The Italian Partisan Republics or Free Zones were the provisional state entities created by Italian partisans in areas liberated from the joint Nazi-Fascist occupation (or temporarily free for other reasons) in the summer of 1944, during the Second World War.[1] Located in mountainous and hilly territories of Northern Italy (along the arc of the Alps and the Northern Apennines), they were universally short-lived, with most of them being reconquered by the Wehrmacht within weeks of their formal establishments and re-incorporated into the Italian Social Republic.