eople. The main railway station and adjoining areas were severely hit, and 44% of the buildings in the center turned out to be either destroyed or severely damaged. The city was heavily bombed again on September 25. The raids, which this time were not confined to the city center, left 936 people dead and thousands injured.
American M24 passes through ruins of a town south of Bologna, spring 1945.
During the war, the city was also a key center of the Italian resistance movement. On November 7, 1944, a pitched battle around Porta Lame, waged by partisans of the 7th Brigade of the Gruppi d'Azione Patriottica against Fascist and Nazi occupation forces, did not succeed in triggering a general uprising, despite being one of the largest resistance-led urban conflicts in the European theater. Resistance forces entered Bologna on the morning of April 21, 1945. By this time, the Germans had already largely left the city in the face of the Allied advance, spearheaded by Polish forces advancing from the east during the Battle of Bologna begun on April 9. First to arrive in the center was the 87th Infantry Regiment of the Friuli Combat Group under general Arturo Scattini, who entered the center from Porta Maggiore to the south. Since the soldiers were dressed in British outfits, they were initially thought to be part of the allied forces; when the local inhabitants heard the soldiers were speaking Italian, they poured out on to the streets to celebrate. Polish reconnaissance units of the Polish 2nd Corps entered Bologna from another direction on the same morning as the Friuli Combat Group. The fighting to oust the Germans from the town had been mostly undertaken by Polish troops.
After World War II, Bologna became a thriving industrial center as well as a political stronghold of the Italian Communist Party, leading the Italian political "Red Quadrilateral". The city, from 1945 to 1999, had an uninterrupted series of left wing mayors, the first and best
