Book Review for Naples 1944: The Devil's Paradise at War by Keith Lowe

 

Naples 1944: The Devil's Paradise at War by Keith Lowe

Published:  March 11, 2025 by St. Martin's Press 

Genre:  Nonfiction, Italy, WWII

Taken from Goodreads:  Award-winning author Keith Lowe's newest critical deep-dive into the history of Naples during WWII.

Keith Lowe has chronicled the end of WWII in Europe in his award-winning book Savage Continent and the war’s aftermath in the sequel, The Fear and the Freedom. In Naples 1944, he brings readers another masterful chronicle of the terrible and often unexpected consequences of war. Even before the fall of Mussolini, Naples was a place of great contrasts filled with palaces and slums, beloved cuisine and widespread hunger. After the Allied liberation, these contrasts made the city instantly notorious. Compared to the starving population, Allied soldiers were staggeringly wealthy. For a packet of cigarettes, even the lowest ranks could buy themselves a watch, a new suit or a woman for the night. As the biggest port in Allied hands, Naples quickly became the center of Italy’s black market and has remained so ever since. Within just a few months the Camorra began to re-establish itself. Behind the chaos and the corruption, there was always the threat of violence. Army guns were looted and traded. Gangs of street kids fought running battles with the military police. Public buildings, booby-trapped by departing Germans, began to explode, seemingly spontaneously.

Then in March 1944 - like an omen - Vesuvius erupted. Naples was the first major European city to be liberated by the Allies. What they found there would set a template for the whole of the rest of Europe in the years to come. Keith Lowe’s Naples 1944 is a page-turning book about a city on the brink of chaos and glimpse into the dark heart of postwar Italy.

 

My Thoughts:  I am not a nonfiction book reader, usually.   But this book called to me.  I am a huge WWII reader and I love when I find a book that tells the story of something I do not know a lot about.  Naples is a part of WWII that I did not know much about, other than it is in Italy. 

Naples 1944 is a true nonfiction book.   There are parts of stories within each chapter but it reads as nonfiction.   I found it be a slow read with many facts and attention to details.   I was able to picture Naples as the Allies found it destroyed from the Nazi’s leaving.   The devastation was complete and the paradise they were promised did not exist.  

The book is full of facts, at time the facts seemed overwhelming and I would have liked more narrative.   It is a book that I read over a long period of time and while reading a fiction book to give my brain a break from all the facts.

Thank you St. Martin’s Press for a copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

 

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Meet the Author (taken fromhis website):  Keith Lowe is the author of several major works of history. His first book, Inferno, was a critically-acclaimed study of the bombing of Hamburg in 1943. His second book, Savage Continent, became a Sunday Times top ten bestseller, and went on to win both the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History and Italy’s national Cherasco History Prize. It is now a standard work on the wave of violence and revenge that swept Europe after the war.The Fear and the Freedom is an intimate history of the long-term consequences of the Second World War, and the shadow that it still casts over our lives today. It was shortlisted for the Historical Writers’ Association Non-fiction Crown, and has been adapted as a 12-part radio series in the Czech Republic. He has also written books on WWII monuments, and the bombing of Hamburg in 1943.

 

His latest book, Naples 1944, describes the liberation of Italy, and the political and economic chaos that followed. Naples was the first major city to be liberated by the Allies, and suffered a series of crises, including hunger, sexual exploitation, a typhus epidemic and a volcanic eruption. This is the first book in the English language to describe the history of Naples during this crucial period of the Second World War.

 

Lowe regularly speaks on TV and radio, and he often lectures on postwar history at venues across Europe and North America. He has written for a variety of newspapers and journals, including the Daily Telegraph, The Times, the Wall Street Journal, El Paìs and the NeueZürcherZeitung. He serves on the historical advisory board for Liberation Route Europe, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

 

He lives in London with his wife and two children.