The Arezzo Massacres A TuscanTragedy

The Arezzo Massacres A TuscanTragedy
Author: Janet Kinrade Dethick
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 150
Release: 2008-08-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 1409215423

This book examines the relationship between partisan activities and Nazi-fascist massacres (during which over one thousand civilians were killed ) in the Italian province of Arezzo during the spring and summer of 1944. It traces the growth of the partisan movement and the widening of its activities, beginning with the disarming of the Carabinieri and the cutting of telegraph wires and ending not only with attacks on German convoys but with actual battles with the German troops and their fascist supportersThe clamorous massacres of Vallucciole, Partina, Civitella in Valdichiana, San Pancrazio, Castelnuovo dei Sabbioni, San Giustino and San Polo are described as are all other instances when smaller numbers of civilians were killed in reprisalsSources include partisans' and survivors' individual testimonies, memorial tablets and monuments,accounts written by village priests, local historians and British soldiers, and German and Allied War Diaries

The Road to Civitella 1944

The Road to Civitella 1944
Author: Dee La Vardera
Publisher: Fonthill Media
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2017-01-20
Genre: History
ISBN:

The massacre and destruction of Civitella on 29 June, 1944 by the 1st Fallschirm Panzer Division 'Herman Goring' as reprisal for the shooting of three German soldiers in the village Dopolavoro-after work social club, left women widows and children fatherless. The book describes the journey of Captain John Percival Morgan and Father Clement O'Shea with the Eighth Army in Italy, to that hilltop village in Tuscany. Even though they had seen much death and destruction during their service in North Africa and Italy, they were moved by the plight of this small community. The two British officers adopted the village, and over a five-month period, regularly brought life-saving supplies and comfort to the women and children. The village organised a farewell Christmas party that survivors still remember today, treasuring gifts they received from their 'Santa in a truck'. Thanks to Keith Morgan, Captain Morgan's son, discovering Civitella in 1997, while retracing his father's wartime journey, this part of Civitella's history would have gone unrecorded and forgotten. In 2001, the village commemorated the work of this father and friends in the naming of a street Costa Capitano John Percival Morgan. A son found his father; a town its hero.

At War on the Gothic Line

At War on the Gothic Line
Author: Christian Jennings
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2016-03-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1466871733

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.

The Hermits of Big Sur

The Hermits of Big Sur
Author: Paula Huston
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2021-11-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0814685307

Between World War II and Vatican II, as Italy struggled to rebuild after decades of Mussolini’s fascism, an eleventh-century order of contemplative monks in the Apennines were urged by Thomas Merton to found a daughter house on the rugged coast of California. A brilliant but world-weary ex-Jesuit, who had recently withdrawn from a high-intensity public life to go into reclusion at the ancient Sacro Eremo of Camaldoli, was tapped for the job. Based on notes kept for over sixty years by an early American novice at New Camaldoli Hermitage, The Hermits of Big Sur tellsthe compelling story of what unfolds within this small and idealistic community when medievalism must finally come to terms with modernism. It traces the call toward fuga mundi in the young seekers who arrive to try their vocations, only to discover that the monastic life requires much more of them than a bare desire for solitude. And it describes the miraculous transformation that sometimes occurs in individual monks after decades of lectio divina, silent meditation, liturgical faithfulness, and the communal bonds they have formed through the practice of the “privilege of love.”

Monte Cassino

Monte Cassino
Author: Peter Caddick-Adams
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 413
Release: 2013
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199974640

Offers an authoritative account of the lesser-known yet devastatingly brutal battle waged by the Italian campaign during World War II.

The Missing Italian Nuremberg

The Missing Italian Nuremberg
Author: M. Battini
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2007-08-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 0230607454

This book explores how the trial of the entire military command of the Nazi power structure in Italy, prepared by the Allies following the Nuremberg mode, came to be replaced by a few contradictory trials of very minor significance. This resulted in an enormous historical misrepresentation of the Nazi occupation of Italy.

Death in the Mountains

Death in the Mountains
Author: Lisa Clifford
Publisher: Pan
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2010
Genre: Country life
ISBN: 9780330425254

"This is the true story of the murder of Artemio Bruni, a peasant farmer in the mountains of Casentino, north-eastern Tuscany, in the winter of 1907. Artemio was my husband's great-grandfather. For reasons not understood by my husband's family, Grandpa Artemio's death was never investigated. It was not reported to the police, nor did Bruna Bruni, Artemio's wife, ever demand justice. How could that be possible, I asked my mother-in-law – mafia? 'No, no, you don't understand,' she answered. 'Things were different in the mountains one hundred years ago. Grandpa and Grandma were poor farmers, no one could have cared less about them. Grandpa was a nobody and life was cheap in Tuscany then.'"When Australian author and journalist Lisa Clifford moved to Florence to be with her Italian husband, an unsolved murder in his family became part of her life. The more Lisa found out about it, the more intrigued she became – so much so that she was driven to investigate the tragic events of a century ago. Soon it was not just the murder that obsessed her but also the harsh existence of Artemio and his family, one that had continued unchanged since the middle ages and had none of the warmth and sophistication of the Florentine life she knew. Death in the Mountains is Lisa's brilliant recreation of the life and death of Artemio Bruni, and an evocation of the world of the Tuscan mountains in the early 20th century. It is both a murder mystery and a beautifully observed picture of a lost Italy.

Memory and World War II

Memory and World War II
Author: Francesca Cappelletto
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2005-08-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1847880096

Foreword by Michael LambekThe death and destruction of war leave behind scars and fears that can last for generations. This book considers the connections between memory and violence in the wake of World War II.Covering the range of European experiences from East to West, Memory and World War II takes a long-term approach to the study of trauma at the local level. It challenges the notion of collective memory and calls for an understanding of memory as a fine line between the individual and society, the private and the public. International contributors from a range of disciplines seek new ways to incorporate local memory within national history and consider whether memories of extreme violence can be socially transformed. Personal testimony reveals the myriad ways in which communities react to and reconstruct the horrors of war. What we learn is that terrifying experiences reside not only in memories of the past but remain embedded in present-day lives.