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Title details for Naples 1944 by Keith Lowe - Wait list

Naples 1944

The Devil's Paradise at War

by Keith Lowe
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Award-winning author Keith Lowe's newest critical deep-dive into the history of Naples during WWII.

Keith Lowe has chronicled the end of WWII in Europe in his award-winning book Savage Continent and the war's aftermath in the sequel, The Fear and the Freedom. In Naples 1944, he brings readers another masterful chronicle of the terrible and often unexpected consequences of war. Even before the fall of Mussolini, Naples was a place of great contrasts filled with palaces and slums, beloved cuisine and widespread hunger. After the Allied liberation, these contrasts made the city instantly notorious. Compared to the starving population, Allied soldiers were staggeringly wealthy. For a packet of cigarettes, even the lowest ranks could buy themselves a watch, a new suit or a woman for the night. As the biggest port in Allied hands, Naples quickly became the center of Italy's black market and has remained so ever since. Within just a few months the Camorra began to re-establish itself. Behind the chaos and the corruption, there was always the threat of violence. Army guns were looted and traded. Gangs of street kids fought running battles with the military police. Public buildings, booby-trapped by departing Germans, began to explode, seemingly spontaneously.
Then in March 1944 - like an omen - Vesuvius erupted. Naples was the first major European city to be liberated by the Allies. What they found there would set a template for the whole of the rest of Europe in the years to come. Keith Lowe's Naples 1944 is a page-turning book about a city on the brink of chaos and glimpse into the dark heart of postwar Italy.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 11, 2025

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781250235060

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781250235060
      • File size: 54128 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      Starred review from February 1, 2025

      Lowe (Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg 1943) examines the plight of Naples, Italy, near the end of World War II. The city in Italy's neglected southern region has been overlooked in many World War II chronicles, an omission Lowe aims to rectify with a detailed, expertly written portrait of Naples before, during, and after its liberation by Allied forces. In three parts--"Beautiful Monster," "Uprising," and "Compromise Betrayals"--Lowe describes a city with rampant starvation and poverty even before Mussolini. During the war, there was no electricity, gas, firefighting, train service, or sewage system, nor were there any provisions for burying the dead. Naples's port, a major source of income, was heavily bombed by Allied forces and became a center of the black market. Adding to the troubles were the 1944 typhus epidemic and eruption of Vesuvius. Lowe draws on primary sources to provide insight into efforts to rebuild and the resiliency of the Neapolitan people. VERDICT A well-researched, meticulous account of life for the people of Naples during and immediately after the war, for readers interested in Italian and World War II history.--Jacqueline Parascandola

      Copyright 2025 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      February 7, 2025
      Within days of Italy's declaration of war in June 1940, the British began bombing Naples, Italy, a bombardment that was escalated by the U.S. Historian Lowe recounts in detail the Neapolitans' civil defense until the German army violently took over upon the Italian armistice in September 1943. Reigning by terror, the Germans demolished the city's port, surrounding infrastructure, and much cultural heritage. Retreating mostly because of the Allies' landing in nearby Salerno but also because of an insurrection by the Neapolitan populace, German forces bequeathed a gigantic problem of civil governance to the Allies. Lowe emphasizes that the Allies' priority for Naples was supporting front-line combat. Imperative for military operations was restoration of port operations, water, sewers, and electricity. Successful though these efforts were (including defeat of a typhoid epidemic), less laudatory, in Lowe's view, was the Allied Military Government's basic misunderstanding of Italian society and its focus on rest and relaxation, primarily intoxication and prostitution, for soldiers. Lowe delivers a vivid and searing account of a famous European city, one of hundreds, traumatized by World War II.

      COPYRIGHT(2025) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
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  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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