The Announcement

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This chapter transports readers to the moment that Italians first learned of the fall of Mussolini via a late-night radio broadcast on July 25, 1943. It surveys immediate reactions from different social groups, including Fascists and anti-Fascists, soldiers and civilians, Northerners and Southerners, adults and children. It then travels backward in time to Italy’s entry into the Second World War in June 1940, tracing the factors—political, social, economic, military—that eroded community bonds, turned popular sentiment definitively against the regime and the war effort, and paved the way for protests and the reorganization of the anti-Fascist opposition. These crises ultimately converged in the collapse of the regime in the summer of 1943.</jats:p>