In the fall of 1943, Bianca Guidetti Serra, a young anti-fascist partisan, defied the Italian authorities to create her first giornalino—or two-sided mini newspaper—for her neighborhood in the city of Turin. At the time, printing was a dangerous act. It was a few months into the German occupation of Italy, and one of the Nazis’ first edicts, by a commandant in Florence on Oct. 3, 1943, declared, “Anyone who is discovered compiling, printing, distributing, and spreading anti-German propaganda will be punished with immediate execution by firing squad.”
This article is adapted from Women of War: The Italian Assassins, Spies, and Couriers Who Fought the Nazis by Suzanne Cope (Dutton, 480 pp., $32, April 2025).
Serra had to remain secretive. Printing presses were large and loud, and so the teams that ran them were constantly on the move to avoid detection. Serra briefly used the back of a pasta shop—the frequent comings and goings of women shoppers with heavy bags making it a perfect cover for her team of women to leave with stacks of newspapers, and the loud chopping sound of the pasta-cutting machine cover for the printer itself.
Every inch of Serra’s paper, Il Proletario, was filled with entreaties to join the resistance and news from the frontlines of war, which state-sanctioned newspapers generally ignored in favor of Axis propaganda. This illegal independent newspaper was typical of the 581 (according to one official count) publications published in Nazi-occupied Italy.
The Italians who produced these risked their lives to spread information they believed was crucial to the resistance. Simply possessing an illicit publication could be grounds for arrest and even torture—and this extreme censorship only underscored the underground press’s importance.
The majority of these brave Italians were women, who could move around with less suspicion to gather and spread information. Their work was responsible for not only informing but galvanizing an ad hoc army and its supporters after more than 20 years under fascist oppression. Today, these oft-unsung heroes of the anti-fascist cause serve as an important reminder of the power of the independent press in defining and uniting a movement.
Italian resistance fighters level their rifles for an ambush in the Apennine Mountains in May 1944. Hulton Archive/Getty Images
After Germany invaded Italy in September 1943, many young Italian men who were ordered to report to the army under the Republic of Salò—as the German puppet state was colloquially called—went into hiding, often in mountain camps or abandoned barns. That fall, an improvised resistance army formed among these groups, with men and women filling roles for armed fighters, saboteurs, couriers, and more. Helping to direct them was a new provisional government. This coalition was made up of six anti-fascist parties and was originally based out of Rome, with regional leadership around Nazi-occupied Italy.
With all of these efforts came a need to communicate, and the mainstream press wasn’t an option. By the mid-1920s, the Italian media had become a state-run mouthpiece under the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini. The Nazis, when they arrived in 1943, and their Italian Fascist allies used these newspapers to publicize their own propaganda and biased reporting on the war. Creating its own source of news was the only option for the resistance.
Much of the information in these giornolini came from a complex network of couriers, called staffette, who reported on horrific retribution that members of the resistance faced and collected other news from the many bands of partisans hidden around occupied Italy. These publications also featured articles that taught readers about history and politics, information omitted in school curricula under Mussolini. As the resistance became more organized, these papers included information on planned strikes, encouragement to slow down work at factories, and suggestions for sabotaging vehicle and munitions production.
Some groups, organized by professions such as chemists and doctors, created their own publications. Others coalesced under political parties, labor unions, or geographic location, such as L’Italia degli Studenti, created by Rome University students.
Most publications were printed simply on a standard-sized sheet of paper, in blue ink that tended to freeze in the winter and had to be warmed on a stove before it was spread over the netting that imprinted the words as the paper passed over a heavy drum.
An issue of the Italian resistance newspaper Il Proletario.Stampa Clandestina
While Serra turned to a pasta shop, other presses were set up in wine cellars and factory basements. Some of these papers published just a few issues, while others were printed on a more regular basis. Some, such as La Riscossa Italiana, were even able to be printed on standard newspaper-sized paper with the help of sympathetic connections at professional presses who snuck in printing between runs of the state-sanctioned papers.
Of course, this wasn’t just taking place in Italy. Illegal independent newspapers proliferated around Nazi-occupied Europe, particularly in France, many with similar goals of sharing more accurate news from the war and encouraging others to join or support the resistance.
But what made Italian newspapers unique—and critical—was the role they played in not only communication and recruitment, but in shaping their collective vision of a post-war Italy. Unlike France, Belgium, and elsewhere, the resistance in Italy was not fighting to return to life as it had been before the war. As Frank Rosengarten writes in The Italian Anti-Fascist Press (1919-1945), the Italian people were “forced not only to rebuild a sense of national integrity in reaction to the massive fact of German occupation but also explain the causes that had originally led Italy to fascism and subsequently to a political and military alliance with Nazism.”
In essence, these publications helped them make sense of their fascist past and explicitly declare their shared political goals for the future, which included the chance for the Italian people to choose their own leaders, the opportunity for women to have agency within the new government, and more support of workers’ rights. The fact that the anti-fascist resistance was largely unified in its vision of a post-fascist government kept the movement focused on defeating its enemy.
Covers of the New York Amsterdam News from December 1945 and the Chicago Defender from September 1955.New Amsterdam News; Emmett Till Project
The United States has its own history of the independent press, which was a reaction, in part, to the country’s earliest newspapers being openly subsidized—and thus influenced—by various feuding political parties, until the late 1800s. One enduring example of independent publishing can be seen in the numerous, mostly regional, newspapers by and about Black Americans, which began in the early 1800s. These papers, such as the New York Amsterdam News and Chicago Defender, were essential in providing news and perspectives left out of their white-dominated counterparts.
By the 1900s, journalistic ethics groups proliferated, and explicit political patronage was pushed out of news coverage. But what grew from these new politically independent presses was a battle for market share, which affected what stories the newspapers might choose to cover. Interest groups who were not publishing for financial gain still found power in the independent press, although these were often to smaller or more focused audiences.
From the mid-1960s until the early 1970s, the Black Panther Party published its own newspaper highlighting stories that it believed mainstream news ignored or distorted, alongside political commentary. Printed weekly, the Black Panther had a weekly circulation of more than 300,000 at its peak. From late 2011 to early 2012, the Occupied Wall Street Journal—the publication of the Occupy Wall Street movement—circulated tens of thousands of copies with stories from the camps, articles written by scholars and journalists, and statements from its General Assembly.
These publications, like the underground newspapers during World War II, did not purport to emulate mainstream news. Instead, they sought to recruit members who also shared a vision of a future different from the status quo and amplify stories of successes by—or harm done to—marginalized or oppressed groups as a tool to push against existing power structures.
New York University anthropologist Natasha Zaretsky, who works on the politics of memory in the Americas, has emphasized the importance of these publications within social and political movements. Zaretsky said in an interview that “any form of documenting what is happening can be a form of resistance, and a way to hold onto the truth during periods of societal transition and repression.”
Today, most of what might be considered the independent press in the United States is published by a single person or small group of journalists. This almost exclusively takes place online. For example, a journalist, scholar, or insider might share their experience or analysis on social media, often to offer additional insight—or a contradictory perspective—on a topic or amplify stories they believe were inadequately covered in mainstream media.
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Smaller platforms such as the privately held Substack and Bluesky—the latter of which is a Public Benefit Corporation, or a company designed to “generate social and public good”—have grown exponentially, as users look to consume and publish this kind of writing in spaces that aren’t influenced by large corporate interests or the whims of the market.
While people publishing on these platforms today aren’t endangering their lives in the same way as those who created underground publications under Nazi occupation, in the current social and political climate, speaking out against U.S. political leaders is not without risk. There have been reports of increased scrutiny of social media accounts at U.S. border crossings, and individuals and journalists have faced various forms of retribution from those who disagree with what they publish, from death threats to doxing. Still, increased engagement with these modes of communication point to a brewing discontent with mainstream news sources.
While countering inaccuracies or silences has long been a role of the independent press, its work is also about demanding accountability—from the mainstream press and the entities it reports on—and operating as a kind of watchdog to ensure the government is acting transparently and within the law. As Stuart Soroka, a communication and political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, explained, numerous studies have shown “that democracy works better when there is a robust press that is able to operate independent of government constraints.”
Likewise, after World War II, publications like the ones that Serra printed in secret largely ceased. They were no longer needed once traditional news sources were trusted again to keep Italians informed—and these now-uncensored publications were better able to push leaders to take responsibility for their actions and provide more government transparency.
Ultimately, this history illustrates the necessity of a press that is allowed to operate—whether in print or online—without explicit or implicit censorship. As the anti-fascist citizen-journalists of World War II knew, it is a civic duty to stay politically informed and consider news sources more critically.
Now that we all have the power to “publish” via various platforms, more individuals than ever can amplify the stories of others. But we must remember that part of the anti-fascist resistance’s success came from its collaborative spirit and unified political goals. Speaking truth to power is not enough on its own. A shared vision for the future is also key to supporting democracy.
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