Carlo Sforza

Nationality

Italy

Date of Birth

1872

Date of Death

1952

Political
Preference

Republican

Carlo Sforza was an Italian diplomat and politician. Born in Lucca, Italy, he studied Law at the University of Pisa and entered the diplomatic service in 1896. Sforza was in favour of the Italian intervention on the side of the Allies during World War I. He was ambassador in Corfu to the exiled Serbian government from 1915 to 1919, and after the War he became Italian foreign minister. He was assigned to Paris in 1922, but resigned in protest after Benito Mussolini took power in the same year.

Sforza was exiled to Belgium in 1926 after leading the anti-fascist opposition in the Senate, where he wrote several books analysing fascist ideology in Italy and Europe. He lived in Belgium until the German attack in the spring of 1940. He then relocated to London and later to the United States, and became a member of the Mazzini Society, an antifascist society created by Italian-American immigrants in the United States. He returned to Italy in 1944 and joined Ivanoe Bonomi’s provisional antifascist government. Sforza became a member of the Italian Republican Party in 1946.

When he was Foreign Minister from 1947 to 1951, Sforza supported the Marshall Plan and the settlement of Trieste and advocated a pro-European policy. Together with Alcide de Gasperi, he led the Italian delegation to the Council of Europe. He also took part in the meetings of the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC). In April 1951, Sforza signed the Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), of which Italy was a founding member.