4 May 1949. The tragedy of Superga and the "heroes" of Grande Torino

Abstract

The death of the Torino footballers in what would come to be known as the Superga tragedy, which occurred on 4 May 1949, represented the first great collective mourning in post-World War II Italy. At a time of great social tension between the Christian Democrats and the Popular Front, the funeral of these athletes seemed to unite the country in one great grief devoid of political orientation. Starting from the complete press review found in the archives of the Italian National Olympic Committee and relying on unpublished archive sources, this article aims to analyse how the media of the time narrated this event and how the deceased players became heroes of the newly-born republican Italy. This paper will analyse the way in which the military hero from the years of Fascism passed to the civil hero after the Second World War, highlighting narrative discontinuities and continuities with the previous period. Lastly, it will be shown how the church and the Christian Democrat government sought to re-appropriate the cult of the dead, which between the two wars had represented one of the cornerstones of the civil Fascist religion.