ABSTRACT
R. Gayre had good reason to believe that the first eight months of Allied occupation—when Allied Military Government (AMG) retained sole sovereignty over nearly all of the Mezzogiorno—might offer Anglo-Americans a unique opportunity to assist Italians in breaking with a deeply authoritarian educational past. Repressed personal resentments and political passions were let loose, converging in widespread popular support for a thorough purge of government as well as party officials. Yet the first Allied attempts to restore the social foundations of democracy while waging war proved to be profoundly contradictory. The military campaign which freed Italian schools from Fascism destroyed a great number, and requisitioned many more for non-educational purposes. The Anglo-American purge of "committed Fascists" did not begin to address this deeper legacy of dictatorship. Yet in different ways, both Gayre and Washburne had been distressed to recognize on the Italian scene and in the policies of their own superiors so few of their own most cherished pedagogical principles.
