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By Root 1411 0

Sicily]. That is the position to which we are reduced, and which you should labour sedulously to correct.’ But the British and Americans found it impossible to launch a grand ground commitment in Europe in 1943; instead, they opted for limited operations against the Axis southern flank. At Casablanca Churchill’s delegation had secured American agreement to a landing in Sicily, which it was then hoped might take place in early summer. Much emphasis was also placed on Pointblank, the Combined Bomber Offensive designed to pave the way for the invasion of France. By the time of the subsequent Washington summit in May, the protracted endgame in North Africa had pushed back the Sicilian target date to July. The US chiefs of staff remained unhappy about diverting strength from the prospective French campaign, but in Washington they acknowledged that no landing in north-west Europe could take place that year. They believed that the British were exploiting the shipping shortage to escape a French invasion commitment which they disliked. British caution was real enough, but so was the transport issue. It would be intolerable for Allied armies to linger idle in England until the following summer; Italy was meanwhile their only credible objective.

The Allies knew how desperately many Italians yearned to escape from the war. Iris Origo, the American-born writer who occupied a castle in southern Tuscany, wrote in April: ‘A marked change has come over public opinion. The active resentment and dismay which followed upon the Allies’ landing in North Africa and the bombing of Italian cities has given place to a despairing apathy … everyone says quite openly: “It is Fascism that has brought us to this.”’ It was plain that Italy would soon quit. The British assumed that once this happened, most of the country would fall into Allied hands: Ultra indicated that the Germans did not intend to mount a major campaign in the lower peninsula, but merely to hold a mountain line in the north. Here was an example of the dangers posed by enjoying a privileged view of the enemy’s hand. The Allies thought they knew Hitler’s mind. But he frequently changed it, and redealt the cards.

Churchill and his generals were thus far right, that it was essential to attack the Italian mainland, the only battlefield where Anglo-American ground forces could engage the Germans in 1943. But they were inexplicably and culpably ill-informed about the geographical, tactical, political and economic problems they would meet there. They underestimated the difficulties of advancing through mountainous territory against a skilful and stubborn defence. They expected that Italy would provide a springboard for an early offensive against Germany’s southern flank. ‘The Mediterranean,’ the British chiefs of staff asserted in Washington, ‘offers us opportunities for action in the coming autumn which may be decisive … We shall have every chance of breaking the Axis and of bringing the war to a successful conclusion in May 1944.’

The Americans agreed the Italian commitment, subject to an understanding that come autumn, several divisions would be withdrawn, for redeployment to Britain to prepare for D-Day. As late as 27 July 1943, the British Joint Intelligence Committee correctly forecast an imminent Italian surrender, but mistakenly assumed that Hitler’s forces would thereafter withdraw to the Maritime Alps and positions covering Venice and the Tyrol. Churchill’s chiefs of staff were more cautious, anticipating some German reinforcement of Italy. But Allied operations against Mussolini’s country were launched amid British assurances of easy pickings, which prompted enduring American bitterness when confounded by events.

On 10 July an armada of 2,590 warships and transports began to disembark 180,000 troops on the coast of Sicily, under the command of Gen. Sir Harold Alexander. The British landed in the east, the Americans in the south-west. Strong winds wreaked havoc with the airborne plan, causing many gliders to fall into the sea – sixty-nine out of 147 which took off from Tunisia