Miss Italy winner mocked after telling judges that she would have prefered to live in 1942

The winner of the Miss Italy contest has been ridiculed after claiming 1942 was the year she would most liked to have lived in, despite Europe being at the height of the Second World War

When Alice Sabatini was asked by judges which historical time period she would most like to live in during the final stage of the contest on Monday, she replied: "[19]42".

According to a translation obtained by The Independent, the 18-year-old reasoned that as a woman during this period, she would have escaped conscription and the battlefield.

"You know we always read pages and pages on WWII and I would like to experience it, though obviously being a woman I would have just stayed home and wouldn't have to be a soldier."

The dictator Mussolini’s fascist party was still ruling Italy in 1942, a year during which the mass murder of Jews in the Auschwitz concentration camp began and almost 21,000 Italians were killed in the Battle of Stalingrad. Thousands of Jews also left Italy and emigrated to America after anti-Semitic legislation was introduced in 1938 and upheld until 1942.

Her answer was widely mocked on social media, with a number of people doctoring pictures from battlefields by inserting her image into them.

However, her answer failed to deter judges and she was crowned the winner of the annual beauty pageant on Monday.

Ms Sabatani reportedly clarified her comments on Tuesday, telling the Urban Post her great-grandmother had lived through the war and often recounted stories from that period.

“I would have liked to live through what she had gone through in those years,” she said. “For better and for worse.