The Italian resistance

One of the enduring myths about World War Two is that only the Allies liberated occupied Europe. Many countries had anti-fascist Resistance movements, and Italy’s was one of the biggest and most politically radical – yet it is relatively unknown outside of its own homeland. Within Italy many plaques and streets commemorate the actions of the partisans – a spontaneous movement from below that began to grow once Mussolini’s dictatorship started to unravel. Led by radical left forces, the Resistance trod an uneasy line between fighting fascism and their Nazi allies who had occupied the country, keeping political unity across a broad front, and maintaining an uneasy alliance with the Allies. Using unpublished archival material and interviews with surviving partisans, Tom Behan tells the inspiring story of how first Naples, then Florence and many other cities were liberated by anti-fascists. This book also takes issue with ‘revisionism’, the attempt in recent decades to rewrite history, a process helped by ‘post-fascists’ now becoming a stable feature of Italian governments.