ABSTRACT
The six anti-Fascist parties of the Committees of National Liberation collaborated in the government from the last two years of the war until May 1947. Two of them, the Action Party and the Demoliberals, did not survive the immediate postwar era. Strong Marxist influence stemming from the Communist role in the Resistance represented the real novelty of postwar Italian politics and society. At the end of World War II, Italy had the good fortune to have at its helm one of the outstanding European statesmen who came to the fore after the conflict. The 1948 elections ended the immediate postwar era. The anti-Fascist alliance had broken up, and given the fear of a Communist takeover and American opposition to a Communist presence in the government, the DC remained the fulcrum of politics in Italy for the next forty-five years. Moreover, allegations of police brutality have been rife in postwar Italy.
