"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 Women at War explores Italian women's participation in war and conflict throughout Italy's modern history, beginning with the Unification and ending with the twentieth century. The essays in this volume, help to further the discussion on women's participation in violence, warfare, and political protest throughout Italy.

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.

Italian Women at War: Sisters in Arms from Unification to the Twentieth Century offers diverse perspectives on Italian women’s participation in war and conflict throughout Italy’s modern history, contributing to the ongoing scholarly conversation on this topic. Part one of the book focuses on heroines who fought for Italy’s Unification and on the anti-heroines, or brigantesse, who opposed such a momentous change. Part two considers exceptional individuals, such as Eva Kühn Amendola, who combatted both with her body and her pen, as well as collective female efforts during the world wars, whether military or civilian. In part three, where the context is twentieth-century society, the focus shifts to those women engaged in less conventional conflicts who resorted to different forms of revolt, including active non-violence. All of the women presented across these chapters engage in combat to protest a particular state of affairs and effect change, yet their weapons range from the literal, like Peppa La Cannoniera’s cannon, to the metaphorical, like Letizia Battaglia’s camera. Several of the essays in this volume discuss fictional heroines who appear in works of literature and film, though all are based on actual women and reference real historical contexts. Italian Women at War furthers the efforts begun decades ago to recognize Italian women combatants, especially in light of the recent anniversary of the Unification in 2011 and global discussions regarding the role of women in the military. Its aim is not to glorify violence and war, but to celebrate the active role of Italian women in the evolution of their nation and to demystify the idea of the woman warrior, who has always been viewed either as an extraordinary, almost mythical creature or as an affront to the traditional feminine identity.

It is quite impossible to attach importance to material possessions now. All that one still clings to is a few vital affections' Iris Origo, October 1943. Marchesa Iris Origo and her husband had been settled at their rural estate of La Foce since 1924. When the Second World War broke out Origo, an Englishwoman married to an Italian landowner, had divided loyalties. But as the war dragged on and the hostilities escalated, the small community of Val d'Orcia found themselves helping evacuees, orphans, refugees, prisoners of war and soldiers from both sides, concerned less with who was fighting whom than caring for those who needed their aid. Origo kept her diary throughout this time, when the risk of betrayal was a fact of life and the penalty for helping the enemy would result in death. Even with German troops occupying her manor house, she wrote at night about her valiant attempts to shelter refugees, burying her diary in the garden each morning. The result is a book which has become a classic, an affirmation in itself of courage and resistance, and an unsentimental, compelling story of the trials and tragedies of wartime.

In Italy in the Era of the Great War, Vanda Wilcox brings together nineteen Italian and international scholars to analyse the political, military, social and cultural history of Italy in the country’s decade of conflict from 1911 to 1922. Starting with the invasion of Libya in 1911 and concluding with the rise of post-war social and political unrest, the volume traces domestic and foreign policy, the economics of the war effort, the history of military innovation, and social changes including the war’s impact on religion and women, along with major cultural and artistic developments of the period. Each chapter provides a concise and effective overview of the field as it currently stands as well as introducing readers to the latest research. Contributors are Giulia Albanese, Claudia Baldoli, Allison Scardino Belzer, Francesco Caccamo, Filippo Cappellano, Selena Daly, Fabio Degli Esposti, Spencer Di Scala, Douglas J. Forsyth, Irene Guerrini, Oliver Janz, Irene Lottini, Stefano Marcuzzi, Valerie McGuire, Marco Pluviano, Paul O’Brien, Carlo Stiaccini, Andrea Ungari, and Bruce Vandervort. See inside the book.

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.

WOMAN AT WAR is the diary of a woman's growing self-awareness. Beginning as a passively absent narrator, Vannina encounters a fascinating array of characters during the holiday she takes on an island in the Bay of Naples with her husband, Giacinto. When he returns to work in a garage in Rome, Vannina travels to Naples with Suna, a friend she has made on vacation. This startling character opens Vannina to the possibility of finding love through other women and helps her reject the role of serving coffee to the men who would change the world through violence. Back in Rome, Vannina rejects her former life and moves toward complete, if difficult, independence. Maraini's writing is superb. Its warm and sensual style gives life to details: the food of the Mediterranean, the smell of its herbs, the acts of making coffee and making love, the step-by-step journey of an individual to self-awareness, self-reliance and independence. Everything is vivid and vibrant. Maraini's women grow in strength beyond the clamor of political slogans. The values of understanding, intuition and compassion effect real change that transcends the wearisome struggle between the chauvinisms of the political Right and the political correctness of the Left. A milestone in Italian literature.

World War II stories on Italian women in the Resistance as heroines and traitors, and the way they exploited their femininity. In Red Flag, a woman hides guns by covering them with a soiled sanitary napkin.

She began to turn the pages of the paper more quickly, searching for the details about the war, the scandal, the trial... She thought back to those days at the end, when trust in Italy was in short supply. Betrayal was everywhere and the world went mad. Italy, 2019: Each morning Livia Moretti sits in her favorite café in Florence, drinking espresso and reading the newspaper. To the tourists who pass by she is simply an old lady. They walk on without knowing the part she played in saving this beautiful city. To Livia too the dark days of war feel very far away. But one morning she sees the name Isabella Bellucci and is jolted right back to the past. To a time when Nazi troops marched through the city and you could trust no one. Italy, 1942: As a member of the Italian resistance, Livia monitors British radio transmissions from the secrecy of her little attic room, dedicating her time to decoding mystery messages that could have the power to save the lives of those she loves the most. Until the day her life intersects with Isabella Bellucci. And, in a strange twist of fate, a terrible misunderstanding will change the course of the war for both of them. One woman will never forgive herself. And the other will find herself betrayed...