The Black Prince and the Sea Devils
The Story of Valerio Borghese and the Elite Units of the Decima Mas
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
At the beginning of World War II, Prince Junio Valerio Borghese, dashing Italian nobleman, assembled the famous Decima MAS naval unit-the first modern naval commando squad. Borghese's "frogmen" were trained to fight undercover and underwater with small submarines and assault boats armed with a variety of destructive torpedoes. The covert tactics he and the Decima MAS developed, including the use of midget submarines, secret nighttime operations, and small teams armed with explosives, have become a standard for special forces around the world to this very day.After the Italian capitulation in 1943, Borghese determinedly fought on as a Fascist commando leader. After the war, he became a man of mystery, variously said to be involved with several right-wing conspiracies, abortive coups, and clandestine activity. The Prince's death in 1974 was every bit as mysterious as his life.Greene and Massignani have drawn upon official archives as well as information from Allied and Axis veterans in an unprecedented attempt to separate fact from fantasy in this detailed examination of Borghese, the Decima MAS, and the Italian naval special forces.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A one-man embodiment of the collusion between royalty and fascism during WWII, Italian prince Junio Valerio Borgese (1906-1974) founded the Decima MAS (or Motobarca Armata Svan), a then-innovative small unit that was a progenitor of today's U.S. Special Forces. The X Mas, as it was also called, included everything from frogmen who walked underwater to their targets, to torpedoes"driven" by operators, to tiny submarines and small, fast, light surface craft. Greene (Ironclads at War) and Italian author Massignani (who co-wrote Rommel's North Atlantic Campaign with Greene) claim to be bringing Borghese's whole story"before the English-language audience for the first time in a full-length work," drawing on archival material (which provides fodder for an 8-page b&w photo insert), interviews and secondary sources. From outlining his origins within the gentry and young adulthood under Mussolini to discussing his wartime exploits, adventures with Italy's anti-communist far right during the Cold War, and mysterious death, the authors try to stay within the realm of the known, keeping speculation--and sensationalism--to a minimum.
