WW II Gothic Line ghosts haunt modern day Italy, Europe

``The further backward you can look the further forward you can see," Winston Churchill. As Russian Dictator Vladimir Putin continues to wage his murderous war against Ukraine and his friend U.S. President Donald Trump stands idly by while also creating his own quagmire in Iran and other parts of the Middle East, it has become ever more obvious that the lessons learned from the WWII fight against Nazi fascism have been forgotten. A lot of that has to do with populist politicians from both the far-right and the far-left of the political spectrum in Europe and North America who engage in revisionist history to suit their myopic agenda.

Putin is of course the most virulent perpetrator of false narratives to justify his war crimes that include kidnapping children, bombing hospitals and schools. He twists history to insist Ukrainians are Nazi's threatening Russia. Across the Atlantic Ocean, Trump is waging a jihad on museums, including the venerated Smithsonian, and banning books that tell the true story of racism in American society including in the U.S. military during WWII.

Will it ever be possible to put this heinous attack on Western democratic values back in the bottle and return to civil dialog guided by a moral compass based on the rule of law, academic freedom and respect for human rights as well as sustainable development?

As that question hangs ever heavier over our daily lives, it is ever more important to either remind ourselves or to teach anew to others the true story of the bravery and valor of Allied Forces that gave their lives and laid the foundation for the relative peace and prosperity that the post-WWII Baby Boomer generation has benefited. That is one of the reasons the History Channel launched a new 20-part series on WWII that is currently airing and is narrated by Tom Hanks. And as thorough and accurate as the History Channel WWII series is, it still misses so many important details. A few examples of these are include the next series of episodes to be released in the coming weeks and months. Despite years of research on the story of WWII, some of these episodes include stories I knew little or nothing about when I launched this podcast to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII and to tell the story of the Gothic Line Offensive and, most important, the multinational and multiracial Allied army that waged it. But like an epic opera or theater production that enthrals an audience on stage, there is always a cast of characters working furiously and anonymously behind the scenes to make it happen. It was only when I started to probe deep into the dark of this backstage Gothic Line history that i understood the complexity and these backstage stories. With that in mind, I hereby invite all of you to listen to the ``rest of the story'' in the coming months in the hopes that it will help fact prevail over the fiction of revisionist history as we face the future.

``The further backward you can look, the further forward you can see,'' Winston Churchill

By Joe Kirwin

When Italian dictator Benito Mussolini joined Adolph Hitler as an ally in WWII, Greece, whose monarch and head-of-state shared direct bloodlines with the British monarchy, allied with the United Kingdom and stood by the British through the dark days of the war when Hitler had overrun the European continent. That was a bond that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill never forgot and played a role in why he backed the Greeks in the face of the Nazi invasion of their country in 1941. And also why he played a key role in the fight against his erstwhile allies the Greek communist resistance fighters who wanted to replace the Greek monarchy and civilian government after the Nazis departed in 1944. The Greek resistance fighters effort to impose a Bolshevik-inspired communist government led to a three-year civil war in Greece after WWII that had the support of Yugoslav communist leader Josip Broz Tito, who was also an erstwhile British ally fighting the Nazis..

The bond between the British and the Greeks is key to understanding the saga that unfolded through the course of WWII when Mussolini invaded Greece in 1941 and then when Italy declared an armistice in September of 1943. Around the time Italy changed sides in the war, the exiled Greek king and its government spent time in Naples preparing the way to return to Greece - a plan that included a brigade of Greek soldiers joining the Allies on the Gothic Line Offensive in Italy. While the Greek king was in Naples, the Greek resistance fighters were waging a fierce battle in Greece against the Nazis using British-supplied weapons while the remnants of the Greek army were regrouping at British military bases in the Middle East to prepare for their arrival in Italy..

Meanwhile during the period just after the Italian Armistice on Sept. 8 19143, one of the least known massacres of WWII took place when German soldiers turned on their erstwhile allies and launched a slaughter of Italian soldiers based on the Ionian Sea island of Cephalonia that eventually led to more than 9,000 deaths. Mussolini had invaded the Greek island of Cephalonia and annexed it in 1941 as part of his drive to rebuild the Roman Empire.

Complicated story? Yes. And the aforementioned s is just a brief overview. To break down the details and make sense of a saga that has unfolded over the last eight decades, Italian author and University of Napoli history professor Paolo Fonzi provides an in-depth explanation to many of the complicated issues that hover over the Italian-Greek WWII story that includes war crime prosecutions and reparations - or the lack of them - and overall is a chapter in what is known today as ``memory politics'' where government officials, politicians and others interpret some of these historial events to suit their brand of populist politics.

``The further backward you can look, the further forward you can see,'' former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on the importance of understanding history.

By Joe Kirwin

There were a lot of unsung heroes among the unique multinational, multiracial armies that fought as part of the Gothic Line Offensive but one that gets little recognition even among historians who have studied the subject for years is the role the Greek Army played. The snapshot of history that most are familiar with when it comes to Greece and WWII involves an invasion by Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini in 1940, a brutal Nazi occupation from 1941 to 1944, and then a three-year post-WWII civil war followed up by a Greek military dictatorship more than a decade later.

But in between all that tragedy, there are a few short chapters of success. One of those occurred in Italy when the Greek army actually achieved the first major Allied Army victory on the Gothic Line when a brigade of Greek soldiers broke through German defenses and liberated the Italian Adriatic port city of Rimini.

That success came after the decimated Greek army retreated to North Africa and the Middle East to regroup in the face of the Nazi invasion in 1941. Determined to prove itself as a dependable ally and also take revenge against Italy, the Greek government in exile implored British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to allow a reformed Greek brigade to be part of the British Eighth Army that led the Adriatic sector of the Gothic Line Offensive. For the British, Greek participation did not offer much tactically as the entire Greek force was 3,337 men but strategically it was important because rehabilitating a democratic Greece in a post-WWII world was vital to ensure free navigation in the Mediterranean Sea. It was also symbolic because Greece allied with the British from the start of WWII and was one of the few bright spots in the darkest hours of 1940.

Of course, as gallant as the Greek troops proved during their short stay in Italy, there was a major snag en route. In a preview of the Greek civil war to come, transport ships taking the Greek brigade to Italy had to turn back when violence broke out between communist-oriented factions and those loyal to the Greek monarchy and the Greek government in exile.

Details about that story and a host of other WWII and post-WWII legacy links between Italy and Greece - some that still resonate to this day -are spotlighted in this two-part series. The first episode centers on an interview with Greek military historian Colonel Pangiotis Naxos and the story of how the Greek Army regrouped and took up the battlefield in Italy. The second episode involves an interview with distinguished Italian historian Paolo Fonzi, who is a professor and author at the University of Napoli as well as a former fellow at Harvard University in the United States. Paolo has written extensively on Greek WWII and post-war history. He is also a respected commentator on the so-called ``memory politics'' that populist politicians from political extremes use to manipulate historical facts about events such as WWII and the pre- and post-WWII period to suit their propaganda.

``The further backward you can look, the further forward you can see,'' former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on the importance of understanding history.

By Joe Kirwin

When Italy pulled out of its alliance with Germany on Sept.8, 1943, Hitler's generals gave more than two million Italian military personnel an ultimatum: fight with the Nazis or go to prison. Some actually chose another option: they escaped and joined r the Allied Forces as part of what is known as the Italian Co-Belligerent Army. Others joined the Italian Partisans fighting a guerrilla warfare campaign against the Germans and Italian Fascists in the part of Italy yet to be liberated by Allied Armies led by the United States and the United Kingdom.

One of the least known stories triggered by the abrupt end of the Italian alliance with Hitler occured in the Mediterranean Sea island of Corsica where the captain and crew of the Italian torpedo boat Aliseo sunk several German navy ships in the port of Bastia. Another topsy-turvy episode occurred in Yugoslavia where several divisions of Italian soldiers joined Josef Tito's army of Partisans and fought together with them against the invading German army until the end of the war in 1945. However shortly after WWII ended the Italian soldiers faced fatal retribution from Tito as payback for Italian Fascist army massacres that took place four years previous in the former Yugoslavia. That story is one a number of episodes that still re-ignite bitter political divisions on the border lands of northeast Italy and what is today Slovenia. The latest took place in 2025 over a European Parliament resolution proposed by center-right politicians from Slovenia to memorialize the victims of Tito. https://sloveniatimes.com/44087/eu-parliament-adopts-resolution-on-post-wwii-communist-violence-in-slovenia

The reformed Co-Belligerent Army that joined Allied Forces and fought against German and Italian Fascist forces would play a vital role in Italy becoming a founding member in NATO and the European Union. To help us better understand this complex and confusing battlefield scenario triggered by the Italian Armistice and its impact after WWII, we resume our discussion from Part. 1 of this three-part series with retired Italian Lieutenant General Antonio Li Gobbi. He is the director of the Italian Centre for Studies and Historical Research of the National Association ofVeterans of the Italian Co-Belligerent Armed Forces.

``The further backwards you can look, the further forward you can see,'' Winston Churchill on the need to know history

By Joe Kirwin

It is known as the ``the choice'' in Italian military history annals. When Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini was arrested in July of 1943 and the country declared a WWII Armistice against Allied Forces two months later, the soldiers of the Italian Armed Forces faced an agonizing decision - stay loyal to the Germans and fight with them or be shipped to prisoner of war camps in Germany. Many went to prisoner of war camps. Many died in the camps; some decided to join the Mussolini puppet army and government known as the Italian Social Republic set up by Hitler after the Italian dictator was rescued from a prison in the mountains outside Rome. However many Italian soldiers escaped and joined the Italian resistance. The Allied Forces retrained more than 100,000 of those that escaped and they joined the British Eighth Army on the Gothic Line in the last months of WWII. The soldiers played a key role in the post-WWII reconstruction of Italy and its becoming a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the European Union. The Italian military of today traces its roots back to the ``The Choice.''

``The farther backward you can look, the further forward you can see,'' Winston Churchill.

If you spend much time listening to European conservative politicians and increasingly those from the center-left pontificate about immigration one would think the flow of migrants coming into Europe is the root of all the woes the continent faces. Or as Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni put it recently ``uncontrolled'' migration is a ``poly'' crisis that is responsible for current economic, competitive, security and other problems facing Italy and Europe.

However that diagnosis contrasts dramatically with empirical data. In fact by all reliable European Union metrics Italy as well as a host of other European countries face significant labor shortages that increase annually. Furthermore, in the case of Italy, companies - according to a recent business survey - fill one out of every three job openings with non-EU citizens. And of course that does not include the tens of thousands of Italian and other European entrepreneurs, especially in the agriculture and service sectors, that hire illegal immigrants for paltry wages to keep their businesses going.

If you drill down deeper into the issue, it is not hard to deduce that the problem for many anti-immigrant politicians is not so much about the supposed burden immigrants place on society but where they come from. That is evident when you hear far-right rants about the so-called``great replacement'' theory that posits Caucasians face a takeover threat from persons of color.

The distorted debate over immigration is detrimental for the entire continent of Europe if not all the Western world but it is particularly warped in a country like Italy. That's because Italy's post-WWII resurgence would have been significantly different had it not been for the contribution of persons of color who fought in and died to defeat Nazism and Italian Fascism, especially on the Gothic Line between August 1944 and May 1945. The fact that most Italians are unaware of this contribution underlines the old adage that if you do not know history, then you are bound to repeat it. And of course, anti-immigrant hysteria is as old as the first immigrant flows dating back to the days of antiquity.

One Italian politician who is most articulate in highlighting the irony and hypocrisy of the current debate in Italy and Europe is 81-year-old Albertina Soliani. She is a former Senator in the Italian parliament and until recently was the president of the Instituto Cervi which has spent decades promoting social equity and integration as a key part of economic growth.

In 2025, Soliani made that point emphatically at the WWII Indian Soldier cemetery commemorating the more than 50,000 Indian soldiers who fought as part of the British Eighth Army in Italy including on the Gothic Line offensive in the Adriatic sector.

As Soliani stated that day, Italian society and Europe has to come to grips with immigration reality and one of the best places to start is at a WWII cemetery such as the one in Forli that includes a dramatic life-sized statue of two Indian Sikh soldiers assisting an Italian soldier. The soldier was part of the reformed Italian army that joined the Allied Forces after Italy withdrew from its alliance with Hitler and its declaration of war against the Allied nations, including the United Kingdom, the United States and others.

The comments by Soliani led me to visit the Cervi Institute which was established in memory of seven sons of Alcides Cervi who executed by Italian Fascists loyal to Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini. The institute's director Mirco Zannoni expanded on Soliani's speech in the following interview. Federico Fabini, one of the most prominent economic and political journalists in Italy, added his comments on how the past and the present pose challenges most politicians are ignoring but civil society is trying to resolve.

``The further backward you can look, the further forward you can see,'' Winston Churchill on the need to know history.

More than 50,000 Indian and Gurkha soldiers fought as part of the British Eighth Army during the WWII Allied campaign in Italy. They played a vital role in the Gothic Line offensive, especially in the Apennine mountains where they together in close combat with Scottish Highlander troops. Unfortunately that story has been censored from Indian history books since the country gained independence from the United Kingdom several years after the end of WWII.

Over the past two to three decades more than half a million Indians, including approximately 200,000 have migrated to Italy. Many work in various sectors, especially agriculture, and play a vital role in bolstering the Italian economy. Since their arrival, the Sikhs have discovered the heroic sacrifice their forebears made to help Italy and Europe defeat Nazism and Italian Fascism and embrace it with numerous ceremonies and various memorials. Some of the expatriate Indians as well as others in India believe that if the story of how the Indians of all ethnicities, castes and creeds fought together - including those from what is modern-day Pakistan and Bangladesh, it would go a long way to improve relations on the Indian subcontinent. A high-ranking Indian Army officer, who recently visited Italy and toured the memorials and former battlefields, explains.

Meanwhile, in contemporary Italy, the refusal to accept the contribution Indians soldiers made some 80 some years ago still lingers among some. Satnam Singh, a spokesman and leader within the Sikh community in Italy, and Italian independent historian, author and museum curator Daniel Cesaretti explain.

``The further backwards you can look, the further forward you can see,'' Winston Churchill and the need to know history.

At the top of the hillside U.S. military cemetery on the fringe of the Italian city of Florence there is a large wall that describes the Allied Force troop movements that fought on the Gothic Line from August 1944 to April 1945. There is a dizzying array of arrows that provides an inkling of how complicated the story of the final phase of what is often referred to as WWII's ``Forgotten Front.'' There is smaller plaque that mentions how the U.S. Army Fifth Corp led by U.S. General Mark Clark included the only U.S. African American infantry division to face combat in WWII. Often referred to as the ``Buffalo Soldiers'' they included the 92nd Infantry Division and an attachment known as the 366th Regiment, many of whom had joined the military after serving in ROTC programs while pursuing a college education.

What the plaque description does not mention is the racial abuse these black soldiers and their segregated units faced as they fought, in the words of a Pentagon historian, two wars: one against the Nazis and Italian Fascists and another against white racist U.S. commanders. The cemetery also does not mention that there is an ongoing special U.S. Department of Defense project to identify more than 50 unknown African American soldiers buried in the Florence cemetery.

Despite the ongoing efforts by the Trump Administration and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to whitewash the story of racial abuse in the U.S. military before, during and after WWII, the special project to ID the unknown African American soldiers continues. Launched in 2014 the remains of seven soldiers - some from the 92nd Division and some from the attached 366th Regiment - have been identified. To provide more details about the special Pentagon project, the program's historian Ed Valentin explains in this episode the background and details of how work continues using various identification techniques including DNA analyses, field work, archive research and other methodologies. He also expressed optimism the program would be announcing new identification success in the coming year.

``The further backward you can look the further forward you can see,'' Winston Churchill on the need to know history.

Welcome again to the podcast and this second of a three-part series where we will look back at the story of African American soldiers who braved Nazi and Italian Fascist attacks but also white U.S. Army officer racist abuse while fighting on the Gothic Line. The first episode of the series included an interview with Solace Wales who published a book in 2020 titled Braided in Fire – Black GIs and Tuscan Villagers on the Gothic Line 1944. That episode was published earlier in this Gothic Line podcast series.

The second part centers around an interview with military historian and author Daniel Gibran who the U.S. Department of Defense employed in the 1990s to do a report on why no U.S. African American, including those fighting on the Gothic Line, received a Medal of Honor, after WWII ended. As a result seven African American soldiers, including Lt. John Fox and Lt. Vernon Baker, were awarded the Medal of Honor by former U.S. President Bill Clinton at the White House in 1997. Fox received the medal posthumously while Baker was present at the WH East Room ceremony.

The third part of the series includes an interview with Ed Valentin, the official historian of an ongoing, special U.S. Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency U.S. Army 92nd Infantry Division program to identify the unknown African American soldiers killed in combat on the Gothic Line more than eighty years ago and whose remains are buried in a U.S. military cemetery in Florence, Italy. As Valentin will tell us, racism played a major role in why the African American soldiers were not identified more than seven decades ago and are having such a difficult time today to identify the remains even though the special program was launched in 2014.

``The further backward you can look the further forward you can see,'' Winston Churchill on the need to know history.

There are many Gothic Line heroes who helped free Italy from Nazi and Italian Fascist tyranny but arguably some of the most unsung soldiers who fought and died for democracy even though they did not have it at home were the 50,000 Indians troops. They played a pivotal in the British-led Eighth Army on the Adriatic sector of the Allied Force campaign. Three Indian Divisions, each embedded with Scottish Highlander troops and sometimes other British soldiers, fought mainly in the rugged Apennine mountains to cover the flank of English, Canadian. Polish and Greek troops advancing up the Adriatic coastal plain. The bond forged between the Indians and British soldiers, especially with different divisions of the Scottish Highlander troops, is a multicultural success story .

Daniel Cesaretti began a crusade 40 years ago to honor the Indian soldiers that fought in Italy and to inform his fellow Italian citizens of their noble efforts. During the past four decades he has visited every battlefield where Indian soldiers fought and where more than 5,000 of them died. His efforts have led to various memorials. He is now leading an effort to establish a Indian soldier memorial site outside the city of Rimini so their valor will never be forgotten.

The story of the Indian soldiers is one that is not only an important historical landmark but also a vital reference point in today's politics when it comes to the debate over immigration in Europe. For the next two episodes of this podcast we will examine all of these issues in a two-part series dedicated to the Indian soldier story on the Gothic Line.

``The further backward you can look, the further foward you can see,'' Winston Churchill on the benefit of studying history

By Joe Kirwin

From an early age 34-year-old Marco Dalmonte accompanied his father on field trips combing the Adriatic coastal plain and Apennine mountains searching for WWII artifacts and even body parts of soldiers that remained unidentified decades after the Allied Armies engaged in the Gothic Line Offensive. Since that time, Dalmonte's family has accumulated a massive collection of abandoned Army surplus. As he grew older Marco Dalmonte transitioned from combing the old battlefield sites to exploring WWII film archives as well as internet platforms where vintage film and photos are traded. As a result, he gathered a collection of original film material taken primarily by the British Army but also American forces as well as German Wehrmacht. In recent years he has collated the material and engaged on a tour with film presentations customized for more than 50 towns in the Adriatic hills and the coastal plain where the British Eighth Army slogged up northeastern Italy before hitting a brick wall in the form of approximately 500,000 German troops. They were under orders from Hitler to defend at all costs the Senio River that flows from the Apennines towards the Adriatic Sea. By December of 1944 the British Eighth Army, low on arms, soldiers and, perhaps most of all, morale, reverted to WWI tactics and dug in for a four-month battle of attrition. Along a 30-kilometer stretch of the river English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Canadian, New Zealander, Polish, Indian soldiers along with one of the first Jewish armies since Roman times hunkered down and engaged in a fierce, daily barrage of artillery exchanges as well as regular cat-and-mouse guerrilla fighting. Today the territory is still hazardous due to unexploded ordnance. Along with his travels across the region, Dalmonte can guide you along the banks of the Senio River and recount the stalemate that makes visitors understand the agony of battle and the enduring aftermath along one of WWII's least known but decisive military fault lines.

``The further backward you can look, the furher forward you can see,'' Winston Churchill on the need to know history.

By Joe Kirwin

Eighty some years before the Israeli Defense Force became one of the most powerful armies in the Middle East, it was a flelging, disparate group of volunteers that were part of the Zionist movement in what was the Palestine Mandate established by the League of Nations and governed by the United Kingdom. When WWII began after Adolph Hitler began his blitzkrieg in Poland in 1939 and Italian Dictator Mussolini joined him by attacking France and the Balkans, some members of the Zionist movement joined the British Army. Facing constant pressure from those Zionist volunteers to have their own Jewish Brigade instead of serving within British units, the British military and government originally resisted. But when in 1944 the British and American governments began to receive witness accounts and intelligence about German extermination camps slaughtering Jews that had been rounded up from all over Europe, the British acquiesced and thus the first Jewish Army since Roman times was born. It was made up of approximately 5,000 soldiers - mostly men but some women from the Palestine Mandate - and it took up positions in March of 1945 in Italy on the Adriatic sector of the Gothic Line as part of the British Eighth Army. After participating in various battles along the Senio River in the April 1945 offensive to break through German forces and capture Bologna, the Jewish Brigade was moved to northern Italy in the mountains along the borders of what is today Italy, Slovenia and Austria. From there some Jewish Brigade members began unauthorized missions using British vehicles to rescue Jewish refugees who had escaped the Holocaust and bring them to ports in Italy so they could be transported to the Palestine Mandate. The Jewish Brigade soldiers would eventually return to the Palestine mandate and their experience on the Gothic Line was instrumental when tensions between Jews and Arabs erupted in war in 1948. After Israel was established as an independent nation in 1949 and the Israeli Defense Force was formed, the Jewish Brigade veterans were a core part. This included officers, who used their military training in the British Army to continuously overcome far larger and better-equipped Arab armies, especially the Egyptian Forces, as Israel evolved. This story is told by Stefano Scaletta, a native of Italy and resident of Tel Aviv, in a recent book titled La Brigata Ibraica tra Guerra e Salvataggio dei Sopravvissutti alla Shoah (1939-1947) or in English: The Jewish Brigade between war and rescuing the Holocaust survivors (1939-1947). And as part of the podcast's Past is Present theme, Scaletta also responded to questions about whether or not Israeli government and the Israeli Defense Force's policies in Gaza and the West Bank since the April 7, 2023 attack by Hamas have been disproportionate and, as some human rights groups and others claim, amount to a genocide against the Palestinians.

``The further backward you can look, the further forward you can see,'' Winston Churchill on the need to know history.

By Joe Kirwin

When you learn the story of some Polish soldiers and civilians' WWII saga including being imprisoned in the Soviet Union at the start of WWII, then escaping down through what is today central Russia, Iran, Syria, Palestine and Libya before arriving in Italy in 1943 to help Allied Forces end Nazi and Italian Fascist tyranny, it is easy to wonder how they survived such trauma. Surely, human perseverance played the biggest role. But they had a little help from a furry animal they found in the mountains of Iran. Named Wojtek - which means joyful warrior in Polish - it was a cub brown bear whose mother had been killed. Raised by the Poles during their saga across the Middle East and North Africa, he was enlisted in the Polish Army in late 1943 in order to get around British Navy rules forbidding the presence of animals on battleships that were transporting troops across the Mediterranean Sea to Italy. By that time Wojtek was far more than a morale-boosting pet. He was a brave artillery brigade asset who transported ammunition in the heat of battle. Mimicking fellow soldiers , Wojtek also adopted their fondness for beer, cigarettes and wrestling. Although Wojtek's presence was not enough to save some Polish soldiers from desperate acts upon hearing the news of the betrayal by Roosevelt and Churchill at the February 1945 Yalta Conference, he did help keep a smile on many a face during the Gothic Line Offensive and well after the end of WWII in Italy and Europe.

For more info about this story and others in the podcast contact Joe Kirwin at the following email address: joekirwin@compuserve.com

``The further backwards you can look, the further forward you can see,'' Winston Churchill on the need to know history.

By Joe Kirwin

When Leone Singer escaped Austria and Hitler's Jewish genocide the ever changing national borders in central Europe confused a bureaucratic in the city of Trieste. As a result he issued iin 1938 an identity card that determined Leone's nationality as stateless and, most important, it omitted his Jewish heritage. As a result he was able to begin a new life in Italy. But eventually the Fascist government caught up with him and had him arrested in mid 1943 - but not as a Jew but as a stateless refugee. When Mussolini was arrested and Italy signed an armistice in September of 1943 with the Allied countries, Italian police released Leone Singer and others at the prison and told them to flee before the Nazis arrived. Leone Singer and several others escaped to a small fishing village east of Rome on the Adriatic Sea and paid a fisherman to take them over the night to the port town of Ancona where the Polish army was preparing for the Gothic Line offensive. Leone Singer joined the Polish Army. In February when the fighting against the Nazis halted along the Senio River and the devastating news of the Yalta Conference arrived Leone Singer was able to convince bureaucrats in Rome that he had residency rights thanks to the faulty info on his 1938 residency card. Working In that Rome bureaucratic office was a former partisan from the Justice and Liberty group named Fortunata Romeo. Shortly thereafter, she and Leone would fall in love and son Enrico Singer was born in 1947. Enrico would go on to become a prominent Italian journalist where he served as a foreign correspondent in different European capitals until retiring 15 years ago. He tells the family story of tragedy (his grandparents were killed in the Holocaust) as well as luck, love and now dismay as refugees are scapegoated and war is raging in Ukraine where his family descended.

``The further backwards you can look, the further forward you can see,'' Winston Churchill on the need to know history

By Joe Kirwin

The story of war and the refugees it provokes is a story as old as homo sapiens. But few are as complicated, confusing and enduring as the story of how more than 100,000 Polish soldiers ended up fighting as part of the British Eighth Army in Italy in 1944-45 , including on the Gothic Line. The saga began when Hitler invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939 which triggered the start of WWII. The Soviet Union followed up with a Polish invasion two weeks later after the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union went into force. The dual invasions scattered hundreds of thousands of Polish refugees throughout Europe, Asia, Africa and other parts of the world. The heroic sacrifice to get to Italy and then again onto the battlefield climaxed in April 1945 when the second Polish Army Corp liberated Bologna in the final days of the Gothic Line Offensive and WWII in Italy. However there were no spoils of victory for the Polish Army in Italy thanks to the February 1945 Yalta Conference when British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt ceded Eastern Europe control to the Soviet Union and its murderous dictator Josef Stalin.

Michel Zarychta, an historian with the Polish Institute for National Remembrance in Warsaw provides the details of the complex Polish soldier diaspora triggered by WW II and how they ended up in Italy in this 2-part series about Poland and their contribution in Italy and the Gothic Line.

The second episode of this two-part series focuses on the story of the Jewish father of prominent Italian journalist Enrico Singer. Leone Singer escaped to Italy in 1938 from central Europe and the Nazis and then again from the Italian Fascists and joined the Polish Second Army Corp in Ancona on the Adriatic Coast of Italy as they were launching their part of the Gothic Line Offensive.

Photo of Polish General Wladyslaw Anders courtesy of Polish Institute for National Remembrance photographic archives.

War and politics can make for strange bedfellows and that axiom was as true 80 years ago in WW II in Italy as it is today. One prominent example of that was Brazil joining the Allied Forces to end Nazi and Italian Fascist tyranny in Italy on the Gothic Line Offensive. Before and during WW II, Brazil was led by dictator Getulio Vargas who took power in Brazil via a coup d'etat in the 1930s. His authoritarian inspiration came from none other than Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. However after U.S. State Department lobbying that followed the Japanese Pearl Harbor attack in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941 and the subsequent sinking of Brazilian coastal merchant ships by German submarines, Brazil declared war in 1942 on the Axis Forces of Germany and Italy.

To help the Allied Forces, the Brazilian army formed a 25,000 soldier Brazilian Expeditionary Force (FEB). Unlike any other WWII army, the FEB was racially integrated - an example that would go on to help galvanize the U.S. African American civil rights movement.

However American military commanders were not impressed. The Brazilian military training and weaponry was based on WW I military doctrine and was therefore outdated and obsolete, especially as it concerned mountain warfare .

It was only when the U.S. Army Allied Command decided to move more than 25,000 U.S. troops out of Italy in mid-1944 to support the Normandy invasion in France and were desperately in need of replacements for the Gothic Line Offensive that the Brazilian FEB was deployed. That took place in the second half of 1944 in Tuscany. After their first combat training in WW II mobile and mountain warfare, the FEB was sent to the Apennine Mountains. Flanking them on their left was the segregated U.S. African-American 92nd Division ``Buffalo Soldiers'', who were also facing their first WWII combat. . The FEB's role was to work primarily with the U.S. Army 10th Mountain Division, which was also experiencing its first combat after more than two years of intensive mountain combat training in the United States.

The FEB suffered significant losses in its first combat when it was tasked with driving German troops off key strategic mountains that were blocking the U.S. Fifth Army from a breakthrough in its goal to reach Bologna before Christmas of 1944. Tactical errors were partly to blame for initial FEB failures. But strategically placed mountain-top German artillery also made their task difficult if not impossible.

By the spring of 1945, the FEB was, by all accounts, a much more effective fighting force and achieved major victories. One of those included the conquest of the mountain town of Montese west of Bologna where the FEB are feted annually.

Two authors - Brazilian Prof. Dennison de Oliveira and Italian museum curator Andrea Gondolfin - who have chronicled the story of the FEB in recent years - will provide in this podcast episode further insight to the Brazilian WWII story on the Gothic Line in Italy.

During the final segment of the episode we will fast forward 80 years when neo-fascism and war are threatening the European continent in eerily similar ways to what happened in the run-up up to WW II. As was the case in the 1930s, Brazil and its current Socialist President Lula da Silva has some ironical bedfellows. No. 1 on that list is Russian President Vladimir Putin, who President Lula da Silva has embraced and is indirectly supporting by buying diesel fuel from Russia even though Brazil has sufficient domestic supplies. President Lula has repeatedly rebuffed Western democratic country pleas, including from many that Brazil allied with in WW II, to join the effort to help Ukraine. Vitelio Brustolin, an international relations professor in Brazil and in the United States, will explain how by embracing Putin Lula is out of step with most Brazilians.

For more information about the podcast contact Joe Kirwin at joekirwin@compuserve.com or at 00 32 478 277802.

Ivy League envy is a familiar theme that has occasionally surfaced in American public and political life since the elite universities such as Harvard, Cornell, Dartmouth, Yale and others opened more than 200 years ago. The current resentment wave led by U.S. President Donald Trump and his MAGA mob is a particularly pernicious, unwarranted inquisition and will surely backfire - just as happened in the past, including in World War II.

Moreover when U.S. Army General Mark Clark planned and commanded the 1943-44 winter American assault on the mountainous terrain of mainland Italy between Naples and Rome, he had at his disposal the first-ever specially trained mountain division of more than 20,000 soldiers. Known as the 10th Mountain Division, the troops had undergone rigorous training since 1941 - first on Mount Rainier in Washington state and then high in the Colorado mountains at a purpose-built training base where they honed their combat skills in frigid weather using skis and mountain climbing. But after more than two years of training - and despite a desperate need for infantry troops - the Tenth Mountain Division was rejected by Clark. Why? Because he considered them unreliable Ivy League ``elitists'' unsuitable for rugged combat. Indeed a large majority of the 10th Mountain Division were from Ivy League institutions, especially schools such as Dartmouth and others located in the New England mountains.

Clark's initial rejection of the 10th Mountain Division proved costly as the U.S. military struggled in the mountains between Naples and Rome . As it was, specially trained French and Moroccan mountain troops were employed when U.S. commanders withdrew some American troops to conduct the amphibious, Anzio surprise beach landing 30 miles southwest of Rome in early 1944. The French and Moroccan troops were fierce fighters but they also sexually assaulted thousands of Italian women - a controversy that still lingers today and is a shameful legacy that some Italians use to either ignore or tarnish the sacrifices of Allied Forces in Italy . As it was, the winter of 1943-44 was a bloody battle that cost the lives of tens of thouands of Allied soldiers, many of whom had never trained or fought in the mountains.

Despite that costly campaign, Clark continued to reject the 10th Mountain Division when he planned the U.S. Fifth Army assault on the Gothic Line, which began in early September of 1944. Again faced with the deadly challenge of assaulting German mountain-top fortifications in the northern Apennine mountains, Clark insisted on using U.S. army infantry divisions that had been on the front lines for nearly two years with minimal or no rest - unheard of in contemporary military doctrine. Military historians cite low morale and high deserationrates among those troops that Clark deployed with the launch of the U.S. Fifth Army's assault up the center of the Apennines between Florence and Bologna.

Finally Clark and other U.S. commanders, facing failure as the Gothic Line offensive stalled, relented and in December 1944 the 10th Mountain Division infantry arrived in Tuscany in the western part of the Apennines. They would go on to play a decisive role in breaking through German mountain-top artillery that had earlier slaughtered hundreds of American and Brazilian troops trying to break through the Gothic Line.

Ultimately, the 10th Mountain Division would not only break through the Gothic Line at a pace much faster than expected but would arrive in the Po Valley and then at the foot of the Alps when WW II in Europe ended in May 1945. They had achieved every objective assigned to them but at a cost. Of the approximately 20,000 10th Mountain Division soldiers that arrived on the front lines in Italy in December more than 1,000 soldiers were killed and approximately 3,900 were injured in six months.

By Joe Kirwin

There are numerous Gothic Line Offensive stories that are obscure and nearly lost to history but none more so than the more 7,000 South African black soldiers who helped to end Nazi and Italian Fascists tyranny in Italy.

Fighting in Tuscany between American and Brazilian troops in the mountains above the city of Montemurlo, the Black South African troops' role was restricted to menial labor and other service-related duties under the command of the White South African Sixth Armored Division. That's because South African law prevented the Black South African soldiers from carrying a firearm. Instead they could only arm themselves with spears and shields against German machine guns, artillery and mortar fire.

The firearm restrictions were part of the overall racial abuse imposed by white South Africans going back to the early 1900s when they confiscated from blacks most of the arable land in the country. In 1939 when South Africa agreed to join the Allied Alliance and declare war on Germany, Italy and Japan, the controversial decision caused political upheaval - especially among Afrikaans political factions that identified with Nazi Germany.

When the war decision was taken by the White South African government, it realized it had a big problem: a severe shortage of infantry troops. Reluctantly the white South African government realized their only option was to allow Blacks and Coloreds into the Army.

Many Black South Africans agreed to join a special Native Military Corp in the South African army hoping it would lead to civil rights and land reform rewards when WW II ended. Whereas most other soldiers of color who fought and died for democracy on the Gothic Line in Italy - even though they did not have it in their own country - there was a slow and minimal post-war dividends. Ssome, such as U.S. African American troops, eventually gained civil rights in some parts of the United States. In the case of the approximately 60,000 Indian troops, their Gothic Line war service did play a role in helping India gain its independence from the United Kingdom in 1947. Japanese American troops were were compensated for being imprisoned after the Pearl Harbor attack by Japan in 1941.

But it was the opposite for Black South African soldiers when they returned from Italy. Apartheid was codified into South African law in 1948. As a result Blacks were forced onto desolate homelands or township slums. When Nelson Mandela's was released from prison in the early 1990s and led the African National Congress into government, the story of the Black South African soldiers service in WW II in Italy was disregarded. To this day it is still absent from most history book sand museums in South Africa and Italy.

After a four-month search for this podcast I finally found a man who has arguably done more than any over the last 50 years to keep the Black South African WW II soldier story alive. That person is University of Johannesburg Prof. Emeritus Louis Grundling. In the early 1980s he wrote his PhD thesis on the Black South African WW II history including on the Gothic Line and taught it for the next five decades at South Africa's largest academic institution.

Some 80 years later after the end of the Gothic Line Offensive and WW II in Europe, Prof. Grundling said there is still no recognition in the South African education system or in museums about the Black Soldiers' role in WW II, which started in north Africa under British command and then continued in Italy. Grundling said it was only in January of 2025 that recognition was given to Black South African soldiers who fought in WW I.

``Hopefully sometime soon recognition for the WW II Black South African soldiers will come,'' he told me.

The ferocious 4-month battle that took place at Monte Cassino when Allied Forces attempted to break through the mountains between Naples and Rome and drive the German and Italian Fascist forces out of Italy will always be remembered as the bloodiest and most brutal chapter of the 1943-45 WW II Allied campaign in Italy.

Later in 1944, when Allied armies launched the Gothic Line offensive after the liberation of Rome on June 4, the fighting across the northern Apennines is not as steeped in folklore as Monte Cassino but there were a number of epic battles that equaled in intensity if not in length and casualties. The fierce fighting in the mountain-top town of Gemmano overlooking the Adriatic Sea is often referred to as the ``Cassino of the Adriatic'' although some historians insist the battle over the old Roman coastal and port town of Rimini, was even bloodier.

On the western side of the Gothic Line in Tuscany, not far from where the Apennines and Apuane mountains meet, the battle of Monte Castello, Monte Torraccia and Monte Belvedere and nearby Riva Ridge, involving American and Brazilian troops, is sometimes referred to as the ``Cassino of Tuscany''.

In the center of Italy where the U.S. Fifth Army launched in mid-September, 1944 its part of the Gothic Line one-two punch, pincer movement to capture Nazi headquarters in Bologna, the struggle to control the strategic heights of Monte Battaglia (715 meters) above the Santerno and Valsenio river valleys is often referred to as the ``Cassino of the North.'' It was fought off and on over the course of several months starting from Sept. 27, 1944 when American 88th ``Blue Devil'' troops, aided by Italian Partisans, waged a week-long struggle.

If you climb to the top of Monte Battaglia today you can understand why it was the site of deadly combat. The commanding view of the Adriatic coastal plain extends all the way to the Po River valley and, Italy's breadbasket, Beyond it is Italy's industrial heartland. Although not in view, the city of Bologna and the Nazi military headquarters, is less than 40 kilometers.

So when the U.S. Army took control of Monte Battaglia in early autumn of 1944 the Gothic Line Offensive was on a roll. But the momentum was short-lived. Torrential rains, frigid weather and stout German resistance - as ordered relentlessly y by Hitler - proved insurmountable. As a result the Allied Forces, including American forces struggling to breakthrough in the mountains southwest of Bologna, called a halt to the offensive in mid December, For three months a battle of attrition similar to WW I warfare ensued. The Gothic Line offensive would not resume in full until March of 1945 when weather, refreshed troops, mechanical innovations, restocked ammo supplies and waning German soldier morale revived momentum.

Valerio Calderoni , 64, and a native of nearby Imola, has spent decades roaming the Santerno River Valley, especially over the last 40 years during his work as a veterinarian and pursuing his passion as an independent historian. For many years, Valerio has heard the local stories about the battle of Monte Battaglia some of which varied when it concerned the role of Italian Partisan freedom fighters and the U.S. Army troops and the relationship between the two. More than 20 years ago, Valerio took it upon himself to do extensive research examining archive records in the United States, Italy and Germany to understand the true story of what happened on Monte Battaglia. In 2014 he published his results in a book titled ``Monte Battaglia 1944: from Myth to History. Valerio explained in this podcast episode his conclusions and ongoing work, which includes forensic recovery of fallen soldiers on Monte Battaglia. Valerio is also a board member of the Gothic Line museum located in Castel del Rio in the Santerno River Valley.

For more infomation contact Joe Kirwin at joekirwin@compuserve.com or tel: 00 32 478 277802

By Joe Kirwin

Soon after the surprise Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii when Japanese forces destroyed much of the U.S. Navy and Air Force Pacific Ocean presence, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the arrest of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans living in the United States. They were forced from their homes, farms and businesses and locked up in internment camps in the deserts of the western United States. Yoshio Nakamura and his family were among those that lost everything. They were considered national security threats that could not be trusted.

Two years after the mass incarceration, the U.S. War Department, entering the third year of fighting WW II fronts in the Pacific and in Europe, faced a troop shortage. Suddenly imprisoned Japanese American men 18-years and older who were born in the United States were seen as a solution instead of spies. So the U.S. government allowed the Japanese-Americans men 18 and over to leave the prison camps but only if they agreed to join the U.S. Army and fight the Nazis in Italy or the Japanese in the Pacific. The injustice and hypocrisy was too much for many of the imprisoned Japanese Americans men and they refused . But for others it was an opportunity to prove their allegiance to the United States. Yoshio Nakamura was one of the latter. Even though his family members remained locked up in the desert until the end of the war, he would join the 442nd Japanese American regiment. It would go onto become one of the most decorated U.S. Army units in WW II.

The first Japanese American infantry troops arrived in Italy at Salerno in September of 1943 as part of the 100th Infantry Battalion. They would go on to engage in combat at Monte Cassino and suffered significant casualties and were subsequently referred to as the ``Purple Heart'' battalion. In the summer of 1944 the Nisei 442 Combat team would arrive in Italy north of Rome and were joined by the 100th Infantry Battalion and helped drive the Germans and Italian Fascists up the coast and into mountain-top fortifications on the Gothic Line. The Japanese American troops were then transferred to southern France and helped free territory that would allow American troops join Allied forces that had landed in Normandy. U.S. General Mark Clark, impressed by the Japanese Americans - or Nisei troops as they were known - by their short time in Italy - requested their return for the final Gothic Line thrust in western Tuscany. Their task was to scale the steep, white-marble Tuscan mountains overlooking the sea where German and Italian Fascist troops were hunkered down in artillery bunkers and had used the strategic redoubt to block Allied Forces from moving north up the Mediterranean Coast.

Now living in southern California, where he was born and raised, 100-year-old Yoshio Nakamura explained why he decided to join the U.S. Army and also recounted in vivid detail a crucial nighttime climb up Monte Folgorito to destroy one of the enemy mortar and artillery bunkers as if it occurred recently instead of 80 years ago. Yoshio also recounted how a half century later the U.S. government apologized for the gross injustice imposed on Japanese Americans during WW II.

For more information contact Joe Kirwin at joekirwin@compuserve.com or 00 32 478 277802

By Joe Kirwin

Over the past decade, author and U.S. Marine veteran Andrew Biggio interviewed more than 30 U.S. Army soldiers who fought on the Gothic Line as part of his research for his best-selling books The Rifle and The Rifle 2. Many were in their late 90s or older. But they had vivid, emotionally distraught recall of what happened from Sept. 1944 to April 1945 in the northern ItaIian Apennine mountains. As he describes in the podcast many of the soldiers had been on the front lines for almost two years - far longer than most other Allied Force troops fighting in other parts of Europe or in the Pacific theater. And as Allied Forces marched across northwest Europe towards Berlin, the Gothic Line U.S. Army troops attacking up heavily fortified mountain-top bunkers knew they were ``bait'' to keep German troops pinned down in Italy as the end neared in the six-year war. Morale was low and the death toll was high. Having survived North Africa, Sicily, Salerno, Anzio and Cassino, the mental and physical exhaustion drove many to either desert or even commit suicide. Upon the war's end and American veterans returned to the U.S. the country feted the heroes of the Normandy beaches, the Battle of the Bulge, Iwo Jima or Guadalcanal. But Gothic Line survivors were belittled by some fellow veterans who knew, like most Americans and Europeans, of the brutality and often futile task of combat on the Italian ``Forgotten Front.''

Biggio's work with U.S. WW II veterans on the Gothic Line in Italy and other theatres stems partly from his own military service. He has done tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and upon returning to civilian life he started projects to help wounded vets rehabilitate and adapt to civilian life. He currently resides in the Boston area and works in law enforcement. He is also the founder of Boston's Wounded Vet Run, which is an annual motorcycle ride honoring and supporting vets. His two books The Rifle and The Rifle 2 are available online or your local bookstore.

For more information contact Joe Kirwin at joekirwin@compuserve.com or at 00 32 478 277802

By Joe Kirwin

When the U.S. Fifth Army launched its part of the Allied Force Gothic Line one-two punch pincer movement to capture Bologna it began with a one of WW II's most daunting tasks: conquer the imposing heights of Monte Altuzzo 50 kilometers north of Florence. After initial success the offensive bogged down and turned into a WW I type of trench warfare because of a snowy, frigid winter in the mountainous terrain. Eighty years on, the Gotica Toscana Museum, located just below Monte Altuzzo in Tuscany, holds annual day-long re-enactments to not only honor the bravery of the American soldiers but also as a way to engage younger generations who know little or nothing about this dark chapter of Italian history. As Andrea Gatti, a former chairman of the Gotica Toscana museum, said: Italian students learn in school about Roman Empire history or the history of the founding of Italy in the 1800s but the WW II story is still taboo for some because of the bloody civil war that raged in Italy when the Gothic Line offensive began. Tens of thousands of civilians were murdered in cold blood by retreating Nazis and Italian Fascists. And because there was never an Italian version of the Nuremberg trials where Nazi war criminals were tried and convicted, suspicion and vengeance still fester within families, communities and politics in Italy.

Gatti also explains why knowing the history of what happened on the Gothic Line in Italy as well as the rest of Europe in WW II is vital to understand and appreciate the value of the European Union, which grew from the ashes of the conflict.

For more information contact Joe Kirwin at joekirwin@compuserve.com or 00 32 478277802

By Joe Kirwin

More than 60,000 Indian troops served in the Allied Force armies that fought and died to free Italy from German and Italian Fascist tyranny even though the soldiers from India did not have democracy in their homeland. Serving as volunteers under British command in the Adriatic sector of the Gothic Line offensive, Hindus, Moslems, Sikhs, Gurkhas and others fought side by side - primarily as fierce mountain fighters. They covered the flank of British soldiers on their right coming up the hills over looking the Adriatic Sea and American Fifth Army on their left, who began a campaign a few weeks after the British Eighth Army attack, up the center of Italy as part of a one-two punch, pincer movement to capture Bologna.

There are more than 5000 Hindu, Moslem, Gurkhas, Sikhs and other ethnic Indian soldiers buried or cremated in three Commonwealth grave cemeteries in and around the Gothic Line. Fifteen years ago Dhruv Ratti moved to Italy to work as a chemical engineer for an Italian company. He, like almost all other Indians of his generation, were never taught in school about the approximately 2.5 million Indian soldiers who volunteered to fight in WW II under British command, including the 60,000 who faced combat in Italy. Living near the Adriatic Sea, Ratti was told about a war cemetery near his house. He visited only to discover Indian soldier tombstones, some of whom came from villages near his home town and who had fought and died on the Gothic Line offensive - a battle that claimed more lives of his countrymen than any other in WW II. The emotion triggered by that visit launched Ratti on a two-fold mission that continues to this day: gain recognition in Italy for those Indian soldiers in the same way that American, Canadian, British, Australian and other Western nation troops are honored - a quest that he has yet to fulfill. That mission parallels an effort to counter anti-immigrant scapegoating by Italian and other European politicians as well as the general public who do not appreciate the fact that the "freedom they enjoy has been nourished by Indian blood.'''

The second goal of his mission is to bring awareness to more than 1 billion people on the Indian subcontinent whose forebears fought in Italy and in other parts of WW II.

In 2021 Ratti made important headway on the latter goal when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Italy. Ratti presented him with a display, including cemetery photographs, detailing Indian soldier sacrifice in Italy - a story that has been ignored in Indian history because it happened before the country gained independence from Britain in 1947. With Modi's encouragement, Ratti continues to work on various film and documentary projects in order to inform younger Indian generations of their ancestors WW II history.

Ratti has also worked tirelessly to get the British Commonwealth Grave Cemetery Commission to rectify Indian tombstone language errors in Italy as well as sacrilegious flaws listing Muslim soldiers at cremation sites.

In addition in this podcast episode, Ratti also tells the story of how there were also Indians, some motivated by their quest for independence from Britain, who fought on the Axis side in WW II. And how both the Indians who fought with the British in WW II and those that were part of the Indian Nationalist Army that formed during WW II, helped accelerate India's successful drive for independence from Britain.

For more information contact Joe Kirwin (joekirwin@compuserve.com) or on whatsapp at 00 32 478 277802

By Joe Kirwin

After U.S. Fifth Army General Mark Clark deviated from an Allied Force plan in early June 1944 to trap retreating Germans in central Italy and instead moved his troops to liberate Rome, the controversial decision outraged British commanders, especially Lt. General Oliver Leese. As a result, Leese rejected the original Gothic Line offensive plan for a joint American-British attack up the center of Italy in the Apennine mountains to liberate Bologna from Nazi and Italian Fascist occupation.

Instead, Leese launched one of the most complex and dangerous logistical exercises in WW II by moving at night in August 1944 approximately 100,000 British Eighth Army troops - an amount equal to those in the D-Day landing in Normandy. The convoy traveled from central Italy across a primitive, hilly road network to the Adriatic coastal plain. The coalition of soldiers under Leese's command included troops from India, Scotland, Poland, Greece, Palestine, New Zealand and Canada.

On Aug. 28, 1944, they launched the first wave of the Gothic Line offensive, which was part of a one-two punch, pincer movement instead of the original full-frontal, central Italy thrust. The U.S.-led Fifth Army, commanded by Clark, would launch two weeks later the second part of the one-two punch plan up the Giogo Pass north of Florence.

Author Mike Sommerville's father was part of the Sherwood Foresters infantry regiment of the British Eighth Army. Sommerville, a military historian, described how ``The Sherwood Boys'' - as his book is titled - had been transferred out of Italy to Palestine in February 1944 to rest and retrain before returning to Italy for the Gothic Line offensive.

However, like much of the Allied Force campaign in Italy that started in 1943 with a landing in Sicily, little went to plan. The British-led army suffered significant casualties from the start of the offensive and was often bogged down because of rain-swollen rivers and mud. In September, fierce fighting claimed the lives of more than 80,000 German and Allied soldiers. Low morale problems soon became an issue, especially after the British troops learned politicians and the tabloid press in the U.K. had labeled them as ``D-Day dodgers '' vacationing on the Adriatic Sea. The desertion rate multiplied as soldiers went AWOL to avoid being killed or injured when it had become clear the war was nearing an end. Ultimately, the British-led offensive ground to a halt in December 1944 on the Senio River because of limited and exhausted troops, low ammunition, poor weather as well as relentless German resistance made it impossible to achieve the planned Christmas-time victory celebration. As a result, they would spend nearly three months hunkered down on the fringe of a no-man's land by the Senio amidst constant artillery exchanges with German troops on other side of the river bank. Three and a half months later, the British Eighth Army under Leese's command would renew the offensive in April. The American-led Fifth Army, which also stalled for months, broke through from the west. After three weeks the German forces agreed to surrender at the end of April despite Hitler's order to fight to the death.

For more information contact Joe Kirwin at joekirwin@compuserve.com or on whatsapp 00 32 478277802

By Joe Kirwin

When U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January of 2025 one of the first things his newly confirmed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth did was ban books in the Pentagon and Armed Forces academies and other libraries and schools that tell the story of institutional racism faced by segregated African American soldiers during WW II and when they returned to the United States. When American art teacher Solace Wales and her husband bought in the early 1970s a small house in the mountain-top village of Sommocolonia in Italy, she had no idea about the U.S. military institutional racism faced by U.S. black soldiers that fought on the Gothic Line in and around that part of Tuscany. But after a decade of spending summers in the small village the stories of what happened in 1944-45 set her off on a journey with notebook, tape recorder and pen in hand. She thus began a 30-year research journey including extensive interviews with many U.S. black veterans that served on the Gothic Line in Tuscany. Her story tells of black soldier bravery and as well as the treatment by white racist military commanders from the segregated U.S. south determined to prove their supremacist views that black soldiers were inferior. In 2020 Wales, now based in northern California outside San Francisco, published Braided in Fire: Black GIs, Tuscan Villagers and Italian Partisans on the Gothic Line 1944. Besides detailing the story of how Lieutenant John Fox gave his own life in Sommocolonia to save his fellow soldiers, the story also gives a compelling account of how local villagers - many whom were her neighbors - navigated the treachery of the Nazi and Italian Fascist occupation, roving bands of local bandits, Italian Partisan freedom fighters and their relationship with undercover American secret agents as well as the Allied Force Gothic Line armies. The latter included the U.S. 92nd Infantry Division Buffalo Soldiers, who were the first African American infantry soldiers to face combat in WW II, and an elite African American artillery battalion. Both were deployed in the second half of 1944 when the U.S. Army, desperate for replacement soldiers, finally allowed the African American infantry to enter the battlefield. Among the latter was Fox, who called in artillery fire he knew would end his life but would allow his fellow soldiers to escape a surprise Christmas-time German counter-offensive. In the podcast interview Wales tells how the white commander of Fox's battalion knew about the German counter offensive but did not inform the under-manned black troops stationed over Christmas in Sommocolonia. It took more than 50 years for Fox to posthumously receive the U.S. Medal of Honor when former U.S. President Bill Clinton awarded it to his widowed wife at the White House. Present that day were other African American veteran Medal of Honor recipients who also had been denied bravery recognition because of a racist narrative that lingered for decades in the U.S. military after WW II. Also present was Solace Wales and she recounts that emotional day in Washington, D.C.

For more information contact Joe KIrwin at joekirwin@compuserve.com or on whatsapp at 00 32 478277802

By Joe Kirwin

85 years ago Italy was on the wrong side of history after joining Adolf Hitler in declaring war against Allied countries including the United States and the United Kingdom. It took the most multinational and multiracial army ever assembled to finally end Nazi and Italy Fascist tyranny in Italy in April of 1945 when the nine-month Gothic Line offensive concluded and WW II ended in Europe with Germany's unconditional surrender.

Often referred to as the Forgotten Front, the Allied Force Gothic Line offensive took place after the liberation of Rome on June 4, 1944 and the D-Day invasion in Normandy. It was the final phase of a bloody battle up the Italian boot. Built by slave laborers, mercenaries, prisoners of war in the northern Apennine Mountains, Hitler ordered the construction of the Gothic Line as a last defense barrier against the capture of the Po River valley, which is the breadbasket of Italy. The Gothic Line consisted of 300 kilometers of bunkers, trenches and tunnels- many still in existence. Soldiers from more than 17 countries took part in the Allied Force Offensive. It marked the first infantry combat for segregated U.S. Army African American soldiers, who fought two enemies: the Nazis and racist American white commanders. Other Allied soldiers included Japanese-Americans, whose families were locked up in prison camps in the United States, Indian soldiers from all sects and religions, black South Africans and Maorians from New Zealand. All of them fought and died for democracy in Italy and Europe even though they did not have it in their home country. The first Jewish Brigade since Roman times joined the Allied Forces on the Gothic Line in January of 1945 and would go onto to play a controversial role in rescuing survivors of the Holocaust.

In addition more than 200 civilian massacres in villages across the Gothic Line were carried out by Nazi and Italian Fascist soldiers. Few were held accountable for those war crimes and they area festering political wound 80 years later. And as Italian President Sergio Mattarella stated in early 2025 these massacres are no different than what Russian President Vladimir Putin has done in Ukraine in the past three years.

Meanwhile most Italians are unaware about this ugly chapter in their recent history. With Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni's political party Brothers of Italy tracing its roots back to Hitler's ally Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini the Fascist past regularly erupts today more than it has for decades. At the same time U.S. President Donald Trump threatens the post-WW II transatlantic economic and defense alliance that has fostered relative peace and prosperity for the last 80 years and Putin makes no secret of his ambition to rebuild the Iron Curtain. As a result Italy, a founding European Union member state, faces crucial security and defense questions. Considering so many foreign soldiers sacrificed their lives for Italy 80 years ago, solidarity with countries facing the same death and destruction today from Russian aggression would seem like an easy choice. However across the Italian political spectrum and among a majority of the population there is opposition not only to helping Ukraine with military arms but also plans to rebuild a European military defense capacity required due to Trump's pro-Putin appeasement policies.

The complacency against the Russian threat in Europe is similar to the dangers posed by Hitler. Along with scapegoating immigrants there is denial about their vital role in keeping the Italian and European economy going in the face of an aging population, stagnant economic growth and a massive national debt. All of these issues and others are the subject of more than 15 podcast episodes that details the story of the Gothic Line ghosts that haunt Italy and Europe and where the past is present. For more info: joekirwin@compuserve.com or on whatsapp at 00 32 478 277802

Russian emigre and Prague-based history professor Sergei Medvedev explains how the past is present in Europe as Russian President Vladimir Putin makes no secret of his plans to rebuild the Iron Curtain. In addition just as Hitler had European and Asian allies so does Putin. Today in Europe a growing list of far-right, far-left and centrist politicians either support Putin or are apologists. Whereas Japan was on Hitler's side Putin receives assistance from North Korea, China and Iran providing assistance in his war against Ukraine along with a growing cadre of far-right, far-left and centrists politicians in Europe.

Medvedev also explains today's political and economic similarities with the 1930s when a far-right, intolerant, anti-science political movement swept Germany. He also dissects how U.S. President Donald Trump's MAGA movement is simply bent on chaos and has attracted the anti-science climate change deniers and anti-vaccine movement - just as happened in the 1930s when brilliant minds such Albert Einstein were forced to leave Europe. As Trump makes a mockery of the blood and treasure countries such as the United States and others gave to save democracy in Europe in WW II, Medvedev also concurs that Trump and his territorial ambitions in Greenland, Canada and Panama have undermined the moral imperative to stop Putin's aggression in Ukraine. This Trump imperialism also helps explain his obvious appeasement approach toward the Russian leader. ``The post WW II international institutions are being battered from all sides,'' Medvedev says. ``It is a very dangerous time we are living in.''

For more information contact Joe Kirwin at joekirwin@compuserve.com or on whatsapp at 00 32 478277802

By Joe Kirwin

Nazi and Italian Fascist troops committed more than 200 civilian massacres in WW II in Italy between July of 1944 and April of 1945. Few were held accountable for the cold-blooded murders, especially in Italy. Eighty years later the issue festers as Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni's political party Brothers of Italy has neo-fascist roots linked to Hitler's ally Benito Mussolini. He ruled Italy for two decades before he was killed by Italian freedom fighters at the end of WW II.

Carlo Gentile, an Italian native and history professor at the University of Cologne in Germany, explains his ongoing work to give closure to the thousands of massacre victims and their families as well as help Italians confront their WW II past. He also explains the complex Italian Fascist resistance movement that evolved during WW II including when Allied Forces fought a bloody battle to drive the Nazis and Italian Fascists from power in Italy.

In addition, Udo Surer, the son of a Nazi soldier, who participated in one of the civilian massacres in an Italian village, explains the peach and reconciliation campaign he began after he discovered his father's past.

For more information contact Joe Kirwin at joekirwin@compuserve.com or at whatsapp 00 32 478 277802