1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910686481803321

Autore

Cacciatore Nicola

Titolo

Italian Partisans and British Forces in the Second World War : working with the enemy / / Nicola Cacciatore

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham, Switzerland : , : Palgrave Macmillan, , [2023]

©2023

ISBN

3-031-28682-0

Edizione

[1st ed. 2023.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (IX, 248 p.)

Collana

Italian and Italian American Studies, , 2635-294X

Disciplina

940.5345

Soggetti

Military campaigns

War - Underground movements

World War, 1939-1945 - Campaigns - Italy

World War, 1939-1945 - Underground movements - Italy

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Chapter 1: Introduction -- Chapter 2: Where it all began -- Chapter 3: Fieldwork -- Chapter 4: Propaganda -- Chapter 5:The long liberation -- Chapter 6: Conclusion.

Sommario/riassunto

This book proposes a significant new interpretation of the relations between Italian partisans and British forces during the Italian campaign of 1943-1945. The core of the argument challenges many assumptions that are today still present both in Italian and in the Anglophone historiography on the subject. In current historiography, the debate is still ongoing as to whether the British were a hostile force to the Italian Resistance, trying to weaken it to better control it, or a genuine and committed ally. Instead of a clear-cut and artificial dichotomy between the 'Italians' and the 'British' this book posits the idea that lines were often blurred, and relations existed on a scale that included lots of grey and overlapping areas. Thanks to an original approach that examines the Italo-British interaction from a point of view as close as possible to the ‘action’, it proposes a new interpretation based on the way the British image was cast in Italy. Politics is left in the background in favour of an analysis of the concrete problems and difficulties that Italians and the British had to face when working together and how



these processes influenced the image of Great Britain in Italy in the following decades. This produces a final interpretation that enriches current historiography and pushes forward our understanding of the relationship between Italian partisans and British forces.