By 1943, the Allies were entering what Winston Churchill referred to as the “perhaps, the end of the beginning” of the Second World War. Axis forces had finally been driven out of North Africa and Allied commanders turned their attention to the wider strategy in the Mediterranean. With the Soviet Union fighting a brutal war against the Nazis on the Eastern Front, the Western Allies were expected to open a second front in Europe. The question was: where?
It was Churchill who advocated an invasion of Italy. Famously referring to the then-fascist country as the “soft underbelly of Europe”, the British prime minister believed that knocking Italy out of the war had several benefits. Neutral Turkey could potentially join the Allies and Italy would be a useful springboard for Allied invasions into Austria and Germany. At worst, an Italian campaign would divert precious Axis resources away from the Eastern Front.
Although Churchill was enthusiastic about Italy, the United States was not. The Americans wanted to pour their European war resources into an invasion of northern France, which eventually became Operation Overlord. However, they did agree to invade Italy alongside their British partners with the first target being the country’s most southerly region: Sicily.
Codenamed Operation Husky, the island invasion of Sicily was critical to a future assault on the Italian mainland. Using hundreds of thousands of troops, Husky was actually the largest Allied amphibious invasion of the war. It was also innovative, with the Allies launching large airborne operations for the first time and successfully deploying pioneering landing craft. However, despite their numerical and technological advantage, the Allies met larger than expected resistance and argued among themselves. The “soft underbelly” turned out to be not so soft after all.
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