After many decades reading about the Second World War, I realized that I had some major gaps in other many "secondary" (or not) theaters, like for example the Italian campaign; or in main War theaters like the Pacific (covered last year with the excellent trilogy written by Ian W. Toll); or most of the Eastern Front battles.
Following a visit to Montecassino and Anzio in late April 2022, I made a firm self-committment to start filling those gaps inmediately. Over the late summer and the autumn 2022, I focused my attention in the "other" 1944 Western Europe battles (= excluding Normandy, Arnhem and The Ardennes) and in the 1945 campaign.
Not an easy task, as surprisingly there are not many published works. Luckily I found a couple of superb books to fill this gap: the late Robin Neillands´ "The Battle for the Rhine 1944", covering from just after the Falaise pocket in August 1944 to the end of The Bulge in very early 1945.
And followed byPeter Caddick-Adams' 1945: Victory in The West which seamlessly continued the narrative at the point where Neillands book concluded (just after The Ardennes) and until the capitulation of Nazi Germany in May 1945.
For 2023 I planned to research two very different topics: the 1943-45 Italian Campaign and the whole of the Eastern Front (from Barbarossa to Berlin). Being undecided about which I should go first, I arranged a poll in Twitter, and (surprisingly ) the majority opted for the Italian Campaign (3 to 1).
My reading open shot for this theater has been Sicily '43: The First Assault on Fortress Europe written by James Holland. He's one of may favorite military history writers of whom I had already read his two tomes on the War in the West, Normandy and Arnhem.
Brief summary of the campaign
The Sicily campaign extended between July 9th and August 17th 1943 and was the Allies' first step into Continental Western Europe. The operation had four distinctives phases:
1. Before the invasion, the aerial campaign in Sicily and South Italy to gain control the skies before the actual landings. This campaign was a complete success. Bombers protected by fighter screens flying from Malta and North Africa, rendered destroyed the Axis airfields and many of the enemy planes operating in the island, forcing the Italian and German air forces to pull back to continental Italy and Sardinia. For most of the campaign, Allied forces enjoyed full air supremacy.
2. The landings and consolidation of the beachheads: previous to the major landings, commando and US Ranger forces successfully crippled many of the critical coastal defences; the naval and air bombadment during the sea assault made the rest. Unlike in Normandy almost a year later, landings were generally very sucessful and with little effective opposition. The major Allied disaster in this phase were the airborne operation, very badly executed due to the inexperience of the transport crews.
3. The fight inland. After a successful landing, the Germans and Italians counterattacked aiming to force a reembarking of the Allied troops. With the exception of the attack led by the Hermann Goering division in the US sector at Gela, these counterattacks were ineffective and costly to the Axis forces.
With the Italian resistance weakening, the Germans took full control of the island operations. Reinforcements were sent across Messina and the units pulled back to a main defence line around Mount Etna, a rough and easily defendible area with few access roads. The Allied advance slowed in that difficult terraind and casualties increased significantly.
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| Source: Wikipedia |
4. Evacuation: by the end of July, and with Mussolini ousted, the German command saw no reason to continue in the Island and planned an evacuation through the Messina Strait. The goal was to avoid another "Tunisgrad" and to save as many troops and weapons as possible. The evacuation was successfully executed between August 11th and 17th. Despite the overwhelming Allied air and naval superiority, a concentration of naval and flak guns in the narrrow strait made impossible for the Allies to interfere with the evacuation to the continent.
The Book
Sicily 43 is a thick 600 pages detailed book, with abundance of maps, photos and annexes.
This books fills a major publishing gap around this operation. As in other previous works, Holland relied on diaries, interviews, letters and other materilas from the people involved, not only combatants but also civilians victims of the terrible consequences of the war.
The structure of each chapter is similar: start with "the voice" of an individual witness involved in the specific event of the chapter and from there zooming out to have a panoramic view of the situation. The using these personal voices helps the reader to get inmersed into the situation, sometimes in a very dramatic way: the Italian officer that found a naked Italian young woman on her bed killed by the shrapnel of Allied naval guns while sleeping; or the frequent comments on the thirst, flies and stench of dead affecting both sides.
The book is written in a very engaging style. In addition, chapters have the right length for me (around 15 pages) perfect to spend 20 minutes reading in bed before sleeping. The number of maps is right and the level of detail enough to follow the narrative, including all the main locations and geographical features mentioned in each chapter.
There is a lot of useful material in the book for wargamers, given the detailed description made of some of the encounters. On a more general level, there are three issues that attracted my attention specially:
The technical weakness of the Tiger I tanks. The HG division had a battalion with 17 of these monsters and almost all were lost due to techncial glitches or breakdowns. The lack of a transport (rail) forced the tanks to move via dusty roads to the front line, losing many in the way due to engine failures (one even caught fire in a retreat, blocking the road to the rest of the columns)
The myth of the race to Messina. Using available documentation, the author busts this long-time standing myth (nurtured with the Patton film) about the competition between the American commander and Montgomery to be the first in the city. Neither Alexander (the C-in-C) directed or favoured the in any way the English Army corps, nor Monty obstructed the communication lines to gain an advantage over Patton's forces.
The disastrous execution of the airborne operations. Firstly, these troops were superbly trained but nobody seemed to worry about putting on equal foot of excellency the transport crews in charge of taking the paratroopers to their objectives. Second, despite the disaster with the first wave (night jump with inexperienced air crews), the Allied command attempted a second wave that was even worse: where to the the previously mentioned factors, you have to add that the element of surprise was already lost and the enemy was ready to confront an airborne assault; and on top of that, the route to the LZs crossed the area of the Allied fleet, with many losses caused by friendly AA fire.
The disaster of the airborne contrast with the effeciency (both in terms of resultsaand limited casualties) of the raids executed by the Rangers and British commandoes attracking their objectives landing from the sea. The Allied command seems not to have taken stock or learned almost mothing in following operations.
And a final note: did the Italian-American maffia have a rol in the massive surrendering of Italian tropps in the island? There is an interesting tale in the book of yellow pennants in Sherman tanks, maffia leaders and active OSS personnel but without a clear conclusion.
Conclusions
Sicily was a clear Allied victory, controlling the island in 5 weeks albeit with a high cost in casualties. It is estimated that Allied suffered 24,000 casualties of which 4,800 were KIA. German forces suffered around 28,000 casualties of which 4,300 were KIA and around 10,000 POWs. Italians had the highest casualties, 37,000 in total of which 4,800 were KIA and the rest wounded.
Strategically, Italy was ousted the Axis forces lossing several hundreds of thousands of men from the Italian army as a result (only in Sicily surrendered over 100,000 Italians); German divisions had to be transferred from the Eastern front and from Western Europe to defend the South; and logistically speaking the operation was a feat and a success for the Allies.
Was it a complete victory? To some extent the victory was tarnished by the ability of the German army to pull out in the face of overwhelming odds, extracting close to 60,00 men and many thousands of vehicles, guns and tanks that were later used in the defensive battles of the Italian campaign, until the unconditional surrender in May 1945.
What's next?
My next goal is the campaign in the Italian penninsula, and I have two books in sight:
1. Rick Atkinson's The Day of Battle: The War is Sicily and Italy 1943-1944 (second book of the Liberation trilogy). On this I have second thoughts, as I liked the book on Torch and Tunisia (An Army at Dawn) but didn't like much the third dealing with Normandy to Germany (The Guns of Last Light)
2. James Holland's Italy's Sorrow: A Year of War 1944-45. The main drawbak of this book is covering the period from Montecassino to the end of the war, thefore Salerno, the drive to Rome and Anzio are excluded. On the positive side, I already covered Cassino/Anzio with Peter Caddick-Adams book, used to prepare my battlefield visit on April 2022.
Other potential interesting readings, but exclusively focused on the Canadian armies, are the excellent series written byCanadian military hostrian Mark Zuehlke: Ortona, Forgotten Victory, The Gothic Line, The Liri Valley, and The River Battles.
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You can follow James Holland in his website, Twitter account or by listening to his podcast channel "We have ways to Make you Talk" in collaboration with Al Murray.
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