ENGLISH

The Invasion of Sicily 1943

By Jon Diamond

Book information

Publisher
Pen and Sword Military
Year
2017
ISBN
1473896096, 9781473896093
Language
english
Format
EPUB
Filesize
34 MB (35468025 bytes)
Series
Images of War
Pages
248\0
Time added
2022-01-17 13:01:34

Description

With victory in North Africa complete, the Allies had a choice. The Americans wanted an early cross channel attack from Britain on North West Europe. Churchill favored invading the soft underbelly of Italy to weaken the Axis forces and gain Italian surrender. With Eisenhowers army and battle-hardened Eighth Army in North Africa, Churchill prevailed. The ambitious Operation HUSKY required meticulous planning. Montgomery's Eighth Army and Patton's Seventh landed successfully although the air landing proved costly. While the outcome was not in doubt the mountainous terrain acted in the defenders favor. The German presence was higher than expected and the vast bulk of the enemy were Italian. In little over a month, the first Americans reached Messina. The strategic plan was successful: the Italian capitulated, Hitler had to reinforce his Southern flank relieving pressure on the Soviets and valuable lessons were learned by Allied for D-Day.

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