Abstract

This article aims to bring to light the continuities and differences in the anti-Protestant campaigns which took place in Italy during the Thirties and after the Second World War. There is no doubt that, after the conflict, the Christian Democrat controlled governments maintained the same attitude towards Protestant minorities which the Fascist regime had had, due to the survival of some Fascist laws and decrees. Despite this, the different political situation and the democratic character of the new Italian State - first and foremost the independence of the judiciary - played an important role in putting in crisis the illiberal attitude of the governments' and, at the middle of '50s, determining a change in the policies regarding the religious minorities.