Customer Reviews

Italy's Sorrow: A Year of War, 1944-1945

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've never read anything by James Holland before. Apparently I'm going to have to get used to historians (to say nothing of a President) who are younger than I, which is something of a jarring experience. The current book, however, is a well-researched, well-written account of the course of the campaign in Italy, basically from the last battle of Cassino up through the end of the war. The author spends a lot of time (more than used to be the fashion) discussing the impact of the war on civilians, and he also spends a lot of time discussing the lives of individual soldiers on both sides of the lines.

Cassino was one of the most frustrating battles of the war, for the Allies, and the author starts with it, recounting briefly the earlier battles, then recounting in considerable detail the successful attack by the Poles. He also spends a lot of time talking about the famous attack out of the Anzio bridgehead by Mark Clark's Fifth Army, and interestingly defends Clark's decision to turn towards Rome and capture it, as opposed to moving to the fabled Valmontane, where Alexander had ordered him to go. Holland discusses this incident, and the produces a map which shows the main German retreat routes from the Cassino front. Only one of them goes through Valmontane, and the author lets you know this was an alternate, less-important, route. The four further north, out of reach of Clark's forces no matter what he did, were the significant ones. Very interesting thesis.

That, in some ways, was the highlight of the book. There's a great deal of information here about various forces and battles, later in the campaign, and much of the information is very well-presented and the judgements are thoughtful. There isn't, however, anything in the way of ground-breaking scholarship for the rest of the book.

I did have a few misgivings. At times Holland's understanding of military technology seems a bit weak. One passage includes a discussion of something called an "Ofenrohre". I'm not the world's greatest expert on German militaria, but I know a lot of other amateur experts, and none of us had ever heard the term. It turns out "Ofenrohre" means "stovepipe" in German, and that this was the nickname for the Panzerschrek. *That* we would have understood, but he didn't include the name in the text or anywhere else. At other points he seems to get confused about gun calibers and things of that nature. He also has an odd habit of referencing U.S. Infantry divisions by their divisional nicknames, and occasionally getting them a bit wrong. So for instance, he refers to the 92nd "Buffalo" Division, when of course it should be (if you're going to do it this way) the 92nd "Buffalo Soldier" Division. The term "Buffalo Soldier" traces back to the Indian wars, when said Indians thought a black person's hair looked like buffalo fur.

Those few misgivings aside, this is an interesting, well-written book. It includes a considerable amount of information, and the text is well-illustrated by enough maps for you to follow the action as to what's going on. I really enjoyed the book, and would recommend it.

Italy's Sorrow is the story of the often forgotten Italian campaign in WWII. Despite Soviet calls for a "second front" from 1942, somehow the 1943 invasion of Sicily, and subsequent slog up the Italian peninsula, did not even count as a second front in WWII, despite tying up a large number of German troops, especially after the Italian surrender, and then switching sides to fight alongside the Allies.

Nonetheless, the war in Italy was an important part of WWII, and James Holland tells the story well. All sides of the conflict are covered off - the Allied forces, including Free French and Polish troops as well as the GI's and Brits, and the German defenders under Kesselring, with the Italian people caught in the middle, whether as partisans, auxliaries to one side or other, or civilians.

The campaign is analysed from a military standpoint, but the impact on Italy itself is never overlooked. In Masters and Commanders and The Storm of War Andrew Roberts questioned the value of the Italian front after the capture of Rome, but Holland never considers the question - it is clear that to leave simply half of Italy in German hands and settle into defensive positions was not an option for democracies who claimed to be fighting for freedom. German atrocities against Italians are detailed, and the impact of the Allies was at times scarcely less brutal, especially the French colonial Goums.

When reading about D-Day and the second battle of France, the impact on civilian life - the collateral damage, in today's terms - is made clear. What is also clear after reading Italy's Sorrow is that Italy suffered far worse - perhaps rightly, as a former Nazi ally - and that this suffering can largely be laid at the feet of Il Duce Mussolini himself. A case could probably be made that Nazi Germany might have been better off with Italy remaning a friendly neutral in WWII, trading with Germany but not co-belligerant with it. With no North Africa and Greece to ensnare German troops to rescue Italian adventurism, the Eastern push might have been quite different in 1941-42. Certainly Italy would have been better off without entry into WWII, which ended with much of the country in ruins and a popultion starved and shell shocked by war.

This ultimately is a frustrating book. First, the positives: Holland does an effective job demonstrating just how awful the last year of WWII in Italy really was. He puts a human face on the campaign by drawing on the recollections of several people who suffered through the campaign, including Americans, Brits, Canadians, Kiwis, South Africans, Poles, Germans, and Italians of all stripes (civilians, partisans, and Fascists). Moreover, he more than adequately explains and interprets military strategy and operations, and delves into politics (particularly in the Allied camp) just enough to provide some context for military decisions. In short, I feel I have a good understanding of how and why the last year of the war in Italy unfolded the way it did.

That said, "Italy's Sorrow" falls short in certain respects. Initially, while I understand that Holland wanted to focus on just the last year of the war, the book starts well into the Allied campaign to break the Gustav Line. This somewhat disconcertingly leaves the impression that at least a couple of preliminary chapters are missing. In addition, the book ends abruptly on May 2, 1945; there is a short postscript that describes what happened to the people the author quotes throughout his opus, but almost nothing beyond that. In light of the work's scope, these shortcomings (as well as a few awkward transitions in perspective) are forgiveable. However, stylistic inconsistency is not. The book sometimes reads well, but is riddled with many poorly written passages that would shame a college freshman. Over-repetition also is a problem, as is the occasional factual howler (e.g., early on, Holland describes pre-war Poland as a "beacon of democracy," when it in fact was an authoritarian state). An editor could easily fix these problems, so here's hoping the publisher decides to release a revised edition. If it does, then "Italy's Sorrow" could stand out as a definitive work on its subject.

James Holland's "Italy's Sorrow" is a powerful and illuminating study of the WW II battle for Italy. As a student of history, I find that warfare studies often concentrate so much on the fighting, the movement of army units, the effect of air support and all the other parts of the battle that they overlook the fact that the fighting is taking place somewhere, that people live there, and that those people are often in the way of the warfare. Holland has brought to vivid life the horrendous effect that the fighting up the Italian peninsula had on the towns and the townspeople who had the ill fortune to be in its way. Magnificently researched and with the geography (so much a part of everything in this stretch of warfare) closely described, Holland easily deserves five stars for this great book.

Rick Atkinson's coverage of the war in Italy through the capture of Rome was an excellent read, but Italy's Sorrow is an essential supplement as well as a great piece of historical writing on its own. The war in Italy was not over when Rome fell, and during the final year much went on that is of considerable interest including two major allied offenses. In addition Holland spends much time covering what the Italians were doing during 1944-45, a history of the Polish divisions before and in Italy, and (as reportedly in his other books) the war as seen by civilians, generals, and grunts. While Atkinson is American and Holland British, it is Holland who makes the best case for Clark and Alexander as able, talented generals.

There are many helpful maps, 32 pages of illustrations, and 539 pages of gripping text.

This covers the Italian campaign from just before the breaching of the Gustav line till the end of the war. The main thing that is new in the book is the discussion of the effect of the war on the Italian people. The Germans were able to use the mountainous territory of the Italian Peninsular to fight their most successful defensive campaign of the war. As they retreated the Germans destroyed all bridges and transport infrastructure. The allies used their air power to destroy anything power stations and other infrastructure. This meant that for the year covered by the book the lack of transport in both the German and Allied areas meant that civilians were on the brink of starvation. In the allied occupied areas at least half the woman under forty contracted venereal diseases as they turned to prostitution to try to make ends meet. French colonial troops also were poorly disciplined and raped very large numbers of Italian women.

In the context of the war the Italian campaign has been seen as something of a failure. The Russians wanted the allies to open a second front in France to draw large numbers of German troops away from the Eastern Front. Instead the allies first cleared the Germans out of Africa in 1942 and then invaded Italy in 1943. Churchill was the main advocate of the Italian strategy. He referred to Italy as the "soft underbelly of Europe". In the light of the bitter fighting that occurred for the next year this was seen as something of a bad joke. However there was some truth to Churchill's approach. The danger for the allies was that if they landed in France the Germans could use the European transport system to concentrate troops and actually win. In Italy the remoteness meant that they could not use allied mistakes to achieve a decisive victory. Thus the allies when they landed troops at Anzio moved slowly and soon their units were surrounded. However the Germans were not able to concentrate forces and to eliminate the beech head.

Whilst the Italian campaign was thus a safer option than France the terrain and remoteness which protected the allies from any real danger meant that the Germans were able to use reasonably limited forces to fight a tenacious defensive campaign.

In retrospect the Italian campaign does not seem to have achieved much. The major success was Italy overthrowing Mussolini and pulling out of the war. However the reality was that the Italian army by 1943 was ineffectual. The Germans were able to occupy Italy and they promptly occupied the industrial areas. They used Italians and slave labourers and sent of thousands to free up German workers for the army. In all probability this arrangement was more productive for the Germans as it is likely that if Italy continued to be a co-belligerent there would have been more active resistance to the use of workers as slave labourers.

The book is interesting as it does raise the issue of how dreadful the impact the campaign was on the civilian population and it gives a good narrative of the events. The weakness of the book is putting the campaign in the strategic context and seeing what effect it had on the rest of the war.

The above is a shortened quote from page 530. If the reader has got that far he'll be asking why the Italian statistic is missing.

The story is gripping but the writing isn't, and the book is long. This is partly because of the Balzacian repetition but also because the author tries to do too much. You might think that the title, Italy's Sorrow, would imply a focus on the Italians. Instead, it's sixty pages before we're introduced to one, and overall we get three stories: Grand Strategy, military events, the Italians. Holland at least sticks doggedly to chronology, but the scene changing between the allied front line, the German front line, HQs, partisans, fascists, Italian bystanders is clunky, and it's hard to remember where we met these characters before, let alone sympathise with them. The victims, in short, do not come alive on the page.

This despite the cliché. is the purpose of history. WW2 is well enough understood and the Italian campaign likewise. For the allies, it was a means to relieve pressure on Russia, and subsequently on the invasion of France. The allies achieved overwhelming numerical and material superiority but still had to battle inch by inch up the leg of Italy before final victory (when ironically the manpower difference was only about 1:1.4). We are used to WW1 generals being condemned as idiots, but the author is so fair to Clark and Alexander as to put doubt in the reader's mind. Hey, if Hannibal could do it (from the other end) why did the allies end up advancing nearly as slowly as the western front? The strategic feint may have been a colossal error and Kesselring (German commander) was right: "We tied up more of them than they tied up of us."

The author draws on Norman Lewis's memoir Naples '44, rarely in quotes. This is wise, as to compare yourself to one of the finest prose stylists of the 20th century is a comparison few of us would risk. I recommend Naples 44, and Mark Thompson's The White War, instead of this book.

Only for those who really need to know the details of the campaign.
Naples '44: A World War II Diary of Occupied ItalyThe White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919