Introduction

‘The Fascist city’

Trento, September 8, 1943. Fascist Italy is in crisis. The Allies have taken Sicily and are moving up the Peninsula, and many believe the war is now unwinnable. This includes the King, Vittorio Emanuele III, and most of the fascist leadership. More than a month ago, on July 25, they sacked and arrested ‘Il Duce’ Benito Mussolini, plunging a war-battered country into turmoil and open division. Today, September 8, the new prime minister, Marshal Petro Badoglio, will announce Italy’s surrender to the Allies.

Advance news of the Armistice has already prompted the German army to pour into northern Italy. In Trentino the Germans are set to take direct control and occupy Trento. The rest of the North will soon become a Nazi puppet state led by Mussolini, after the Germans break him out of jail on September 12.

The story of September 8 in Trento – caught between occupying Nazis and Allied bombers – is told by Guido and Emma. Guido was a journalist at the National Fascist Party Press Office. He believed in the Fascist promise of a strong, united, imperial Italy, but he’s become disenchanted, painfully aware of the military situation and the civil war that is starting to grip the country. His daughter, Emma, is 12 years old, born into Mussolini’s Italy and a proud Piccola Italiana, or ‘Little Italian’, the Fascist organization girls aged 8 to 14 had to join. Now all Guido wants to do is get Emma on a train to the relative safety of the Val di Non, in the mountains.

In the app trail, you’ll find Emma waiting for her father outside the Casa del Fascio, the city’s Fascist headquarters. As you join her and Guido, you’ll hear not only the story of this fateful day, but discover how two decades of Fascist rule reshaped Trento, visiting many of the traces of the era that still exist today.

The brief articles in these pages expand on the app audio, and dive deeper into the locations and historical context at each of the 9 sites in ‘The Fascist city’ trail.