Italy's Sorrow

March 31, 2008
British historian and journalist Holland (Fortress Malta) vividly recalls the final year of World War II in Italy in this masterful narrative. The controversial decision to invade Sicily and Italy following the North African campaign was "purely opportunistic" and intended to draw German resources away from the main action in Normandy. As critics had feared, Italy, with its rugged mountains, was "a truly terrible place to fight," and the campaign became a bloody war of attrition. The final toll on combatants, civilians, and the Italian landscape was staggering; total casualties exceeded a million and entire cities were leveled. Cassino, the site of a decisive battle, was "utterly-100 per cent-destroyed" and Benevento resembled "a post-apocalyptic ruin." Holland's balanced account of the savage fighting and wholesale destruction draws on the eyewitness testimony of Allied and German combatants, Italian partisans and Fascist loyalists. He concludes-echoing historian Rick Atkinson's excellent recent account of the campaign, The Day of Battle-that despite its terrible cost, the fight in Italy played a decisive role in defeating Germany. A complementary volume to Atkinson's account focusing on the earlier stages of the campaign, this is popular history at its very best: exhaustively researched, compellingly written and authoritative.

March 10, 2008
British historian and journalist Holland (Fortress Malta) vividly recalls the final year of World War II in Italy in this masterful narrative. The controversial decision to invade Sicily and Italy following the North African campaign was "purely opportunistic" and intended to draw German resources away from the main action in Normandy. As critics had feared, Italy, with its rugged mountains, was "a truly terrible place to fight," and the campaign became a bloody war of attrition. The final toll on combatants, civilians, and the Italian landscape was staggering; total casualties exceeded a million and entire cities were leveled. Cassino, the site of a decisive battle, was "utterly-100 per cent-destroyed" and Benevento resembled "a post-apocalyptic ruin." Holland's balanced account of the savage fighting and wholesale destruction draws on the eyewitness testimony of Allied and German combatants, Italian partisans and Fascist loyalists. He concludes-echoing historian Rick Atkinson's excellent recent account of the campaign, The Day of Battle-that despite its terrible cost, the fight in Italy played a decisive role in defeating Germany. A complementary volume to Atkinson's account focusing on the earlier stages of the campaign, this is popular history at its very best: exhaustively researched, compellingly written and authoritative.

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2008
During the course of the past few years, historians and publishers have shown a renewed interest in World War II. The popularity of Ken Burns recent documentary The War is evidence that the general public is still fascinated by this iconic twentieth-century conflict. Though much has been written about the war in Europe, comprehensive treatments of the Italian campaign are far outnumbered by the vast array of books that document D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, and the race across Western Europe to Berlin. Holland attempts to fill the void with this meticulously researched history of the final year of the war in Italy. Readers new to this subject may be surprised to learn of the tremendous havoc and destruction wreaked upon Italy during 1944 and 1945; those more familiar with martial history will welcome this inclusive chronicle of the Allied, German, and Partisan campaigns in both the south and the north of the Italian peninsula.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)