Women of War: The Italian Assassins, Spies, and Couriers Who Fought the Nazis

"Suzann Cope rights a wrong in this exhaustive book, detailing through four women's particular experiences the pivotal role women had in fighting the fascist occupation."

Suzanne Cope has done an impressive amount of research to bring us the stories of four women who joined the partisans to fight against the Nazis and the fascist Italian government during WWII. Each woman came from a different part of Italy, each with its own battles. One was Roman, one Florentine, one from Turin, and one from Reggio Emilia. Each area turned into a deadly battleground during the final stretch of the war.

The first part of the book explains how each woman got interested in the partisans in the first place After all, most of Italy was happy to be ruled by Mussolini, to be partners with the Third Reich. Carla, Anita, Teresa, and Bianca were not. They were all motivated by protest already as teenagers, some drawn to communism because of its economic promises, others to college protests against the racial laws targeting Jews.

Cope lays out each woman's individual experience against the broader history of Italian experience during the war. A critical moment comes when Mussolini is ousted by King Victor Emmanuel III in 1943, after the successful Allied invasion of Sicily.

"Despite her nascent hatred of Mussolini's regime, in the summer of 1943 Carla was not yet active in politics. Like so many Italians, she had been quietly hoping to bide her time until the end of the war and the fall of Mussolini. Now Carla wondered what she would do. Il Duce was gone, but the war he'd gotten them into was clearly far from over."

In fact, the general who took over, Pietro Badoglio, didn't reach out to join the Allies. Instead, he ordered the war to continue, to disastrous results for his country. The fighting continued after the king surrendered to the Allies that September, with Mussolini free again to lead the Nazi-backed northern part of the country.

Readers who have a solid knowledge about WWII may still lack details about Italy's role. Cope tells an important story of the situation, city by city, as well of the wide-spread contribution women made in actively fighting the fascists.

The women in this book were mostly messengers and saboteurs in the first part of the war:

"Staffette were essential to the Resistance. Because women were assumed to have no political interest, that first autumn of the occupation they were rarely searched. And even if they were, their wisely hidden or memorized messages would like be undetected."

These women had even more active roles in the later part of the conflict. They were often armed soldiers, joining the street-by-street fighting with the German occupiers. They planted bombs, tracked down targets, guarded prisoners. They took the same risks as the men and suffered the same fates. They were arrested and tortured and shot. The second part of the book describes the many battles and actions taken by the Resistance and the key roles women played.

Anita joined the partisans in the summer of 1944. "The next day, her education as a soldier began First, she had to learn to use a weapon, assemble and disassemble it, clean it, fire it. She practiced this for hours until she was proficient."

Teresa, who was tortured and raped, but escaped, had no regrets about the risks she took. "'It was its own education,' Teresa later said, 'to have chosen the Resistance. . . . Because it is necessary to do all that is required for liberty and to have understood that fear is our nemesis.'"

The women who had fought so hard, continued to fight after the war, for equality this time. They had been treated like men in the Resistance, given the same risks, responsibilities, and freedom. It was hard to lose all that once peace came. These women continue to be shunted by the side in terms of history, their parts largely ignored. Suzan Cope rights a wrong in this exhaustive book, detailing through four women's particular experiences the pivotal role women had in fighting the fascist occupation.

"These women's experiences are dramatic and brave—and I chose to amplify their stories because I do believe they represent the breadth of the work women performed in the Resistance. Yet there are as many stories as there are women. Widely published estimates point to women making up about 10 percent of the three hundred thousand partisans who took part in armed actions—or about thirty-five thousand. But the definition of what should be considered resistance is still evolving. Hundreds of thousands of women actively supported in other ways."