The Italian Army¿s participation in Hitler¿s war against the Soviet Union has remained unrecognized and understudied. Bastian Matteo Scianna offers a wide-ranging, in-depth corrective. Mining Italian, German and Russian sources, he examines the history of the Italian campaign in the East between 1941 and 1943, as well as how the campaign was remembered and memorialized in the domestic and international arena during the Cold War. Linking operational military history with memory studies, this book revises our understanding of the Italian Army in the Second World War.

Bastian Matteo Scianna is Assistant Professor at the University of Potsdam, Germany.

1. Introduction.- 2. Historiography: Past Problems and Recent Trends.- 3. The Italian Army before the Second World War (1861-1940).- 4. The guerra fascista - 10 June 1940-25 July 1943.- 5. The Italian Operations on the Eastern Front (1941).- 6. The Italian Operations on the Eastern Front (1942).- 7. The Battle on the Don, 11 December 1942-31 December 1943.- 8. The Italian Combat Performance: 'Chicken led by Donkeys?'.- 9. Narratives about Victimhood: Evil Germans, Good Italian Occupiers, and Evil Soviets?.- 10. Shaping the Myths: Memoirs, the Army, and the Alpini.- 11. Contested Memories during the Cold War.- 12. Conclusion.