ABSTRACT
The democratisation of Italy after 1945 faced two different legacies of Fascism. One in the central northern areas of the country, which had been overrun by a ferocious civil war between the Partisans and the Italian Social Republic from 1943 to 1945, and the other in the southern regions, where Fascism fell on 25 July 1943. In order to liberate the country from the influence of Fascism, the new rulers carried out a purge that generated controversy between the moderate parties and those on the left. This ideological clash has also left its mark on the politics of memory with regard to Fascism and has continued in this polemical vein up to the present.
