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  • Spring 1943:the Fiat Strikes and the Collapse of the Italian Home Front
  • Claudia Baldoli (bio)

By the time Italy entered the war in June 1940, the collective voice of the Italians had been manipulated for almost twenty years by the Fascist dictatorship's powerful media apparatus. But from the early military defeats onwards, a hesitant but substantial public opinion was being reborn, increasingly sensitive to British and American propaganda.1 As Fascist Party and Ministry of the Interior reports on public morale demonstrate, the disastrous Greek campaign with the loss of Albania in November 1940, the British air attack on the naval base at Taranto the same month, and the successful British counter-offensive in North Africa in January 1941 destroyed the regime's prestige. Likewise, the stalling of Rommel in Egypt and of the Germans at Stalingrad by autumn 1942 persuaded large numbers of Italians that the Axis was doomed. The Allied landings in French North Africa, combined with intensified air raids on Italy, increased popular detachment from the regime.2 Shocked by the realization that Mussolini had brought the country into war unprepared, faced with growing difficulty in finding food, and feeling unprotected from enemy bombs, particularly from the end of 1942, civilians started to distance themselves from the dictatorship. The climax came in March and April 1943, when workers at Fiat in Turin went on strike, followed by workers from factories in Piedmont and Lombardy.

Prefectural reports of a population enthusiastic about the war had been few even in 1940. The first air-raids, and their first civilian victims, had had a powerful impact on the population. The bombings of Turin and Palermo of June 1940 'laid bare a deficient anti-aircraft defence'.3 Proper shelters were rare exceptions right up to the end of the conflict, and lack of precise plans for evacuation characterized the whole period of the war, causing severe difficulties for local authorities when the raids became heavier and more frequent from autumn 1942. The strikes which were sparked at Fiat in March 1943 therefore need to be put into the context of Italy at war and of the crisis of the regime, in particular its inability to deal with the consequences of the bombing of Turin.

Between 1940 and 1945 the Allies dropped some 370,000 tons of bombs on Italy, which killed over 60,000 civilians and caused massive destruction [End Page 181] particularly to industrial and port cities. Air raids in Italy presented the same problems as in other countries: it was necessary to build shelters, evacuate the most vulnerable, clear debris and maintain public services, order and morale. One characteristic of the war in Italian cities was the progressive disintegration of state organization, from the provision of food and the functioning of public transport to the protection of civilians in cities threatened by both aerial and naval bombardment. By 1942-43, the crisis reached up to affect the political, military and administrative apparatus. In Piedmont, and in the province of Turin in particular, collective mobility revealed more than anything else the extent of the crisis: people moved from the cities to the countryside to find food and somewhere to live to escape the bombing. In the winter of 1942-43, 340,000 citizens left the city, around half of the entire population.4 Alongside the long-term evacuation of those who moved out of both the city and the surrounding province, factory workers also left the city after work on a daily basis. These workers were the initiators of the mass strikes of March 1943.

Fiat in Turin was the most important industrial site in northern Italy, and from 1939, when its production was entirely converted to war manufacture, one of the most vital centres of Italian military production. Fiat's expansion had taken place mostly between 1936 and 1939, with the construction of the Mirafiori plant, which employed 22,000 workers.5 The other large Fiat industrial estate, Lingotto, had been built in 1923, and by 1939 employed almost 20,000 workers.6 The strikes of March and April 1943 were the first mass strikes in Italy during the war, and among the most significant up to...

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