Customer Reviews

The Battle for Rome : The Germans, the Allies, the Partisans, and the Pope, September 1943-June 1944

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The Italian campaign in World War II was a bloody (and that's not just a swear word, but also a description) waste of time, as the Allies followed Churchill's plan of hitting the "soft underbelly of Europe." Landings at Salerno in southern Italy and, in January 1944 at Anzio just south of Rome, resulted in a stalemate for a great many months, costing thousands of lives and not really gaining much. The ultimate objective was Rome, mainly for the propaganda coup that would benefit whichever army entered it first. When the Allies invaded, many Romans thought that they would be liberated in a matter of days. The Fascist government had been toppled and there's no way the Germans would try to hold Rome and fight in southern Italy.

Right?

The Battle for Rome, by Robert Katz, tells the story of a city that awaited that "matter of days" for 9 long months. Nine months of resistance activity, starvation, and oppression that battered the city's soul and resulted in the deaths of many, including almost the entire Jewish population. The sub-title of the book is "The Germans, The Allies, The Partisans, and the Pope." Katz examines all of these aspects of the Italian campaign, meshing them into a seamless narrative that's both provocative and fascinating to read. Well-researched and extensively documented, Katz makes use of many sources that have just come to light, including documents recently declassified by the CIA. He uses these to greatly criticize Pope Pius XII and his handling of the Roman situation. Katz doesn't examine the complete attitude of the Vatican toward Hitler's "Final Solution," but he does examine the attitude as it pertained to the round-up of Jews in Rome after the Germans occupied it, as well as its reaction to the massive reprisal that killed 335 Romans after a particularly effective Partisan attack. The Vatican (and especially the Pope) comes out of this wanting.

Not only was Pius silent in his criticism of the Holocaust, not only was he silent as the Germans systematically rounded up the Jews who were supposedly being protected by the Vatican, but he was silent as the Germans clamped down on the population of Rome, including one of the worst massacres in Italian history. Katz points out that, even if Papal silence in the face of the Holocaust facing Europe may have been "understandable" at times, what awaited his personal flock in Rome deserved some sort of outcry that never came. Instead, he sacrificed everything for a myth of an "open city" where no military presence was allowed. The Germans, while agreeing to this concept, ignored it when it came time to move troops to the front. Instead of protesting this, however, he criticized the Roman partisans for breaking the peace when they attacked. Instead of criticizing the Germans for cracking down on partisans, he instead blamed the partisans for it. The Vatican has been very reluctant to release documents from its archives pertaining to World War II, especially documents related to the Roman occupation.

Katz doesn't just tell the Vatican side of the story, though, and he doesn't just criticize Pius. He also tells of the Allied blundering in the Italian campaign, from the non-breakout of the Salerno beachheads that resulted in long months of fighting against Kesslering's various defensive lines, to the invasion at Anzio that, with a little bit of initiative, could have resulted in the fall of Rome in January, 1944. He uses the diary of General Mark Clark, the American general who eventually took Rome, very extensively, commenting on the relationship between him and his superior officer, General Alexander. Katz does not go into great detail on the fighting, though there is enough to understand what is going on. Instead, he concentrates on the politics of the Italian Campaign, the need to be the first to enter Rome and Churchill's attitude toward the whole thing.

Finally, Katz uses his contacts with some primary figures (OSS spy Peter Tompkins and Rosario Bentivegna) to detail life inside Rome, the partisan activity that took place there, and the endless political struggles between the various partisan groups that almost destroyed the Resistance from within. He uses personal stories in this case, including the diary of a Vatican nun and testimony from the trials of the various German figures within the city. Sometimes, Katz does make too much of an aside about the personal lives (especially Rosario and the woman who later became his wife) which distracts from the historical narrative, though it does add a bit of tension to the whole story which is kind of nice.

Katz weaves all this together into a narrative that is, at times, disjointed. He bounces around from the Vatican to the partisans, then takes a breather and talks about the Allied armies advancing (or, more often, not advancing) on Rome. This is a really effective way to tell the tale, especially all of the relationships between the various parties and the events in Rome, but it does grate at times.

The Battle for Rome is compelling, thought-provoking, and chilling at times. Katz spends a whole chapter on the reprisal for the partisan attack on the Via Rasella, telling in great detail about the round-up of the prisoners, taking them to the caves, and then shooting them five at a time. He details this from the German side, and it presents a picture of men who are revolted by what they are being ordered to do, but do it anyway rather than speak out. It really is quite intense, and the description may not be for the squeamish.

The Battle for Rome is a fascinating book that should be read by anybody interested in the subject. It's well-written and keeps your attention while you read some things that you may not have wanted to know. But you should.

David Roy

Don't let the title of this book confuse you. Mr. Katz uses the word "battle" in its broad sense- this is not a work primarily concerned with the nuts-and-bolts of the Allies attempt to wrestle Rome away from the Germans. There is some military history- the landing at Anzio and the "lost opportunity" to move quickly up the underdefended route to Rome are neatly summarized. But Mr. Katz is mainly concerned with personalities, diplomacy and morality. He focuses on a few of the partisans, so that we come to know them intimately. We go along on several of their "missions" and learn about both fear and bravery. One key mission, setting off a bomb on a street known to be part of the daily route followed by some German policemen, results in the deaths of 32 Germans- and results in the infamous reprisal known as the Ardeatine Caves massacre. Hitler was so angered by the attack on the policemen that he wanted 30-50 Italians, per each German killed, to be executed. "Cooler heads" prevailed and managed to get the ratio down to 10-to-1. Lists were drawn up to figure out who the unlucky 320 people would be- they were largely made up of Italians already in jail awaiting execution or life imprisonment for previous "crimes." As you might expect, when these numbers proved insufficient the Germans became less selective- they also wound up miscounting and wound up executing 5 extra people. A thread running throughout the book is the behind-the-scenes maneuvers by the Vatican and Pope Pius XII to remain neutral- so that Rome would not be devastated and also so that Vatican City and its inhabitants would be left alone. Mr. Katz fairly presents the Pope's position. He also clearly condemns the Pope and the Vatican hierarchy for a failure to provide moral leadership. A consistent failure to "speak up" allowed the Germans to act with impunity- to kill Roman Jews and non-Jews alike. Would "speaking up" have made any difference? We'll never know the answer to that question- but Mr. Katz is persuasive when he argues that the Pope had an obligation to condemn brutality and inhumanity- and he failed to do so in any forceful manner. Another interesting aspect of the book is the military politics that were played in the final push to Rome. American General Mark Clark was determined that the Americans would liberate Rome. He felt that our troops had earned that right after the casualties suffered at Anzio. Clark felt that British General Alexander was trying to manipulate strategy so that the British could get to Rome first. In the end, Clark prevailed. Mr. Katz manages to juggle all of the storylines without losing sight of the big picture. He also drops a bombshell in the epilogue- but I can't give that away. Suffice it to say that it involves some more unsavory behavior by Vatican officials.

My father was one of the soldiers who captured Rome in June 1944, so when I saw this book I knew that I wanted to read it. I found it very well-written, and it covered quite a bit of the history of the Nazi occupation of the Italian capital in 1943 & 1944. The emphasis was mainly on the partisan activity within the city itself, and the Allied military planning and actions take somewhat of a back seat, but it is important to note that the inside activity was extremely important to the eventual safe delivery of the city without the potential wholesale destruction that many people feared. Puis XII is shown to have attempted to steer a middle course between the occupiers and the Allies, to the point of compromising his moral authority as Pope. There were many things he could have, and probably should have, done, but he didn't, and it's difficult at this remove in time to attempot to stand in his shoes and judge his actions. In my humble opinion, he was found wanting, but that's an entirely different issue. The book is excellent, and worth reading!

I highly recommend this book; I gave it only four stars because, on occasion, it became too detailed and contained too many names for me to take in what I was reading. But the descriptions of the partisans' attack on Nazi troops at Via Rasella, and of the Nazi's response with their massacre of innocent Italians at Ardeatine Caves, are extremely vivid, with the description of the latter almost unbearable.

The partisans (Italian anti-fascists and anti-Nazis), two of whom we get to know well personally, killed 33 Nazi troops at Via Rasella with explosives. All the partisans escaped, and Hitler was so upset that he ordered that, in retribution, 30 to 50 Italians be shot for every German soldier who had been killed. The Nazi leaders in Italy, however, were too "moral" to carry out that order in full. They decided that 10 Italians for each German would be enough, and they did not want to kill innocent Italians at random. Therefore, they took Italian Jews, whom they figured would be murdered at Auschwitz anyway. Then they took Italians who were on death row (not necessarily for a good reason), because they figured that they'd die soon anyway. Those didn't add up to 330, so some of the 335 they murdered (they didn't count so well) they picked up at random. I found this example of "moral" behavior fascinating.

I was a student at a Catholic high school when Rolf Hochhuth's "The Deputy" was published. We were deeply shocked that anyone could suggest that the Holy Father was anything, but -- well -- holy. We know better now. Every new revelation about Pius XII and the Vatican is more sickening.

Robert Katz's well-told "Battle for Rome" would not be much more than a story for World War II buffs if it were not for Pacelli. Italy was a sideshow, and the sufferings of the Romans, real enough, did not amount to much, proportionally. The hideous massacre at the Ardeatine Caves, the signature crime of the German occupation, killed a mere 335 men and boys. In the USSR, the war killed more people than that every hour for four years.

The signature crime ought to have been the roundup of Rome's Jews. In the brutal calculus of the Holocaust, the Italians have come out near the top, along with Bulgaria and Denmark: Only a small proportion of Italian Jews went to the death camps. This was not out of any particular fondness of Italians for Jews. Pacelli was a typical Italian in every way and a devoted antisemite.

The Romans had no liking for fascism, but no great antipathy, either. When the Partisans finally rose up, it was against Germans, not Italian Fascists, except secondarily; and few had any liking for democracy. In that they were like Pacelli, too. If there is a glaring omission in "The Battle for Rome," it is Katz's failure to make clear how nationalistic the opposition was. The Italians had had reasons to detest Germans for a thousand years.

If Pacelli was unRoman in any way, it was his love of Germans.

"The Battle for Rome" has to cover a lot of ground: the infighting at the top of the Allied high command, and the infighting at the military command; the politics of postfascism; the emergence of the Partisans (who were themselves splintered a dozen ways); and, most provocatively, the policy of Pius.

Katz himself has been a minor victim of Pius. In 1974, the Pacelli family sued him for defamation of the pope. He was at one point sentenced to a long term in prison, although in the end, in a series of decisions that do no credit to Italian lawyers, the whole thing was dismissed on what seems to be a retroactive technicality.

While "The Battle for Rome" condemns Pacelli and his evil priests again, with more evidence than Katz had at hand in the `70s, the pope still gets the benefit of the doubt. Even Katz approaches the man and his position as if the default assumption should be that the Vatican is a respectable organization.

Katz treats Pacelli's policy of "silence" as a reasonable, if misguided and unsuccessful, form of international politics.

Until the very last paragraphs he maintains his tone of evenhandedness: something Pacelli claimed to have done, although Katz shows that he was pro-Nazi at all times. Pacelli's strongest wish was to see the Hitler regime survive. All Vatican policy was bent toward talking America and Britain into an alliance with Hitler to fight Stalin.

This is not as shocking, though, as something else Pacelli did. It was a crime that only a pope could commit.

Pacelli claimed first to last that his principal role was to protect his own city and its citizens. Rome was to be exempt from the devastation that was being visited on the cities of Europe and Asia.

Yet when the Italian government abandoned Rome and the Germans occupied it, Pius repeatedly begged the Germans to send more police, in order to keep down the "irresponsible" elements; that is, the antinazis and antifascists.

Pacelli had information from virtually every village in Europe. He knew exactly what it would mean to invite the Gestapo (and the Ordnungspolizei, the regular German police) into Rome. He demanded more and more German police. And he got them.

As a sad coda, after the war, the victors proved to have little heart for punishing the criminals it could catch, who were few enough since the Vatican organized the escape for, Katz estimates, at least 60,000 war criminals.

This is not intended as a complete review, as others do that well here, but simply a comment. Living in Poland and being very familiar with the wartime history here, and in Warsaw specifically, I had a hard time getting past the preface and that colored my reading of the rest of the book. While the Via Rasella ambush attack by ten partisans on a column of 156 SS police is obviously notable. Calling it "the boldest and largest Resistance assault, unequaled by the Partisan movements in any other of the German-occupied European capitals", when juxtaposing this against the realities in Warsaw, the statement is flat out hyperbole and made me question the integrity and veracity of other assertions in the book by extension - and that lingered with me. Perhaps a semantic argument could be made to classify those in Warsaw differently as they were better organized but that seems a weak argument and those events - and the reprisals - dwarf those of Via Rasella. Still, a good read overall - though it does not match the work of Anthony Beevor, Max Hastings or Norman Davis in my opinion.

Reading The Battle for Rome by Robert Katz, I felt as though I was an observer in an operating theatre...
the doctors, nurses, etc. replaced by the Partisans, Nazis, Allies and the Pope.

Moment by moment you are a witness to the courage and resolve of the Partisans, the hesitancy and intolerable silence of the Pope, the enigmatic maneuvering of the Allies and the treachery and atrocities of the Nazis.
The evidence that Katz places before us is indisputable yet surreal, as is the Holocaust in its entirety.

It is not an easy read for those of us who have never been aficionados of WW II narratives, but it is a book, once started, impossible to put down, once completed, impossible not to recommend.

Robert Katz is to be congratulated and thanked for reminding us what happened
when the Germans occupied Rome from late 1943 to Spring 1944. Hundreds of
Italians, Jews and others lost their lives before the Allied armies were able to
help because of the Pope's unwillingness to take a stand in defense of the
people and because of his fear of Communism and concern for the safety of the
Papal State. This book should be read by everyone interested in the history of
World War II. It is so well written that it reads like fiction.

Alex J. Rosenberg
New York

Just finished Robert Katz, The Battle for Rome. Had to carry on through Epilogs, sources and notes. What an enjoyable experience. Reads like an adventure. He writes with clear authority, great charm and undeniable sureness for detail. For me, Katz put many bits and fragments of Roman history that I only half understood into a comprehensive and inclusive whole. Every line rings true. I particularly liked his interweaving of such diverse perspectives, recollections, places, fragments and events into a cogent chronology. CONGRATULATIONS to the author of such a fine book!

There was a lot of intrigue keeping the eternal city whole. I felt the author did a good job of discussing the events that were central to the story, the struggle of the church to stand up to the Nazi's as best they could without bringing bombs raining down on the city. Should they have done more--undoubtedly yes. But lives saved are important. I enjoyed the writer's style and research