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