THE GREEN DEVILS JUMP ON MONTEROTONDO - 9–10 September 1943

Summer 1943, Rome an open city, Italy prepares to switch sides and installs its army headquarters at Monterotondo, some twenty kilometres from the capital. From late July, the German command takes measures to counter the threat. Italy proclaims the armistice on 8 September; under the command of Major Gericke, 650 German paratroopers of II./FJR 6 jump on Monterotondo on the morning of 9 September to capture the Italian headquarters — a little-known German airborne operation. A swift victory for the Fallschirmjäger, who nonetheless find themselves encircled but are relieved by the favourable turn of events.

The operation is reconstructed in minute detail on the basis of previously unpublished German and Italian archival documents.

Three war correspondents, including two photojournalists, also accompanied the German battalion. This is why professional photographs of the operation exist, some held in the German Bundesarchiv and others in the archives of the French ECPA-D.

The book contains approximately 250 photographs, more than 150 of which are previously unpublished, with the remainder placed for the first time in their precise spatio-temporal context. The casualties on both sides have also been reconstructed and analysed in detail, with nominal lists of the dead, detailed organisational charts of the units involved in the fighting, as well as numerous maps illustrating the course of the engagements in detail.