Marco Romagnoli

The Italian people learned on 8 September 1943 that an armistice had been signed with the Allies, that Italy had surrendered. On that fateful day, after three years of war, the Italian Royal Navy’s Xa Flottiglia MAS1 may only have been a mere handful of men, but had the honour of having received, in relation to its numerical strength, the highest number of awards for bravery of any unit in the country’s armed forces. Its men had attacked the best equipped bases in the Mediterranean, from Alexandria to Gibraltar, from Souda Bay to Algiers. They had defied Malta’s defences and radar. They had stuck in Libya, Sicily and the Black Sea, operated under cover in Spain and Turkey and had prepared, with new means and methods, for attacks on Freetown and New York (...). Marco Romagnoli has carried out extensive and careful research in public as well as private archives, especially those of the Institutes for the History of the Resistance Movement in Italy, which until now have probably never been explored as a source for information on the Xa. Thanks to this arduous research he has been able to trace a considerable quantity of documents, posters, postcards, service orders, and unit newspapers that allow us to have a picture of the special units that were formed to address the specific political, military and other matters and which were developed and spread with great competence and commitment , not only throughout the Italian Social Republic itself, but also in the Pre-Alps and Adriatic Coastal areas that were under direct German military control (...). This book also allows one to reflect upon and be challenged by the until now little known and appreciated personal side of this military unit’s story. By concentrating on images the author allows the reader to live and relive the sentiments and the emotions that the postcard, the poster, and the newspaper cannot fail to arouse and which in the dark days from September 1943 to the end of the war, successfully caught the imagination of, fascinated and convinced thousands of young men and women to join the Xa.… (meer)