Group items tagged

They blamed Italy’s high number of infections on aggressive testing of people without symptoms in the north, which they argued only created hysteria and tarnished the country’s image abroad.

Even once the Italian government considered a universal lockdown necessary to defeat the virus, it failed to communicate the threat powerfully enough to persuade Italians to abide by the rules, which seemed riddled with loopholes.

Still, he acknowledged that the health minister had struggled to persuade his government colleagues to move more quickly and that the difficulties of navigating Italy’s division of powers between Rome and the regions resulted in a fragmented chain of command and inconsistent messages.

For the coronavirus, 10 days can be a lifetime.

Politicians across the spectrum worried about the economy and feeding the country, and found it difficult to accept their impotence in the face of the virus.

Most importantly, Italy looked at the example of China, Ms. Zampa said, not as a practical warning, but as a “science fiction movie that had nothing to do with us.” And when the virus exploded, Europe, she said, “looked at us the same way we looked at China.”

A day later, on March 9, when the positive cases reached 9,172 and the death toll climbed to 463, Mr. Conte toughened the restrictions and extended them nationally.

But he also had not had any direct contacts with China, and experts suspect he contracted the virus from another European, meaning Italy did not have an identifiable patient zero or a traceable source of contagion that could help it contain the virus.

The virus had already been active in Italy for weeks by that time, experts now say, passed by people without symptoms and often mistaken for a flu

“Who we call ‘Patient One’ was probably ‘Patient 200,’ ” said Fabrizio Pregliasco, an epidemiologist.

Mr. Fontana, who had been pressing the central government for tougher action, agreed. He said that the mixed messages from Rome and the easing of restrictions had led Italians to believe “that everything was a joke, and they kept living as they used to.”

“They were convinced that the situation was less serious and they did not want to hurt our economy too much,”

the nation became divided between those who saw the threat and those who didn’t.

some regional governors independently ordered people coming from the newly locked-down area to self quarantine. Others didn’t.

Mr. Ricciardi said Italy had the bad luck of having a super spreader in a densely populated and dynamic area who went to the hospital not once, but twice, infecting hundreds of people, including doctors and nurses.“He was incredibly active,” Mr. Ricciardi said.

Italy is still paying the price of those early mixed messages by scientists and politicians. The people who have died in staggering numbers recently — more than 2,300 in the last four days — were mostly infected during the confusion of a week or two ago.

Roberto Burioni, a prominent virologist at the San Raffaele University in Milan, said that people had felt safe to go about their usual routines and he attributed the spike in cases last week to “that behavior.”

Leaders in the north are desperate for the government to crack down harder.

On Friday, Mr. Fontana complained that the 114 troops the government deployed were insignificant, and that at least 1,000 should be sent. On Saturday, he closed public offices, work sites and banned jogging. He said in an interview that the government needed to stop messing around and “apply rigid measures.”

“At least this slows down the virus’ speed,’’ Mr. Zaia said, arguing that testing helped identify potentially contagious people without symptoms. ‘‘And slowing down the virus’ speed allows the hospitals to breathe.’’

after his release, he abrogated the Treaty of Madrid (January 1526), in which he had been forced, among other concessions, to abandon his Italian claims. He headed a new anti-Spanish alliance, the Holy League of Cognac (May 1526), which united France with the papacy, Milan, Florence, and Venice.

Spanish military superiority eventually owed its success to the introduction in 1521 of the musket (an improved harquebus) and to the refinement of pike and musket tactics in the years preceding the Battle of Pavia. Such tactics dominated land warfare until the Battle of Rocroi in 1643.

The Papal States were restored, and in 1530 the pope crowned Charles V emperor and king of Italy

Italy remained subject to sporadic French incursions into Savoy in 1536–38 and 1542–44 during a third and fourth Habsburg-Valois war, and Spain’s Italian possessions were increasingly taxed to support Charles’s continual campaigns; however, for the remainder of his reign, Charles’s armies fought the French, the Ottomans, and the Protestant princes outside Italy. Notable for Italy was Charles V’s capture of Tunis in 1535 and his glorious march up the Italian peninsula in 1536 to confirm his personal rule. But the Ottomans formally allied themselves with France against the Habsburgs thereafter, defeated an allied fleet at Prevesa, retook Tunis in 1538, and stepped up their assault on the Venetian empire in the Mediterranean.

Italy became a part of the Spanish Habsburg inheritance of his son, Philip II (ruled 1556–98), and, after the Spanish victory over the French at St. Quentin (1557), the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559) officially confirmed the era of Spanish domination that had existed in Italy since 1530.

The king, however, continued to receive and be responsive to embassies sent by various groups outside official channels until the Spanish Habsburg line died out in 1700.

Faulting Spain for trying to integrate Italy within its absolutist and imperial program or blaming Italy’s 17th-century decline on Spanish social and economic policies has served nationalistic fervour since the 16th century, but it has missed both the benefits of Spanish rule to Italian peace and security and the main causes of crisis in 17th-century Italy.

Survivors accuse the government and the judiciary, which has been slow to investigate clerical abuse cases, of silence on the issue. Prosecutors have often said that their hands are tied by expired statutes of limitations.

Italian politicians vie to stay on the good side of the Vatican. Same-sex civil unions were approved only in 2016, and the final draft was watered down. Italy still has one of the most restrictive laws in Europe on medically assisted fertility.

When Pope Francis acknowledged for the first time this month that sexual abuse of nuns by priests and bishops had been a persistent problem, reporters from around the world knocked on the door of Lucetta Scaraffia, whose article in Women Church World, a magazine distributed with the Vatican’s newspaper, had cast a spotlight on the problem

“Incredibly, not one Italian newspaper” came to interview her, Ms. Scaraffia said. “Because in Italy there is a fear of upsetting the church.”

Some analysts who say Pope Francis has been slow to respond to the abuse crisis point to the fact that he is surrounded by Italian advisers in an essentially Italian bureaucracy, in the heart of Italy.

“That is part of the Vatican bubble in which Pope Francis operates,”

Italy had a good war. To a degree unimaginable in Donald Trump’s America, and beyond even that of many Europeans, Italians showed what long history teaches: civic wisdom.

Far-right and populist forces appeared to gain more than 50 percent of the vote in Italy, where the economy has lagged, migration has surged and many are seething at those in power.

Taken together, the votes cast for the Five Star Movement, the League and its post-fascist coalition partner, the Brothers of Italy party, run by Giorgia Meloni, depicted a dark mood in Italy and deep frustration with the governing, pro-Europe, Democratic Party of the center left.

The projections also showed big gains for the far-right League, a formerly northern-based secessionist party run by Matteo Salvini. He has been unapologetic about his use of inflammatory language about migrants, calling for their expulsion

Any government will be difficult to form without the insurgent Five Star Movement, a web-based, populist party less than a decade old. The party was poised to become the country’s biggest vote-getter, winning about a third of the votes cast

their strength at the polls was a strong indicator of voter anger after a prolonged period of economic stagnation and the arrival of hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants from Africa and elsewhere

The Five Star Movement appealed to voters on both the left and the right, especially in the country’s poorer southern regions. Young voters flocked to their throw-out-the-bums message.

By the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), Victor Amadeus II (reigned 1675–1730) was raised in 1713 from duke to the status of a king as ruler of Sicily

During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815), only Sardinia remained free of French control, but in 1815, Victor Emmanuel I (reigned 1802–21) added Genoa to the family’s holdings

At the beginning of the Risorgimento, the territory of the house of Savoy, centred on Piedmont, was unique among Italian states for its freedom from foreign influence and for its relative military strength. A liberal revolution in 1821 forced Victor Emmanuel I to abdicate in favour of his brother, Charles Felix. On the death of the latter in 1831, Charles Albert, of the Carignano branch of the family, obtained the throne. He contributed to the cause of unification under Piedmont’s leadership by modernizing his government

and fighting against Austrian power in Italy in the First War of Independence of 1848–49. Under his son Victor Emmanuel II (reigned 1849–1878, king of Italy from 1861), who supported Piedmont’s prime minister, Count Cavour, in the diplomatic maneuvering immediately before unification, the Kingdom of Italy was formed with the house of Savoy at its head

Victor Emmanuel III (reigned 1900–46), who remained as figurehead king during the Fascist regime, abdicated in 1946, at the end of World War II, in favour of his son Umberto II in an attempt to save the monarchy, but the Italian people voted in a referendum of June 2, 1946, for a republic, ending the rule of the house of Savoy

No longer royal, the Savoy family moved abroad, and the monarchist movement, strong in the 1950s, went into decline

I recently interviewed Sofia Ventura, a professor of political science at the University of Bologna, about Silvio Berlusconi, and whether the image of women had improved in Italy since he had left power, after shaping a culture of trashy television. “The image of women hasn’t really improved in Italy. It’s still rare to find women who have authoritative roles in the media and political system. On the contrary, things have gone backwards,” she told me. “The evening talk shows are frightening,” she continued. “When they discuss politics and call on an authoritative voice, women are never called on.”

The #MeToo movement barely caught on in Italy, except coverage of developments in the States. Women were afraid to come forward in Italy for fear of being humiliated, excoriated, or sued for defamation. In the States, the #MeToo movement took off “because there was already a culture that allowed these people to be heard with respect,” the novelist and screenwriter Francesca Marciano told me. “Here, we’re so far behind that we still need to build that.”

In every country where populists have won, including the United States, it’s been followed by soul-searching about the role of the press in a democracy. Maybe it’s time for Italy to have the same debate.

The country's R rate is now at 1.6 with coronavirus variants increasing the spread of the virus, according to the health ministry.The variant B.1.1.7, which was first identified in the United Kingdom, is also now prevalent in the country, according to the health ministry, who also said that they are worried about the presence of small clusters of the Brazilian variant.

Meanwhile, the variant first reported in Brazil, known as P.1, may be up to 2.2 times more transmissible and could evade immunity from previous Covid-19 infection by up to 61%, according to a modeling study, released earlier this month by researchers in Brazil and the UK.

Italy was under a national lockdown from March to May 2020, however there have been many localized lockdowns in regions across Italy since.

On Thursday alone Italy reported more than 25,000 new daily cases. That was its highest record since November -- and it jumped to over 26,000 cases on Friday.The last two weeks have also seen an additional 5,000 people in hospital with Covid-19, with the number in intensive care increasing by more than 650, he said.

On Saturday, Italy's new Covid-19 commissioner Paolo Figliuolo said, "By this summer, all Italian adults will be vaccinated," noting that the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, which is expected to be the next coronavirus vaccine authorized by the EU, will be "decisive."Only 3.08% (1,861,852 people) of Italy's eligible population has been fully vaccinated so far, with 6,219,849 doses administered, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University (JHU).

Italy, once the epicenter of Covid-19 in Europe, has marked 3,149,017 Covid-19 cases in total. The country ranks sixth highest in the world for coronavirus fatalities, with 101,184 deaths recorded, according to JHU.

Dr. Longo, who is also a professor of gerontology and director of the U.S.C. Longevity Institute in California, has long advocated longer and better living through eating Lite Italian, one of a global explosion of Road to Perpetual Wellville theories about how to stay young in a field that is itself still in its adolescence.

In addition to identifying genes that regulate aging, he has created a plant and nut-based diet with supplements and kale crackers that mimics fasting to, he argues, allow cells to shed harmful baggage and rejuvenate, without the down side of actually starving.

He has patented and sold his ProLon diet kits; published best-selling books (“The Longevity Diet”); and been called an influential “Fasting Evangelist” by Time magazine.

Last month, he published a new study based on clinical trials of hundreds of older people — including in the Calabria town from which his family hails — that he said suggests that periodic cycles of his own faux-fasting approach could reduce biological age and stave off illnesses associated with aging.

“It’s very similar to the original Mediterranean diet, not the present one,” she said, pointing at photographs on the wall of a bowl of ancient legumes similar to the chickpe

“Almost nobody in Italy eats the Mediterranean diet,”

He added that many Italian children, especially in the country’s south, are obese, bloated on what he calls the poisonous five Ps — pizza, pasta, protein, potatoes and pane (or bread).

in recent years, Silicon Valley billionaires who hope to be forever young have funded secretive labs. Wellness articles have conquered newspaper home pages and Fountains-of-Youth workout and diet ads featuring insanely fit middle-aged people teem on the social media feeds of not insanely fit middle-aged people.

he said Italy’s lack of investment in research was a disgrace.

even as concepts like longevity, intermittent fasting and biological age — you’re only as old as your cells feel! — have gained momentum, governments like Italy’s are fretting over a creakier future in which booming populations of old people drain resources from the dwindling young.

many scientists, nutritionists and longevity fanatics the world over continue to stare longingly toward Italy, seeking in its deep pockets of centenarians a secret ingredient to long life.

“Probably they kept breeding between cousins and relatives,” Dr. Longo offered, referring to the sometimes close relations in little Italian hill towns. “At some point, we suspect it sort of generated the super-longevity genome.”

The genetic drawbacks of incest, he hypothesized, slowly vanished because those mutations either killed their carriers before they could reproduce or because the town noticed a monstrous ailment — like early onset Alzheimer’s — in a particular family line and steered clear.

Dr. Longo wonders whether Italy’s centenarians had been protected from later disease by a starvation period and old-fashioned Mediterranean diet early in life, during rural Italy’s abject war-era poverty. Then a boost of proteins and fats and modern medicine after Italy’s postwar economic miracle protected them from frailty as they got older and kept them alive.

At age 16, he moved to Chicago to live with relatives and couldn’t help notice that his middle-aged aunts and uncles fed on the “Chicago diet” of sausages and sugary drinks suffered diabetes and cardiovascular disease that their relatives back in Calabria did not.

He eventually earned his Ph.D in biochemistry at U.C.L.A. and did his postdoctoral training in the neurobiology of aging at U.S.C. He overcame early skepticism about the field to publish in top journals and became a zealous evangelizer for the age-reversing effects of his diet. About 10 years ago, eager to be closer to his aging parents in Genoa, he took a second job at the IFOM oncology institute in Milan.

He found a fount of inspiration in the pescatarian-heavy diet around Genoa and all the legumes down in Calabria.

he also found the modern Italian diet — the cured meats, layers of lasagna and fried vegetables the world hungered for — horrendous and a source of disease.

His private foundation, also based in Milan, tailors diets for cancer patients, but also consults for Italian companies and schools, promoting a Mediterranean diet that is actually foreign to most Italians today.

“Italy’s got such incredible history and a wealth of information about aging,” he said. “But spends virtually nothing.”

He talked about how he and others had identified an important regulator of aging in yeast, and how he has investigated whether the same pathway was at work in all organisms.

Dr. Longo said he thinks of his mission as extending youth and health, not simply putting more years on the clock, a goal he said could lead to a “scary world,” in which only the rich could afford to live for centuries, potentially forcing caps on having children

A more likely short-term scenario, he said, was division between two populations. The first would live as we do now and reach about 80 or longer through medical advancements. But Italians would be saddled with long — and, given the drop in the birthrate, potentially lonely — years burdened by horrible diseases.

The other population would follow fasting diets and scientific breakthroughs and live to 100 and perhaps 110 in relative good health.

Just hours before his party announced it would be forming a coalition government, League leader Matteo Salvini posted a video on Facebook appearing to show a man of African origin plucking a pigeon, with the words, "Go home!!!"

On Thursday's visit to the presidential palace, Conte instead proposed Giovanna Tria as finance minister. Tria has been critical of Germany's role in Europe but, unlike Savona, has never expressed the desire to leave the single currency. Savona will enter the government as minister for European affairs.

During the negotiations, the populists ditched some of their most incendiary campaign vows, such as calling for a referendum on whether Italy should abandon the euro or leave the European Union.

Tensions have also risen between the two parties and the President, peaking as Di Maio called for Mattarella's impeachment earlier this week following his rejection of Conte's choice of finance minister.

The European Union has failed Italy because promised solidarity in taking in immigrants reaching Europe through Mediterranean routes hardly materialized. In 2017, Italy received over 60 percent of such migrants

It has failed Italy because the rigid fiscal constraints of membership of the euro — set up to ensure that Italy’s budgetary laxness and administrative inefficiency would not be a problem for Germans — have proved unsustainable, engendering growing resentment toward Chancellor Angela Merkel.

let Salvini and Di Maio and Giuseppe Conte, the new prime minister whose inflation of his academic credentials is not reassuring, go to work on the mess. It’s much better to have them fail on the inside than have them rail from the outside. It’s better to have them lose support through failure than gain support through bluster.

a core beauty of the European Union is that its interlocking institutions are designed precisely to ensure that no country can go off on what the Germans call a Sonderweg — the sort of wayward path of nationalism and mysticism and racism that led Germany, and all of Europe, to ruin.

the mortality rate here is (at time of writing) 7.17% compared with 0.05% in Sweden and 0.2% in Germany

Nor do we understand why the contagion has spread so fast in Italy: the cases per million of the population is, at 250, far higher than anywhere else in the world: Iran stands at 120, China at 56.

Even as this slow-motion, medical tsunami was moving towards the UK, the prime minister, Boris Johnson, was sneering at the need for “draconian” measures. We watched in disbelief as thousands of people travelled to watch horse racing in Cheltenham and 3,500 gathered in Paris dressed as smurfs just to break a world record.

From our lockdown in Italy, it seemed at that time as if the world’s addiction to sport, partying and frivolity was blinding it to the most serious pandemic in our lifetimes.

Because actually Italians are very well-informed (some might even say obsessive) about personal health. They learn about plague and contagion at school because two of the classics of Italy’s literary canon – Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed and Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron, deal with precisely those themes. Italians, on the whole, know far more about hygiene and medicine than their European counterparts

But also: Don’t invite people over for dinner, don’t let your kids go on playdates, don’t take them to the playground, don’t let your teenagers out of your sight. They will sneak out with their friends, they will hold hands, they will share their drinks and food.

If this seems too much, consider the following: We are not allowed to hold weddings or funerals. We can’t gather to bury our dead.

For us, it might be too late to avoid an incredible loss of life. But if you decide against taking actions because it seems inconvenient, or because you don’t want to look silly, you can’t say you weren’t warned.

Dr. Neil M. Ferguson, a British epidemiologist who is regarded as one of the best disease modelers in the world, produced a sophisticated model with a worst case of 2.2 million deaths in the United States.

I asked Ferguson for his best case. “About 1.1 million deaths,” he said.

one can argue that the U.S. is not only on the same path as Italy but is also less prepared, for America has fewer doctors and hospital beds per capita than Italy does — and a shorter life expectancy even in the best of times.

up to 366,000 I.C.U. beds might be needed in the United States for coronavirus patients at one time, more than 10 times the number available. A Harvard study reached a similar conclusion.

This is an interval of quiet when the United States should be urgently ramping up investment in vaccines and therapies, addressing the severe shortages of medical supplies and equipment, and giving retired physicians and military medics legal authority to practice in a crisis

During World War II, the Ford Motor Company turned out one B-24 bomber every 63 minutes; today, we should be rushing out ventilators and face masks, but there’s nothing like the same sense of urgency.

After initial missteps in Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first discovered, China adopted protocols for protective gear that are more rigorous than those in the United States, involving N95 masks and face shields, double gowns, gloves and shoe covers, plus special areas to remove protective clothing — and all this worked. Not one of the 42,000 health workers sent to Wuhan is known to have become infected with the coronavirus. The United States isn’t protecting health workers with the same determination; it seems to be betraying them.

This crisis should be a wake-up call to address long-term vulnerabilities. That means providing universal health coverage and paid sick leave — and if you think that the coronavirus legislation Trump signed on Wednesday achieves that, think again. It guarantees sick leave to only about one-fifth of private-sector workers. It’s a symbol of the inadequacy of America’s preparedness.

“We are all making dying contingency plans at this point just in case,” she said. “Wills, backup people to take care of kids, recording bedtime stories.”

The United States is in a weaker position than some other countries to confront the virus because it is the only advanced country that doesn’t have universal health coverage, and the only one that does not guarantee paid sick leave

with infectious diseases, the burden will be shared by all Americans

In Italy, 8.3 percent of coronavirus cases involve health workers. A doctor in the Seattle area who is forced to reuse N95 masks told me that she and her colleagues fear that the lack of supplies will be deadly.

We may dodge a bullet this time, but experts have been warning for decades that a killer pandemic will come;

if we, too, can be scared enough to invest in public health and fix our health care system, then something good can come from this crisis — and in the long run, that may save lives.

Ferguson questions whether South Korea and other countries can sustain their success for 18 months until a vaccine is ready, even as new cases are constantly being imported

America and South Korea reported their first Covid-19 cases on the same day, but South Korea took the epidemic seriously, promptly created an effective test, used it widely and has seen cases go down more than 90 percent from the peak.

In contrast, the United States badly bungled testing, and President Trump repeatedly dismissed the coronavirus, saying it was “totally under control” and “will disappear,” and insisting he wasn’t “concerned at all.” The United States has still done only a bit more than 10 percent as many tests per capita as Canada, Austria and Denmark.

Peter Hotez, an eminent vaccine scientist at Baylor College of Medicine, told me that he and his colleagues have a candidate vaccine for the coronavirus but still haven’t been able to line up sufficient funding for clinical trials.

Informal workers — carers, cleaners, construction workers, waiters, couriers, drivers, agriculture workers and many more — are doubly vulnerable. First, because the work on which they depend has disappeared

the measures put in place by the Italian government to ameliorate the worse effects of the crisis — a moratorium on mortgages, loan repayment holidays for businesses and wage protections for those laid off — do not protect them.

The underlying logic of Italy’s welfare system, which offers little support for those without tax contributions, remains intact. So Mr. Esposito and his family are relying on weekly food parcels from a community center. “Without their help,” he said, “we just wouldn’t have anything to eat.”

The situation for many is bleak. “Everyone here is having problems now,” Mr. Gallinari, the florist, said. “There are lots of people who are going hungry. You can see that their behavior is beginning to change.”

Reports of social unrest across the region — shopkeepers forced to give away food, even some thefts — have ruffled a usually close-knit community. “The other night I caught some kids trying to break into my garage,”

Even so, such incidents are rare. More striking — and representative of neighborhood life in Naples — has been a groundswell of community initiatives

Italians are being asked to vote on a sweeping series of constitutional reforms championed by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. He says the changes are vital to end political gridlock and revive Italy's stagnant economy, and has pledged to resign if voters reject them.

immediate risk stems from the country's troubled banks, which are saddled with about €360 billion ($383 billion) in non-performing loans, roughly a third of the eurozone total

Its stock has lost 86% so far this year, and other heavyweights such as Unicredit (UNCFF) have fared little better.

f Renzi follows through on his pledge to resign, it is possible -- but not a foregone conclusion -- that early elections could be triggered

The party, founded by comedian Beppe Grillo, is animated by many of the same forces that Trump leveraged to win the White House.

In the same way, Berlusconi emerged as Italy ceased to be a Cold War pivot and the Christian-Democrat-dominated postwar political alignments imploded. Everything was in flux as the “mani pulite” (clean hands) investigation started by Milan magistrates in 1992 exposed what everyone knew: that graft and corruption were cornerstones of Italian politics. No matter that Berlusconi was also a target of the investigation: He was new, he talked the talk, he would conjure something!

the deregulation of broadcast media in the United States and Italy — in contrast to Britain or France or Germany where state media companies still “act as a kind of referee for civil discourse” and “commonly accepted facts” — has fostered the fact-lite free-for-all of “alternate realities” conducive to Trumpism.

What Berlusconi teaches is that Trump could go all the way in a nation thirsting for a new politics. The man known as “The Knight” ended up convicted of tax fraud and paying for sex with an underage prostitute — but it took 17 years of intermittent scandal and incompetence, from 1994 to 2011, for Italy to rub the stardust from its eyes.

Take note, America, before the die is cast.

The brainchild of experts associated with American museums, the concept was embraced by President Roosevelt, who established the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas.

The commission assisted the War Department by providing maps of European cities and towns where significant monuments and religious sites were highlighted, to be used by bombing crews and commanders when planning operations.

In Britain, Prime Minister Churchill approved a parallel committee in the spring of 1944. Like all sections of the Allied military government, the MFAA would be composed nearly equally of American and British officers.

The commission selected a few enlisted men to serve in Italy with the Allied armies—MFAA ranks would increase to more than 80 as the war progressed across Europe and reached France, Austria and Germany—and charged them to report on and bring first aid to damaged buildings and art treasures, and indoctrinate troops on the cultural heritage of Italy.

The Italian campaign, predicted to be swift by Allied commanders, turned into a 22-month slog. The whole of Italy became a battlefield.

In Sicily, Monuments Officers encountered utter destruction in the main coastal towns, while the interior of the island, and its ancient Greek temples, were unscathed.

In December 1943, after repeated reports of Allied soldiers’ vandalism reached Supreme Headquarters, General Eisenhower addressed a letter to all Allied commanders. He warned his men not to use “the term ‘military necessity’...where it would be more truthful to speak of military convenience or even personal convenience.” Military necessity, Eisenhower insisted, should not “cloak slackness or indifference.”