first republican Prime Minister of Italy and one of the Founding Fathers of the European Union. Italy became a republic after a referendum[68] held on 2 June 1946, a day celebrated since as Republic Day. This was also the first time that Italian women were entitled to vote.[69] Victor Emmanuel III's son,

exodus.
Sicily was then invaded by the Allies in July 1943, leading to the collapse of the Fascist regime and the fall of Mussolini on 25 July. On 8 September 1943, Italy surrendered. The Germans shortly succeeded in taking control of northern and central Italy. The country remained a battlefield for the rest of the war, as the Allies were slowly moving up from the south.
In the north, the Germans set up the Italian Social Republic (RSI), a Nazi puppet state with Mussolini installed as leader. The post-armistice period saw the rise of a large anti-fascist resistance movement, the Resistenza. Hostilities ended on 29 April 1945, when the German forces in Italy surrendered. Nearly half a million Italians (including civilians) died in the conflict,[66] and the Italian economy had been all but destroyed; per capita income in 1944 was at its lowest point since the beginning of the 20th century.[67] Following the 1947 Paris Peace Treaties, Italy surrendered to Yugoslavia almost all the territories gained on the East border at the end of WWI, Briga and Tenda to France and lost all its colonies except for Somalia.
Republican Italy
Main article: History of the Italian Republic


Alcide De Gasperi, first republican Prime Minister of Italy and one of the Founding Fathers of the European Union.
Italy became a republic after a referendum[68] held on 2 June 1946, a day celebrated since as Republic Day. This was also the first time that Italian women were entitled to vote.[69] Victor Emmanuel III's son, Umberto II, was forced to abdicate and exiled. The Republican Constitution was approved on 1 January 1948. Under the Treaty of Peace with Italy of 1947, most of Venezia Giulia was lost to Yugoslavia and, later, the Free Territory of Trieste was divided between the two states. Italy also lost all its colonial possessions, formally ending the Italian Empire.
Fears in the Italian electorate of a possible Communist takeover proved crucial for the first universal suffrage electoral outcome on 18 April 1948, when the Christian Democrats, under the leadership of Alcide De Gasperi, obtained a landslide victory. Consequently, in 1949 Italy became a member of NATO. The Marshall Plan helped to revive the Italian economy which, until the late 1960s, enjoyed a period of sustained economic growth commonly called the "Economic Miracle". In 1957, Italy was a founding member of the European Economic Community (EEC), which became the European Union (EU) in 1993.


In 1957 Italy was among the EEC's six founding members in the Treaty of Rome.
From the late 1960s until the early 1980s, the country experienced the Years of Lead, a period characterized by economic crisis (especially after the 1973 oil crisis), widespread social conflicts and terrorist massacres carried out by opposing extremist groups, with the alleged involvement of US intelligence.[70][71][72] The Years of Lead culminated in the assassination of the Christian Democrat leader Aldo Moro in 1978 and in the Bologna railway station massacre in 1980, where 85 people died; these events had deeply affected the whole country.[citation needed]
In the 1980s, for the first time since 1945, two governments were led by non-Christian-Democrat premiers: one liberal (Giovanni Spadolini) and one socialist (Bettino Craxi); the Christian Democrats remained, however, the main government party. During Craxi's government, the economy recovered and Italy became the world's fifth largest industrial nation, gaining entry into the G7 Group. However, as a result of his spending policies, the Italian national debt skyrocketed du

me, that was not part of territories promised at London but had been occupied after the end of the war by Gabriele D'Annunzio. Fascist Regime Main articles: Italian Fascism and Military history of Italy during World War II

and the Dodecanese under its rule.[58]
First World War and aftermath
Main article: Military history of Italy during World War I
Italy, though nominally allied with the German Empire and the Empire of Austria-Hungary in the Triple Alliance, was lured by Allies into the war with a promise of substantial territorial gains, that included western Inner Carniola, former Austrian Littoral, Dalmatia as well as parts of the Ottoman Empire, annexed most of the promised territories after the First World War according to the secret treaties of London and Rapallo.
The war was initially a failure for Italy. The Italian army repeatedly attacked Austria, making little progress and suffering heavy losses, and being routed in 1917 by a German-Austrian counteroffensive. In October 1918, the Italians attacked again. The Austrian army broke down, and the Italians drove deep into Austrian territory. Fighting ended on 3 November.
During the war, more than 650,000 Italian soldiers died[59] and there was a large growth of the public debt. Whereas hundreds Italians were left in the new founded Kingdom of Yugoslavia[i] half a million South Slavs,[60] mainly Slovenes and Croatians, and about two hundred thousand germanophone Tyroleans became part of the Kingdom of Italy. Under the Peace Treaties of Saint-Germain, Rapallo and Rome, Italy obtained most of the promised territories, but not Dalmatia (except Zara), allowing nationalists to define the victory as "mutilated". Moreover, Italy could annex the Hungarian harbor of Fiume, that was not part of territories promised at London but had been occupied after the end of the war by Gabriele D'Annunzio.
Fascist Regime
Main articles: Italian Fascism and Military history of Italy during World War II


Benito Mussolini, Duce of Fascist Italy.
The socialist agitations that followed the devastation of the Great War, inspired by the Russian Revolution, led to turmoil and anarchy throughout Italy. The liberal establishment, fearing a Soviet-style revolution, started to endorse the small National Fascist Party, led by Benito Mussolini. In October 1922 the blackshirts attempted a coup (the "March on Rome"). The coup itself was a failure, but at the last minute king Victor Emmanuel III refused to proclaim the state of siege and appointed Mussolini prime minister. Over the next few years, Mussolini banned all political parties and curtailed personal liberties, thus forming a dictatorship, who attracted international attention and that served as the inspiration, among others countries, for Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain, in Europe and outside.
In 1935 Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, resulting in an international alienation and leading to Italy's withdrawal from the League of Nations. Consequently, Italy allied with Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan and strongly supported Francisco Franco in the Spanish civil war. In 1939, Italy annexed Albania, a de facto protectorate for decades. Italy entered World War II on June 10, 1940. After initially advancing in British Somalialand and Egypt, the Italians suffered heavy defeats in Greece, Russia and North Africa.
After the attack on Yugoslavia by Germany and Italy, suppression of the Yugoslav Partisans resistance and attempts to Italianization resulted in the Italian war crimes[61] and deportation of about 25,000 people to the Italian concentration camps, such as Rab, Gonars, Monigo, Renicci di Anghiari and elsewhere. After the war, due to the Cold war, a long period of censorship, disinterest and denial occurred about the Italian war crimes and the Yugoslav's foibe killings.[62][63][64][65] Meanwhile about 250,000 Italians and anti-communist Yugoslavs fled to Italy in the Istrian

ctor Emmanuel II: on 26 October 1860, General Garibaldi sacrificed republican hopes for the sake of Italian unity under a monarchy. The birth of the Kingdom of Italy was the result of efforts by Italian natio

ignited by the rivalry between France and Spain, the city-states gradually lost their independence and came under foreign domination, first under Spain (1559 to 1713) and then Austria (1713 to 1796). In 1628-1621, a new outburst of plague claimed about 14% of Italy’s population.[53] In addition, as the Spanish Empire started to decline in the 17th century, so did its possessions in Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, and Milan. In particular, Southern Italy was impoverished and cut off from the mainstream of events in Europe.[54] In the 18th century, as a result of the War of Spanish Succession, Austria replaced Spain as the dominant foreign power, while the House of Savoy emerged as a regional power expanding to Piedmont and Sardinia. In the same century, the two-century long decline was interrupted by the economic and state reforms pursued in several states by the ruling élites.[55] During the Napoleonic Wars, northern-central Italy was invaded and reorganized as a new Kingdom of Italy, a client state of the French Empire,[56] while the southern half of the peninsula was administered by Joachim Murat, Napoleon's brother-in-law, who was crowned as King of Naples. The 1814 Congress of Vienna restored the situation of the late 18th century, but the ideals of the French Revolution could not be eradicated, and soon re-surfaced during the political upheavals that characterized the first part of the 19th century.
Italian unification and Liberal Italy
Main articles: Italian unification and Military history of Italy during World War I


The legendary "handshake of Teano" between Giuseppe Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel II: on 26 October 1860, General Garibaldi sacrificed republican hopes for the sake of Italian unity under a monarchy.
The birth of the Kingdom of Italy was the result of efforts by Italian nationalists and monarchists loyal to the House of Savoy to establish a united kingdom encompassing the entire Italian Peninsula. In the context of the 1848 liberal revolutions that swept through Europe, an unsuccessful war was declared on Austria. The Kingdom of Sardinia again attacked the Austrian Empire in the Second Italian War of Independence of 1859, with the aid of France, resulting in liberating Lombardy.
In 1860–61, general Giuseppe Garibaldi led the drive for unification in Naples and Sicily,[57] allowing the Sardinian government led by the Count of Cavour to declare a united Italian kingdom on 17 March 1861. In 1866, Victor Emmanuel II allied with Prussia during the Austro-Prussian War, waging the Third Italian War of Independence which allowed Italy to annex Venetia. Finally, as France during the disastrous Franco-Prussian War of 1870 abandoned its garrisons in Rome, the Italians rushed to fill the power gap by taking over the Papal States.


Alpini mountain troops in 1915. More than 650,000 Italian soldiers died on the battlefields of World War I.
The Savoyard Albertine Statute of 1848, extended to the whole Kingdom of Italy in 1861, provided for basic freedoms, but electoral laws excluded the non-propertied and uneducated classes from voting. The government of the new kingdom took place in a framework of parliamentary constitutional monarchy dominated by liberal forces. In 1913, male universal suffrage was adopted. As Northern Italy quickly industrialized, the South and rural areas of North remained underdeveloped and overpopulated, forcing millions of people to migrate abroad, while the Italian Socialist Party constantly increased in strength, challenging the traditional liberal and conservative establishment.
Starting from the last two decades of the 19th century, Italy developed into a colonial power by forcing Somalia, Eritrea and later Libya