by RobertKatz (Author)
This is the epic story of the brutal occupation of Rome by the Germans after the fall of Mussolini in July 1943 up to the capture of the city by General Mark Clark in June 1944. Swelling to nearly twice its usual size with more than a million refugees from the countryside, Rome became a city of spies, double agents, informers, torturers, escaped Allied war prisoners, hunted Jews and hungry people. The city was the focus for four groups, each anathema to the others: the Allies, trying to capture Rome as their first shining prize of the war but discovering impregnable armour instead; the Germans, trying to throw the intruders back into the sea, holding Rome hostage and using it rapaciously as a supply line to the front; the Pope, trying to bring the West and the Germans to terms and save the world from Communism and the Vatican City from destruction; and the partisans, trying to redeem Italy's honour by making Rome untenable for the occupiers.
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 448
Edition: 1st Ed. (U.K.)
Publisher: Orion
Published: 25 Sep 2003
ISBN 10: 0297846612
ISBN 13: 9780297846611
Book Overview: based on newly declassified CIA documents from the Office of Strategic Survey, declassified wartime papers of the Vatican archives, material from two Rome trials in mid-1990s of former SS officer Erich Priebke, and other Italian archives Also uses the author's own research and interviews over many years with those involved Follows individual stories as well as the big picture; plenty of heroic as well as horrific incidents, partisan ambushes and terrible Nazi reprisals Quote from Pat Conroy: Robert Katz has written a fascinating, illuminating and definitive history of the fall of Rome to the Allies in World War II. Fatal Silence tells us what the Germans were thinking, what the partisans were plotting, when the Allies were coming, and what the Pope was failing to do. It is a work both of great history and art.