WWII - War In The Mediterranean

By December 11, 1941, the U.S. was at war with all three major Axis powers, and although many Americans wanted to defeat Japan first after Pearl Harbor, American military strategists argued that defeating Hitler first was essential because otherwise Germany might overrun Great Britain and the Soviet Union and gain control of Europe. America and Great Britain agreed on a Europe-first strategy but disagreed over where to strike, with the U.S. favoring a direct cross-English Channel invasion into France and the British preferring attacks on the Axis edges to avoid another trench warfare disaster. With the Soviets desperate for a second front, Winston Churchill persuaded the Allies to invade North Africa in 1942. Operation Torch began in November 1942 under Dwight D. Eisenhower and brought together 400,000 Allied soldiers, most of them American, in a joint effort with British forces to trap Erwin Rommel's forces in Tunisia between Eisenhower advancing east from Casablanca and Bernard Montgomery's Eighth Army moving west from Tripoli. After fierce fighting, Rommel was routed by May 1943 and the Axis lost North Africa. The British then persuaded the reluctant Americans to continue into Sicily in July and Italy in September. Sicily fell quickly in August, Benito “II Duce” Mussolini was deposed, and Eisenhower arranged the unconditional surrender of Pietro Badoglio's new Italian government in September 1943. Italy left the Axis, but German troops remained and fought on, especially after Italy joined the Allies and declared war on Germany in October 1943. Some of the war's harshest fighting followed in Italy's snowy mountains, where the Allied advance stalled early in 1944 at Monte Cassino. To get beyond it, the Allies landed at Anzio in January 1944 near Rome, but it took weeks to break out, and Rome did not fall until June 4, 1944. Two days later the invasion of France began on D-Day, shifting Germany's main attention to the French front, though fierce fighting continued in Italy until German troops there surrendered on May 2, 1945, five days before Germany's overall surrender ended the war in Europe.

Gonzales, Louisiana · United States