Abstract

The essay analyses the resistance movement in Italy in the light of a number of major interpretative issues and its framing within the more general phenomenon of the Second World War and resistance in Europe. Like all the resistance movements in Europe, the Italian one assumed the features of a patriotic war - both civil and between classes - although in Italy they assumed a specific salience due to the experience of fascism and the often divergent interpretations of it. The essay examines the phenomenon of civil resistance, which cut across party-political alignments, and the links between memory of the Resistance and the formation of post-war political culture, dwelling in particular on the problem of the birth of a "shared political sense" and redefinition of national identity.