What if Italy went communist after World War 2?

[TheRejectionist]

Wait a minute...Italy did not go communist?

Which time line are you from?

I'm just kidding but Italy was probably the most left-leaning country in the western alliance.

It's...debatable.

Sure we had people like Mattei, Olivetti and Moro and more that were very... I don't even know how to describe.
I would go with somewhat social... nationalist ? I honestly don't know how to classify them in simple terms. And my timeline kinda deals with a similar premise in a way (see my signature).
Italian communist were a different breed. Even Togliatti wasn't full on Moscow-line as Thalmann, Thorez, Duclos or others in the Warsaw Pact.The prime example of how different Italocommunism was ... should be Enrico Berlinguer, there are books of/by him in Italia, I don't have any English sources at the moment.

If you want more modern examples to show how peculiar communists are you can into Marco Rizzo of the Italian communist party and Diego Fusaro of Still Italy.

I disagree with @archipeppe on the "nightmare", but it wouldn't have been rosy.

My daughter studied in Bologna, then a local soviet; I did some Defence work in Turin, where it was explained to me that the PCI was far more I than C.

We forget that Stalin, then successors did pull out of places, from Bornholm to N.Iran - sometimes they had to be prised out, but they did understand the cost of colonialism. Would Moscow want the cost of running Italy? It is ungovernable, as we know.

Can I ask a supplementary: would a Referendum have been held to decide whether to join NATO, 4/49? What might the answer have been?

So @alertken probably a marginal yes OR a marginal no victory.

Another thought or two....
Italy goes Communist.

How does Austria and Switzerland react?

@zen could they do deals with the USSR as they did with the Third Reich?

Oerlikon missiles might be driven forward. Along with Swiss nuclear weapons?

Austrian neutrality becomes impossible.....hmmmm...Tyrol...

Bavaria along with Austria becomes a giant pocket of the West inside a Communist pincer....

Monaco wedged between them.

IF Communist Italy retains the irredentist claims against France, it's probably absorbed inside it. I don't see it becoming a Israel-like state (too few people).

Tunisia and Algeria must remain outside of Soviet influence. Potential UK and US backing of the French here.

If the massacre that happened in 1944/1945(can't remember the exact date) it might be to late.

Sicilia and Sardinia might be encouraged to break free.

United too long to have that happen.