Based on the evidence of survivors and eye-witnesses, Colonel Liuzzi's book is a soldier's appraisal of one of the worst atrocities committed by the Wehrmacht in the European theatre of conflict in the Second World War. This moving work catalogues the annihilation of the Acqui Division on Kefalonia in September 1943 and is an emotional tribute to those men.
Twenty days after the violence practiced by the German Gebirgsjäger on the military of the Acqui Division in Kefalonia another crime for the same reason was committed on the island of Kos by the Grenadieres of the 22nd Division of General Müller: 103 Italian officers were shot because Badogliani and, therefore, traitors. Months after the tragic event, in 66 mass graves, 66 bodies were found, of which 42 were recognized. Those bodies are in the Ossario d'Oltremare in Bari. The remains of the other 37 officers have never been found. Thanks to the financial help of friends and relatives of the officers as well as to the voluntary participation of researchers, another pit was found from which emerged bone and personal artifacts preserved in the History Museum in Kos. The few bone artifacts belonging to two 26-year-olds are buried in the Ossuary Ossuary in the Catholic Cemetery of Kos (Operation Lisia). This book highlights what emerged from testimonies and archival documents with the aim of redeeming the memory and honor of those men in arms.
**AS SEEN ON BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS** 25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION - WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR 'A true diamond of a novel, glinting with comedy and tragedy' Daily Mail It is 1941 and Captain Antonio Corelli, a young Italian officer, is posted to the Greek island of Cephallonia as part of the occupying forces. At first he is ostracised by the locals but over time he proves himself to be civilised, humorous – and a consummate musician. When Pelagia, the local doctor's daughter, finds her letters to her fiancé go unanswered, Antonio and Pelagia draw close and the working of the eternal triangle seems inevitable. But can this fragile love survive as a war of bestial savagery gets closer and the lines are drawn between invader and defender? 'Louis de Bernières is in the direct line that runs through Dickens and Evelyn Waugh...he has only to look into his world, one senses, for it to rush into reality, colours and touch and taste' Evening Standard
Ichiro Sudan trained to be a kamikaze. Roscoe Brown was a commander in the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African American military aviators. Charin Singh, a farmer from Delhi, spent seven years as a Japanese prisoner of war and was not sent home until four years after the war ended. Uli John lost an arm serving in the German army but ultimately befriended former enemy soldiers as part of a network of veterans—"people who fought in the war and know what war really means." These are some of the faces and stories in the remarkable Veterans, the outcome of a worldwide project by Sasha Maslov to interview and photograph the last surviving combatants from World War II. Soldiers, support staff, and resistance fighters candidly discuss wartime experiences and their lifelong effects in this unforgettable, intimate record of the end of a cataclysmic chapter in world history and tribute to the members of an indomitable generation. Veterans is also a meditation on memory, human struggle, and the passage of time.
A comprehensive guide to the history and technology of transatlantic passenger ships. This book covers the earliest steam-powered liners, through the great ocean liners of the early 20th century, and up to the modern cruise ships of today. With photographs, diagrams, and detailed descriptions of the ships and their voyages, this book is a must-have for anyone interested in the history of ocean travel. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
"This monograph will prove to be one of the more valuable works ever written on the efficacy of modern era amphibious warfare. While many students of military affairs have assumed that large-scale forcible entry amphibious operations are a thing of the past, the authors have done an outstanding job, in just eight concise and well-written chapters, to demonstrate how amphibious warfare, in combination with other joint operations, can prove decisive on modern-day battlefields. Covering a little-known combat operation that incredibly involved two neighboring North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies--Greece and Turkey--the 1974 battle known in Turkey as Operation Star Drop-4 and erroneously in the West as Operation Attila, took place on the perpetually restive island nation of Cyprus. Moreover, the authors have finally brought to light what is "arguably only one of two such [amphibious] operations" fought since 1945 that involved a substantially opposed landing. The operation also included the heavy use of airborne, airmobile, naval surface, and other follow-on armored forces that proved decisive toward relative Turkish success on Cyprus in 1974"--
This book is the first complete study in English of Antonescu's part in the Second World War. Antonescu was a major ally of Hitler and Romania fielded the third largest Axis army, joined the Tripartite Pact in November 1940 as a sovereign state and participated in the attack on the Soviet Union of 22 June 1941 as an equal partner of Germany.
The Ionian Islands stretch south from the Adriatic, where Corfu’s Pantokrator mountain overlooks Albania across narrow straits, along the western coast of mainland Greece through Paxi, Kephalonia, Ithaca, Lefkada and Zakynthos, to Kythira, midway between Athens and Crete. Three crucial sea-battles were fought here – Sybota (the first recorded), Actium and Lepanto – an indication of the Ionians’ role as an East-West crossroads, between Western Christendom and the Orthodox and Islamic East. Ruled by Venice in her Stato da Mar (sea-empire), the islands became an independent state, as the Septinsular Republic and then, under British Protection, as the United States of the Ionian Islands. Before the mainland Greeks had a State, the Ionian people were proud of having a university – from 1824 – in Corfu town, a World Heritage Site. The islands were united with the Kingdom of Greece in 1864 – the first addition to its territory. This book (with over thirty illustrations) explores the history, archaeology, languages, customs and culture of the Ionian Islands. Without venturing far from the islands, readers will learn much about this distinctive part of the Mediterranean and Greek world. The chapters range from the mythology of the Bronze Age (Homer’s Scheria, where Odysseus startled Nausicaa as she bathed) to today, concentrating particularly on the British Protectorate (1815–1864). One, illustrated by contemporary maps, deals with descriptions of the islands by a fourteenth-century Venetian writing in Latin. The roles of Jews, Souliot refugees, Greek revolutionaries, rebel peasants in Cephalonia, and workers in Corfu’s port suburb of Mandouki are examined in detail. There are contributions on religion and philosophy, as well as literature, music, painting, and the folk-art of carved walking-canes.
Fascist Italy's ultimate defeat was foreordained. It was a pygmy among giants, and Hitler's failure to destroy the Soviet Union in 1941 doomed all three Axis powers. But Italy's defeat was unique; the only asset that it conquered - briefly - with its own unaided forces in the entire Second World War was a dusty and useless corner of Africa, British Somaliland. And Italy's forces dissolved in 1943 almost without resistance, in stark contrast to the grim fight to the last cartridge of Hitler's army or the fanatical faithfulness unto death of the troops of Imperial Japan. This book tries to understand why the Italian armed forces and Fascist regime were so remarkably ineffective at an activity - war - central to their existence. It approaches the issue above all from the perspective of military culture, through analysis of the services' failure to imagine modern warfare and through a topical structure that offers a social-cultural, political, military-economic, strategic, operational, and tactical cross-section of the war effort.
Italy Invades, full of restless adventurers, canny generals, and the occasional scoundrel, is a fast-paced and compelling read, the perfect sequel to America Invades. Recreating their success with America Invades, Christopher Kelly and Stuart Laycock take another global tour, this time starting from Italy and exploring that country's military involvements throughout the ancient and modern worlds. From the empire building of the Romans, through the globe-spanning Age of Exploration, to the multinational cooperation of NATO, Italy has conquered and explored countries as diverse and far-ranging as Cape Verde and Mongolia and Uruguay. With the additional guide of maps and photographs, the reader can visually follow the Italians as they conquer the world. The book also contains an excerpt from the never before published An Adventure in 1914, written by Christopher Kelly's maternal great-grandfather, Thomas Tileston Wells. Wells served as the American consul general to Romania each summer; and in the summer of 1914, as war exploded across Europe, he was there with his wife and two children.
