Italy’s Sorrow

Today Italy is a land of beauty and prosperity but in 1944-45 it had become a place of nightmares, a land of violence, war, and destruction. James Holland's ground-breaking account expertly documents the German advance to the stalemate of the Gothic line and a segment of Italian history that has been largely neglected.

The war in Italy was the most destructive campaign in the west as the Allies and Germans fought a long, bitter and highly attritional conflict up the mountainous leg of Italy during the last twelve months of the Second World War. For front-line troops, casualties rates at Cassino and then along the notorious Gothic Line were as high as they had been along the Western Front in the First World War. There were further similarities too: blasted landscapes, rain and mud. For the men who fought there, Italy really was the hardest campaign.

And while the Allies and Germans were slogging it out through the mountains, the Italians were fighting their own battles, one where Partisans and Fascists were pitted against each other in a bloody civil war. Around them, civilians tried to live through the carnage, terror and anarchy while, in the wake of the Allied advance, beleaguered and impoverished Italians were forced to pick their way through the ruins of their homes and country and often forced into making terrible and heart-rending decisions in order to survive.

'Italy's Sorrow' is the first account of the war in that most beautiful of countries to tell the story from all sides and to include the experiences of soldiers and civilians alike. Offering extensive new research, it weaves together the drama and tragedy of a terrible year of war with new perspectives and material on some of the most debated episodes to have emerged from the Second World War. It is a magnificent achievement by one of our finest young military historians.

Reviews

‘James Holland has written his best book yet, a gripping, yet compassionate account of the terrible war in Italy, with a memorable depiction of civilian suffering.’ Antony Beevor

Praise for ‘Together We Stand’:
'Anyone who wants to know how it felt to fight in the desert war should read Holland's book. It represents a remarkable collation of personal experience and sensible historical judgments.' Max Hastings, Sunday Telegraph

'Holland has produced a wonderful book whose pace…never seems to flag…he is a master at evoking time and place, with haunting descriptions of the desert landscape…If there is a better book on the North African campaign, I haven't read it.' Daily Telegraph, Saul David

About the author

James Holland was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, and studied history at Durham University. He has worked for several London publishing houses and has written for a number of national newspapers and magazines. He is the author of ‘Fortress Malta: An Island Under Siege 1940-1943’, ‘Together We Stand’, ‘Heroes’ and a novel, ‘The Burning Blue’. Married with a son, he lives near Salisbury.