Italian history

Why is Italy's Far Right Embracing Dante?

Italy's original Fascists embraced Dante as a marker of national chauvinism, and a prophet of authoritarianism; today's far right has renewed their enthusiasm for the poet. 

The Pope at War: Pius XII and the Vatican's Secret Archives

by James Thornton Harris

David Kertzer's book argues that defenders of Pope Pius XII's actions during the Holocaust mistake his defense of the prerogatives of the Catholic Church for a defense of the victims of Nazi persecution and genocide. 

Mussolini in Myth and Memory

by Paul Corner

Italians' recollection of Mussolini and the Fascist regime embody the replacement of historical memory with national mythology—a mythology that dismisses both the violence of the dictatorship and Italians' collective responsibility for it and enables the resurgence of the far right today.

Lunchtime in Italy: Work, Time and Civil Society

by Jonathan Levy

The Italian lunchtime insists that time be organized around communal rituals and sustenance, not work. Does the utter foreignness of this attitude in America help explain the current national derangement? 

What Explains Fascism's Durable Roots in Italy?

The success of a party with historical connections to fascists who survived the Second World War raises important questions about why Italians justify voting for the hard right. 

Mario Fiorentini (1918-2022): The Last Surviving Italian Partisan

by David Broder

After Nazi German occupied post-Mussolini Rome, Fiorentini escaped from prisons four times during twenty months of anti-Nazi struggle. He remained an important witness for a society prone to forgetting the horrors of far-right politics.

Paul Ginsbourg: London-Born, Florence-Based Historian of Modern Europe

Energized by student protests at Cambridge in 1968, Ginsbourg was drawn to study the European revolutions of 1848 and rise of the modern Italian nation. 

Tracing World War 2's Impact on Sicily's Cultural Heritage Sites and Museums

by Antonino Crisà

World War II profoundly affected museums and antiquities in Sicily; a new research project is examining this underappreciated destructive consequence of war.

Melting Glaciers Have Exposed Frozen Relics of World War I

Melting glaciers have allowed access to a mountain barracks used by Austro-Hungarian soldiers fighting the "White War" in the Italian Alps. 

France Arrests Ex-Members of Italy Extremist group Red Brigades

Alleged members of the leftist terror group had been harbored in France under policies of its former Socialist president François Mitterand, with the proviso that such sanctuary was only for those who had not been involved in violence. 

Stop Pretending Italian Fascists Were Innocent Victims

The growing far right has sought to draw a moral equivalency between Italian Fascists and the leftist partisans, including Communists, who fought to expel fascist forces from occupied Yugoslavia at the end of World War II. Historian Eric Gobetti says that victims of reprisals were targeted for fascist allegiance, not Italian ethnicity.

What Does The Triumph of Biden-Harris Represent Historically?

by Stanislao Pugliese

"Americans should not make the same mistake committed in Italy after World War II in thinking that fascism was merely a “parenthesis” in Italian history."

‘One Man, and One Man Alone’: Mussolini’s War

by John Gooch

Mussolini acted on the spur of the moment, always sensitive to the need to be seen as Hitler’s equal.  Rarely did anyone ever try to talk him out of a chosen course, and when they did so they failed.  You couldn’t reason with him.