Target: Italy: The Secret War Against Mussolini 1940-1943 - Rilegato

Roderick Bailey

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0571299180 ISBN 13: 9780571299188

Casa editrice: Faber & Faber, 2014

Riassunto

Drawing on long-classified documents, Target: Italy is the official history of the war waged by Britain's Special Operations Executive on Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy. It is the first full account of SOE's clandestine efforts to strike at Italy and sever its alliance with Nazi Germany, uncovering missions as remarkable as a plot to assassinate Mussolini and plans to arm the Mafia.

It is also the first in-depth history of SOE's attempts at causing trouble inside an enemy country as opposed to an enemy-occupied one, issuing a sobering reminder of the terrible dangers that foreign agencies can encounter when trying to encourage resistance to powerful authoritarian regimes.

This is a compelling tale of desperate daring and sacrifice, climaxing in one of the most extraordinary episodes of the war: the delicate and dramatic dealings between the Allies and the Italians that led to Italy's surrender in 1943.

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Recensione:

[A] gripping history of Britain's undercover role in fomenting anti-Fascist activity in wartime Italy. (The Observer)

An inspiring study about the courage of undercover wartime operatives... The great skill of this book is to demonstrate that war is both brutal and dizzyingly unpredictable ... Bailey not only pays tribute to determined and brave people, but unravels a web of conflict in a beautiful land. (Sinclair McKay Daily Telegraph)

Roderick Bailey is a fine historian who has researched his subject and given his tale a strong narrative drive. (David Gilmour The Spectator)

[Bailey] has an eye for the colourful characters drawn to undercover operations. (The Economist)

[R]eadable and authoritative... vividly described... [T]he role of British intelligence agencies in the Second World War is now better understood. (Christopher Andrew Literary Review)

Roderick Bailey is a fluent writer, with a fine eye for personalities, and this book is, apart from its solid professional virtues, a very good read. The nightmarish and brutal world of underground work against Fascism in Italy is well covered... Drama is ever present. As in Eric Ambler novels, suitcases full of explosives were hidden in crummy hotels, and secret assignations made on trains. It was a world far from the Geneva conventions ... A great strength of the book is the use of oral interviews and Italian archival material, in contrast to earlier SOE histories which depend mostly on British documents (Times Literary Supplement)

[A] precious testimony to our past ... [W]ell written, well structured and with an absolutely flawless series of sources. (Angelo Paratico Corriere della Sera)

Drawing on long-classified documents . . . a readable, fast-paced narrative. (Ian Thomson Observer)

Descrizione del libro:

Target: Italy by Roderick Bailey details the unknown story of the cloak-and-dagger war fought by British secret agents against Mussolini's Italy in the Second World War.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Faber & Faber
• Data di pubblicazione: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0571299180
• ISBN 13: 9780571299188
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 464