"On the night of 9-10 July 1943, the Allies made their first move to regain control of Western Europe. Operation HUSKY, the invasion of Sicily, was in fact a larger operation than the Normandy landings the following year. For the next thirty-eight days, half a million Allied servicemen fought the Germans and Italians for control of this rocky island." "As the author reveals, despite the successful outcome of this ambitious undertaking, personal, service and international divisions and rivalries were to rob the Allies of the opportunity to inflict a crushing defeat on the Axis forces. As a result the enemy were able to conduct a fighting withdrawal to the Italian mainland thereby saving sizable forces to continue the war."--BOOK JACKET.

Ian Blackwell was Senior Lecturer at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and the Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham.

On the night of 9-10 July 1943, an Allied armada launched the invasion of Sicily, a larger operation than the Normandy landings the following year. Over the next thirty-eight days, half a million Allied servicemen fought the Germans and Italians for control of this rocky island, which was to become the first part of Axis homeland to fall during World War II. Despite their success in capturing the island, inter-Allied and inter-service divisions and rivalries robbed them of the opportunity to inflict a crushing defeat on the Germans and Italians, who were able to conduct a fighting withdrawal to the Italian mainland and save sizable forces to continue the war. Regarded by some as a "blind alley" and by others as the way into Europe via the "soft underbelly", the decision to invade Sicily was and remains controversial. Notwithstanding the campaign's failure to achieve its potential, invaluable lessons were learned which contributed to success in France later. Many of the leading generals who were to take prominent roles in northwest Europe amongst them Eisenhower, Montgomery, Bradley and Patton brought with them the experience of Sicily.