Books about Italian forces on the Eastern Front
Books about Italian forces on the Eastern Front
I can not read Italian, so I'd really appreciate any recommendations for books in English which cover the Italian participation on the Eastern Front, if there are any that exist.
Re: Books about Italian forces on the Eastern Front
Honestly, I don't think that there is any definitive book about the Italian campaign in USSR during WW2 not even in Italian language. Giorgio Scotoni's books, which are very good and informative, make extensive use of Soviet and Italian sources, but less of German ones, and are not complete (and, anyway, not published in English language). I know that David M. Glantz was making research about this topic some years ago, but no study has been published yet. Please notice that the Eastern front is, along with the civil war in Italy in 1943-45, the most politicized topic of the Italian involvement in WW2.
Anyway, the following are the sole books in English language about this topic that I know:
B.M. Scianna, "The Italian War on the Eastern Front, 1941–1943: Operations, Myths and Memories"
M.T. Giusti, "Stalin's Italian Prisoners of War"
Q. Antonelli, L. Gardumi, G. Scotoni, "Back to the Don River. An Exhibition on the Italian War in the Soviet Union"
E. Corti, "Few Returned: Twenty-eight Days on the Russian Front, Winter 1942-1943"
M. Rigoni Stern, "The Sergeant in the Snow"
N. Revelli, "Mussolini's Death March: Eyewitness Accounts of Italian Soldiers on the Eastern Front"
Ciro Paoletti's excellent book about Italian military history devotes some space to this topic, but if I were you I would buy it only if you have a broader interest in Italian history and not only on the Russian front:
C. Paoletti, "A Military History of Italy"
Anyway, the following are the sole books in English language about this topic that I know:
B.M. Scianna, "The Italian War on the Eastern Front, 1941–1943: Operations, Myths and Memories"
M.T. Giusti, "Stalin's Italian Prisoners of War"
Q. Antonelli, L. Gardumi, G. Scotoni, "Back to the Don River. An Exhibition on the Italian War in the Soviet Union"
E. Corti, "Few Returned: Twenty-eight Days on the Russian Front, Winter 1942-1943"
M. Rigoni Stern, "The Sergeant in the Snow"
N. Revelli, "Mussolini's Death March: Eyewitness Accounts of Italian Soldiers on the Eastern Front"
Ciro Paoletti's excellent book about Italian military history devotes some space to this topic, but if I were you I would buy it only if you have a broader interest in Italian history and not only on the Russian front:
C. Paoletti, "A Military History of Italy"
Re: Books about Italian forces on the Eastern Front
Thank you very much, that was much more than I was expecting in this thread. I will have a look at those books and see which ones I can get my hands on.
Re: Books about Italian forces on the Eastern Front
I have just found also this new book:
P. Romeo di Colloredo Mels, "Italian Black Shirts on the Eastern Front 1941-1943".
P. Romeo di Colloredo Mels, "Italian Black Shirts on the Eastern Front 1941-1943".
- Jeff Leach
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Re: Books about Italian forces on the Eastern Front
Should mention, "Le Operazioni Delle UnitÀ Italiane al Fronte Russo (1941 - 1943), Ministero Della Difesa, Stato Maggiore Dell'esercito, Ufficio Storico, Roma 1977
It the offical history with 43 fold out maps and really nice order of battle. Worth looking at even if you can't read Italian.
Alot of the English books I read really play up the 'Good Italian - Bad German' theme, which I don't personally believe.
It the offical history with 43 fold out maps and really nice order of battle. Worth looking at even if you can't read Italian.
Alot of the English books I read really play up the 'Good Italian - Bad German' theme, which I don't personally believe.
Re: Books about Italian forces on the Eastern Front
You are free to believe whatever you want, but the mere fact that Italian veterans were welcomed in USSR for decades after the war would be more than enough to justify this "theme".Jeff Leach wrote: ↑07 Sep 2020, 13:57Alot of the English books I read really play up the 'Good Italian - Bad German' theme, which I don't personally believe.
Re: Books about Italian forces on the Eastern Front
I'm not disputing what you're saying, but I'd be curious to know what you mean by Italian veterans being welcomed into the USSR after the war. Why/When were Italian veterans traveling to the post-war USSR? From what I heard, the Italian soldiers who were taken prisoner during the war were treated pretty rough by the Soviets, and many were still missing after 1945...
Re: Books about Italian forces on the Eastern Front
Since the Sixties travels in group were organized by Italian veterans associations and Soviet-Russian organizations in the places were Italian troops had stationed during the War. At first these travels were clearly a Soviet propaganda tool to cover the outrage in Italy for the death of the vast majority (more than 80%) of the Italian PoWs, but, to be honest, Italian veterans in first place did not blame the Russian people that they had met during the occupation for the fate of their comrades, which occurred in captivity and outside the control of the civilians, who were to some extent victims of the Soviet regime too. Fraternization with the local civilians was common during the occupation and some friendships and even loves started during it.Hyus wrote: ↑07 Sep 2020, 17:43I'm not disputing what you're saying, but I'd be curious to know what you mean by Italian veterans being welcomed into the USSR after the war. Why/When were Italian veterans traveling to the post-war USSR? From what I heard, the Italian soldiers who were taken prisoner during the war were treated pretty rough by the Soviets, and many were still missing after 1945...
Read, for example, the beginning of this article published on the Italian journal "Corriere della Sera" in 1978 reporting one of these travels (https://www.unirr.it/viaggi/554-pellegr ... ussia-1978):
They have traveled, in twelve days, 7,660 kilometers. By aircraft, by train, by bus, along the roads of five large Soviet cities. They have been welcomed with liking, cordiality, extreme care. They were 143: they have treated them, one by one, with the military honours. So the veterans, and the relatives of the fallen and missing. "This visit of yours" it has been often repeated in the buffets and in the welcome speeches "strengthens the relations between the Soviet and Italian peoples, deletes the blood painfully shed during the war, makes honour to our and yours fallen, strengthens the desire for peace in all of us."
Re: Books about Italian forces on the Eastern Front
Thank you, something which I was completely ignorant of. I had of course heard that Italian forces on the Eastern Front were viewed as more lenient than the Germans (and certainly more lenient than Italians in Yugoslavia), but I wasn't aware of these post-war veterans trips.
Re: Books about Italian forces on the Eastern Front
Italian occupation forces behaved in accordance to the environment in which they found themselves. Where civilians did not engage in criminal activities there was no reason to retaliate. In the Soviet territories occupied by Italian troops partizan activity was nearly unexisting and therefore no tensions developed with civilians. An even more quiet situation was in France and Corsica, instead in central-northern continental Greece the situation was worse, and in former Yugoslavia it was more or less a slaughterhouse, with its obvious consequences. But, and I wish to stress this, the Italian forces always had to adapt to the kind of irregular warfare that the occupied population wished to wage, if the latter behaved according to the laws of war no harsh actions by the Italian occupation forces ever occurred.
Re: Books about Italian forces on the Eastern Front
If Italy hadn't invaded those places in the first place, no guerilla resistance would have been necessary. I see no justification for massacres of civilians in response to guerilla attacks (which were perpetrated by Italian troops in Yugoslavia). I think that the "mild' behavior of Italians on the Eastern Front had more to do with the fact that Italy had no real desire to colonise those lands, so they did not feel the need to ethnically cleanse them as they tried to do in Yugoslav territories with the mass deportations of Slavs from their homes to concentration camps.
Re: Books about Italian forces on the Eastern Front
Hyus, I don't know which sources have you read, but there was not even distantly any plan of ethnic cleansing of the territories occupied by Italy (which, actually, was perperatred at the end of the war by the Yugoslavs on Italian people), and reprisals (included the execution of civilians, which anyway were carried out very rarely by the Italian Army, as the executions were usually carried out on captured partizans) were a legitimate act of war in front warcrimes committed by the enemy. If you had the barest idea of the constant massacres in which the Italian forces found themselves involved in Yugoslavia, massacres that they did their utmost to stop in first place, you would not blame that situation on them.
Moreover, invading a country doesn't give to its people the right to wage illegal warfare actions and the Italian invasion of Yugoslavia was more than justified, given that it was a preemptive action in face of the Yugoslav plans, made with UK and Greece, to attack Italy and, in particular, Albania.
Moreover, invading a country doesn't give to its people the right to wage illegal warfare actions and the Italian invasion of Yugoslavia was more than justified, given that it was a preemptive action in face of the Yugoslav plans, made with UK and Greece, to attack Italy and, in particular, Albania.
Re: Books about Italian forces on the Eastern Front
I think I'll have to leave this conversation then, we seem to have very different ideas on how Italian forces acted in that part of the world. If Italy hadn't wanted to cleanse Slavs from parts of Yugoslavia to make way for Italian settlement, there would have been no horrors like the Rab concentration camp (and other similar camps run by Italians where Slavs were forcibly removed to). I remind you of the words of Mario Roatta: "If necessary don't shy away from using cruelty. It must be a complete cleansing. We need to intern all the inhabitants and put Italian families in their place."DrG wrote: ↑08 Sep 2020, 14:21Hyus, I don't know which sources have you read, but there was not even distantly any plan of ethnic cleansing of the territories occupied by Italy (which, actually, was perperatred at the end of the war by the Yugoslavs on Italian people), and reprisals (included the execution of civilians, which anyway happened very rarely, as the execution were usually carried out on captured partizans) were a legitimate act of war in front warcrimes committed by the enemy. If you had the barest idea of the constant massacres in which the Italian forces found themselves involved in Yugoslavia, massacres that they did their utmost to stop in first place, you would not blame that situation on them.
Moreover, invading a country doesn't give to its people the right to wage illegal warfare actions and the Italian invasion of Yugoslavia was more than justified, given that it was a preemptive action in face of the Yugoslav plans, made with UK and Greece, to attack Italy and, in particular, Albania.
Re: Books about Italian forces on the Eastern Front
Hyus,
I think you are somewhat misinformed about the reasons of Slovene/Croat civilians being deported to concentration camps during the Italian occupation. The purpose was not to cleanse the annexed territories of their Slav populations, but to deprive the partisans of the support (real or perceived) of the civilian population. A bit like it had been done in Libya in the 1920s or like the British had done with Boer civilians during the Boer War. The same is true for the massacres of civilians carried out by the Germans in occupied Italy post-September 1943, which were on a similar scale (perhaps even greater) than massacres of civilians carried out by Italian troops in occupied Yugoslavia. Were the Germans trying to ethnically cleanse Italy of Italians? Of course no. They were trying to deprive the partisans of the civilians' support through a terror campaign.
Indeed, these concentration camps were established after the partisan guerrilla campaign got going; initially there had been attempts at a 'milder' approach towards the Slavic population. It is true that some of the most radical fascists/nationalists wanted to forcibly relocate the entire Slavic population and to replace it with Italians (one of such ideas was to award lands seized from Slavs to families of fallen Italian soldiers), but these plans were rejected as, if anything, impractical and hardly executable. The purpose of "Italianizing" these lands was seen as achievable through gradual, forced Italianization of the Slavs living there (banning their languages and traditions, changing their names, etc.) rather than through their eradication and replacement with Italians. 'Cultural' cleansing rather than 'ethnic' cleansing, if you want; leaving the Slavs there but destroying their culture and replacing it with the Italian one. Which is also criminal, of course. But a different thing.
An out of context quote means very little, although those who push the idea of an Italian attempt at 'cleansing' western Slovenia and Dalmatia of Slovenes and Croats usually rely on these - the other classical one is the one made by Mussolini during a speech to Triestine/Istrian fascists about being willing to kill half a million barbarous Slavs in exchange for fifty thousand Italians, or something like that. I suggest reading a book like Empire on the Adriatic by James Burgwyn to put this better into context.
I think you are somewhat misinformed about the reasons of Slovene/Croat civilians being deported to concentration camps during the Italian occupation. The purpose was not to cleanse the annexed territories of their Slav populations, but to deprive the partisans of the support (real or perceived) of the civilian population. A bit like it had been done in Libya in the 1920s or like the British had done with Boer civilians during the Boer War. The same is true for the massacres of civilians carried out by the Germans in occupied Italy post-September 1943, which were on a similar scale (perhaps even greater) than massacres of civilians carried out by Italian troops in occupied Yugoslavia. Were the Germans trying to ethnically cleanse Italy of Italians? Of course no. They were trying to deprive the partisans of the civilians' support through a terror campaign.
Indeed, these concentration camps were established after the partisan guerrilla campaign got going; initially there had been attempts at a 'milder' approach towards the Slavic population. It is true that some of the most radical fascists/nationalists wanted to forcibly relocate the entire Slavic population and to replace it with Italians (one of such ideas was to award lands seized from Slavs to families of fallen Italian soldiers), but these plans were rejected as, if anything, impractical and hardly executable. The purpose of "Italianizing" these lands was seen as achievable through gradual, forced Italianization of the Slavs living there (banning their languages and traditions, changing their names, etc.) rather than through their eradication and replacement with Italians. 'Cultural' cleansing rather than 'ethnic' cleansing, if you want; leaving the Slavs there but destroying their culture and replacing it with the Italian one. Which is also criminal, of course. But a different thing.
An out of context quote means very little, although those who push the idea of an Italian attempt at 'cleansing' western Slovenia and Dalmatia of Slovenes and Croats usually rely on these - the other classical one is the one made by Mussolini during a speech to Triestine/Istrian fascists about being willing to kill half a million barbarous Slavs in exchange for fifty thousand Italians, or something like that. I suggest reading a book like Empire on the Adriatic by James Burgwyn to put this better into context.