When the leaders of the Western Allies met at Casablanca in January 1943, that was just two months after the invasion of North Africa, « Operation Torch. » At that time, the Americans still clearly had a preference for planning a direct invasion of Europe, which Stalin strongly desired to provide the necessary second front to relieve the strain on the Russian front. Churchill, more moved than his American allies by memories of World War I, was eager to avoid such an adventure for as long as possible. As an alternative, he advocated invading Europe’s « soft underbelly. » In the end, of course, both courses would be followed. A full-scale invasion of France would come in June 1944 with the Allies’ surprisingly successful landing in Normandy. But that would have to be delayed longer than either the Russians or the Americans had originally desired. Meanwhile, having successfully established Allied control of the southern coast of the Mediterranean with the defeat of the Italians and the Germans in North Africa, the Allies were ready to challenge the Axis’ weakest link, Italy, with an amphibious invasion of Sicily, « Operation Husky, » 80 years ago today.
The invasion of Sicily and the subsequent surrender of Italy inevitably get second billing in any history of the European war to the much more dramatic and important invasion of Normandy and the subsequent liberation of France and the Low Countries and the eventual unconditional surrender of Germany. That, of course, is as it should be. But what began 80 years ago today was no mere sideshow. Knocking Italy out of the war was a great accomplishment, a genuine political turning point, although unfortunately not the military turning point it was originally hoped to be.
After weeks of preparatory aerial bombardment, four British and Commonwealth Divisions landed on Sicily’s southeast coast, near Syracuse, while three American Divisions anded slightly to the west of the British at Gala. The British were to advance toward Catania (from which my grandparents had immigrated to America decades earlier) and Messina, while the Americans would support them on their left. After their experience in North Africa, the Allies expected serious Axis resistance, but the enemy appeared to have been taken off-guard. (This may have been partly due to successful Allied disinformation which caused the Germans to expect an invasion in Sardinia or Greece.) Significantly, unlike the Germans, Italian military morale was low. The Americans, under Patton, successfully captured Palermo on July 22.
Meanwhile, the Allied bombing of Rome (while Mussolini was out of town, meeting Hitler at Feltre) had a possibly even more immediately destabilizing effect on the government. In a lengthy meeting on the night of Saturday, July 24, the Fascist Grand Council voted what was in effect a motion of no confidence in Mussolini’s leadership. (Technically it was a recommendation to the King that he resume his full constitutional role as commander-in-chief.) On Sunday, July 25, Mussolini went to see the King, at which audience Vittorio Emanuele III, who had been fully briefed on the previous night’s meeting and had been in on the plotting that had preceded it, told him he was no longer Prime Minister. As Mussolini left the Villa Savoia, he was arrested.
Italy under the new government remained officially at war with the Allies until an Armistice was signed on September 3 and made public on September 8. In the interim, the Allies invaded southern Italy from Sicily on September 3. But Hitler righty distrusted the Italians, and the Germans took advantage of the Italian duplicity to move into a position to occupy northern Italy and Rome itself. Sensibly, the Royal Family and the Government fled from Rome after the the announcement of the Armistice, but did so in a way which left the defenders of Rome confused and directionless, which resulted in the immediate capture of Rome by the Germans and an effective division of the country. It took the Allies until June 4, 1944, to liberate Rome, and it wasn’t until April 1945 that German control of northern Italy ended.
There were many problems along the way, but Operation Husky did detach Italy from the Axis. Militarily divided, with a puppet Italian Fascist government in the North, Italy was no longer of any actual use to Germany. While the Allies were unexpectedly bogged down fighting the Germans all the way up the peninsula, the Germans were also bogged down fighting in Italy instead of reinforcing The Atlantic Wall against the inevitable Allied invasion. In that sense, the operation was a success.
For Italy, however, what initially seemed to offer an opportunity to extricate the country from further fighting, turned into a tragic division of the peninsula and an effective civil war. The Italian government’s temporizing attempt to play both sides instead of immediately surrendering to the Allies contributed to this unfortunate outcome. Italy’s pre-Fascist dysfunctional politics resumed, while the Savoy dynasty was (fairly or not) ultimately held accountable after the war not just for the infamous fuga del Re of September 1943, but for the war itself and the whole political debacle that the German alliance had brought about.
In the end, it made sense for the Allies to invade Sicily and then to move from here to the rest of Italy. It had the desired effect of bringing down the Fascist government (maybe more easily even than anyone had expected). It brought about a major turning political point in the war, while militarily it served as a learning experience which further prepared the Allies for the more challenging task of invading France.
If only the post-Mussolini Italian Government had been more realistic and less duplicitous and had quickly surrendered, then (while there likely still have been a German occupation of part of northern Italy and consequently continued conflict in the country) the capital and its environs might have remained under government control, and a less discredited government might have been better able to unite the country, minimizing the terrible sectional division which was exacerbated by the way the war ended and which continue to weaken the country during the post-war period. And, of course, if Vittorio Emmanuele III had immediately abdicated, as practically everyone wanted him to do at the time, perhaps King Umberto II would have successfully stayed on the throne reigning over a less devastated and less divided country.
