Italian Campaign
Briefing
The invasion of Sicily in July 1943 knocked Mussolini from power within weeks, but the campaign that followed became one of the war's cruellest slogs — Salerno, the Gustav Line, Monte Cassino, Anzio — as Allied armies ground up the mountainous peninsula against skilful German defence until the final days of the war.
Books Covering This Event (14)
Popular History
Four battles, four months, and the destruction of a 1,400-year-old abbey — the hardest fighting of the western war.
The invasion of Sicily and the brutal Allied advance up the Italian peninsula.
British intelligence floats a corpse with fake invasion plans to convince Hitler that Sicily was a feint.
The war of Felix Sparks and the 157th Infantry — from Sicily to Dachau.
Memoir
Pyle's dispatches from Sicily, Italy, and Normandy — the war at the level of one tired man at a time.
Willie and Joe — the unshaven, exhausted dogfaces of the infantry — in the Pulitzer-winning cartoons that defined the GI's war.
Patton's war diary from Morocco to the Rhine, published two years after his death.
The Supreme Commander's own account of the war in the West, from Torch to the German surrender.
A British intelligence officer's diary of a year in liberated, starving, magnificent Naples.
Historical Fiction
An Italian-American major governs a liberated Sicilian town and replaces the bell the fascists melted down.
Five saboteurs climb an impossible cliff to silence the German guns commanding the Aegean.
A burned man in a ruined Italian villa, a Canadian nurse, a Sikh sapper, and a thief — four lives wrecked by the desert war.
An Italian officer garrisons a Greek island with a mandolin and falls in love — until Italy surrenders and his German allies turn their guns.
A teenager guides Jews over the Alps, then becomes the personal driver — and spy — inside the German command in Milan.