Bombing and Land War in Italy: Military Strategy, Reactions, and Collective Memory

The article examines the theme of the violence of war in Italy during the Second World War. It offers an original approach to the subject with regard to both the Italian and international literature. The text shifts between macro- and micro-history. On the one hand the article contains an analysis of the general context of war, military strategies and their history: the history of aerial bombardment, the strategies and the tactics applied to Italy. On the other hand an insight is provided into the experience of the civilian population, a view from below reconstructed from Italian archives, diaries and oral testimony.