Forty-Five Days

Abstract

This book reconstructs the collapse and aftermath of Mussolini’s Italian Fascist regime in 1943. Narrating events through the eyes of contemporaries, it explores the ways in which ordinary people engaged in a reckoning with twenty years of repressive rule through ritualized celebration, iconoclasm and retributive violence, accusations and forgiveness, and recriminations and apologies. In this fleeting window, Italians clashed over the legacies of the past, prescriptions for the present, and dreams for the future. What had Fascism—suddenly consigned to history—done to Italy? Who had been a true Fascist, and who remained uncompromised? How should communities cleanse themselves and rebuild after two decades of authoritarian rule? What should come next, and who possessed the moral authority to lead the nation into an uncertain future? The period now remembered as the “Forty-Five Days” represents a critical juncture in the history of modern Italy and Europe and provides new insight into the lived experience and social dynamics of regime change.