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Battle of the Alps 1940: Italian Invasion of France. by Marek Sobski

Discussion in 'ETO, MTO and the Eastern Front' started by ColHessler, Nov 17, 2022.

  1. ColHessler

    ColHessler Member

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    Length: 276 pages

    This is the third book in Marek Sobski's series on the Italian military in WWII. We start with Italy and France's relations between the wars. Most of the time the animosity of the French Left is what drove them to fortify the Franco-Italian frontier. Sobski tells us about the frontier forts and gun positions not only on the mainland, but Corsica and later the Mareth Line in Tunisia.

    Mussolini gets told by his advisors Italy would not be ready to fight until 1942. He still goes ahead and declares war on Britain and France on June 10, 1940. His army's battle plan is broken down, as well as the orders of battle for both sides.

    It takes over a week for Italy's forces to move, and Sobski gives us the action going from north to south, from the Swiss frontier to the Med coast. The difficulties the Italians encounter, from weather and fog, to lack of artillery, make the going difficult. Hitler tells Italy to make their own armistice with France, so the fight carries on while Germany makes it's advances and even signs their ceasefire on June 22. There is also info on the skirmishes in Libya and Tunisia, and de Gaulle and LeClerc are mentioned as preparing to move from Chad. Stay tuned.

    Sobski does a much better job with organizing this book than he did with the first two. His table of contents are in the front instead of the back, and the translation is much clearer in this work than the others. I hope he keeps this guy for translating in the future.

    There are also pictures of the French forts from nowadays to show what damage had been done. He does, however, in the back of the book, have Italian magazine pictures from the German advance. Otherwise, this is a great volume in the series to give the English reader info on the Italian-French campaign. I give this 4 stars out of 5.
     

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