I am a historian of the Second World War and the aim of this site is to enable others to access some of the research I have carried out over the past few years, and to encourage people to exchange ideas and views about a wide range of subjects relating to the conflict. On this site you will find an oral history archive with transcriptions of many of the interviews I have conducted with veterans of the war from many different countries, and there are also blogs, comment pieces, book reviews, suggested reading, and also contributions from other leading historians in this field.
I hope you find it interesting.

James Holland


Blog - Tuesday 28th February 2006

Diary of Writing of Italy’s Sorrow

NARA, College Park, February 28, 2006
Spent the day at NARA and found some really good OSS files.  The OSS recruited a number of Italians as agents.  Most were then sent to join a ‘mission’, a bit like the networks that SOE operated in France.  Anyway, I managed to come across the debriefings of these various agents and their missions.  Some were fairly brief, but others were very detailed, including the files of the ‘Zucca’ mission.  It’s always exciting coming across new material like this, especially when it was very clear no-one had looked at these files in decades.  I also found a number files relating to the Judge Advocate of the US 5th Army, which look interesting.

Posted by James Holland
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