The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe 1940-1945

by Richard Overy

In the spring of 1943 at the Fiat works in Turin spontaneous strikes erupted between March 5 and 8 in protest at the failure to provide an indemnity for all bombed workers, not just for those “evening” evacuees who went back and forth to their families in the countryside. Mingled with protest at rising prices and poor food distribution, the strike movement spread to other factories and eventually as far as Genoa and Milan, until they petered out in April. In Genoa protests against the lack of shelters had already followed the first raids, when crowds of angry women tried to storm the bunkers belonging to the rich.89 During 1943 a stream of reports reached Rome from provincial prefects indicating the growing demoralization and hostility of the population, though only some of this was due to bombing and much to do with Italy’s ineffective war effort. A report from Genoa in May 1943 indicated that “public morale is very depressed” due to food shortages and the complete incapacity of the Italian military effort, as well as the material and morale damage caused by the bombs. From Turin it was reported that workers could no longer see any point in working for a failed system but displayed instead “apathy and indifference.” Palermo, hit repeatedly by bombing in 1943, reported in May that almost all civilian activities were paralyzed, the population terrorized and the streets deserted. Even the reports from Rome, not yet bombed, indicated a population that was now “mistrustful and...