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; 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: Paperback
Pages: 320
Edition: New e.
Publisher: Phoenix
Published: 02 Sep 2004
ISBN 10: 0304366811
ISBN 13: 9780304366811
Book Overview: Sheds new light on an important aspect of the Second World War Based on newly declassified CIA documents, from the Office of Strategic Survey, declassified wartime papers from 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 'Katz has a novelist's gift for narrative and as a result, Fatal Silence reads at times like a thriller...this is popular history at its best' New Statesman 'Robert Katz's moving account of Rome under Nazi occupation...meticulous scholarship' Sunday Times