Download or read book Italian Prisoners of War in Pennsylvania written by Flavio G. Conti and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-10-19 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book World War II Italian Prisoners of War in Chambersburg written by Flavio G. Conti and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2017-10-16 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During World War II, the US government interned more than 1,200 captured Italian soldiers at the Letterkenny Army Ordnance Depot located near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. These troops collaborated with the United States in a collective effort to defeat the Axis powers. They formed the 321st Italian Quartermaster Battalion, and their work consisted mainly of stocking and shipping materials--ammunition, military vehicles, weapons, and machinery parts--to the war fronts in the European and Pacific theaters of operation. For entertainment, the soldiers formed an orchestra and band and for sport, several different company soccer teams. As a sign of their faith, they built a chapel and bell tower, which are still used today. Many POWs forged deep friendships with Americans, and after the war, a few married their sweethearts and returned to live in the United States. Today, warm relations still continue between children and grandchildren of the POWs and the wider Chambersburg community.
Download or read book Italian Prisoners of War in America 1942 1946 written by Louis E. Keefer and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 1992 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The only study to date on Italian POWs in the United States, this book records the history of the 50,000 Italian prisoners of war who were captured in North Africa during fighting in the desert and shipped to the United States as POWs. After Italy surrendered to the Allies and declared war on Germany, 35,000 POWs worked with the U.S. Army as cooperators in Italian Service Units serving on Army posts throughout the United States. The 15,000 non-cooperators remained in stockades until their release in 1945 and 1946. The text itself is more than 50 percent oral history and is based largely on interviews with nearly 50 former POWs, their friends and families, and the U.S. civilian and military personnel who worked with them. Many of the POWs returned to the United States after the war (some as male war brides). Every individual interviewed has a colorful, vivid, emotional story to tell of his experience with bullets and bombs, with the dead and the dying, and about the trauma of captivity. The interviews and archival data indicate that the United States treated its POWs very well for the most part, with a couple of dreadful exceptions, and that the POWs' participation helped us to win the war. Italian-Americans interested in their heritage and students of World War II will find these unique stories compelling and informative.
Download or read book World War II Italian Prisoners of War in Chambersburg written by Flavio G. Conti and Alan R. Perry and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2017 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During World War II, the US government interned more than 1,200 captured Italian soldiers at the Letterkenny Army Ordnance Depot located near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. These troops collaborated with the United States in a collective effort to defeat the Axis powers. They formed the 321st Italian Quartermaster Battalion, and their work consisted mainly of stocking and shipping materials--ammunition, military vehicles, weapons, and machinery parts--to the war fronts in the European and Pacific theaters of operation. For entertainment, the soldiers formed an orchestra and band and for sport, several different company soccer teams. As a sign of their faith, they built a chapel and bell tower, which are still used today. Many POWs forged deep friendships with Americans, and after the war, a few married their sweethearts and returned to live in the United States. Today, warm relations still continue between children and grandchildren of the POWs and the wider Chambersburg community.
Download or read book Virginia POW Camps in World War II written by Dr. Kathryn Roe Coker and Jason Wetzel and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2022-11-14 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tour the camps, learn stories of the daily lives of the POWs, and discover the impact they had on the Old Dominion. During World War II, Virginians watched as German and Italian prisoners invaded the Old Dominion. At least 17,000 Germans and countless Italians lived in over twenty camps across the state and worked on five military installations. Farmers hired POWs to pick apples. Fertilizer companies, lumber yards, and hospitals hired them. At first a phenomenon of war in Virginia's backyard, these former enemy combatants became familiar to many--often developing a rapport with their employers. Among them were die-hired Nazis and Fascists, but they benefited from double standards that placed them in better jobs and conditions than African Americans. Historians Kathryn Coker and Jason Wetzel tell a different story of the Old Dominion at War.
Download or read book Secret War at Home written by John Paul Bland and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The British Empire and its Italian Prisoners of War 1940 1947 written by B. Moore and published by Springer. This book was released on 2002-03-13 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Second World War, British and Imperial forces captured more than half a million Italian soldiers, sailors and airmen. Although a symbol of military success, these prisoners created a multitude of problems for the authorities throughout the war. This book looks at how the British addressed these problems and turned liabilities into assets by using the Italians as a labour force, a source of military intelligence and as a political warfare tool before their final repatriation in 1946-47.
Download or read book Italian POWs and a Texas Church written by Donald Mace Williams and published by Texas Tech University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interned in a camp in the Texas panhandle, more than 3,000 Italian POWs spent the last years of World War II an ocean away from their family and friends. A handful of men in camp were artists, and it was this small group of prisoners who struck a deal with the priest of a nearby Catholic church. In exchange for a home-cooked meal each noon, the artists agreed to decorate the plain church with murals and carvings. This compassionate story of courage and kindliness is as enduring as the artwork that still graces the walls of a modest Catholic church in a tiny Texas town.
Download or read book Italian POWs Speak Out at Last written by Carlo Ferroni (PhD) and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wars may be examined on many levels. On the grandest scale one can see them as the movements of masses of troops across a map with arrows and denotations of decisive battles. With a finer lens one can attempt to comprehend wars from the statements of national leaders or the strategic feints, thrusts, and parries of generals who order individual units across the battlefield. As valuable as these frames are in seeking to understand the reality of war, it is only by adding the perspectives of the individual soldiers that one can try to complete a thorough portrait of human conflict. That most critical and fine of lenses is the focus of this book. This is the story of World War II from the individual soldier's view as told by the men who fought for Italy on the Axis side and finished the conflict as prisoners of war (POWs). Through their accounts readers see the war as they experienced it.
Download or read book Prisoners of War and Local Women in Europe and the United States 1914 1956 written by Matthias Reiss and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together historians from Great Britain, the United States, Germany, France, Canada, Austria, and Latvia who have worked and published on fraternisation between Prisoners of War and local women during either the First or Second World War, providing the first comparative study of this multi-faceted phenomenon in different belligerent countries. By focusing on prisoners as wartime migrants and studying the nature and impact of their interactions with the local female population, this book expands the existing framework on prisoner of war studies. Its substantial scope and comparative approach make it an important point of reference in the growing research field of POW studies.
Download or read book Hellmira written by Derek Maxfield and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2020-05-15 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth history of the inhumane Union Civil War prison camp that became known as “the Andersonville of the North.” Long called by some the “Andersonville of the North,” the prisoner of war camp in Elmira, New York, is remembered as the most notorious of all Union-run POW camps. It existed only from the summer of 1864 to July 1865, but in that time, and for long after, it became darkly emblematic of man’s inhumanity to man. Confederate prisoners called it “Hellmira.” Hastily constructed, poorly planned, and overcrowded, prisoner of war camps North and South were dumping grounds for the refuse of war. An unfortunate necessity, both sides regarded the camps as temporary inconveniences—and distractions from the important task of winning the war. There was no need, they believed, to construct expensive shelters or provide better rations. They needed only to sustain life long enough for the war to be won. Victory would deliver prisoners from their conditions. As a result, conditions in the prisoner of war camps amounted to a great humanitarian crisis, the extent of which could hardly be understood even after the blood stopped flowing on the battlefields. In the years after the war, as Reconstruction became increasingly bitter, the North pointed to Camp Sumter—better known as the Andersonville POW camp in Americus, Georgia—as evidence of the cruelty and barbarity of the Confederacy. The South, in turn, cited the camp in Elmira as a place where Union authorities withheld adequate food and shelter and purposefully caused thousands to suffer in the bitter cold. This finger-pointing by both sides would go on for over a century. And as it did, the legend of Hellmira grew. In this book, Derek Maxfield contextualizes the rise of prison camps during the Civil War, explores the failed exchange of prisoners, and tells the tale of the creation and evolution of the prison camp in Elmira. In the end, Maxfield suggests that it is time to move on from the blame game and see prisoner of war camps—North and South—as a great humanitarian failure. Praise for Hellmira “A unique and informative contribution to the growing library of Civil War histories...Important and unreservedly recommended.” —Midwest Book Review “A good book, and the author should be congratulated.” —Civil War News
Download or read book Prisoner of War Camps Across America written by Kathy Kirkpatrick and published by . This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Little Italy in the Great War written by Richard N. Juliani and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-25 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Great War challenged all who were touched by it. Italian immigrants, torn between their country of origin and country of relocation, confronted political allegiances that forced them to consider the meaning and relevance of Americanization. In his engrossing study, Little Italy in the Great War, Richard Juliani focuses on Philadelphia’s Italian community to understand how this vibrant immigrant population reacted to the war as they were adjusting to life in an American city that was ambivalent toward them. Juliani explores the impact of the Great War on many immigrant soldiers who were called to duty as reservists and returned to Italy, while other draftees served in the U.S. Army on the Western Front. He also studies the impact of journalists and newspapers reporting the war in English and Italian, and reactions from civilians who defended the nation in industrial and civic roles on the home front. Within the broader context of the American experience, Little Italy in the Great War examines how the war affected the identity and cohesion of Italians as a population still passing through the assimilation process.
Download or read book Interlude in Umbarger written by Donald Mace Williams and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interned in a camp in the Texas panhandle, more than 3,000 Italian POWs spent the last years of World War II an ocean away from their family and friends. A handful of men in camp were artists, and it was this small group of prisoners who struck a deal with the priest of a nearby Catholic church. In exchange for a home-cooked meal each noon, the artists agreed to decorate the plain church with murals and carvings. This compassionate story of courage and kindliness is as enduring as the artwork that still graces the walls of a modest Catholic church in a tiny Texas town.
Download or read book History of Prisoner of War Utilization by the United States Army 1776 1945 written by George Glover Lewis and published by . This book was released on 1955 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book World War II POW Camps in Ohio written by Dr. James Van Keuren and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2018 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During World War II, more than six thousand prisoners of war resided at Camp Perry near Port Clinton and its branch camps at Columbus, Rossford, Cambridge, Celina, Bowling Green, Defiance, Marion, Parma and Wilmington. From the start, the camps were a study in contradictions. The Italian prisoners who arrived first charmed locals with their affable, easygoing natures, while their German successors often put on a serious, intractable front. Some local residents fondly recall working alongside the prisoners and reuniting with them later in life. Others held the prisoners in disdain, feeling that they were coddled while natives struggled with day-to-day needs. Drawing on first-person accounts from soldiers, former POWs and residents, as well as archival research, Dr. Jim Van Keuren delves into the neglected history of Ohio's POW camps.
Download or read book Controlling Sex in Captivity written by Matthias Reiss and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-06-14 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Controlling Sex in Captivity is the first book to examine the nature, extent and impact of the sexual activities of Axis prisoners of war in the United States during the Second World War. Historians have so far interpreted the interactions between captors and captives in America as the beginning of the post-war friendship between the United States, Germany and Italy. Matthias Reiss argues that this paradigm is too simplistic. Widespread fraternisation also led to sexual relationships which created significant negative publicity, and some Axis POWs got caught up in the U.S. Army's new campaign against homosexuals. By focusing on the fight against fraternisation and same-sex activities, this study treads new ground. It stresses that contact between captors and captives was often loaded with conflict and influenced by perceptions of gender and race. It highlights the transnational impact of fraternisation and argues that the prisoners' sojourn in the United States also influenced American society by fuelling a growing concern about social disintegration and sexual deviancy, which eventually triggered a conservative backlash after the war.
