9781512601725
This is the inside story of how Trieste found itself poised on a knife edge at the end of World War II. Situated near the boundaries of Italy, Austria, and Yugoslavia, this pivotal port city was caught in May 1945 between advancing Allied, Russian, and Yugoslav armies on the strategically vital front lines of the nascent Cold War. Germany lay defeated, and now there were new enemies—Russia and Communism. Told through the stories of twelve men and women from seven different countries, Flashpoint Trieste chronicles, on a human scale, the beginning of the Cold War. A British colonel from the Special Operations Executive, a Maori officer from a New Zealand infantry battalion and a young Yugoslav partisan captain race for the city on May 1, 1945, with the Allies determined to beat Tito’s forces and the Russians to the vital port. An American infantry general, decorated in combat in Italy, then holds the line as Trieste is divided between the American and British armies, and the Yugoslav Communist partisans of Marshal Josip Broz Tito. An American intelligence officer tracks wanted Nazis. An Italian woman Communist walks back to her native city from Auschwitz. An Austrian SS chief goes on the run to escape justice for the atrocities he committed in the city. Having survived the war, everyone is now desperate to make it through the liberation. American investigators hunt for priceless artifacts looted by the Germans. British intelligence will stop at nothing to hold the line against encroaching Communism, and Italian partisans hunt down fascist collaborators. Life is fast and violent, as former warring parties make common cause against the Russians. As the postwar world order unfolds, the borders of the new Europe are being hammered out.
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Table of Contents
Preface: This Land Is My Land, June 2016 • Author’s Note • Maps • PART ONE: THE FALL OF TRIESTE • The Race for Trieste, April 1945 • Holding Trieste, 29 April–1 May • The Capture of Trieste, 1–2 May • PART TWO: REVENGE IN TRIESTE • Kidnapped by the Partisans • Revenge and Reprisals on the Dalmatian Coast • Death on the Plateau, 2–3 May • PART THREE: BRINKMANSHIP ON THE ADRIATIC • Who was Marshal Tito? • The Allies’ Support for Yugoslavia • Marshal Tito Plays a Double Hand • Dividing Trieste, June 1945 • PART FOUR: COLONIALISM ON THE ADRIATIC • Spies on the Adriatic, May–August 1945 • Very British Intelligence • The Capture of Friedrich Rainer and Odilo Globocnik, May 1945 • A New Enemy for the Allies, June 1945 • A New American Sheriff in Trieste, June 1945 • PART FIVE: WAR IN THE SHADOWS • Hidden Conflict, July 1945 • OZNA Sve Dozna (OZNA Can Find Out Anything), August–September 1945 • A Gurkha Beheading, October–December 1945 • PART SIX: THE NEW EUROPE • Bloody Compromise, February–April 1946 • The Free Territory of Trieste, March–August 1947 • Killing Tito and Dividing Trieste • The Numbers, January 1999 • Epilogue: What Became of the Characters in the Book • Appendix: Science Finds the Evidence • Glossary • Notes • Index
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