The Race For Rome: How the Eternal City was saved from Nazi destruction

by Dan Kurzman

A well researched book about the Allied advance up the "boot" of Italy to liberate Rome, before the German SS could make good on its threat to level the city and destroy priceless treasures of centuries that were inportant in the history of western civilization. Here are the major players in the Italian campaign. Genl Mark Clark, Genl Sir Harold Alexander, Pope Pius X11, Italian resistance leaders and Vatican officals working to save Italian Jews.

Genres: World War II, History, Nonfiction

504 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Dan Halperin Kurzman was an American journalist and writer of military history books. He studied at the University of California in Berkeley, served in the United States Army from 1943 to 1946, and completed his studies at Berkeley with a Bachelor degree in political science. In the early 1950s, he worked in Europe and in Israel for American newspapers and news agencies and was then correspondent of the NBC News in Jerusalem.

Reviews

[Julio The Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pearl of a book from my youth. Dan Kurzman wrote books celebrating history's freedom fighters, in this case Italian resistance men and women, fighting first Mussolini and then Hitler, Allied soldiers working their way up the Italian coast towards the Eternal City and churchmen frantically trying to save Rome's Jewish population from the Nazis. (A horror depicted in the Marcello Mastrionni, Richard Burton film MASSACRE IN ROME). Dan does not buy the story that Pius XII was "Hitler's Pope", indifferent to the plight of his Jewish countrymen. Others will differ. An exciting tale told in breathless journalistic fashion.

[Bob Stenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a great overview about the Allies in Italy during WWII.