In the second volume of his epic trilogy about the liberation of Europe in World War II, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Atkinson tells the harrowing story of the campaigns in Sicily and Italy.
"Dramatic, heartbreaking and sweeping in scope." —Wall Street Journal The acclaimed author of A Train in Winter returns with the "moving finale" (The Economist) of her Resistance Quartet—the powerful and inspiring true story of the women of the partisan resistance who fought against Italy’s fascist regime during World War II. In the late summer of 1943, when Italy broke with the Germans and joined the Allies after suffering catastrophic military losses, an Italian Resistance was born. Four young Piedmontese women—Ada, Frida, Silvia and Bianca—living secretly in the mountains surrounding Turin, risked their lives to overthrow Italy’s authoritarian government. They were among the thousands of Italians who joined the Partisan effort to help the Allies liberate their country from the German invaders and their Fascist collaborators. What made this partisan war all the more extraordinary was the number of women—like this brave quartet—who swelled its ranks. The bloody civil war that ensued pitted neighbor against neighbor, and revealed the best and worst in Italian society. The courage shown by the partisans was exemplary, and eventually bound them together into a coherent fighting force. But the death rattle of Mussolini’s two decades of Fascist rule—with its corruption, greed, and anti-Semitism—was unrelentingly violent and brutal. Drawing on a rich cache of previously untranslated sources, prize-winning historian Caroline Moorehead illuminates the experiences of Ada, Frida, Silvia, and Bianca to tell the little-known story of the women of the Italian partisan movement fighting for freedom against fascism in all its forms, while Europe collapsed in smoldering ruins around them.
This is the first account of the Luftwaffe and their allies from the liberation of Rome to the Axis surrender in Italy. It covers not only fighter combats but includes details of an Italian torpedo attack on Gibraltar.
This landmark work draws on newly released documents and firsthand accounts to tell the dramatic story of Rome's dark days during the German occupation. 8-pages of photos. 2 maps.
This is the inside story of how Trieste found itself poised on a knife edge at the end of World War II. Situated near the boundaries of Italy, Austria, and Yugoslavia, this pivotal port city was caught in May 1945 between advancing Allied, Russian, and Yugoslav armies on the strategically vital front lines of the nascent Cold War. Germany lay defeated, and now there were new enemies - Russia and Communism. Told through the stories of twelve men and women from seven different countries, Flashpoint Trieste chronicles, on a human scale, the beginning of the Cold War. A British colonel from the Special Operations Executive, a Maori officer from a New Zealand infantry battalion and a young Yugoslav partisan captain race for the city on May 1, 1945, with the Allies determined to beat Tito's forces and the Russians to the vital port. An American infantry general, decorated in combat in Italy, then holds the line as Trieste is divided between the American and British armies, and the Yugoslav Communist partisans of Marshal Josip Broz Tito. An American intelligence officer tracks wanted Nazis. An Italian woman Communist walks back to her native city from Auschwitz. An Austrian SS chief goes on the run to escape justice for the atrocities he committed in the city. Having survived the war, everyone is now desperate to make it through the liberation. American investigators hunt for priceless artifacts looted by the Germans. British intelligence will stop at nothing to hold the line against encroaching Communism, and Italian partisans hunt down fascist collaborators. Life is fast and violent, as former warring parties make common cause against the Russians. As the postwar world order unfolds, the borders of the new Europe are being hammered out.
By 1943, the war was lost, and most German officers knew it. Three quarters of a century later, the question persists: What kept the German army going in an increasingly hopeless situation? Where some historians have found explanations in the power of Hitler or the role of ideology, Robert M. Citino, the world’s leading scholar on the subject, posits a more straightforward solution: Bewegungskrieg, the way of war cultivated by the Germans over the course of history. In this gripping account of German military campaigns during the final phase of World War II, Citino charts the inevitable path by which Bewegungskrieg, or a “war of movement,” inexorably led to Nazi Germany’s defeat. The Wehrmacht’s Last Stand analyzes the German Totenritt, or “death ride,” from January 1944—with simultaneous Allied offensives at Anzio and Ukraine—until May 1945, the collapse of the Wehrmacht in the field, and the Soviet storming of Berlin. In clear and compelling prose, and bringing extensive reading of the German-language literature to bear, Citino focuses on the German view of these campaigns. Often very different from the Allied perspective, this approach allows for a more nuanced and far-reaching understanding of the last battles of the Wehrmacht than any now available. With Citino’s previous volumes, Death of the Wehrmacht and The Wehrmacht Retreats, The Wehrmacht’s Last Stand completes a uniquely comprehensive picture of the German army’s strategy, operations, and performance against the Allies in World War II.
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This title focuses on the "Risorgimento", the movement that led to the unification of Italy as a single kingdom. The Italian Wars of Independence were a sequence of three separate conflicts, taking place in 1848-49, 1859 and 1866. This volume examines the role of the major powers outside Italy in these conflicts, particularly France, Austria, Great Britain and Prussia, and in Italy the Italian states, the Catholic Church and the revolutionaries. It also examines the role of: Cavour's Piedmont, Mazzini's Young Italy and the Party of Action, Garibaldi's Red Shirts and Daniele Manin's National Society. It is based on original research, particularly in the Vatican archives and it should to be an invaluable text for all students of Italian and European History from 6th form to undergraduate level.