British Army, 51st Division Sicily, July 1943
The Allies had not yet defeated the Germans in North Africa, when British and American civilian and military leaders met at Casablanca in January 1943 to decide where to turn next. The Americans pushed for an early cross-channel invasion of occupied France; the British favored a Mediterranean strategy to knock Italy out of the war. After sometimes bitter negotiations, they decided to turn their attention to Sicily and, ultimately, mainland Italy. Codenamed Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily in July-August 1943 was the largest combined amphibious operation in history.
While Husky was successful and led to the fall of the Mussolini regime, the Allies learned many tough, and sometimes costly lessons in joint and combined warfare, airborne operations, deception planning, air support, logistics, and many others. But applying these lessons enabled the successful planning and execution of Operation Overlord the following June.
Kevin Weddle, professor emeritus of military theory and strategy at the U.S. Army War College, offers an illustrated discussion of this critically important operation that played a major, but often forgotten role, in the Allies’ ultimate success in World War II in Europe.
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