Italy At War

In May 1915, Italy declared war on the Habsburg Empire, hoping to seize its 'lost' territories of Trieste and Tyrol. The result was one of the most hopeless and senseless modern wars - and one that inspired great cruelty and destruction. Nearly three-quarters of a million Italians - and half as many Austro-Hungarian troops - were killed. Most of the deaths occurred on the bare grey hills north of Trieste, and in the snows of the Dolomite Alps. Outsiders who witnessed these battles were awestruck by the difficulty of attacking on such terrain. General Luigi Cadorna, most ruthless of all the Great War commanders, restored the Roman practice of 'decimation', executing random members of units that retreated or rebelled. Italy sank into chaos and, eventually, fascism. Its liberal traditions did not recover for a quarter of a century - some would say they have never recovered. Mark Thompson relates this nearly incredible saga with great skill and pathos. Much more than a history of terrible violence, the book tells the whole story of the war: the nationalist frenzy that led up to it, the decisions that shaped it, the poetry it inspired, its haunting landscapes and political intrigues; the personalities of its statesmen and generals; and also the experience of ordinary soldiers - among them some of modern Italy's greatest writers. A work of epic scale, The White War does full justice to one of the most remarkable untold stories of the First World War.

In 1934, the Italians who shouted "Duce! Duce!" did not know their leader would take them into world war and national ruin.

Vanda Wilcox’s edited volume Italy in the Era of the Great War analyses the political, military, social, economic and cultural history of war in Italy between 1911 and 1922.

This book reconstructs the fate of Italian prisoners of war captured by the Red Army between August 1941 and the winter of 1942-43. On 230.000 Italians left on the Eastern front almost 100.000 did not come back home. Testimonies and memoirs from surviving veterans complement the author's intensive work in Russian and Italian archives. The study examines Italian war crimes against the Soviet civilian population and describes the particularly grim fate of the thousands of Italian military internees who after the 8 September 1943 Armistice had been sent to Germany and were subsequently captured by the Soviet army to be deported to the USSR. The book presents everyday life and death in the Soviet prisoner camps and explains the particularly high mortality among Italian prisoners. Giusti explores how well the system of prisoner labor, personally supervised by Stalin, was planned, starting in 1943. A special focus of the study is antifascist propaganda among prisoners and the infiltration of the Soviet security agencies in the camps. Stalin was keen to create a new cohort of supporters through the mass political reeducation of war prisoners, especially middle-class intellectuals and military élite. The book ends with the laborious diplomatic talks in 1946 and 1947 between USSR, Italy, and the Holy See for the repatriation of the surviving prisoners.

Like an armor-toothed belt across Italy’s upper thigh, the Gothic Line was the most fortified and fiercely defended position the German army had yet thrown in the path of the Allied forces. On August 25, 1944, it fell to I Canadian Corps to spearhead the famed Eighth Army’s major offensive, intended to rip through it. The 1st Infantry and 5th Armored Divisions advanced into a killing ground covered by thousands of machine-gun, antitank gun positions, and pillboxes expertly sited behind minefields and dense thickets of barbed wire. Never had the Germans in Italy brought so much artillery to bear or deployed such a great number of tanks. For 28 days, the battle raged as the Allied troops slugged an ever deeper hole into the German defences. The Metauro River, the Foglia River, Point 204, Tomba Di Pesaro, Coriano Ridge, San Martino, and San Fortunato became place names seared into the memories of those who fought there. They fought in a dust-choked land under a searing sun which by battle's end was reduced to a guagmire by rain. But they prevailed and on September 22 won the ground overlooking the Po River Valley, opening the way for the next phase of the Allied advance.

Italy's War of Liberation takes issue with the apparently prevalent attitude among Allied commanders during World War II that the Italian military was ineffective. O'Reilly recounts the little-known story of the significant contribution made by the Italian military during the Italian Campaign, including the contribution of relatively unacknowledged Italian Partisan formations that fought in Italy, France, Yugoslavia, and Greece. Despite the fact that Italians fought on the front lines with the British and American soldiers, and despite the service of the Italian Navy and Air Force, the Allies refused repeated Italian pleas for more involvement in combat. This book not only attempts to correct the record of military history by illustrating the ways in which the Italians were underutilized by the Allies, but it also serves to paint a fair portrait of the Italian military's substantial efforts to defeat Hitler and eradicate Fascism.

Marshal Pietro Badolgio was involved in the highest levels of the Italian political hierarchy ever since his early successes in the First World War, for which he was promoted General. He was head of the Italian Armed Forces from 1925 to 1940, and did his best to raise the military to a level that might match the expansionist views of Mussolini. He presided over the brutal invasion of Ethiopia, but nationally he acted as a counter-balance to Mussolini’s pre-World War II schemes. Unable to stop the inevitable disaster following the Italian-German Pact of Steel and the onset of war, he resigned as Chief Of Staff after the humiliating reverses of the Italian invasion of Greece. He was brought back into the political spotlight in 1943, after the fall of Mussolini, and was named Prime Minister of Italy during the turbulent months of their volte face change of sides. His position was unenviable, caught between the Italian people who cried out for peace and the Allied powers who pursued German defeat in Italy by armed force. In this fascinating book he recounts his memories and recollections of Italy during the Second World War, particularly focussed on his attempts to hold the country together in 1943 and 1944.