Fifth Army in Italy, 1943–1945

Fifth Army in Italy, 1943–1945 PDF Author: Ian Blackwell
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 1783032448
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
A history of the Allied coalition in Italy during World War II. The US Fifth Army first saw action during the Salerno Landings in September 1943. While commanded by US Lieutenant General Mark Clark, from the outset one of its two Corps was the X (British) Corps; the other V1 (US) Corps. The multi-national composition of Fifth Army is demonstrated by the French Expeditionary Corps, the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, the South African Armoured Division, the Italian Co-Belligerent forces, formations from the New Zealand Corps and the 4th Indian Division. Clark’s Fifth Army was itself part of the Fifteenth Army Group, commanded by Field Marshal Alexander. Alexander’s light and diplomatic touch oiled the wheels of this uneasy arrangement but inevitably there were tensions and disagreements that threatened success. The low priority accorded to Italy as compared with OVERLORD and NW Europe did not help matters. Seen as a backwater, crack units were taken away and insufficient resources allocated to the Italian Campaign. This combined with the tenacity of the Germans, the difficult terrain and the harsh climate caused real problems. Allied morale was at times particularly brittle and desertion rates worryingly high. This superbly researched book objectively examines the performance of Fifth Army against this complex and troublesome backdrop. The author’s findings make for authoritative and fascinating reading and give food for thought about multinational cooperation in more recent conflicts.

Fifth Army in Italy, 1943–1945

Fifth Army in Italy, 1943–1945 PDF Author: Ian Blackwell
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 1783032448
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 476

Get Book Here

Book Description
A history of the Allied coalition in Italy during World War II. The US Fifth Army first saw action during the Salerno Landings in September 1943. While commanded by US Lieutenant General Mark Clark, from the outset one of its two Corps was the X (British) Corps; the other V1 (US) Corps. The multi-national composition of Fifth Army is demonstrated by the French Expeditionary Corps, the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, the South African Armoured Division, the Italian Co-Belligerent forces, formations from the New Zealand Corps and the 4th Indian Division. Clark’s Fifth Army was itself part of the Fifteenth Army Group, commanded by Field Marshal Alexander. Alexander’s light and diplomatic touch oiled the wheels of this uneasy arrangement but inevitably there were tensions and disagreements that threatened success. The low priority accorded to Italy as compared with OVERLORD and NW Europe did not help matters. Seen as a backwater, crack units were taken away and insufficient resources allocated to the Italian Campaign. This combined with the tenacity of the Germans, the difficult terrain and the harsh climate caused real problems. Allied morale was at times particularly brittle and desertion rates worryingly high. This superbly researched book objectively examines the performance of Fifth Army against this complex and troublesome backdrop. The author’s findings make for authoritative and fascinating reading and give food for thought about multinational cooperation in more recent conflicts.

SAS in Italy 1943-1945

SAS in Italy 1943-1945 PDF Author: Malcolm Tudor
Publisher: Fonthill Media
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This is the story of Britain's elite special force in Italy during the Second World War. In the summer of 1943 the SAS came out of Africa to carry the fight to the Germans and Fascists in Sicily and the mainland. On the Italian Armistice and Surrender in September 1943 the originator of the SAS, Scots Guards lieutenant David Stirling, was a prisoner at the high-security prisoner of war camp five at Gavi in Piedmont, north-western Italy, after being captured in January in Tunisia. He eventually ended up as a prisoner at Colditz Castle in Germany, but his work continued. The idea of small groups of parachute-trained soldiers operating behind enemy lines to gain intelligence, destroy enemy aircraft, and attack their supply and reinforcement routes, was realised in the many daring missions carried out in Italy by the men of 2nd SAS Regiment and the Special Raiding Squadron. The famous SAS motto of 'Who dares wins, ' was swiftly translated into the Italian 'Chi osa vince.' This book reveals how words were turned into deeds.

The National Army Museum Book of the Turkish Front 1914-1918

The National Army Museum Book of the Turkish Front 1914-1918 PDF Author: Michael Carver
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 9780330491082
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
The Turkish Front in World War I was an historically important campaign as the destruction of the Ottoman Empire led to the political turmoil of the Middle East. But it also had a big emotional pull. This book contains extracts from the letters, diaries and other papers of those involved.

Tug of War

Tug of War PDF Author: Dominick Graham
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473819938
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 635

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Book Description
When the Allies invaded mainland Italy in 1943 they intended only a clearing-up operation to knock Italy out of the war, but Hitler ordered the German armies to defend every foot of the country. The 'Tug of War' was the mysterious force which caused a war to race out of control, and attract vast numbers of men, tanks, guns and aircraft. The book analyses the main battles of Salerno, Cassino, Anzio and the march on Rome.

Battleground Italy 1943-1945

Battleground Italy 1943-1945 PDF Author: Franz Kurowski
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780921991779
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description


Mussolini and the Salò Republic, 1943–1945

Mussolini and the Salò Republic, 1943–1945 PDF Author: H. James Burgwyn
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319761897
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
This book is a long overdue in-depth study of the Italian Social Republic. Set up in 1943 by Hitler in the town of Salò on Lake Garda and ruled by Mussolini, this makeshift government was a last-ditch effort to ensure the survival of Fascism, ending with the murder of Mussolini by partisans in 1945. The RSI was a loosely organized regime made up of professed patriots, apostles of law and order, and rogue militias who committed atrocities against presumed and real enemies. H. James Burgwyn narrates the history of the RSI, with vivid portraits of key figures and thoughtful analysis of how radical fascists managed to take the Salò regime from a dictatorship in Italy to a Continental nazifascismo, hand in hand with the Third Reich. This book stands as an essential bookend to the life of Mussolini, with new insights into the man who duped the Italian people and provoked a war that ended in catastrophic defeat.

Mission Accomplished

Mission Accomplished PDF Author: David Stafford
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1409027821
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
In May 1945 Italy was liberated from Nazism and Fascism by the British Eighth and American Fifth Armies. By that time the Italian resistance movement had emerged as one of the strongest in Europe - crucially aided and abetted by the UK's Special Operations Executive. As what Winston Churchill graphically described as the 'red-hot rake of the battle-line' advanced bloodily up the Italian peninsula, clandestine cells in the cities and partisan bands in the countryside fought to free their country from enemy occupation and shape the politics of Italy's post-war future. Based on recently released official files, documents retrieved from other agencies, diaries, memoirs and personal interviews, Mission Accomplished provides the first ever complete and authoritative account of Britain's secret war in Italy - the heroic exploits, the larger than life participants and the extraordinary, against-the-odds achievements.

War In Italy, 1943-1945

War In Italy, 1943-1945 PDF Author: Richard Lamb
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 9780306806889
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Richard Lamb, one of the few Italian-speaking officers in the British Army during World War II, has relied in part on newly opened Italian archives to present a surprising and unprecedented history of the war in Italy from Mussolini's fall until the final victory. Chronicling an unbroken sequence of Nazi infamies, Lamb reveals how German troops massacred thousands of surrendering Italians in the Aegean islands, deported Italian Jews to Auschwitz, and slaughtered Italian hostages and POWs. Had it not been for Mussolini's frenzied attempts to protect his countrymen, Italy would have been treated even worse than Poland.Lamb answers important and controversial questions, such as why the Allies did not land unopposed in Italy before the Germans poured over the Brenner Pass, and why Pope Pius XII did not take a stronger stand on behalf of Jews and the victims of the Ardeatine massacre. He details Anthony Eden's opposition to an aid for Italian partisans, and the disastrous order form the War Office that British POWs should stay in their camps. He unfolds the extraordinary stories of the Cossack settlement in the Fruili, the attempted annexation of northern Italy by de Gaulle and Tito, the contributions of the Royalist Army to the Allied cause, the Italian civilians who helped Allied POWs escape, and the German generals who failed to obey Hitler's order to "scorch" all of Northern Italy.War in Italy will long remain the most complete account ever published of one of the most terrible dramas of World War II.

A House in the Mountains

A House in the Mountains PDF Author: Caroline Moorehead
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062686380
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 520

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Book Description
"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.

Italian Prisoners of War in Pennsylvania

Italian Prisoners of War in Pennsylvania PDF Author: Flavio G. Conti
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1611479983
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
During World War II 51,000 Italian prisoners of war were detained in the United States. When Italy signed an armistice with the Allies in September 1943, most of these soldiers agreed to swear allegiance to the United States and to collaborate in the fight against Germany. At the Letterkenny Army Depot, located near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, more than 1,200 Italian soldiers were detained as co-operators. They arrived in May 1944 to form the 321st Italian Quartermaster Battalion and remained until October 1945. As detainees, the soldiers helped to order, stock, repair, and ship military goods, munitions and equipment to the Pacific and European Theaters of war. Through such labor, they lent their collective energy to the massive home front endeavor to defeat the Axis Powers. The prisoners also helped to construct the depot itself, building roads, sidewalks, and fences, along with individual buildings such as an assembly hall, amphitheater, swimming pool, and a chapel and bell tower. The latter of these two constructions still exist, and together with the assembly hall, bear eloquent testimony to the Italian POW experience. For their work the Italian co-operators received a very modest, regular salary, and they experienced more freedom than regular POWs. In their spare time, they often had liberty to leave the post in groups that American soldiers chaperoned. Additionally, they frequently received or visited large entourages of Italian Americans from the Mid-Atlantic region who were eager to comfort their erstwhile countrymen. The story of these Italian soldiers detained at Letterkenny has never before been told. Now, however, oral histories from surviving POWs, memoirs generously donated by family members of ex-prisoners, and the rich information newly available from archival material in Italy, aided by material found in the U.S., have made it possible to reconstruct this experience in full. All of this historical documentation has also allowed the authors to tell fascinating individual stories from the moment when many POWs were captured to their return to Italy and beyond. More than seventy years since the end of World War II, family members of ex-POWs in both the United States and Italy still enjoy the positive legacy of this encounter.