Rationing and illegal food trade in Second World War Italy have received very little scholarly attention in comparison to the scale and impact they had on people's daily life. This article contributes to filling this gap, first by providing an overview of the dynamics that already in the early years of the war determined the development of an illegal system of food trade. It then considers the experience of the black market through two wartime diaries, one published and the other unpublished, written by women of opposite political views, both living in Rome and its outskirts. The analysis of the diaries considers women's attitudes towards the black market. The article argues that the Fascist propaganda of duty to the homeland, so intensively practised through domestic literature during the 1920s and 1930s, was again exploited in wartime in the discourse around the black market and hid the political responsibilities of the government.

与第二次世界大战意大利的配给和非法食品贸易对人们日常生活的规模和影响相比，学术界很少关注它们。本文有助于填补这一空白，首先概述了战争初期决定非法食品贸易体系发展的动态。然后，它通过两本战时日记来思考黑市的经历，一本已出版，另一本未出版，由居住在罗马及其郊区持相反政治观点的妇女所写。对日记的分析考虑了女性对黑市的态度。文章认为，法西斯宣传的对祖国的责任，在 1920 年代和 1930 年代通过国内文学如此密集地进行，在战时在围绕黑市的话语中再次被利用，并隐藏了政府的政治责任。