ROME FELL TODAY by Adleman, Robert H, and Walton, George, Col

Little Brown & Co., Boston, 1968. US first edition, hard bound in dust jacket, 6 1/2 x 9 1./2, VG/VG CONDITION, (very minor dj edge wear), x, 336 pages, illus., maps, notes, bibliog., index.------------------------------------------The battle for Italy was admittedly the most controversial campaign of World War II. To this day, soldiers, historians, reporters and political leaders angrily debate whether the choice of that miserably uncomfortable arena was a bloody waste of men and materiel or was the sound result of a series of inevitable problems and decisions.The leaders of both sides have not escaped the puzzled stares of contemporary and succeeding generations. Was President Roosevelt a too-willing tool in what some have agreed was a Stalinist plot to chew up Anglo-American resources? Was Field Marshal Albert Kesselring really the military genius that some American generals have acclaimed or was he simply the interfering optimist as described by several of his own subordinate commanders? Was Mark Clark a publicity-hungry "butcher" or was he one of the most able of the Allied military leaders? As for Pope Pius XII, was he a pro-German opportunist or a spiritual leader deeply grieved by private convictions of weakness?---------------------------------------------------These are some of the questions that have been honestly met within the pages of this book. The authors have allowed the answers to emerge from their sifting through of thousands of pertinent documents in the National Archives, their conversations with almost every living participant in every major event that shaped or took place in that campaign, their studies of the available private papers of many of the German generals who fought the Allied advance, and from their summaries of the hundreds of books which touch upon the period.