Caroline MooreheadRecensioni

Lucie de la Tour du Pin led an extraordinary life during a tumultuous period of history. When Lucie died, "The France into which Lucie was born, in the spring of 1770, was no more." But that France is still very interesting to read about -- the time when there were kings and emperors and revolutions, salons run by brilliant women where good conversation was an art, and wit and good manners were highly esteemed.

Early on, Moorehead talks about June 1932, when Martha rejoins her lover Bertrand de Jouvenel, sailing into le Havre and then taking off together for a walking tour through Germany. She writes, "They drove across France and into Germany. Berchtesgaden reminded Bertrand of Disneyland..."

This is a poorly written book about an unpleasant and very selfish woman. I didn't like the writing and I didn't like Gellhorn, but I did like reading about her most extraordinary life.

A riveting and fascinating biography of Benito Mussolini’s eldest daughter and favourite child, Edda.

The subtitle declares Edda to have been “The Most Dangerous Woman in Europe” and it’s worth pondering that for a moment. It’s a phrase that the author quotes from a newspaper, not her own opinion. Fascist ideology came with a conservative social mindset that wanted women to obey men, just as men should obey the state, and in the end everything and everyone served the Duce. As daughter of the dictator and wife of foreign minister Ciano, Edda was in the same position as the Roman ladies of old — she wielded influence, not power. Edda didn’t attempt to lead any political organisation. Caroline Moorehead describes how the dictator’s wife Rachele followed the lead of many second-tier fascists and ran her own network of spies and informers; not so Edda. There isn’t any suggestion that Edda set out to build a serious political network, or that she tried to read the official papers that her husband may or not have brought home. Edda did her best to safeguard Ciano’s professional diaries, and used them to secure her survival and make money, but Moorehead doesn’t mention Edda actually reading them, or what she thought of them. Edda was a social go-between, and when she travelled the distance between Hitler and Mussolini, she was important as such. But the evidence, to my mind, backs up her own claim that she was politically naive.

Her life played out as a tragedy in four acts.

First Act: A rather unhappy childhood in an at least initially poor family. Edda was the unwilling witness of the quarrels between her parents, as Benito Mussolini was a bad husband and father, serially adulterous and often absent, and the practically minded Rachele wasn’t inclined to back down. Moorehead’s sketch of the times gives more insight in the world of her parents, than that of the child, but this is inevitable.

Second Act: The zenith of Italian fascism, in which Benito covered the streets in monuments to and statues of himself, the new elites shamelessly enriched themselves through corruption, dissidents were thrown in jail, and the Duce decreed that there should be no mention in the press of his age and birthdays, outbreaks of disease, unhappiness, bad weather, or women in trousers. Edda accordingly lived a rich and privileged life, but Moorehead’s description doesn’t render it as a particularly happy life. As a husband, Galeazzo Ciano became a disappointment, and Edda would have divorced him if her father had not decided that adultery wasn’t grounds for divorce. (Of course he would have looked ridiculous if he had.) At least Ciano didn’t seem to mind Edda’s numerous affairs either, which suggests that he was less attached to double standards than most Italian men of his time. The son-in-law’s obsequiousness to the whims of the Duce annoyed his wife, who was far more independently minded. But she did play out her diplomatic role as she was sent out to improve relations with Berlin. The main story that is told in this book is one of decadence, nouveau riches mixing with impoverished aristocrats, heavy gambling, and malign gossip.

Third Act: Italy’s participation in WWII, which demonstrated the folly of spending all your money on marble and foreign adventures, instead of on building your (war) industry. Here Edda is presented as more naive than her husband, and a true believer in the victory of the Axis, while Ciano understood early on that this adventure was going to end very badly. In these chapters of the book, it must be said, it is clear that Moorehead is no military historian. The author adopts a dismissive attitude to the Italian war effort that has been corrected by the efforts of more recent historians who have documented that the Italians, though poorly equipped and badly led, often fought bravely and contributed more to the successes of the Axis than they usually get credit for. There are also some blunders in detail. But there is no denying that the writing was on the wall early on, and Edda seems to have respected the determination of Ciano to find a way out, which contributed to Mussolini’s fall in 1943. And which of course, eventually cost Ciano his life, as he was shot on 7 January 1944.

Fourth Act: Edda’s life on the run, initially as a rather unwelcome guest of the Swiss, but arguably continuing even after she was allowed to return to Italy, and soon enough allowed to freely choose her place of residence again. This is the part of her life in which Edda needed to fend for herself and her three children, as her husband was dead and her father soon would be. It’s true cloak-and-dagger stuff, full of narrow escapes and bizarre negotiations. Edda tried to use Ciano’s diaries as leverage, offering them in turn to the SS and the OSS. It is an enticing story but this account of so many illicit manoeuvres can be a bit confusing, and as a reader you have to wonder whether it is really all true, or some of it is part of the many myths and legends of the period. But Edda survived, if not without difficulty. She didn’t spend that much time in detention and much of it was fairly gentle: In hotels, in convents, in a luxury mental hospital, on an island. It was hardship for someone who had gotten accustomed to money and comfort, but a better life than many Italians had in a bombed-out, shot-up and impoverished country. And until her death in 1995, she lived out her life in peace.

“Illusion is perhaps the only reality in life,” Moorehead quotes a young Benito Mussolini at the end of the book. The years of fascism were years of mutual illusion, during which the people thought that they had a strong and wise leader, and the leader thought that he had obedient and martial people. In this biography, it is laid out in detail Edda’s relationships with the two most important men in her life were likewise founded on illusions. But somehow her bonds with her husband grew deeper and stronger in times of danger and hardship, while those with her father were shattered beyond repair. Nevertheless Edda never stopped believing in the myth of her father. Her personal tragedy didn’t mirror that of her nation, as she had a too strong personality for that, but Moorehead’s biography of Edda nevertheless reads like rich and illuminating account of the times.

Auschwitz

I am finishing this book on Holocaust Remembrance Day, 2023, 80 years after the events recounted in this book.

This book is largely about one group of victims of the German occupation of France: some 249 women who fought silently for the French Resistance and who were given up by snitches and collaborator French police to the German SS.

Tortured by their captors, eventually shipped off to Birkenau concentration camp, many to die from abuse, starvation, or disease. Many murdered by murderers.

But this book is also about how France reacted to occupation by the Nazis. The new French government, among other things, banned abortion and condoned the burning of books. They did the dirty work of identifying and collecting French and other Jews for destruction in the death camps.

I am always shocked the brutality of the era.

The most unbelievable part of this true story is that even one of these women survived at all. Members of the French Resistance, these women were betrayed, rounded up, and deported -- to Auschwitz. They showed unbelievable courage in the face of unspeakable cruelty. Caroline Moorehead does an admirable job in immersing us in the world of the resistance fighter and the hardships once they were "transported east". Hard to read, but even harder to put down.

On 17 June 1934, Benito Mussolini’s daughter, Edda, presided over a fascist parade at Edgware Stadium in north London, flanked by the radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi and the Italian ambassador Dino Grandi. She was 23. Over 1,000 Italian children dressed up in the uniforms of the fascist youth groups Opera Nazionale Balilla and Avanguardisti and marched past the platform. The aim – as outlined in 1922 – was to ‘create in effect a new Italian empire’ using the ten million Italians abroad, those ‘in London in particular’. On that day, Edda Mussolini could not have foreseen that her host, Grandi, would play an instrumental role in bringing down her father. Nor that many of the children parading before her would cry over the loss of their fathers following Italy’s declaration of war on the United Kingdom in June 1940. Thousands of Italian civilians were interned as potential ‘dangerous characters’ and 470 were drowned when their passenger ship, the Arandora Star, was sunk by a German U-2 while en route to Canada in July 1940.

Edda was in London on a diplomatic mission. Mussolini wanted to be certain of Britain’s position before launching an attack against Ethiopia which would involve sending troops through the Suez Canal. She was to let the British government know about Italy’s ambitions and report back. In Caroline Moorehead’s gripping new book, we learn how she extracted a chilly green light from the prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald. Mussolini had reasons to be thankful to the glamorous emissary he had trained with a mixture of love and brutality since she was a child. She was his favourite. Even in her old age, Edda remembered how, when she was just three or four, her father put a frog in her hands. She had to squeeze it to keep it prisoner. She was told never to cry.

Moorehead’s meticulous research describes another of Edda’s diplomatic missions, this time to Germany, charged with establishing useful contacts. While there, she became an enthusiastic Nazi. An unbridgeable contrast ensued with her anglo-francophile husband, Galeazzo Ciano, who as Foreign Minister could not stop Mussolini from siding with Adolf Hitler. Edda wanted war at all costs.

Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.

Alfio Bernabei is the author of The Summer before Tomorrow (Castelvecchi, 2022).

I very much enjoyed this biography of Edda Mussolini -- Benito Mussolini's eldest, and most loved, child. The book describes her life, her relationship with her father, and the role she played as a "ambassador of fascism". The author examines how much influence Edda had over her father and events, and how much she was perceived to have. It looks at public attitudes toward her as Italy's defeat in WWII became evident and fascism was overturned. It is written in an engaging, accessible style. It provides context about Italy's domestic economy and politics and well as the broader geopolitical situation leading up to WWII. Recommended.

Very well researched. Lots of people to keep track of.

prima en vlot geschreven boek

It wasn't until I listened to the audiobook of Mark Sullivan's Beneath a Scarlet Sky that I gave much thought to the Italian Resistance during World War II. Yes, I knew it existed, but that's about it. Then I came across A House in the Mountains, the true story of Ada, Frida, Silvia, and Bianca-- four women who risked everything to defeat Fascism in Italy-- and I knew I had to read it.

This is a rich, dense book filled with historical detail. I learned that Italy basically had to fight for its own survival with little outside help. The entire country and its inhabitants were held in deep suspicion by the UK and the US because of Mussolini's twenty-year reign. Besides, they believed the country was about to turn Communist anyway, and neither wanted to help Communists. Then Mussolini was overthrown, and now the Italian people had a new enemy: Germany. A sentence that made my blood run cold: "Italy, which had been a useless ally, was now occupied by men [Nazis] who had learned in Eastern Europe how to treat useless people."

Italy was now being brutally stripped of everything the Third Reich needed to fuel the war effort, and anyone who tried to stand in the way was murdered. The first to stand up and fight back were the women of Italy, who had been totally disenfranchised during Mussolini's reign. They stood up in their thousands and joined the Resistance, risking everything for their freedom.

A House in the Mountains is fascinating and inspiring, showing how the Resistance in Italy began and how it gathered strength, and I appreciate having a much better understanding of Italy and its people now.

Extraordinarily difficult to read emotionally, but such an honor. Caroline Moorhead has offered up a great tribute of stark facts and achingly astute observations of these women. If this topic needed any more humanizing here it is.

About a group of women who were involved in the resistance against Nazi regime, who were captured and sent to concentration camps, and endured through the atrocity and crime against humanity by having formed a bond of friendships and the will to survive; which only 49 of the 230 member returned to France and to their families. Book is not for faint of hearts or for children.

The Red Cross was the inspiration -- the dream -- of Henri Dunant, a 31-year-old Swiss businessman appalled by the butchery and lack of medical care for injured soldiers at the battle of Solferino in 1859. He set out to create an international organization which was to alter, irrevocably, the fate of all those wounded in every war. Caroline Moorehead is the first writer to be granted unrestricted access to the extensive Red Cross archives in Geneva. This book traces the origins of the organization, and uncovers some startling truths about the Red Cross and its relationship with some of the most horrific and barbaric political regimes of the twentieth century. It is a moving and authoritative history of the politics of conflict by an author of real distinction which sheds light not just on the Red Cross but on the nature of humanity itself.

If I had recalled the other Moorehead title I read, I wouldn’t have bothered. She has an editing problem. You get much more than you think you’re getting. Here, Moorehead feels she needs to re-tell the entire story of the war in Italy and the rest of the region. Her coverage of her supposed main characters is spotty and she keeps slipping away to tell all the mens stories as well.

Excellent, illuminating, very well researched, inspiring and scary how much Trump resembles the Nazis.

Martha Gellhorn did not like that her accomplishments were overshadowed by having been Ernest Hemingway's third wife. She would most like to be known for her now-forgotten novels. What she deserves to be remembered for is her ground-breaking war reporting that paved the way for women to report from conflict zones.

This biography is a thorough look at Gellhorn's life, with care taken to center her life and activities within the history and politics of the time. And with Gellhorn being a regular visitor to the Roosevelt White House, breaking into journalism with reports on the living conditions of mill workers in North Carolina and Massachusetts during the Depression, being on the ground in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and reporting during the Second World War, including being among the first reporters on the beaches on D-Day, this makes for interesting reading. She traveled all over Europe during the last days of the war, including riding through Italy with the soldiers fighting and a post-liberation visit to the Dachau concentration camp. Later, she'd visit both Israel and try to get a pass to report on the Vietnam War.

The book bogs down in the final third, when Gellhorn's life becomes less about her career and more about her disappointments with aging and relationships. She was not a good mother and when the book turned to detailing things like how many times she humiliated her son or the time her cats peed on the sofa, I found my love for this detailed book waning. I'd recommend it for the first two-thirds and suggest skipping the rest. She was an important historical figure, but certainly not an unproblematic one.

Authors need to do lots of research for historical stories. However, they shouldn't feel compelled to share all of it with their readers. The first 6 chapters gave us life stories of a few of the children rescued to the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon. The next couple of chapters details the rescuers and their organizations and then moves onto the plateau and gives us the local history. I threw up my hands when we got detailed histories of each of the Protestant groups that have found shelter there. Too much! Can we just tell the story, please? I have encountered this story before, in [Lest We Forget] and this book does afford a better picture of why this spot was particularly ideal. It's not just geography and independence. The infrastructure was already in place. This spot next to the Alps was already a summer spa destination for sickly children.½

I think I needed to read the first book to get the full effect.

Nonetheless this book is very insightful as to the development of the events of WW2, the horror of the event, and the hurt and trauma that followed.

Sadly I found it connected to current events. Not a happy thought.

Recommended. Not a light read. But important.

Caroline Moorehead - [Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France]
During the second world war some villages in unoccupied France sheltered jews from Nazi persecution. The Vichy government in collaboration with the Germans ruled the unoccupied area which covered roughly half of France. The Village of Secrets is really a collection of villages on the Plateau Vivrais-Lignon which succeeded in frustrating some of the Vichy government's attempts to round up jews for deportation to the German death camps. The villages unique position in the mountains of the central massif and the religious culture that was prevalent inspired the inhabitants to do more than most frenchmen to save Jews from the holocaust. The Vichy government were intent on carrying out the bidding of their German masters and some might say they were overzealous. Although the Vichy government were ruling their country in collaboration with the Germans they saw themselves as protecting the nation of France. It is not difficult then to understand why French officials and the police force fearing occupation and the loss of their identity as a nation would carry out, and in some cases encourage the persecution of minorities who were not french. Unfortunately there are many examples of racial hatred as a tool used by politicians to cling on to power.

After the end of the war while France was busy taking revenge against the collaborators it was also trying to move on from some actions regarded as shameful during the occupation. There was a collective denial of the events surrounding the rounding up of the Jews to placate the voracious Nazis final solution. Moorehead's book was published in 2014 when France had belatedly admitted to the role of the Vichy government in the holocaust. It was therefore not as controversial as it might have been, but would have added to the unease of many inhabitants of villages and towns in rural France that were in Vichy territory, because many were far more compliant with the Nazis aims. It should also of course stir up unease in many readers who might well ask themselves what action or non action they would have taken in a similar situation. This was a horror story that happened in living memory.

I found Village of Secrets a well organised book. The first few chapters fill in the background to the Vichy Government's policies and the setting up of the French internment camps, from there we learn of conditions inside the camps and start to meet some of the individuals who will feature in the story of the 'Secret' villages. We follow the lucky ones who made the journey up into the mountains and are with them when they meet the people who will be responsible for trying to save their lives. Chambon the most important village is described along with the characters who will play an active part in the story. The unique protestant culture is explained with the pacifist pastor André Trocmé being an inspirational preacher, but in surrounding villages there were Darbyists and Ravenist; protestant cults who new the price to be paid for being different. When the first of the Jewish children arrived in Chambon it was not too difficult to find safe houses for them with the reclusive religious families. On to 1942; it is the Vichy officials who are the main threat with a system of informers and collaborators, more children arrive through an unofficial network and by 1943 conditions have become so desperate that a network of people smugglers is set up to get children and Jews on a wanted list across to Switzerland. In 1944 it is the Germans who are the enemy, facing defeat they desperately try to complete the extermination programme themselves, while the Vichy armed police fight it out with the maquis. Morehead tells her story through incidents in the lives of the refugees during the four years of German control. We follow their stories and the stories of the villagers that helped them. Characters emerge and just as tragically disappear as Moorehead chillingly documents numbers of the convoy train carriages that take them to the death camps. Some just disappear, but many are kept alive through the hard work and risks taken by the villagers. The liberation of France while stopping the immediate threat to life and limb did not solve the long term issues for children who have lost their parents and adults who have lived in fear for four long years and Moorehead provides some living testimony to this.

There is an after-word that ties up some loose ends, but also questions the veracity of some of the stories. It is still not clear who among the Vichy officials lent a helping hand when they could. There were double agents and some acted pragmatically, but by the very nature of clandestine actions it will never be known who were the good guys and who were the traitors. Publications and films made of the events have tended to cloud the issue. A book by Philip Hailie an American historian published in 1979 based on an autobiography by Andre Trocmé, which seemed to claim that the pacifist views of the pastor were the main reason the villages were successful: caused much distress amongst the villagers. Moorehead has tried to let the villagers and the jews speak for themselves when she can, but their stories are couched with her own research of the events. It is probably even more difficult to arrive at a true version of events when people are still alive to give their versions; relying on a memory that stretches back 70 years or the stories of their parents.

Caroline Moorehead's book is a sobering account of life in an area of France where people had sometimes to make life or death decisions. At the time the German extermination camps were not common knowledge, but the evidence was everywhere to be seen of the ill treatment of the jews, identified by the Nazis as an inferior race. The people of the Plateau Vivrais-Lignon did better than most areas of the country in the preservation of human dignity, by taking risks to save others. Moorehead provides a lively background to her history and the events are described in a style that bends towards journalism, which makes it an enthralling and realistic read. The lists of primary sources and secondary sources at the back of the book is evidence of her research. Perhaps not the last word on the treatment of jews in Vichy France, but being tied to a relatively small area with characters brought alive by their stories it makes for a good book and so 4 stars.

A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France Not for the faint hearted this one.
 
Personally anything to do with the extermination camps deeply disturbs me. This one extends that to the actions of a populace i.e. the French. The roundup of the Jews was initiated by the Vichy government and manages by the French themselves. The Germans were impressed with French efficiency and brutality in this inhuman undertaking. When the Germans asked the French to deliver thousands of Jews, the French used cattle cars. The Germans had never thought of that themselves. Bah!This story centres on the thousands of women and girls who did the leg work for the French Resistance. Delivering pamphlets, posters, supplies and weapons from one resistance cell to another. Knowing fully the consequences if caught, they just carried on regardless. Using that innate efficiency that women can bring to any task they were lubrication that kept the resistance machine going.This story takes a while to get going but eventually centres on a group of women who are "disappeared". The process the Germans used to destroy the morale of other resistance members, having previously found out that executing them turned them into heroes. This consisted of simply moving them away without notifying anyone of their eventual destination or even the fact that they were gone.These women had no idea where they were headed when they boarded a series of cattle trucks one night. Their destination was Auschwitz.A harrowing story of heroism, bravery, imagination, courage and determination against all odds. By turns heartbreaking, moving and disgusting. The horrors of day to day existence in those places which to this day we can only imagine the half of it. Descriptions that will turn your stomach and your heart.The book itself is reasonably well written. The first chunk is just a series of names and dates and incidents. In reality this is building the context in which everything coalesces to the main grist. In the end I really liked it but could remember how I nearly put it down several times at the beginning. (Later: see the 1 star reviews for more on that)A nice intro into some of the history of WW2 especially the French part and their collaboration with the Nazis. Interesting to read yet again how widely the Jews were hated well before WW2 itself. Amen, may they all rest in peace.Well worth the effort.

I was in two minds about posting this review. It's a grim subject, and maybe readers would rather hear about escapist books. But I was in the mood to read about courage and resilience, and this book almost fell into my hands when I was re-shelving after the marathon effort to reconstruct my lost TBR file. Reading it has certainly put our current troubles into perspective.

I heard about A Train in Winter from Marg at The Intrepid Reader, and I was lucky enough to win her giveaway at the time. In her review, Marg said that she had been reading a lot about the experiences of people during WW2, and that this book was something different because it was about a group of women in the French Resistance who were sent to Auschwitz. It must have been a groundbreaking book when it was first published in 2011; Moorehead has since followed it up with what is now called The Resistance Quartet, comprising A Train in Winter (2011); Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France (2014); A Bold and Dangerous Family: The Remarkable Story of an Italian Mother, Her Two Sons, and Their Fight Against Fascism (2017); and A House in the Mountains: The Women Who Liberated Italy from Fascism (2019).

(Although the theme of the quartet is obviously the role of women in the resistance movements, I'd like to read this last one because one of our neighbours and proprietor of a local trattoria was a 15-year-old partisan in WW2 Italy, a man who transcended the brutality of his adolescence to become one of the best-loved people in our community. I'd like to know more about the role of the Italian partisans).

Caroline Moorehead (b.1944) is the daughter of the Australian author Alan Moorehead. On the TBR, I have Thornton McCamish's 2016 biography of this remarkable man, Our Man Elsewhere: In Search of Alan Moorehead. Many Australian readers of my generation will have read Alan Moorehead's Darwin and the Beagle at school, but what he is most famous for is his work as a war correspondent, described at Wikipedia as having the great virtue of widening the local story to include its global implications. This is a skill that his daughter Caroline also shows in A Train in Winter....

She sets the scene with a preface about the small number of women who made it back home after the war and how she was able to discover their story. Only a very few were still alive by the time she came to interview them in 2008. Charlotte Delbo, one of the few to document her experiences, had written a play about it in the 1960s, but she had died of cancer in 1985. One of the saddest aspects of this book comes at the end, when we learn that France did not want know about what these survivors of Auschwitz had to say. Like many Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, they had retained the will to live despite the horror, because of the need to bear witness. But France's determination to 'move on' after the war denied them a voice.

Mado, captured and deported when she was 22, was haunted by the ghosts of the women who died.

'The life we wanted to find again, when we used to say, "if I return" was to have been large, majestic, full of colour. Isn't it our fault that the life we resumed proved so tasteless, shabby, trivial, thieving, that our hopes were mutilated, our best intentions destroyed? ' Her husband, she said, was sensitive, thoughtful, and wanted her to forget, and she did not want to hurt his feelings. But all she could think was that to forget would be an act of betrayal. (p.317)

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/07/18/a-train-in-winter-by-caroline-moorehead/

I started finding this tedious almost as soon as I started reading it. So I decided to set it aside for a few days and then come back to it. "A few days" turned into a week, and I didn't feel any strong desire to return to it. I figure that if I can start reading a book, put it down for a week, and still feel no interest in reading it, it's simply not for me and it's time to move on.

I started finding this tedious almost as soon as I started reading it. So I decided to set it aside for a few days and then come back to it. "A few days" turned into a week, and I didn't feel any strong desire to return to it. I figure that if I can start reading a book, put it down for a week, and still feel no interest in reading it, it's simply not for me and it's time to move on.

This is a well researched and written book for a narrow audience. My only complaint is the book's subtitle "the women who liberated Italy from Fascism". The insertion of the word "helped" would have made the cover less misleading. The book generally follows the lives of four women who become members of the resistance against Mussolini and his government during World War 2 and after with their disappointment that women didn't get their deserved credit and the benefits they hoped for in post war Italy. Well worth reading if this topic appeals to you.