End of the Fascist Regime

About the Images

The following citations are for the images shown above, left to right, illustrating books and other works included in the exhibit “Italian Life Under Fascism” in the Department of Special Collections in 1998.

  1. L’Italia Libera. Padua on 28 April 1945
  2. L’Italia Libera. Edizione Lombarda, 9 June 1944.
    • Partisan newspaper labeled “the organ of the Action Party,” urging the liberation of Italy ahead of the Allied forces, which had reached Rome three days before. The short-lived Partito d’Azione formed in the summer of 1942, derived from uninterrupted clandestine opposition against the regime, and based its political program on the ethical commitment and humanitarian ideals of the anti-Fascist movement Giustizia e Libertà. During the first few years after the war, unwillingness of the “Actionists” to work with reviving political parties “tainted by association with Fascism” resulted in the rapid decline of the Partito d’Azione.
  3. E. A. Colonna. Settembre 8, 1943. Turin: Tipografia Manifesti e Commerciale, n.d. but ca. 1945.
    • Scathing reconstruction of the events following Italy’s armistice with the Allies on 8 September 1943 and of the failure of Italian political authorities and the military high command to order leaderless Italian troops to turn their guns on the German invaders.
  4. Ferruccio Lanfranchi. L’Inquisizione Nera. Milan: Nibbio, 1945.
    • This rare book describes various “bands” of irregular political police that rounded up Jews and crushed clandestine resistance activities after Italy left the war in September 1943 and Mussolini was returned to “power” in the small town of Salò on Lake Garda. The work focuses on atrocities committed by the group serving Pietro Koch in Rome. The book holds special interest because the Department of Special Collections possesses complete records of the Paduan trial of the security force led by Mario Carità that operated in Florence and Padua.
  5. Il Duce. Storia dell’Impero. [Salerno]: Orlando Editore, n.d. but ca. 1995.
    • Anonymous account of Mussolini, fifty years after his death, defending his life and achievements.

Additional Exhibit Items

The following items were part of the original exhibit in the Department of Special Collections but are not pictured above.

  • Le Ultime Ore di un Dittatore. Calibano, n.d. but 1945.
    • Pseudonymous, concise but full summary of the last days of Mussolini and his regime, written from an anti-Fascist perspective.
  • Vita Libera. Padua, 28 and 29 April 1945.
    • Two issues of the daily published by the democratic political front that had resisted the regime and organized partisan activity against it. The issues announce the popular uprising against the departing Nazi-Fascist forces and the arrival of the British Eighth Army.