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New collection of essays promising to re-energize the debate on Nazism's occult roots and legacies and thus our understanding of German cultural and intellectual history over the past century.
THE SPYING GAME – AMLETO VESPA ́S CHINESE AFFAIR (1920 – 1944) Amleto Vespa, (L’Aquila 1884 - Shanghai 1941), spent most of his life in Siberia, Manchuria and China; first as a spy for the Japanese and as an arms dealer, later as a spy for the Chinese, and again as a spy for the Japanese, during Japan’s occupation of China; finally, in 1938, he was linked to the Americans. Some of the secret missions and duties he was assigned as a secret agent were eventually detailed in the book "Secret Agent of Japan", published in London in 1938, and in the U.S. one year later, where he heavily denounced the Japanese occupation of China. He died mysteriously and was likely killed by the Japanese...
In the summer of 1943, while the Axis troops had just withdrawn from North Africa, the Allied forces were about to conquer Europe starting from what Winston Churchill considered the weak link of the Italian-German alliance, Italy, the “soft underbelly of Europe”. Through Operation Husky, thousands of young men from different military units, all belonging to the Anglo-American alliance, but of different nationalities, landed in Sicily. Among them was a young Rhodesian photographer, Algernon de Blois Spurr, enlisted in the Southern Rhodesian Air Force, who together with his airborne unit, the 55 Squadron of the British Royal Air Force, flew up the boot, in a journey that ended in Rome in t...
On July 25, 1943, news of Mussolini's resignation and subsequent arrest stunned Italians leaving them dumbfounded. After two decades, fascism had fallen without any advance warning. As festive events marked the incredible outcome and reminders of the past were destroyed, an uncontainable joy seemed to pervade Italians. But what did people actually celebrate? How did they understand the bygone dictatorship, which was soon to be reincarnated in the Italian Social Republic (RSI)? Drawing on more than one hundred diaries written by ordinary citizens (and some prominent figures as well) and inspired by Raymond Williams's concept of structures of feeling, the book examines Italians' perspectives o...
This book contains analyses and case studies regarding the former political prisoners' and their families' fates impacted by the Communist dictatorships in Central and Eastern Europe (Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Republic of Moldova, Albania). The focus of research is extended from the individuals to the social context in which they functioned, as they were actors in flawed systems which were ready to harshly limit not only their actions but also of those closest to them. The case studies trace disruptions and distortions of broken lives along with strategies to reclaim and restore an apparent 'normalcy'. Cosmin Budeanca, PhD., is expert at The Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile. Dalia Bathory, PhD., is expert at The Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile.
An overview of air power's history and effectiveness, by the top experts in the field
As the Allied invasion of Italy wore on through the summer of 1943, Mussolini was unexpectedly overthrown and imprisoned by his own people in a remote mountaintop resort. Hitler was furious when he heard the news and swore to rescue his ally and friend. On September 12, a small convoy of glider aircraft suddenly began crash-landing near the hotel where Mussolini was being held and German commandos poured out of the half-wrecked planes. The soldiers quickly overwhelmed the hotel and seized Mussolini, who had watched the drama unfold from a second-story window. "I knew my friend Adolf Hitler would not abandon me," said a grinning Mussolini to his rescuers. Hitler's daring rescue mission to fre...
Tens of thousands of Italian civilians perished in the Allied bombing raids of World War II. More of them died after the Armistice of September 1943 than before, when the air attacks were intended to induce Italy’s surrender. Allied Air Attacks and Civilian Harm in Italy, 1940–1945 addresses this seeming paradox, by examining the views of Allied political and military leaders, Allied air crews, and Italians on the ground. It tells the stories of a little-known diplomat (Myron Charles Taylor), military strategist (Solly Zuckerman), resistance fighter (Aldo Quaranta), and peace activist (Vera Brittain) – architects and opponents of the bombing strategies. It describes the fate of ordinar...
The Italian Army’s participation in Hitler’s war against the Soviet Union has remained unrecognized and understudied. Bastian Matteo Scianna offers a wide-ranging, in-depth corrective. Mining Italian, German and Russian sources, he examines the history of the Italian campaign in the East between 1941 and 1943, as well as how the campaign was remembered and memorialized in the domestic and international arena during the Cold War. Linking operational military history with memory studies, this book revises our understanding of the Italian Army in the Second World War.
Bora is ordered to investigate the murder of Walter Niemeyer, a dazzling clairvoyant, a star since the days of the Weimar Republic. For years he has mystified Germany with his astounding prophecies. Bora's inquiry, supported by former S.A member Florian Grimm, resurrects memories of the excessive and brilliant world of Jazz Age cabarets and locales. Around them, in the oppressive summer heat, constant allied bombing, war-weary Berlin teems with refugees and nearly a million foreign laborers. Soon Bora realizes that there is much more at stake than murder in a paranoid city where everyone suspects everyone, and where persistent rumors whisper about a conspiracy aimed at the very heart of the Nazi hierarchy. Could the charming Emmy Pletsch, who works for Claus von Stauffenberg, be a key to understanding what is going on? Bora eventually meets with Stauffenberg, facing an anguishing moral dilemma, as a German soldier and as a man. The 20 July plot and its dramatic implications as never told before.