Consequences

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This chapter brings the Forty-Five Days to a close, with the Italian surrender to the Anglo-Americans on September 8, 1943, which also precipitated the occupation of most of the peninsula by the Germans. It lays bare the many consequences of Italians’ incomplete reckoning with Fascism: brutal reprisals by German forces taking revenge for the “betrayal” of the armistice; Mussolini’s return to power as the head of the Italian Social Republic, which waged its own vendetta against citizens accused of abandoning the Duce on July 25; the escalation of violence against Italian Jews and political prisoners; the consolidation of the anti-Fascist resistance and the start of the partisan war of liberation; and the complexities of defascistization and political renewal in Allied-held southern Italy.</jats:p>