Abstract The article explores the development and functioning of the Dopolavoro ferroviario (DLF), a Fascist leisure organisation for Italian railway workers. Although originally created as part of the Ferrovie dello Stato (State Railways), the DLF was rooted in a longstanding tradition of workers’ associations and became a means of managing leisure time, offering educational, welfare and recreational activities. Through its cultural and educational programmes, sporting activities and organised tourism, it sought to regulate collective behaviour and promote a model of sociability aligned with fascist objectives. At the same time, the DLF offers valuable insights into the tensions between consent and dissent, highlighting both the regime’s ability to penetrate the railway sector and the persistence of spaces of autonomy and resistance. Drawing on original research, the article argues that the DLF served as a laboratory for political and cultural socialisation, the legacy of which – stripped of its ideological framework – continued to shape Italian society in the republican era.

Abstract This article offers an overview of the statuary dedicated to Cavour erected in Italy during the first 50 years after unification (1861–1915), focusing on the most significant cases. Promoted by moderate circles close to the former prime minister, the construction of public monuments to the so-called ‘‘weaver of unification’’ responded to the requirements of patriotic education. Pursuing a policy of unveiling monuments throughout central and northern Italy, liberal elites sought to strengthen the population’s sense of national identity, while simultaneously promoting the memory and myth of Cavour as a founder of the unified state, champion of liberty and master diplomat. This was no easy task, given Cavour’s limited popularity, and it involved citizens’ committees, mayors, and accomplished artists in an effort to establish an effective and enduring iconographic model.

Abstract This article analyses the story behind a vast collection of personal objects, furnishings, books, photographs and documents belonging to Benito Mussolini and his entourage. Most of these items were dispersed after the war, revealing how the collective memory of fascism was caught between historical erasure, preservation and reuse. Following the collapse of the Italian Social Republic and the end of the war, the assets were transferred from Lake Garda to the Monti Riuniti di Credito su Pegno in Brescia. Considered historically and artistically insignificant but potentially dangerous as objects of worship, the authorities swiftly eradicated them in the early 1950s for fear that they might affect public opinion, which oscillated between authoritarian nostalgia and the exoneration of Fascism. Studying these objects can provide valuable insights into the cultural identity, aesthetic preferences and daily life of Mussolini and his inner circle, offering a better understanding of the internal dynamics of power management at the heart of the regime.

Abstract This introduction situates the Allied occupation of Italy as a distinctive yet comparatively underexplored case within the broader history of mid-twentieth-century military occupations. It traces the origins, peculiarities, and contradictions of Allied rule, foregrounding the tension between liberation and occupation that shaped both contemporary experiences and subsequent historiography. After outlining the fragmented development of the field and the long predominance of liberation-centred narratives, it calls for recontextualising the occupation of Italy within wider transnational and comparative frameworks. Rather than examining the Italian case solely through an exploration of its domestic impact, the article proposes treating it as an early laboratory for Allied ruling practices that were later applied elsewhere. In addition, it suggests exploring the Italian case through a set of research themes that have emerged from the new comparative field of Occupation Studies. The special issue advances this agenda by combining attention to hitherto marginalised aspects of the era with critical reflection on established subjects, thereby contributing to a reassessment of Italy’s place within the history of Allied rule in mid-twentieth-century Europe.

Abstract This article considers the function of American food and its exchange at the time of the Allied occupation of Italy to revisit the complexity of the encounter with the local population. Through unpublished diaries and confidential reports of the Psychological Warfare Branch, as well as video materials, published interviews and published diaries, the article makes the issues around food central to the understanding of the dynamics of the Italian occupation. While contributing to the growing literature on food availability in the Second World War, the article expands in particular on the historic function of American comfort food and rations, to explore the experience of the Italian occupation through the interactions of gifting, bartering and black market trade. It illuminates the complexity of mutual perceptions shaped by hope, nostalgia, supremacy, and fairness. It concludes with a reading of John Hersey’s A Bell for Adano, which, as a cultural product, brings together and makes valid for future generations, the contrasting image of a benign and a damaging occupation explored in the article.

Abstract After introducing the topic of antifascism on the internet and the issues that scientific publications encounter when facing the web, the first part of this contribution in Contexts and Debates examined the first of three digital history projects connected to this topic, the Atlante delle stragi naziste e fasciste . In this following section, the attention is focused on two more publications: IF – Intellettuali in fuga dall’Italia fascista , a project tied to the issue of mobility for people persecuted by the Fascist regime; and Memorie in Cammino , a project that approaches its content and the user’s interaction with it in an entirely non-linear manner, reconstructing the lives and actions of those who resisted the regime.

Donne nella storia dei media. Autrici, artiste, influencer, tra ribalta e retroscenaedited by Anna Lucia Natale and Paola Panarese, Milan, FrancoAngeli, 2024, 230 pp., €32 (paperback), ISBN 9788835163398

Recensione al volume "Il prezzo della libertà. 40 vite spezzate dal fascismo (1919-1945)", di Marcello Flores e Mimmo Franzinelli, Bari-Roma, Laterza, 2025, 328 pp., €24.00 (paperback), ISBN 9788858155479.