Rome Fell Today

London: Leslie Frewin. Very Good/Very Good. 1969. Hard Cover. 8vo 0090983505 Dust jacket in clear protective sleeve, unclipped, minor loss to edges. Red cloth withbright gilt titling. No ownership inscription. illustrated with b/w photographs. Bibliography, index. xii,336 pages. George Walton The battle for Italy was probably the most controversial campaign of the Second World War. To this day, soldiers, historians, reporters and political leaders angrily debate whether the choice of that miserable arena was a bloody waste of men and material or was the sound result of a series of inevitable problems and decisions. The leaders of both sides have not escaped the puzzled stares of contemporary and succeeding generations. Was President Roosevelt a too-willing tool in what some have agreed was a Stalinist plot to expend Anglo-American resources? Was Field Marshal Albert Kesselring a military genius or an interfering optimist? Was Winston Churchill wrong in his assessment of the significance of the Fall of Rome? These are a few of the questions answered by the authors as a result of their conversations with many of the major participants in the Italian Campaign and from their studies of the private papers of the German Generals. Many will dispute the conclusions they reach, but few will argue that they have not successfully captured the mood, the atmosphere, the colour and the confusion of the grinding Allied advance that culminated with the news that 'Rome tell today'. .