Italy's Sorrow

Italy's Sorrow PDF

Author: James Holland

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2008-04-01

Total Pages: 656

ISBN-13: 1429945435

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During the Second World War, the campaign in Italy was the most destructive fought in Europe - a long, bitter and highly attritional conflict that raged up the country's mountainous leg. For frontline troops, casualty rates at Cassino and along the notorious Gothic Line were as high as they had been on the Western Front in the First World War. There were further similarities too: blasted landscapes, rain and mud, and months on end with the front line barely moving. And while the Allies and Germans were fighting it out through the mountains, the Italians were engaging in bitter battles too. Partisans were carrying out a crippling resistance campaign against the German troops but also battling the Fascists forces as well in what soon became a bloody civil war. Around them, innocent civilians tried to live through the carnage, terror and anarchy, while in the wake of the Allied advance, horrific numbers of impoverished and starving people were left to pick their way through the ruins of their homes and country. In the German-occupied north, there were more than 700 civilian massacres by German and Fascist troops in retaliation for Partisan activities, while in the south, many found themselves forced into making terrible and heart-rending decisions in order to survive. Although known as a land of beauty and for the richness of its culture, Italy's suffering in 1944-1945 is now largely forgotten. Italy's Sorrow by James Holland is the first account of the conflict there to tell the story from all sides and to include the experiences of soldiers and civilians alike. Offering extensive original research, it weaves together the drama and tragedy of that terrible year, including new perspectives and material on some of the most debated episodes to have emerged from World War II.

Italy's Sorrow

Italy's Sorrow PDF

Author: James Holland

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2008-04

Total Pages: 692

ISBN-13: 9780312373962

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During the Second World War, the campaign in Italy was the most destructive fought in Europe – a long, bitter and highly attritional conflict that raged up the country’s mountainous leg. For frontline troops, casualty rates at Cassino and along the notorious Gothic Line were as high as they had been on the Western Front in the First World War. There were further similarities too: blasted landscapes, rain and mud, and months on end with the front line barely moving. And while the Allies and Germans were fighting it out through the mountains, the Italians were engaging in bitter battles too. Partisans were carrying out a crippling resistance campaign against the German troops but also battling the Fascists forces as well in what soon became a bloody civil war. Around them, innocent civilians tried to live through the carnage, terror and anarchy, while in the wake of the Allied advance, horrific numbers of impoverished and starving people were left to pick their way through the ruins of their homes and country. In the German-occupied north, there were more than 700 civilian massacres by German and Fascist troops in retaliation for Partisan activities, while in the south, many found themselves forced into making terrible and heart-rending decisions in order to survive. Although known as a land of beauty and for the richness of its culture, Italy’s suffering in 1944-1945 is now largely forgotten. This is the first account of the conflict there to tell the story from all sides and to include the experiences of soldiers and civilians alike. Offering extensive original research, it weaves together the drama and tragedy of that terrible year, including new perspectives and material on some of the most debated episodes to have emerged from the Second World War.

The Beauty and the Sorrow

The Beauty and the Sorrow PDF

Author: Peter Englund

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2012-09-04

Total Pages: 594

ISBN-13: 0307739287

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An intimate narrative history of World War I told through the stories of twenty men and women from around the globe--a powerful, illuminating, heart-rending picture of what the war was really like. In this masterful book, renowned historian Peter Englund describes this epoch-defining event by weaving together accounts of the average man or woman who experienced it. Drawing on the diaries, journals, and letters of twenty individuals from Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Venezuela, and the United States, Englund’s collection of these varied perspectives describes not a course of events but "a world of feeling." Composed in short chapters that move between the home front and the front lines, The Beauty and Sorrow brings to life these twenty particular people and lets them speak for all who were shaped in some way by the War, but whose voices have remained unheard.

Fatal Decision

Fatal Decision PDF

Author: Carlo D'Este

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2009-06-02

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 0061942472

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Fatal Decision is a powerful, dramatic, moving, and ultimately definitive narrative of one of the most desperate campaigns of World War II. In the winter of 1943-44, Anzio, a small Mediterranean resort and port some thirty-five miles south of Rome, played a crucial role in the fortunes of World War II as the target of an amphibious Allied landing. The Allies planned to bypass the strong German defenses along the Gustav Line and at Monte Cassino sixty miles to the southeast, which were holding up the American and British armies and preventing the liberation of Rome. By taking advantage of Allied command of the sea and air to effect complete surprise, infantry and armored forces landing at Anzio on January 22 were expected to secure the beachhead and then push inland to cut off the two main highways and railroads supplying the German forces to the south, either trapping and annihilating the German armies or forcing them to withdraw to the north, thus opening the way to Rome. But the reality of one of the most desperate campaigns of World War II was bad management, external meddling, poorly relayed orders, and uncertain leadership. The Anzio beachhead became a death trap, with Allied troops forced to fight for their lives for four dreadful months. The eventual victory in May 1944 was muted, bitter, and overshadowed by the Allied landings in Normandy on June 6. Mixing flawless research, drama, and combat with a brilliant narrative voice, Fatal Decision is one of the best histories ever written of a World War II military campaign.

Primo Levi's Resistance

Primo Levi's Resistance PDF

Author: Sergio Luzzatto

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2016-01-05

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 0805099557

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A daring investigation of Primo Levi's brief career as a fighter with the Italian Resistance, and the grim secret that haunted his life No other Auschwitz survivor has been as literarily powerful and historically influential as Primo Levi. Yet Levi was not only a victim or a witness. In the fall of 1943, at the very start of the Italian Resistance, he was a fighter, participating in the first attempts to launch guerrilla warfare against occupying Nazi forces. Those three months have been largely overlooked by Levi's biographers; indeed, they went strikingly unmentioned by Levi himself. For the rest of his life he barely acknowledged that autumn in the Alps. But an obscure passage in Levi's The Periodic Table hints that his deportation to Auschwitz was linked directly to an incident from that time: "an ugly secret" that had made him give up the struggle, "extinguishing all will to resist, indeed to live." What did Levi mean by those dramatic lines? Using extensive archival research, Sergio Luzzatto's groundbreaking Primo Levi's Resistance reconstructs the events of 1943 in vivid detail. Just days before Levi was captured, Luzzatto shows, his group summarily executed two teenagers who had sought to join the partisans, deciding the boys were reckless and couldn't be trusted. The brutal episode has been shrouded in silence, but its repercussions would shape Levi's life. Combining investigative flair with profound empathy, Primo Levi's Resistance offers startling insight into the origins of the moral complexity that runs through the work of Primo Levi himself.

Sorrow and Consolation in Italian Humanism

Sorrow and Consolation in Italian Humanism PDF

Author: George W. McClure

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2014-07-14

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 1400861209

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George McClure offers here a far-reaching analysis of the role of consolation in Italian Renaissance culture, showing how the humanists' interest in despair, and their effort to open up this realm in both social and personal terms, signaled a shift toward a heightened secularization in European thought. Analyzing works by fourteenth-and fifteenth-century writers, from Petrarch to Marsilio Ficino, McClure examines the treatment of such problems as bereavement, fear of death, illness, despair, and misfortune. These writers, who evinced a belief in the legitimacy of secular sadness, tried to forge a wisdom that in their view dealt more realistically with the art of living and dying than did the disputations of scholastic philosophy and theology. Arguing that consolatory concerns helped spur the revival of classical schools of psychological thought, McClure reveals that the humanists sought comfort from once-neglected troves of Stoic, Peripatetic, Epicurean, Platonic, and Christian thought. He contends that the humanists' pursuit of solace and their duty as consolers provided not only a forum but perhaps also an incentive for the articulation of prominent Renaissance themes concerning immortality, the dignity of man, and the sanctity of worldly endeavor. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Sorrow of War

The Sorrow of War PDF

Author: Bao Ninh

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2017-03-14

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0525434399

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During the Vietnam War Bao Ninh served with the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade. Of the five hundred men who went to war with the brigade in 1969, he is one of only ten who survived. The Sorrow of War is his autobiographical novel. Kien works in a unit that recovers soldiers' corpses. Revisiting the sites of battles raises emotional ghosts for him and the memory of war scenes are juxtaposed with dreams and remembrances of his childhood sweetheart. The Sorrow of War burns the tragedy of war in our minds.

Tug of War

Tug of War PDF

Author: Dominick Graham

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2004-05-30

Total Pages: 635

ISBN-13: 1473819938

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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.

Garibaldi in South America

Garibaldi in South America PDF

Author: Richard Bourne

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-12-15

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 1787385191

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For over twelve years in the first half of the nineteenth century, Giuseppe Garibaldi, the hero of Italian unification, lived, learned and fought in South America. He was tortured, escaped death on countless occasions, and met his Brazilian wife, Anita, who eloped with him in 1839. From then on, she would share in Garibaldi's personal and political odyssey, first in the breakaway republic of Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil, and then as Montevideo's admiral and general in the Uruguayan civil war. Richard Bourne breathes life and understanding into these spectacular South American adventures, which also shed light on the creation of Italy. Garibaldi's Redshirts liberated Sicily and Naples wearing ponchos adopted by his Italian Legion in Montevideo. His ideas, his charismatic command of volunteers, and his naive dislike of politicking were all infused by his earlier experiences in South America. Bourne combines historical research with his travels in Uruguay and southern Brazil to explore contemporary awareness of and reflection on how the past can influence or be transformed by the needs of today. Now, at a time of narrow identity politics, Garibaldi's unifying zeal and advocacy for subjugated peoples everywhere offer an exemplary lesson in transnational political idealism.

A Death in Italy

A Death in Italy PDF

Author: John Follain

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2013-07-30

Total Pages: 476

ISBN-13: 9781250019387

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Recounts the highly publicized trial of Amanda Knox, drawing on interviews and complete case files to assess the true story and media sensation surrounding the 2007 murder of her roommate and the arrests of Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.