosity of their foreign policy at that moment was expressed through the Marshall Plan. And the Marshall Plan, to us, meant a general who had turned into a secretary of state, and that the secretary of state saw the necessity of the reconstruction of these European countries that had suffered so heavily. It was part of that very strong pro-American feeling that was created in Italy in those days.

It speeded up things. It gave us a closer connection again with the United States, which we already had in prewar days, but it created all that sort of Euro-Atlantic spirit and feeling that the first 10 to 15 postwar years were impregnated with. ...

As far as I can recall, I remember there were [no strings attached] at all. There were no strings. I would say the only string was a psychological string, which was a certain gratitude toward [the nation] which expressed this policy of generosity.

It surely speeded up the recovery, and speeding up the recovery surely does have an effect. Then, it gave us a certain amount of relationship with Washington, with the official side of Washington; we worked again with the Bank of America in a big way -- yes it did have an effect, surely.

On the overall effect of the Marshall Plan on Europe:

In the immediate postwar years, the whole of Europe was in a recession. So first of all, it helped us step out of a recession; it gave a certain amount of speed to the economy. But that was the first step. The second real step was that it [brought us closer to] this European Community. ... It bought us toward what has been considered the Atlantic community, it brought [us] toward NATO and it brought the European countries toward a European integration. ...