Talk:Avola

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The segment on the liberation of Avola in WWII needs to be trimmed as it is way too long and takes up nearly most of the History. If not then surely this would constitute for a separate article in itself? Eastfarthingan (talk) 20:18, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

First of all, the term “liberation”, that the IP-guy likes so much, is nonsensical when dealing with Avola, for a variety of reasons such as: Italy at the time (and until 8/9/1943) was still part of the Axis, and thus the Allied troops capturing an Italian town were legally occupying a town, not liberating it; the German troops in Sicily, as much as the locals disliked them, were not occupation troops and theirs was not an occupation regime, as Italy and Germany were still (barely) allies and the control of the territory until the Allied attack was, anyway, in Italian and not German hands; more specifically, there was not a single German soldier in Avola, as the town was garrisoned by an Italian coastal battalion, the 374th (that the IP-guy unencyclopedically calls “Mussolini’s fascist soldiers” – how come in all Wiki articles about WWII battles involving the Germans I read “German troops” rather than “Hitler’s Nazi troops”?), as written here, in a book that deals specifically with events in this part of Sicily in July 1943. This battalion was not even made up of “random” Italians, but of Sicilians, as it was part of the 206th Coastal Division. As one can read in the any of the pages about the Italian coastal divisions (example: 202nd Coastal Division (Italy)), citing Jowett, Philip S. (2000). The Italian Army 1940-45 (1): Europe 1940-1943. Osprey, Oxford - New York, coastal divisions were “recruited locally” i.e. made of Sicilians. Here is a partial list of Italian soldiers killed in Sicily in World War II, and a quick look at those killed in July 1943 shows that most came from Sicilian towns and villages – so much for “Sicily the anti-fascist hotbed” and “Mussolini’s fascist soldiers”.

Anyway.

Until a few months ago the Allied landing was barely mentioned, until the IP-guy, which seems to have been someone of Sicilian descent and who wants to portray all Sicilians and Avolans as anti-fascists, came out and wrote a bunch of nonsense about Avola and Sicily being an “anti-fascist hotbed” during the twenty years of the fascist regime (but somehow not lifting a finger against the regime during said period: other regions in Italy had armed resistance movements from 1943 onwards, in Sicily all the “anti-fascist” activity consisted in clapping hands at the Allies when they came), due to Mussolini’s “strongarm policies” in Sicily (such as? the only “strongarm campaign” carried out in Sicily during that period was

Sicilian Mafia during the Mussolini regime); that during the war Avola was under occupation by the Germans – nonsense that I already addressed above. As source for all that he gave Carlo D’Este’s book “Bitter Victory: the Battle for Sicily”. Unfortunately for him, said book is in Google Books, and a search for ‘Avola’ shows that that there is no mention of all that in it. So I called his bullshit, and he started to throw in more and more references to obscure sources, of questionable encyclopedicity and, most importantly, not available for any check online, in order to further his parochialist view that Avola was somehow under occupation by an Italian-Sicilian battalion and that the local population, despite the bombing and fighting that had gone on in the town for hours (which had led the locals to escape to the fields in order not to get caught in crossfire, as mentioned in the book that I linked and that can be checked online), were still there and sprang out to greet the liberators as soon as the last bullet was fired, and they could see that there were “no more Germans” (as if there had been any before that)…— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.35.51.129 (talk • contribs) 18:53, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply

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This is all very well but I think we can just put who liberated Avola rather than how it was liberated. As I have said it needs to be put into a seperate article if the information warrants it which in my opinion does.Eastfarthingan (talk) 10:39, 10 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

All of the information that is being repeatedly deleted is sourced and sourced straightforwardly. Some is paraphrased (albeit barely) and some is quoted almost verbatim. As far as the contention that Mussolini's forces be described as fascist, that's not a valid contention, as the Mussolini regime was as demonstrably fascist as any regime ever, literally having the distinction of coining the phrase themselves. Cesare Mori's campaign targeting the mafia, as you've cited, was one factor in alienating the local population from the fascist authorities, but suggesting that it warrants deleting all references to fascism does not hold up. The claim that the D'Este book does not include the information it's cited as is false, and is is easily provably false. If you use THIS link (https://books.google.com/books?id=IDV1AAAAIAAJ&dq=%22Carlo+D%27Este%22+%22I+don%27t+know+anybody+who+could%22&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=Avola) and type in "Avola" in the search terms, you'll see it's found a large handful of times in the book, on the cited pages, and the corresponding information is found there as well. Continued edit warring, and allegations about my ethnicity are equally unwarranted. The alleged contention with the phrase "no more Germans" flies in the face of the cited source (the book about the UK's Durham Light Infantry) which quotes that the locals as saying that, in those exact words. Carlo D'Este is one of America's most prolific World War II historians, and one of his areas of academic focus was the Mediterranean theatre during World War II, dismissing his work as "parochialist" is absurd. Lastly the allegation that the sources I cited were not available for check onling is untrue, they are all available for checking online as I've just taken the trouble to check, if it is deemed necessary I will provide links to the online sources here (the link to the D'Este book is already in this post, for instance).174.70.83.194 (talk) 22:40, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]