Il sangue dei leoni

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]

AuthorEdouard-Marcel Sumbu

OriginaltitleIl sangue dei leoni

LanguageItalian

SubjectPolitics
Unconventional warfare

Quick facts Author, Original title ...

Blood of the Lions
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

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History and contents

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 1 October 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

Structure

The structure of Blood of the Lions is organized according to the following table of contents:^[11]

Blood of the Lions by Edouard-Marcel Sumbu. The "Simba." – The causes of the armed insurrection. – The Congo. But also Africa. – Recourse to armed struggle. – From Kuilu to eastern Congo. – The revolutionary flame blazes in eastern Congo. – Simba is invulnerable. – Towards Stanleyville (Page 5)
Message to the People of the Congo (p. 55)
Culture and National Independence (Havana Cultural Congress). Delegate: Edouard-Marcel Sumbu (p. 71)
Special Forces Manual (January 1965) (p. 78)
Chapter One. General Informations (p. 83)
Chapter Two. Tactics (p. 84)
Chapter Three. Demolitions (p. 97)
Chapter Four. Air Operations (p. 143)
Chapter Five. Armaments (p. 182)
Chapter Six. Communications (p. 208)
Chapter Seven. First Aid (p. 225)
Chapter Nine (p. 254)

Editions

Sumbu, Edouard-Marcel (1965). Il sangue dei leoni [Blood of the Lions] (in Italian). Padova: Prezzo libri.
Sumbu, Edouard-Marcel (1969). Il sangue dei leoni : Appello dei combattenti a tutto il popolo congolese per una riscossa in massa contro la reazione Kinshasa, Discorso al Congresso culturale dell'Avana: Cultura e indipendenza nazionale di E. M. Sumbu, Manuale delle Special Forces [Blood of the Lions : A Call from the Fighters to All the Congolese People for a Mass Revolt Against the Kinshasa Reaction, Speech at the Cultural Congress of Havana: Culture and National Independence by E. M. Sumbu, Special Forces Manual]. Africa in lotta (in Italian). Translated by De Luigi Rotondi, Maria Luisa; Orsini, Milly; Petrillo, Raffaele. Milano: Libreria Feltrinelli. BNI: 705926.

References

[1]
"Search in the Italian National Library Service Catalog (1965 edition)". OPAC SBN (in Italian).
[2]
"Search in the Italian National Library Service Catalog (1969 edition)". OPAC SBN (in Italian).
[3]
Martin Alvarez, Alberto; Rey Tristán, Eduardo, eds. (2016). "The Role of the Left-wing Editors on the Diffusion of the New Left Wave: The Case of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli". Revolutionary Violence and the New Left: Transnational Perspectives. Taylor & Francis. pp. 89–109. ISBN 978-1317291374.
[4]
Monaville, Pedro (2022). "Seven. A Student Front". Students of the World: Global 1968 and Decolonization in the Congo. Duke University Press. pp. 144–160. ISBN 978-1478022985.
[5]
"How Third World Students Liberated the West". Chimurenga. April 2016. Archived from the original on 25 November 2025.
[6]
Jian, Chen; Waley-Cohen, Joanna; Young, Marilyn; Klimke, Martin; Nolan, Mary; Kirasirova, Masha, eds. (2018). "8. Making a "Second Vietnam": The Congolese revolution and its global connections in the 1960s". The Routledge Handbook of the Global Sixties: Between Protest and Nation-Building. Taylor & Francis. pp. 106–118. ISBN 9781351366106.
[7]
Gotor, Miguel (2011). Il memoriale della Repubblica. Gli scritti di Aldo Moro dalla prigionia e l'anatomia del potere italiano [The Memorial of the Republic. Aldo Moro's Writings from Imprisonment and the Anatomy of Italian Power] (in Italian). Torino: Einaudi. pp. 47–53. ISBN 978-8806200398. 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.]
[8]
Armati, Cristiano, ed. (2009). Il libretto rosso dei partigiani. Manuale di resistenza, sabotaggio e guerriglia antifascista [The Little Red Book of the Partisans. A Manual of Resistance, Sabotage, and Anti-Fascist Guerrilla Warfare] (in Italian). Preface by Ferruccio Parri. Purple Press. p. 114. ISBN 978-8895903200.
[9]
ST 31-180 Special Forces Handbook (PDF). U.S. Army J.F.K. Special Warfare Center. January 1965.
[10]
"Il sessantotto speciale del Congo" [The special 1968 of Congo]. Internazionale (in Italian). 6 April 2018. Archived from the original on 25 November 2025. Retrieved 25 November 2025.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
[11]
Sumbu, Edouard-Marcel (1969). "Indice" [Table of contents]. Il sangue dei leoni : Appello dei combattenti a tutto il popolo congolese per una riscossa in massa contro la reazione Kinshasa, Discorso al Congresso culturale dell'Avana: Cultura e indipendenza nazionale di E. M. Sumbu, Manuale delle Special Forces [Blood of the Lions : A Call from the Fighters to All the Congolese People for a Mass Revolt Against the Kinshasa Reaction, Speech at the Cultural Congress of Havana: Culture and National Independence by E. M. Sumbu, Special Forces Manual] (PDF). Africa in lotta (in Italian). Translated by De Luigi Rotondi, Maria Luisa; Orsini, Milly; Petrillo, Raffaele. Milano: Libreria Feltrinelli. p. 263. BNI: 705926. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 June 2025.

Il sangue dei leoni

History and contents

Structure

Editions

See also

References

Bibliography

External links

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