Una spia a Roma

by Peter Tompkins, Mario Bonini (Translator)

Nel gennaio 1944 gli Alleati sbarcano ad Anzio. La strategia di Churchill era di conquistare i colli Albani per accerchiare la 10a armata tedesca del feldmaresciallo Kesselring. Una settimana prima che scatti l'operazione il capo dell'Office of Strategic Services, generale William J. Donovan, decide di inviare a Roma un ufficiale americano volontario che coordini le attività spionistiche e organizzi un'insurrezione partigiana in modo da agevolare l'entrata degli Alleati nella capitale. Per questa missione ad alto rischio viene scelto il maggiore Peter Tompkins, un coraggioso ventiquattrenne che dopo lo sbarco di Salerno si è già distinto nel reclutamento di agenti italiani da inviare clandestinamente al Nord, creando il primo nucleo dell'Organizzazione resistenza italiana, che produrrà intelligence per gli Alleati fino alla vittoria finale. Raggiunta la Corsica con l'aereo privato di Donovan, Tompkins sbarca con un gommone sulla costa tirrenica, dietro le linee tedesche, per poi entrare a Roma e mettersi in contatto con la giunta militare del Comitato di liberazione nazionale. Le fughe rocambolesche e i nascondigli improvvisati, gli spostamenti in incognito per la città con la Beretta in tasca e i "coprifuoco party" (a cui partecipavano anche ufficiali tedeschi, come il capitano delle SS Erik Priebke) si intrecciano a quelle che fecero di Peter Tompkins una figura chiave in una delle pagine più delicate della guerra contro il nazifascismo: il salvataggio della testa di ponte di Anzio dalla controffensiva tedesca. Questa impresa fu possibile proprio grazie alle informazioni raccolte dai partigiani reclutati da Tompkins, e grazie al loro sacrificio (furono tra le vittime delle Fosse Ardeatine e della Storta): ed è agli eroi della guerra per Roma che questo libro vuole rendere omaggio, rievocandone le personalità e raccontandone i destini.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

384 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

Peter Tompkins was an American journalist, World War II spy, and best-selling author.
His best known and most influential books include The Secret Life of Plants, published in 1973, Secrets of the Great Pyramid, reprinted in paperback in 1997, and Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids, published in 1976. He is the father of author Ptolemy Tompkins.

Reviews

[George Coufos · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating account of the adventures of a young U.S. intelligence officer in Italy during the last year of WWII.

There are a number of factors that make this book special. Tomkins is an excellent writer, highly intelligent, politically savvy and mature well beyond his 25 years. With his fluency in Italian and insider knowledge of the city of Rome and local norms and customs, he is able to give us an authentic slice of life experience from the Nazi-occupied city.

Italy's political landscape at the time is diverse and complex. Tomkins shares his struggles, thought process and strategies as he is quickly able - after a rough start, to establish an information gathering network that provides the allies with vital insights on Nazi strongpoints and movements.

He is mostly fortunate in his choice of work colleagues from the italian underground. He describes a diverse range of characters from a variety of occupations from urban police, political ambassadors, vatican officials, doctors, tailors and domestic help.

On the political front Tompkins gives us a first-hand account as he rubs shoulders with fascists roaming the streets and pose a double threat with the threat of violence while some are Nazi collaborators who might turn one in to the SS.

Tompkins is left leaning politically and gives us an open and honest account of how the allies, once they took the city of Rome, eventually shunned socialists and others on the left who fought with them as part of the underground and instead favored the same people on the right that collaborated with the enemy.

With all that going on Tomkins still manages to have fun as he and his gang throw frequent parties to "maintain cover" as care free, high society youths. And at one point has a close call when he ends up partying with a high-level German officer.

There's nothing else I've seen like this book. It's genuinely one of a kind.

[Paul Vidich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter Tompkins served in the Office of Strategic Services in Nazi-occupied Rome in the early months of 1944 when the American Fifth Army struggled toward the city. A Spy in Rome is a lucid, deeply exciting account his five months operating behind enemy lines. “Wild Bill” Donovan, the colorful head of the OSS, frustrated by inadequate intelligence from orthodox sources, recruited the brilliant and eccentric Tompkins, then a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, believing in the advantage of the enthusiastic amateur. “I drove up to the Fifth Army headquarters and told the boys the general had said O.K. That’s all there was to it!” Rome comes alive in Tompkins’s telling: the damp smell of the Tiber at dawn; evenings stolen from the war when love and danger sleep in the same bed; hours of patient surveillance punctuated by the terror of a passing German patrol. A Spy in Rome is notable for its descriptions of how intelligence is collected and collated by the lone spy: German troop movements pieced together from a network of partisan road watchers and turned into intelligence on an old battered typewriter. Tompkins’s fluent Italian allowed him to move easily along Via del Babuino, or in popular restaurants that served black market ham and English gin. “In a way it is a pleasant life, if it weren’t for the nightmare of knowing that all the time we are being hunted.”

[Daniela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Le attuali miserie dell'Italia (e non solo) hanno origini lontane. Una voce indipendente e lucida che ha vissuto la Resistenza da dentro.

[Nancy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful.
So disappointed...

[A.L. Sowards]

An interesting first-person account of a young OSS agent (Office of Strategic Services—the CIA’s precursor) who slipped into Rome just before the landings at Anzio (January 1944) and ended up staying until Rome was liberated (June 1944). He was at the top of the chain, so his work mostly involved shifting through all the information (and there was lots of it) in an attempt to check accuracy, avoid duplication, and pick out only the most important information to send to US 5th Army. He couldn’t send it all because if his radio operator stayed on the air too long, German direction-finding units would no doubt find and arrest him.

I thought the first part of the book was the most interesting—when Radio Vittoria was still functioning and they were relaying large amounts of useful information to the army. But then the Germans got the radio and Peter and his friends spent most of their time drinking or attending parties so that if the Germans (or Fascist Italians) investigated them, they’d think they were just playboys. I was a little surprised that people involved in high-stakes espionage would allow themselves to get drunk while surrounded by Nazis and Fascists and rival intelligence organizations, but they somehow managed to survive (most of them).

A useful book for anyone interested in the occupation of Rome, but last year I read The Battle for Rome: The Germans, the Allies, the Partisans, and the Pope, September 1943--June 1944, by Robert Katz, and I’d actually recommend that one over this one. It covers the same time period and includes information about Tompkins’s mission. It’s also easier to find because it’s still in print, but I have to confess a love for decades-old books with tanned pages and uneven trimming. A Spy in Rome looks beautiful sitting on my bookshelf.

[Jack Laschenski · Rating 5 out of 5]

The true journal of a young man who was sent into Rome by General Donovan (OSS) to extract and transmit information about the Germans in Italy.

Horrifying - the vileness and murderousness of the Germans.

Electrifying the risks taken to bring down the Fascists by so many.

And awful the disorganization of the OSS and the American generals.

No recognition and no record in the Washington files for this intrepid person.

He survived and became a well known author in the US. Died in 2007,

Best known book: The Secret Life of plants