This dissertation is a social history of war and its aftermath. As a local study of everyday life during war and postwar, it explores the complex transition from war to peace, and from fascism to ...democracy for individuals and communities. It is based on extensive archival sources, from Italian, United States, and British archives, especially Italian state and rarely examined communal and association archives. The periodization—from 1944 to 1948—is important. The summer of 1944 saw the most intense and destructive period of war in central Italy. Society (or civil life, as Italians term it) disintegrated, and daily life broke down entirely by the end of that summer. Four years later, in 1948, Italians had a Republic and an elected national government. By then, both physical and societal reconstruction were underway. During those years, citizens struggled on a daily basis to return to normal life in the midst of physical destruction, displacement, and personal loss. The first chapters of the dissertation detail the experience of war, destruction, and civilian massacres. The remainder (and largest part) of the dissertation treats daily life in the aftermath, with chapters on the difficulty of living under Allied occupation; on widespread need, postwar assistance, and the development of state-financed entitlements for victims of war; on restoring fractured communities; on the physical and administrative reconstruction of the communes; on changing and enduring concepts of private property; unemployment and strategies for creating employment; the rebirth of associational life; pervasive and bitter local politics; and on questions about how to honor the civilian dead. This local study is a portrait of everyday life in the aftermath of war. From a particularly Italian point of view, this study on the effects of war treats the Italian dichotomy between the “local” and the “national,” and helps to explain the many continuities between the pre-war and the postwar periods in Italy. On a larger level, it also illuminates more universal issues of war and social change, and describes how a society reconstructs itself after the failure of its institutions, in the face of nearly complete physical and community destruction, and after the violent disruption of normal daily life.
