A Nation Collapses: The Italian Surrender of September 1943

In A Nation Collapses: The Italian Surrender Of September 1943, Elena Agarossi draws on a massive, mostly unpublished, collection of documents in her analysis of the course secret negotiations between Italy and Britain that immediately preceded the overthrow of Mussolini in July 1943 and finds that both parties negotiated in bad faith and with a great deal of duplicity. Misjudging both Nazi Germany and the Allies' strategic commitment in Italy, and promising the Allies a degree of military assistance they were in no condition to deliver, the Italian army swiftly fell into disarray with hundreds of thousands of troops being rounded up by the Germans and interned in concentration camps. As the Allied troops in control of southern Italy advanced into the German-occupied north, Italy (ravaged by a mounting civil war) became a battlefield for the opposing armies for twenty long and bloody months. A Nation Collapses is a seminal, ground breaking work of historical significance for both political and military studies of the European Theater in World War II.