Women of War : The Italian Assassins, Spies, and Couriers Who Fought the Nazis

Women of War: The Italian Assassins, Spies, and Couriers Who Fought the Nazis by Suzanne Cope tells the overlooked story of four Italian women who became key figures in the resistance against Nazi occupation and Fascist rule during the Second World War.

It follows Carla Capponi, who built and delivered explosives from underground bunkers in Rome; Bianca Guidetti Serra, who cycled treacherous Alpine passes to smuggle materials to partisan fighters; Teresa Mattei, a young courier and bomb-runner who went on to help shape Italy's post-war constitution; and Anita Malavasi, who led military operations in the mountains.

Drawing on deep archival research, Cope reconstructs how these women moved from ordinary civilian life into roles as saboteurs, intelligence operatives and fighters, and shows how their wartime resistance also became entangled with the fight for their own rights and equality in a deeply patriarchal society.

The book restores women to the centre of a resistance history that has too often focused only on men.