Massimo (Max) Salvadori was born in London in 1908 of Anglo-Italian parents, returning to Italy when just a few weeks old. In 1924 he and his father, a professor in Florence, Italy, were severely beaten by Mussolini's Blackshirts, and the family went into exile in Switzerland. Which began Salvadori's 22 year struggle against fascism. He met his English wife, Joyce, when she was studying art in Rome, but soon after was arrested by the fascists and sent to prison. Thanks to his English connections he managed to escape Italy after a year of confinement, and married Joyce in England. In the late '30s the British government asked him to go to America, with family, to organize Italian-Americans as an anti-Fascist group, and then to Mexico to thwart the pro-fascist people there, who were sending radio messages to Nazi subs in the Caribbean. After the war broke out he joined the British army's Special Operations Executive, Italian section, which did most of its work behind enemy lines. In the winter of 1945 he parachuted into northern Italy to organize the liberation of Milan. At war's end he was a lieutenant-colonel awarded the Distinguished Service Order and Military Cross, the second and third highest British decorations. He returned to the United States where he had left his wife and two children, and became a college history professor, with two stints in Paris, one with UNESCO, another with NATO. He passed away in 1995, leaving 29 books of thoughtful insight into political-economic history behind as his legacy.
