Post by flycookie on Mar 8, 2008 16:12:49 GMT 12
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A sorry state
Review byChristian Tyler
Published: March 8 2008 00:22 | Last updated: March 8 2008 00:22
Italy’s Sorrow: A Year of War, 1944-45
By James Holland
HarperPress £25, 606 pages
FT bookshop price: £20
The year between the Allies’ final assault on Monte Cassino in 1944 and the end of the second world war was, says James Holland, one of the most terrible times in Italy’s history.
The civilian population stood helpless with “two armies ravaging its land’’, in the words of one Allied soldier. Society was close to collapse. There was starvation in the north, prostitution and corruption in the south, while behind the lines a sporadic but vicious civil war was being fought between fascists and partisans. Many small towns and villages were reduced to rubble by Allied bombing and shelling, even if all sides tried to spare Rome and Florence.
Italy’s Sorrow ambitiously tries to incorporate every element of the Italian campaign. There are some fine descriptive highlights. But the structure creaks under the sheer weight of material: advancing his narrative on so broad a front, the author is either reduced to a crawl, or forced into sudden changes of direction.
As a military historian, Holland gives full weight to the tactical arguments – born of strategic disagreement – between the gentlemanly General (later Earl) Alexander, commander-in-chief of Allied armies in Italy, and the vain, prickly General Mark Clark of the US Fifth. Their opponent, Field-Marshal “Smiling Albert’’ Kesselring, ordered brutal reprisals against partisans but conducted an impressively slow retreat over the mountainous terrain.
Frontline action on both sides is recorded through memoirs and interviews with ordinary soldiers and airmen, though not all these interviews add substance to the story, and a large number of minor characters are unnecessarily identified. Almost more vivid and violent are scenes from the parallel, proxy war. Italian partisans terrified the German troops and caused a lot of trouble. But not all were heroes; those who hunted down fascist neighbours provoked savage recrimination.
The German high command took its own revenge. When 33 troops of the SS were killed in the Via Rasella, Rome – the incident opens the book – 10 times that number were shot in the Ardeatine caves on the Appian Way. It was the first reprisal, but not the worst. Some 560 men, women and children were killed north of Lucca, and 772 (of whom 216 were partisans) at Monte Sole, near Bologna.
Random acts of rape and pillage, however, were rarely committed by the disciplined German soldiers. The Allies’ record was not so good; worst were the Moroccan “Goums’’ who committed an estimated 3,000 rapes, and went unpunished.
It is no fault of the author that after the high drama of Monte Cassino, the military story becomes somewhat repetitive, petering out in pitiful scenes of exhausted German soldiers trying to swim the River Po.
There is a lot of good material here – enough, indeed, for two separate books. The editors could have insisted on more cuts. But readers with a particular interest in the (under-reported) Italian campaign will doubtless be more than happy.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
A sorry state
Review byChristian Tyler
Published: March 8 2008 00:22 | Last updated: March 8 2008 00:22
Italy’s Sorrow: A Year of War, 1944-45
By James Holland
HarperPress £25, 606 pages
FT bookshop price: £20
The year between the Allies’ final assault on Monte Cassino in 1944 and the end of the second world war was, says James Holland, one of the most terrible times in Italy’s history.
The civilian population stood helpless with “two armies ravaging its land’’, in the words of one Allied soldier. Society was close to collapse. There was starvation in the north, prostitution and corruption in the south, while behind the lines a sporadic but vicious civil war was being fought between fascists and partisans. Many small towns and villages were reduced to rubble by Allied bombing and shelling, even if all sides tried to spare Rome and Florence.
Italy’s Sorrow ambitiously tries to incorporate every element of the Italian campaign. There are some fine descriptive highlights. But the structure creaks under the sheer weight of material: advancing his narrative on so broad a front, the author is either reduced to a crawl, or forced into sudden changes of direction.
As a military historian, Holland gives full weight to the tactical arguments – born of strategic disagreement – between the gentlemanly General (later Earl) Alexander, commander-in-chief of Allied armies in Italy, and the vain, prickly General Mark Clark of the US Fifth. Their opponent, Field-Marshal “Smiling Albert’’ Kesselring, ordered brutal reprisals against partisans but conducted an impressively slow retreat over the mountainous terrain.
Frontline action on both sides is recorded through memoirs and interviews with ordinary soldiers and airmen, though not all these interviews add substance to the story, and a large number of minor characters are unnecessarily identified. Almost more vivid and violent are scenes from the parallel, proxy war. Italian partisans terrified the German troops and caused a lot of trouble. But not all were heroes; those who hunted down fascist neighbours provoked savage recrimination.
The German high command took its own revenge. When 33 troops of the SS were killed in the Via Rasella, Rome – the incident opens the book – 10 times that number were shot in the Ardeatine caves on the Appian Way. It was the first reprisal, but not the worst. Some 560 men, women and children were killed north of Lucca, and 772 (of whom 216 were partisans) at Monte Sole, near Bologna.
Random acts of rape and pillage, however, were rarely committed by the disciplined German soldiers. The Allies’ record was not so good; worst were the Moroccan “Goums’’ who committed an estimated 3,000 rapes, and went unpunished.
It is no fault of the author that after the high drama of Monte Cassino, the military story becomes somewhat repetitive, petering out in pitiful scenes of exhausted German soldiers trying to swim the River Po.
There is a lot of good material here – enough, indeed, for two separate books. The editors could have insisted on more cuts. But readers with a particular interest in the (under-reported) Italian campaign will doubtless be more than happy.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
