Sicily ’43: The First Assault on Fortress Europe

Historian Holland (Normandy ’44) chronicles the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily in this expert account. In 38 days, 160,000 American, British, and Canadian troops overcame geographical challenges and fierce German resistance to reach the Straits of Messina. Holland documents how Allied commander Gen. Sir Harold Alexander arrayed his invading forces; recounts how the Tuskegee Airmen helped counter the Luftwaffe; notes cooperation between American intelligence agents and local Mafia dons; and argues that the Sicily invasion provided crucial lessons for the D-Day landings in Normandy. Holland also offers astute assessments of commanders Bernard Montgomery (“highly competent” yet seemingly unaware of his “appalling rudeness”) and George Patton (“obsessed with fears of failure and his own mortality”) and includes the perspectives of frontline combatants and eyewitnesses, including Canadian infantryman Farley Mowat and American reporter Ernie Pyle. Aspects of the Sicily campaign, Holland writes, recalled the trench warfare of WWI; one of the final battles, for the mountain fortress of Troina, was “a terrible, bloody slugging match,” where “horrendously depleted” German forces matched “every act of astonishing heroism from the Americans.” Marshalling a wealth of primary and secondary sources into an engrossing narrative, Holland fills a yawning gap in histories of WWII. This magisterial account is a must-read for military history fans. (Nov.)