World War 2
The Italian Job
After clearing North Africa, the Allies invaded Sicily on the 9th of July 1943. Led by General George Smith Patton and Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery, US Seventh and British Eighth Armies fought a gruelling battle but could not prevent most of the islands German defenders from escaping and slipping across the straits of Messina to mainland Italy, were a greater part of their equipment was waiting.
On the 25th of July, Mussolini was overthrown, and on the 3rd of September an anti-fascist Italian government signed a secret armistice with the Allies. Six days later the Allies landed on the Italian mainland at Salerno, south of Naples, were they were met stiff resistance from two German armoured divisions. Thereafter the Allied progress up the Italian peninsula was a long, hard slog, made all the more gruelling by difficult terrain and stiff German resistance in a series of well-fortified defensive positions, notably the Gustav Line, and the constant drain on resources for the battle, as the priority for the Allies was the upcoming Normandy invasion. In January 1944 an amphibious landing at Anzio, behind the Gustav Line, briefly opened a window of opportunity but the chance was missed.
The strongpoint in the Gustav Line at Monte Cassino was finally taken by the Allies in May 1944, after a long, hard bitter battle, the Allies then took Rome on the 4th of June. However Allied troops remained outnumbered by the German forces in Italy, and it was not until the 29th of April 1945 that the Germans surrendered.