12278 Two Book Recommendations

For all those who are interested in Italian history and in particular military affairs I would like to recommend 2 books that I have just finished reading:-

1. The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915 - 1919 by Mark Thompson

This is a quite brilliant narrative history of the war on the Italian front described as "a major forgotten conflict of the First World War". It certainly came as a great eye-opener for me. I was familiar with the account Ernest Hemingway gives in "A Farewell to Arms" which vividly recreates what I now know was the 12th Battle of the Isonzo and the retreat from Caporetto. I had not realised before that on the German/Austrian side, one of the company commanders of the Wurttemberg Mountain Battalion, was to quote "a 25 year old lieutenant, a born soldier and natural leader, clear-headed, physically tough and avid for glory. His name was Erwin Rommel." Instead of attacking on broad fronts like the Italian commander, General Luigi Cadorna, persisted in doing throughout the war Rommel would isolate Italian strongholds and often leave them where they were and continue advacing with his mobile platoon.

Thompson ruthlessly dissects the character of Cadorna who comes across as a vindictive, stubborn commander who never seemed to learn anything from his endless defeats and was dismissed after the defeat at Caporetto. He restored the Roman practice of "decimation", executing random members of units that he believed had retreated or not fought bravely enough. There are some harrowing pages dealing with these executions. Apparently the phrase "doing a Cadorna" became British soldiers' slang "for coming unstuck, perpetrating an utter ****-up and paying the price". [Please remember I am quoting here!! You will have to guess word Thompson uses as asterisks have taken over!!]

Thompson makes all the military tactics clear and analyses the principal players and their motives with great skill.

2. Italy's Sorrow: A Year of War, 1944 - 45 by James Holland

The material here is much more familiar to me and, of course, it is much better documented than events in first book. It is very thorough, although Holland doesn't quite have the skill of Thompson as a writer. Holland does not flinch away from brutalities committed by either side. He writes vividly of a massacre of civilians on Monte Sole where a small group of Waffen SS men gunned down the population of a whole village in a local cemetry. I quote:"772 people were killed over 3 days on Monte Sole, and, as with the slaughter of 191 in the cemetry at Casaglia, most were civilians, making it the single worst massacre in Western Europe during the entire war." On the Allied side Holland writes of the appalling behaviour of the Moroccan Goumiers - "raping, murdering and pillaging more than 3,000 Italians...a terrible stain on the Allied victory and one that has since been largely swept under the carpet. Medieval in appearance and attitude, they were justifiably feared by Germans and Italians alike." I knew nothing of this.

There is much to learn in both of these books.