We invite you to listen to a lecture by Prof. Federico Ciavattone, director of the Centro Studi di Storia del Paracadutismo Militare Italiano (Centre for the Study of the History of Italian Military Parachuting). The lecture was delivered as part of the ‘Living History’ series in August 2023.

‘July 1944: the battles for the liberation of Ancona. The Italian Liberation Corps and the II Polish Corps in the battles of Filottrano, Rustico and Polverigi‘ (’July 1944: the battle for the liberation of Ancona. The Italian Liberation Corps and the 2nd Polish Corps in the battles of Filottrano, Rustico and Polverigi”).

The subject of the lecture covers the relatively little-known battles of General Anders’ 2nd Polish Corps fought during the so-called Italian Campaign in 1944-1945 side by side with Italian forces, which after the capitulation of Italy in 1943 switched sides and fought alongside the Allies. In the aforementioned battles, the soldiers of General Anders and the Italians of the Italian Liberation Corps clashed with the German forces, which were retreating to the Gothic line and, as at Cassino, put up fierce resistance. The Allies, on the other hand, had to capture important ports off the Italian coast in order to gain access to the sea in order to increase supplies to the fighting Allied troops. Ancona was one of the strategically important logistical points. The battles for Filottrano, Rustico and Polverigi were to unlock the Allied route to Ancona.