David I. Kertzer
"Writing with great flare, Gilbert tells the epic tale of Italy’s emergence from its darkest days under Fascism to its postwar democratic success. There is no better way to understand where Italy has come from than to read Italy Reborn."
Elena Aga Rossi
"This is an important book that, for the first time in the English language, provides a thoroughly researched and balanced overview of Italy’s transition from fascism to democracy. Well written, rigorous and engaging, Mark Gilbert’s work is distinguished from others on this critical period in Italy’s history by his in-depth account, based on primary sources, of Christian Democrat leader Alcide De Gasperi’s decisive role in the country’s postwar democratization. Under his leadership, Italy was able to pursue a democratic path by aligning itself with the Western bloc, notwithstanding the Soviet-linked Communist Party’s (PCI) growing influence in the early years of the Cold War."
Margaret MacMillan
"In this wise and penetrating book, Mark Gilbert demolishes the accepted view of postwar Italy as perpetually teetering on the edge of disaster and shows rather how it moved from the catastrophes of fascism and abject defeat in the Second World War to become a robust democracy which has lessons for the rest of us. A fascinating story wonderfully told."
Kirkus Reviews
2024-08-02
British scholar Gilbert argues that Alcide De Gasperi’s postwar leadership of Italy established the foundation for its embrace of democracy ever since.
Despite the hysteria over the recent ascent of the right-wing Brothers of Italy party, Gilbert asserts that democracy in Italy has firm foundations thanks to the decisions of its postwar leaders. He concentrates on the key decade after the fall of Mussolini and his fascist state, which marked the lowest point for the defeated Italian people. Gilbert asserts that the many prisoners and partisan resisters of the fascist-Nazi regime would prove to be the “protagonists of democratic Italian politics for the next five decades.” Emerging from the “abyss” were the main parties of Christian Democracy (DC), headed by De Gasperi, and the communist party, PCI. Gilbert describes the country at the end of the war as being in a miserable state of poverty and illiteracy, especially in the south. The Truman administration was leery of both the monarchy, discredited by its support of Mussolini, and the left-leaning government in place after liberation; the U.S. advocated for elections to prove that Italy was now a democratic nation. Two-thirds of the country’s towns and villages voted in the spring 1946 local elections, many for the first time (particularly women), in what Gilbert calls a “symbolic act of political maturity.” A referendum on the monarchy and elections to a Constituent Assembly were held on July 2, 1946, and the republic prevailed. The “hinge year” of 1947 would see the hammering out of a new democratic constitution and alignment of the government, with De Gasperi as prime minister, firmly with the United States. De Gasperi’s party would steer the country into “centrismo” with the help of the Marshall Plan over the next five years, despite left-leaning turbulence and the Cold War.
A detailed, nuanced work that sheds new light on a crucial era in Italian history.
