#290: Operation Husky - TWiE War on the Southern Front

Sicily, July 9th 1943: With the North African Campaign over, the Allies, at the behest of an impatient Soviet Union, turned towards the invasion of Hitler's Fortress Europe. The island of Sicily was the logical stepping-stone between the Allies' desert victories and the European mainland. In what was something of a dress rehearsal for the much more famous Normandy landings a year later, two Allied armies, the American 7th and the British 8th, set out to invade Sicily. Each supported by its own airborne assault, the invading armies would hit the southern shores and immediately push northward, their ultimate objective the port of Messina at the island's north-eastern tip. The plan called for a Commonwealth thrust along the eastern coastal roads and for an American drive directly through the island's center. The Italian 6th Army, supported by two German divisions, lay in wait across the rugged Sicilian landscape. The Axis forces would use the unforgiving terrain to offer opposition that historians would later immortalize in books with names like "Bitter Victory" and "Sicily: Whose Victory?"