Storie di guerra. Sfollati, rimpatriati, profughi a Palermo (1940-1943)

Abstract

In the realm of wartime history, a little real analysis has been done on the implications of total war in Sicily. Indeed, World War II transformed the relationship between fascist regime and society. Moreover, there are few studies on reorganization of the connections between local institutions and fascist government. Civilians have been most involved in this process. In this article, I will mainly adopt the perspective of civilians to reconstruct how war led to these transformations. I will focus on the city of Palermo, were war front and home front blurred together in 1943. Especially, I would like to highlight the stories of returned from fascist colonies in Africa, as well as the issue of displaced people, which were forced to abandon Palermo because of the allied bombings. In this framework, I will investigate the case of 4.000 children in 1943 evacuated from Palermo by the Gioventù Italiana del Littorio (Gil).