Abstract

Protest against the Vietnam War constituted a challenge to the United States and a meeting point for different (and diverging) political cultures. In Italy, although the Christian Democratic and Communist elites belonged to different political traditions and looked at the opposite sides of the Iron Curtain, the parties' rank-and-file members partially joined in the protest against the Vietnam War. The main Italian political cultures looked at the Liberals in the United States, as political actors who could drag the US out of the Vietnamese quagmire and launch a new American strategy both at home and abroad. The article, which is based on archival sources as well as printed material, is the first step of a broader analysis on Italian political cultures and the United States from the 1960s until the 1980s.