The Second World War wreaked unprecedented devastation throughout Europe, necessitating monumental reconstruction efforts that burdened not only governments, but the lives of ordinary citizens. War, Massacre, and Recovery in Central Italy, 1943-1948 examines this transitional period in the province of Arezzo by detailing the daily experiences of civilians through the traumas of war and the difficulties of recovery. Studying the aftermath of war in a new and insightful way, Victoria C. Belco shifts the perspective from the national to the local level. With this localized focus, she provides valuable insight into the ways in which civilians coped with an overwhelming range of problems - from adjusting to Allied occupation and widespread displacement to rampant unemployment and the restructuring of local administrations and institutions after fascism. Recreating the post-war atmosphere of disorder, need, and political upheaval, Belco shows how the competing community interests caused social fragmentations that impeded change, while the unity of a shared past prevented civil war.

The Second World War wreaked unprecedented devastation throughout Europe, necessitating monumental reconstruction efforts that burdened not only governments, but the lives of ordinary citizens. War, Massacre, and Recovery in Central Italy, 1943-1948 examines this transitional period in the province of Arezzo by detailing the daily experiences of civilians through the traumas of war and the difficulties of recovery. Studying the aftermath of war in a new and insightful way, Victoria C. Belco shifts the perspective from the national to the local level. With this localized focus, she provides valuable insight into the ways in which civilians coped with an overwhelming range of problems - from adjusting to Allied occupation and widespread displacement to rampant unemployment and the restructuring of local administrations and institutions after fascism. Recreating the post-war atmosphere of disorder, need, and political upheaval, Belco shows how the competing community interests caused social fragmentations that impeded change, while the unity of a shared past prevented civil war.

This book argues that Italy represents a privileged entry point into the comparative analysis of ideologies and experiences of modernity. The book compares how thinkers and politicians belonging to different ideological clusters - Liberalism, Communism, Fascism, Chistian Democracy - came to formulate multiple and often antagonistic visions of Italy's road to the modern. By revisiting Italian political history from the late nineteenth century until the present with a focus on transition periods, Italian Modernities explores how competing historical narratives influenced shifting understandings of Italian nationhood, thus foregrounding the active role of memory politics in the formulation of multiple modernities.

On July 25, 1943, news of Mussolini's resignation and subsequent arrest stunned Italians leaving them dumbfounded. After two decades, fascism had fallen without any advance warning. As festive events marked the incredible outcome and reminders of the past were destroyed, an uncontainable joy seemed to pervade Italians. But what did people actually celebrate? How did they understand the bygone dictatorship, which was soon to be reincarnated in the Italian Social Republic (RSI)? Drawing on more than one hundred diaries written by ordinary citizens (and some prominent figures as well) and inspired by Raymond Williams's concept of structures of feeling, the book examines Italians' perspectives on fascism at a very critical moment in their history. With the country mired in a devastating war further complicated by the September 8, 1943 armistice with the Allies and subsequent German occupation--followed by the eruption of an Italian-against-Italian conflict, the switching of alliances, and the declaration of war against Germany on October 13, 1943--the fast pace of history seemed to deflect Italians' attention from their immediate past. Amidst the daily experience of bombings, hunger, displacement, and death, coming to terms with twenty years of dictatorship turned out to be an arduous enterprise. Whether those who had lived under the fascist regime wished 'not to think of it and not to speak any more about it' as philosopher Benedetto Croce maintained, it is hard to ascertain. In truth, little is known of what Italians felt and thought about fascism after its precipitous demise. This book remedies the gap in historical scholarship by assessing how Italians confronted their present and negotiated their past during the two years from the fall of the regime to the definitive defeat of the RSI and the end of the world war in May 1945. By bringing to life the cultural imaginaries and practices of the past, the book raises ostensibly intractable questions on the epochal impact of what often appears as inconsequential: the typically unseen and seemingly banal power of everyday experiences.

This new study provides a concise, accessible introduction to occupied Europe. It gives a clear overview of the history and historiography of resistance and collaboration. It explores how these terms cannot be examined separately, but are always entangled. Covering Europe from east to west, this book aims to explore the evolution of scholarly approaches to resistance and collaboration. Not limiting itself to any one area, it looks at armed struggle, daily life, complicity and rescue, the Catholic Church, and official and public memory since the end of the war.

Spanish-Italian Relations and the Influence of the Major Powers examines complex relations between Spain and Italy, beginning in 1943 and continuing until 1957, contending that the relationship cannot be examined in isolation and must be understood in its broader context.

This book proposes a significant new interpretation of the relations between Italian partisans and British forces during the Italian campaign of 1943-1945. The core of the argument challenges many assumptions that are today still present both in Italian and in the Anglophone historiography on the subject. In current historiography, the debate is still ongoing as to whether the British were a hostile force to the Italian Resistance, trying to weaken it to better control it, or a genuine and committed ally. Instead of a clear-cut and artificial dichotomy between the 'Italians' and the 'British' this book posits the idea that lines were often blurred, and relations existed on a scale that included lots of grey and overlapping areas. Thanks to an original approach that examines the Italo-British interaction from a point of view as close as possible to the ‘action’, it proposes a new interpretation based on the way the British image was cast in Italy. Politics is left in the background in favour of an analysis of the concrete problems and difficulties that Italians and the British had to face when working together and how these processes influenced the image of Great Britain in Italy in the following decades. This produces a final interpretation that enriches current historiography and pushes forward our understanding of the relationship between Italian partisans and British forces.

This dictionary covers the complex and costly conflict that began when Germany, ruled by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, invaded neighboring Poland on 1 September 1939; and concluded when Germany surrendered on 7–9 May 1945, leaving much of the European continent in ruins and its population devastated. The war against Germany, Italy, and the other European Axis members was fought primarily in Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, East and North Africa, and the Atlantic Ocean. The Axis powers were defeated by the Allies, led by the “Grand Alliance” of Great Britain, the United States, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The Historical Dictionary of World War II: The War against Germany and Italy relates the history of this war through a chronology, an introductory essay, maps and photos, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 300 cross-referenced entries on the countries and geographical areas involved in the war, as well as the nations remaining neutral; wartime alliances and conferences; significant civilian and military leaders; and major ground, naval, and air operations. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about World War II.

Italy in the Second World War: Alternative Perspectives stems from the necessity to write an important page of Second World War history, by focusing on the Italian war experience, which has been overshadowed in international research by the attention given to its senior Axis partner. Drawing extensively on material from Italian and international archives, a team of Italian and international historians, led by Emanuele Sica and Richard Carrier, offers a broad-ranging volume on the war seen through the lens of Italian soldiers and civilians, and populations occupied by the Italian army. Contributors are: Luca Baldissara, Cindy Brown, Federico Ciavattone, Nicolò Da Lio, Paolo Fonzi, Francesco Fusi, Eric Gobetti, Federico Goddi, Andrea Martini, Niall MacGalloway, Amedeo Osti Guerrazzi, Paolo Pezzino, Matteo Pretelli, Nicholas Virtue.

This book is a long overdue in-depth study of the Italian Social Republic. Set up in 1943 by Hitler in the town of Salò on Lake Garda and ruled by Mussolini, this makeshift government was a last-ditch effort to ensure the survival of Fascism, ending with the murder of Mussolini by partisans in 1945. The RSI was a loosely organized regime made up of professed patriots, apostles of law and order, and rogue militias who committed atrocities against presumed and real enemies. H. James Burgwyn narrates the history of the RSI, with vivid portraits of key figures and thoughtful analysis of how radical fascists managed to take the Salò regime from a dictatorship in Italy to a Continental nazifascismo, hand in hand with the Third Reich. This book stands as an essential bookend to the life of Mussolini, with new insights into the man who duped the Italian people and provoked a war that ended in catastrophic defeat.