Download or read book The Forgotten Front in Northern Italy written by Robert H. Schmidt and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A U.S. Army Signal Corps combat photographer, the author spent the winter of 1944-45 documenting the Gothic Line campaign, the Florence to Bologna to Bolzano operation that held in check 20 or so crack German divisions. He focused particularly on the brutal infantry battles in the Apennies, the desperate fighting of the Fifth Army in the Po Valley, and the severe weather and terrain that challenged the Allied troops. His memories and photographs of the operations reveal the harsh fighting and sometimes poignant moments of the men engaged in a battle that was overwhelmed by events at war's end and has been largely forgotten by history.
Download or read book A Soldier on the Southern Front written by Emilio Lussu and published by Rizzoli Publications. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rediscovered World War I masterpiece—one of the few memoirs about the Italian front—for fans of military history and All Quiet on the Western Front An infantryman’s “harrowing, moving, [and] occasionally comic” account of trench warfare on the alpine front seen in A Farewell to Arms (Times Literary Supplement). Taking its place alongside works by Ernst JŸnger, Robert Graves, and Erich Maria Remarque, Emilio Lussu’s memoir as an infantryman is one of the most affecting accounts to come out of the First World War. A classic in Italy but virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, it reveals in spare and detached prose the almost farcical side of the war as seen by a Sardinian officer fighting the Austrian army on the Asiago plateau in northeastern Italy—the alpine front so poignantly evoked by Ernest Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms. For Lussu, June 1916 to July 1917 was a year of continuous assaults on impregnable trenches, absurd missions concocted by commanders full of patriotic rhetoric and vanity but lacking in tactical skill, and episodes often tragic and sometimes grotesque, where the incompetence of his own side was as dangerous as the attacks waged by the enemy. A rare firsthand account of the Italian front, Lussu’s memoir succeeds in staging a fierce indictment of the futility of war in a dry, often ironic style that sets his tale wholly apart from the Western Front of Remarque and adds an astonishingly modern voice to the literature of the Great War.
Download or read book The Forgotten Front written by George H. Cassar and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With The Forgotten Front, George H. Cassar intends to demonstrate Italy's vital contribution to the Allied effort in the First World War. His account of the war in Italy covers the strategic considerations as well as the actual fighting.
Download or read book The Forgotten Front written by Walter C. Ladwig III and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-09 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After a decade and a half of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, US policymakers are seeking to provide aid and advice to local governments' counterinsurgency campaigns rather than directly intervening with US forces. This strategy, and US counterinsurgency doctrine in general, fail to recognize that despite a shared aim of defeating an insurgency, the US and its local partner frequently have differing priorities with respect to the conduct of counterinsurgency operations. Without some degree of reform or policy change on the part of the insurgency-plagued government, American support will have a limited impact. Using three detailed case studies - the Hukbalahap Rebellion in the Philippines, Vietnam during the rule of Ngo Dinh Diem, and the Salvadorian Civil War - Ladwig demonstrates that providing significant amounts of aid will not generate sufficient leverage to affect a client's behaviour and policies. Instead, he argues that influence flows from pressure and tight conditions on aid rather than from boundless generosity.
Download or read book The White War written by Mark Thompson and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-03-17 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In May 1915, Italy declared war on the Habsburg Empire. Nearly 750,000 Italian troops were killed in savage, hopeless fighting on the stony hills north of Trieste and in the snows of the Dolomites. To maintain discipline, General Luigi Cadorna restored the Roman practice of decimation, executing random members of units that retreated or rebelled. With elegance and pathos, historian Mark Thompson relates the saga of the Italian front, the nationalist frenzy and political intrigues that preceded the conflict, and the towering personalities of the statesmen, generals, and writers drawn into the heart of the chaos. A work of epic scale, The White War does full justice to the brutal and heart-wrenching war that inspired Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms.
Download or read book Battles in the Alps written by G. Irving Root and published by Publishamerica Incorporated. This book was released on 2008 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Far removed from the bloody battles of attrition in the rain and mud of northern France, there raged another desperate struggle between two of Europeas strongest yet most underrated powers, the Kingdom of Italy and the Empire of Austria-Hungary. Here, along a twisting, curving 475-mile-long battle line, fierce fighting was conducted among the lofty peaks and rugged countryside of the continentas most notorious mountain range, replete with all the difficulties of weather and the awesome challenges of movement and supply. Contingents of troops from all of the major warring powers eventually became involved in this war of extremes. Before it was over, two and one-half million casualties had been suffered and the map of Europe had been changed forever. Battles in the Alps chronicles this important theatre of the Great War, and explains in text and in maps the consequences of Italyas entry into hostilities and the changes resultant from its aftermath. Related incidents in the skies over the Front and on the waves of the adjacent Adriatic Sea are also narrated.
Download or read book The Day of Battle written by Rick Atkinson and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-09-16 with total page 852 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Forgotten Wars written by Włodzimierz Borodziej and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-01 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Włodzimierz Borodziej and Maciej Górny set out to salvage the historical memory of the experience of war in the lands between Riga and Skopje, beginning with the two Balkan conflicts of 1912–1913 and ending with the death of Emperor Franz Joseph in 1916. The First World War in the East and South-East of Europe was fought by people from a multitude of different nationalities, most of them dressed in the uniforms of three imperial armies: Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian. In this first volume of Forgotten Wars, the authors chart the origins and outbreak of the First World War, the early battles, and the war's impact on ordinary soldiers and civilians through to the end of the Romanian campaign in December 1916, by which point the Central Powers controlled all of the Balkans except for the Peloponnese. Combining military and social history, the authors make extensive use of eyewitness accounts to describe the traumatic experience that established a region stretching between the Baltic, Adriatic, and Black Seas.
Download or read book Italy s Sorrow written by James Holland and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2008 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Holland's ground-breaking account expertly documents the German advance to the stalemate of the Gothic line and a segment of Italian history that has been largely neglected. The war in Italy was the most destructive campaign in the west as the Allies and Germans fought a long, bitter and highly attritional conflict up the mountainous leg of Italy during the last twelve months of the Second World War. While the Allies and Germans were slogging it out through the mountains, the Italians were fighting their own battles, one where Partisans and Fascists were pitted against each other in a bloody civil war. Around them, civilians tried to live through the carnage, terror and anarchy while, in the wake of the Allied advance, beleaguered and impoverished Italians were forced to pick their way through the ruins of their homes and country and often forced into making terrible and heart-rending decisions in order to survive.
Download or read book Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front written by Serhii Plokhy and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The full story of the first and only time American and Soviets fought side-by-side in World War IIAt the conference held in Tehran November 1943, American officials proposed to their Soviet allies a new operation in the effort to defeat Nazi Germany. The Normandy Invasion was already in the works; what American officials were suggesting until then was a second air front: the US Air Force wouldestablish bases in Soviet-controlled territory. Though pushing relentlessly for the United States and Great Britain to do more to help the war effort - the Soviet body count was staggering - Stalin, recalling the presence of foreign troops during the Russian Revolution, balked. His concern was thatthe American presence would inflame regional and ideological differences. Eventually in early 1944, Stalin was persuaded to give in, and Operation Baseball and then Frantic were initiated. B-17 Superfortresses were flown from bases in Italy to the Poltova region (in what is today Ukraine).As Plokhy's fascinating and utterly original book shows, what happened on these airbases mirrors the fate of the Grand Alliance itself. While both sides were fighting for Germany's unconditional surrender, differences arose that no common purpose could overcome. Soviet secret policeman watched overthe Americans, shadowing every move, and eventually trying to prevent fraternization between American airmen and local women. A catastrophic air raid by the Germans revealed the limitations of Soviet air defenses. Relations soured and the operations went south. Based on previously inaccessiblearchives, Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front offers a bottom-up history of the Grand Alliance itself, showing how it first began to collapse on the airfields of World War II.
Download or read book Sacrifice on the Steppe written by Hope Hamilton and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2011-06-08 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When GermanyÕs Sixth Army advanced to Stalingrad in 1942, its long-extended flanks were mainly held by its allied armiesÑthe Romanians, Hungarians, and Italians. But as history tells us, these flanks quickly caved in before the massive Soviet counter-offensive which commenced that November, dooming the Germans to their first catastrophe of the war. However, the historical record also makes clear that one allied unit held out to the very end, fighting to stem the tideÑthe Italian Alpine Corps. As a result of MussoliniÕs disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany, by the fall of 1942, 227,000 soldiers of the Italian Eighth Army were deployed on a 270km front along the Don River to protect the left flank of German troops intent on capturing Stalingrad. Sixty thousand of these were alpini, elite Italian mountain troops. When the Don front collapsed under Soviet hammerblows, it was the Alpine Corps that continued to hold out until it was completely isolated, and which then tried to fight its way out through both Russian encirclement and ÒGeneral Winter,Ó to rejoin the rest of the Axis front. Only one of the three alpine divisions was able to emerge from the Russian encirclement with survivors. In the all-sides battle across the snowy steppe, thousands were killed and wounded, and even more were captured. By the summer of 1946, 10,000 survivors returned to Italy from Russian POW camps. This tragic story is complex and unsettling, but most of all it is a human story. Mussolini sent thousands of poorly equipped soldiers to a country far from their homeland, on a mission to wage war with an unclear mandate against a people who were not their enemies. Raw courage and endurance blend with human suffering, desperation and altruism in the epic saga of this withdrawal from the Don lines, including the demise of thousands and survival of the few. Hope Hamilton, fluent in Italian and having spent many years in Italy, has drawn on many interviews with survivors, as well as massive research, in order to provide this first full English-language account of one of World War IIÕs legendary stands against great odds.
Download or read book The War North Of Rome written by Thomas R. Brooks and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2009-09-09 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The British had a song for it: "Oh, we are the D-Day Dodgers," based on a comment from a female member of Parliament that dismissed all those not on the beaches at Normandy as draft evaders. Indeed, after the invasion of France the Allied armies in Italy found themselves in a forgotten theater of war. Until now, their eleven-month saga of bitter combat and gallant sacrifice has been ignored.The problem for the Allies was that the fall of the Italian capital on June 4, 1944- although a spectacular public relations triumph- did not end the campaign. The Germans had simply conducted a short strategic withdrawal, conceding one objective while proceeding to fortify additional defense lines.From Salerno to Rome, and most famously at Cassino, the Germans took advantage of the mountains, ridges and rivers that crisscross Italy to exact every drop of blood from the Allied forces. Although the press was no longer paying attention, in the north of Rome the process of continued Allied offensives met by a German resistance that alternated between ferocity and flexibility.A notable feature of the combat in Italy was the large mixture of Allied nationalities involved. Although the American Fifth and the British Eighth Armies were the major forces, on different parts of the line fought South Africans, Canadians, Greeks, Nisei, Jews, Poles, French, Gurkhas, Indians and others. The first U.S. black division fought here, as well as the Brazilian contingent (a curiosity to the Germans, who constantly probed their front).The War North of Rome features a forward by Senator Bob Dole, who fought in this neglected theater of war. He was one of 364 wounded (98 killed) in his regiment's attack on a series of German-held hills. Though he barely survived the battle he states, "I always felt I was fortunate . . ."By the time Allied forces vanquished the enemy in Italy, Russian soldiers were already dancing on Hitler's grave. Nevertheless, our young men north of Rome fought as bravely, and suffered as much, as troops on any front in WWII. Their record of courage and sacrifice is described here in a long-overdue, comprehensive account.
Download or read book Forgotten Armies written by Christopher Alan Bayly and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early stages of the Second World War, the vast crescent of British-ruled territories stretching from India to Singapore appeared as a massive Allied asset. It provided scores of soldiers and great quantities of raw materials and helped present a seemingly impregnable global defense against the Axis. Yet, within a few weeks in 1941-42, a Japanese invasion had destroyed all this, sweeping suddenly and decisively through south and southeast Asia to the Indian frontier, and provoking the extraordinary revolutionary struggles which would mark the beginning of the end of British dominion in the East and the rise of today's Asian world. More than a military history, this gripping account of groundbreaking battles and guerrilla campaigns creates a panoramic view of British Asia as it was ravaged by warfare, nationalist insurgency, disease, and famine. It breathes life into the armies of soldiers, civilians, laborers, businessmen, comfort women, doctors, and nurses who confronted the daily brutalities of a combat zone which extended from metropolitan cities to remote jungles, from tropical plantations to the Himalayas. Drawing upon a vast range of Indian, Burmese, Chinese, and Malay as well as British, American, and Japanese voices, the authors make vivid one of the central dramas of the twentieth century: the birth of modern south and southeast Asia and the death of British rule.
Download or read book At War on the Gothic Line written by Christian Jennings and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-03-08 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christian Jennings's At War on the Gothic Line tells the little-known story of the Allied effort to break the German defenses in Northern Italy—told through the eyes of the multi-national force that fought it. In the autumn of 1944, as Patton’s army paraded through Paris, another Allied force was gathering in southern Italy. Spearheaded by over 100,000 American troops, this vast, international army was faced with a grim task—break The Gothic Line, a series of interconnected German fortifications that stretched across the mountains of northern Italy. Striving to reach Europe’s vulnerable underbelly before the Red Army, these Allied soldiers fought uphill against entrenched enemies in some of the final and most brutal battles of the Second World War. In At War on the Gothic Line, veteran war correspondent and historian Christian Jennings provides an unprecedented look inside this unsung but highly significant campaign. Through the eyes of thirteen men and women from seven different countries, Jennings brings history to life as he vividly recounts the courageous acts of valor performed by these soldiers facing overwhelming odds, even as many experienced discrimination at the hands of their allies and superiors. Witness the courage of a young Japanese-American officer willing to die for those under his command. Lie in wait with a troop of Canadian fur trappers turned snipers. Creep along mountain paths with Indian warriors as they assault fortified positions in the dead of night. Learn to fear a one-armed SS-Major guilty of some of the most atrocious war-crimes in the European theater. All these stories and more pack the pages of this faced-paced, action-heavy history, taking readers inside one of the most important, and least discussed, campaigns of World War Two.
Download or read book The Italian Army In North Africa written by Walter S. Zapotoczny Jr. and published by Fonthill Media. This book was released on 2018-08-17 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Previously unpublished analysis of why and how the Italians foughtA look at the role the Italian Army played in North Africa as part of the Deutsches Afrika Korps (German Afrika Korps)In spite of poor leadership, the Italian soldier performed well against all odds in North AfricaProfusely illustrated with many rare and unpublished images ‘The German soldier has impressed the world, however, the Italian Bersagliere soldier has impressed the German soldier.’ Erin Rommel aka ‘The Desert Fox’ When most people think of the Italian Army in North Africa during the Second World War, they tend to believe that the average Italian soldier offered little resistance to the Allies before surrendering. Many suggest that the Italian Army performed in a cowardly manner during the war: the reality is not so simple. The question remains as to whether the Italians were cowards or victims of circumstance. While the Italian soldier’s commitment to the war was not as great as that of his German counterpart, many Italians fought bravely. The Italian Littorio and Ariete Divisions earned Allied admiration at Tobruk, Gazala and EI Alamein. The Italian Army played a significant role as part of the German Afrika Korps and made up a large portion of the Axis combat power in North Africa during 1941 and 1942. In the interest of determining how the Italian Army earned the reputation that it did, it is necessary to analyse why and how the Italians fought.
Download or read book Behind the Forgotten Front written by Barbara Hawkins and published by Bublish, Inc.. This book was released on 2019-08-02 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 75 years after WWII headlines of Pearl Harbor, Normandy and Hiroshima hit the press, the China-Burma-India Theater is brought to light in Behind the Forgotten Front. It's 1942, and Harry Flynn leaves behind the love of his life to journey into East Asia, a world of tigers, elephants and Himalayan Mountains. He enlists to fight, expecting to find the thrill of danger and honor of military service. Instead, Harry is ordered to the Forgotten Front in the Indian subcontinent as an ordinary supply officer. There, General Joseph 'Vinegar Joe' Stilwell is constructing a 'road to nowhere' through Japanese-occupied Burma—and he’s willing to complete it at any cost. In an exotic world with Naga headhunters, opium-smoking Kachin tribesmen, and marauders who scorn both life and death, Harry must entrust his life to others if he is to survive the war. During a time when boys are forced to come of age on the battlefield, and where death and insanity seem to be the only ways out, Harry must find what makes his life worth living. The lessons learned in WWII apply to all wars where men walk away carrying unspeakable memories about the lives that could have been. Behind the Forgotten Front takes you to the overlooked battles in the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II and shows you that history is about facts driven by the passions and sometimes the mistakes of real people.
Download or read book The Last of the Doughboys written by Richard Rubin and published by HMH. This book was released on 2013-05-21 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Before the Greatest Generation, there was the Forgotten Generation of World War I . . . wonderfully engaging” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). “Richard Rubin has done something that will never be possible for anyone to do again. His interviews with the last American World War I veterans—who have all since died—bring to vivid life a cataclysm that changed our world forever but that remains curiously forgotten here.” —Adam Hochschild, author of To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918 In 2003, eighty-five years after the end of World War I, Richard Rubin set out to see if he could still find and talk to someone who had actually served in the American Expeditionary Forces during that colossal conflict. Ultimately he found dozens, aged 101 to 113, from Cape Cod to Carson City, who shared with him at the last possible moment their stories of America’s Great War. Nineteenth-century men and women living in the twenty-first century, they were self-reliant, humble, and stoic, never complaining, but still marveling at the immensity of the war they helped win, and the complexity of the world they helped create. Though America has largely forgotten their war, you will never forget them, or their stories. A decade in the making, The Last of the Doughboys is the most sweeping look at America’s First World War in a generation, a glorious reminder of the tremendously important role America played in the “war to end all wars,” as well as a moving meditation on character, grace, aging, and memory. “An outstanding and fascinating book. By tracking down the last surviving veterans of the First World War and interviewing them with sympathy and skill, Richard Rubin has produced a first-rate work of reporting.” —Ian Frazier, author of Travels in Siberia “I cannot remember a book about that huge and terrible war that I have enjoyed reading more in many years.” —Michael Korda, The Daily Beast
