 The strike wave in Milan quickly spread to the industrial city of Turin, where the working class likewise denounced the war and Fascism.The fact that during the strikes in Milan and Turin, Italian soldiers fraternized with the striking workers, who used slogans associated with the banned Socialist and Communist parties deeply worried Italy's conservative establishment.By this point, the successive Italian defeats had so psychologically shattered Mussolini that he become close to being catatonic, staring into space for hours on end and saying the war would soon turn around for the Axis because it had to, leading even his closest admirers to become disillusioned and to begin looking for a new leader.