Britain, Italy and the Origins of the Cold War

Italy was the first major European nation to undergo reconstruction by the Western Allies after 1943. It was to serve as the subject of a massive experiment for trying out and implementing ideas about national reconstruction and nation building and in time it was to become a prototype for similar intervention around the world during the Cold War and post Cold War periods. In this volume, the British Labour government's contribution to the postwar reconstruction of Italy and its responses to the issues of war criminality punishment, the reconstruction of the Italian armed forces, Italy's institutional role in western security arrangements and on European integrative bodies are analysed. British policy towards Italy during this period was not determined by a British punitive attitudes towards a defeated enemy nor was it based exclusively on power politics concerns, the desire to frustrate the designs of the Soviet Union and the PCI, and the challenge of Growing American influence in Italy. It had a moral and ideological underpinning as well. This was to provide Italy with an alternative model of political, economic and social development to that preferred by the USA, one that was based on the principles of social democracy. As such it offers valuable insights in the aims and pitfalls of nation building.