Spring 1943 : the Fiat Strikes and the Collapse of the Italian Home Front

Shocked by the realization that Mussolini had brought the country into war unprepared, faced with growing difficulty in finding food, and feeling unprotected from enemy bombs, civilians started to distance themselves from the dictatorship, from the end of 1942 especially. The climax came in March and April 1943, when workers at Fiat in Turin went on strike, followed by workers from factories in Piedmont and Lombardy. This article revisits the history of these strikes in the context of Italy at war and of the crisis of the regime, particularly its inability to deal with the consequences of the bombing of Turin. In assessing work by Tim Mason on the subject, the article explores the crucial relation of the strikes to the wider collapse of the Italian home front. By looking at the strikes in the broader social and urban environment in which they took place it is possible to see that the impact of the first experiments in the ‘area bombing’ of northern Italy from autumn 1942 is an important missing element (though not the only one) in any explanation for the collapse of consensus and the strike action that followed.