This led to food shortages, malnutrition, and a lack of wheat, which raised the prospect of italian tables with no pasta. in typical style, rather than lifting the import bans, mussolini tried to convince italians that eating pasta would make them weak, lazy, and even sexually impotent, and that a high-protein diet would make them more productive and war-like. the campaign was clearly not a success. when the fascists arrived, a big part of italians was with mussolini, but 30%, 40% is against mussolini. in fact, pasta actually became a powerful symbol of the resistance against his fascist regime. armed with their guns and sheets of pasta, many of the partisans who stood up to mussolini lived in these very streets. and the great axis railyards from which troops and supplies