ABOUT THIS PRODUCT
When Italy surrendered in 1943, it sparked a resistance movement of anti-German, anti-fascist partisans. This book explores the tactics, organizational structure and equipment of the brave Italian resistance fighters. Beginning with low-level sabotage and assassinations, the groups continued to grow until spring 1944 when a remarkable, unified partisan command structure was created. Working in close co-ordination with the Allies, they received British SOE and American OSS liaison teams as well as supplies of weapons. The German response was ferocious, and in autumn 1944, as the Allied advance stalled, the SS and Italian RSI looked to eradicate the partisans once and for all. But when the Allies made their final breakthrough in the last weeks of the war the partisans rose again to exact their revenge on the retreating Wehrmacht. From an expert on Italian military history in World War II, this work provides a comprehensive guide to the men and women who fought a desperate struggle against occupation, as well as the German and Italian fascist security forces unleashed against them.

CONTENTS

• Introduction: Italian surrender and German occupation
• German organization
• From early resistance to partisan warfare
• Peak of operations: collapse of RSI army security forces and mobilization of Fascist Party 'Black Brigades' - SS take over from Wehrmacht - creation of partisan CVT command, and 'free zones' - partisans fight with Allied troops - resistance in Florence - the struggle on the Franco-Italian border
• Crisis of September 1944-March 1945: major anti-partisan operations - deployment of German combat units against partisans
• The Allies and the partisans
• Final uprising
• The 'operational zones': the NW Italo-French and NE Italo-Yugoslav frontiers
• Equipment, tactics, and assessment of Italian partisan groups
• Equipment, tactics and assessment of German and Italian Fascist anti-partisan forces
• Bibliography
• Index