Naples 1944: The Devil’s Paradise at War

Lowe (Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg 1943) examines the plight of Naples, Italy, near the end of World War II. The city in Italy’s neglected southern region has been overlooked in many World War II chronicles, an omission Lowe aims to rectify with a detailed, expertly written portrait of Naples before, during, and after its liberation by Allied forces. In three parts—“Beautiful Monster,” “Uprising,” and “Compromise Betrayals”—Lowe describes a city with rampant starvation and poverty even before Mussolini. During the war, there was no electricity, gas, firefighting, train service, or sewage system, nor were there any provisions for burying the dead. Naples’s port, a major source of income, was heavily bombed by Allied forces and became a center of the black market. Adding to the troubles were the 1944 typhus epidemic and eruption of Vesuvius. Lowe draws on primary sources to provide insight into efforts to rebuild and the resiliency of the Neapolitan people.