Naples 1944: The Devil’s Paradise at War

Keith Lowe has chronicled the end of WWII in Europe in his award-winning book Savage Continent and the war’s aftermath in the sequel, The Fear and the Freedom. In Naples 1944, he brings readers another masterful chronicle of the terrible and often unexpected consequences of war. Even before the fall of Mussolini, Naples was a place of great contrasts filled with palaces and slums, beloved cuisine and widespread hunger. After the Allied liberation, these contrasts made the city instantly notorious. Compared to the starving population, Allied soldiers were staggeringly wealthy. For a packet of cigarettes, even the lowest ranks could buy themselves a watch, a new suit or a woman for the night. As the biggest port in Allied hands, Naples quickly became the center of Italy’s black market and has remained so ever since. Within just a few months the Camorra began to re-establish itself. Behind the chaos and the corruption, there was always the threat of violence. Army guns were looted and traded. Gangs of street kids fought running battles with the military police. Public buildings, booby-trapped by departing Germans, began to explode, seemingly spontaneously.
Then in March 1944 – like an omen – Vesuvius erupted. Naples was the first major European city to be liberated by the Allies. What they found there would set a template for the whole of the rest of Europe in the years to come. Keith Lowe’s Naples 1944 is a page-turning book about a city on the brink of chaos and glimpse into the dark heart of postwar Italy.