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This article focuses on Fascist Italy's active air defenses during the Second World War. It analyzes a number of crucial factors: mass production of antiaircraft weapons and fighters; detection of enemy aircraft by deploying radar; coordination between the Air Ministry and the other ministries involved, as well as between the Air Force and the other armed services. The relationship between the government and industrialists, as well as that between the regime and its German ally, are also crucial elements of the story. The article argues that the history of Italian air defenses reflected many of the failures of the Fascist regime itself. Mussolini's strategy forced Italy to assume military responsibilities and economic commitments which it could not hope to meet. Moreover, industrial self-interest and inter-service rivalry combined to inhibit even more the efforts of the regime to protect its population, maintain adequate armaments output, and compete in technical terms with the Allies.

This article examines aspects of the consequences of Anglo-American bombing on Southern Italy during the Second World War. In particular, it aims to analyse and link together different aspects of the issue: the reasons of the Allied military and political leaders for bombing the regions of Southern Italy; the failure of the Fascist regime's passive defences to protect both artistic cities and the population from the air raids; and the civilians' reactions to Allied bombing and liberation. While seeking to address crucial questions posed by the most recent historiography on the air war on civilians in the Second World War, this contribution presents the results of a research pursued in the Unites States of America and the United Kingdom, as well as in both national and local Italian archives. The article suggests that the population in the South shared much of the same experience of Northern Italians, but with more extreme consequences, due to a more accentuated lack of resources, in particular in the cases of food provision and of civil mobilisation to confront the material impact of the raids.