Un Anno in Tossignano: A Micro-History of the Santerno Valley 1944-45

During the last year of the Second World War in Italy, the Allied forces assaulted the Wehrmacht's last great line of defense in Italy--the Gothic line. Un Anno in\ud Tossignano examines the effects of that passing war-front on the people of Tossignano and the surrounding villages in the Santerno Valley--an area on the south-eastern edge of the Apennine Mountains in the middle of the Gothic Line. This thesis is a chronological\ud micro-history that tells the story of this small but old mountain village and the valley below during the almost-year long Allied assault on the Gothic line of defense. The specific nature of this clash of foreign military forces changed the social and political structures of the inhabitants of Tossignano and the Santerno Valley. This thesis analyzes the way the war transformed local and national identities as the villagers' relationships with their occupiers, Italians--both collaborator and partisans, and their liberators also changed