There aren't many books I've read that literally made me cry. Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands is one of them. I think The Gulag Archipelago was another. Nonetheless, Rick Atkinson's recounting of the amphibious landing at Salerno Bay had me on the ropes. How quickly, how senselessly Allied troops were gunned down or blown apart on the beachhead. And later, the same tale at Anzio, and Cassino as the Allies plodded their way up the Italian peninsula. The Americans, the British, the French, Canadians and men from many other nations. Waves upon waves of them. And the German troops, incurring bombardment after bombardment. Then there was the disastrous mission of the 82nd Airborne Division in Sicily where many of the pilots flying the mission completely missed their targets and many of the paratroopers wound up being fired upon by their own forces. No wonder war makes us insane. It certainly made insane the French colonial troops who took their vengeance out against the Italian population after their breakthrough at Cassino. For readers only familiar with the plague of rape that accompanied the more recent Yugoslav wars, or the endless rapine in the Congo, they may have missed an important chapter in Central Italy during this most senseless campaign. What Russian soldiers inflicted on Eastern European women on the march to Berlin, Morrocan soldiers duplicated in Italy. Commanders knew about it. A few perpetrators were caught, tried, and shot. But most attrocities went unpunished. Like many German atrocities. Allied commanders don't come out so well in this tale, as they didn't in the first of Atkinson's The Liberation Trilogy. And their experience in North Africa only helped marginally, because they seemed to make the same mistakes over and over. Learn they did. And as the German commander in Italy, Albert Kesselring, observed, they might not have succeeded in France without that experience. If I have anything to add to Kesselring's observation it would be that without Ultra's intercepts, the Allied armies might still be in Italy. Breaking of the German codes not only meant the Allies would be able to find Hitler's wolfpacks of submarines, but they would know virtually all of Kesselring''s major troop movements. That and the timely inventions of radar, sonar, and the Norden bombsight were important to winning the war. If I have one criticism of Atkinson's research it is the apparent lack of appreciation for the complexity of mounting assaults against the German and Japanese aggressors simultaneously. Those of us who run businesses and government however large or small appreciate the difficulty of getting a group of people moving, physically or metaphorically, in the same direction. Atkinson does refer to the toll these responsibilities took on the generals. Running an organization of 4 or 5 million people in a hostile environment, with constantly changing technology, a massively changing workforce; looking after these people 24 hours a day; arming them; hospitalizing them; dress them; motivate them under circumstances that would make a normal person shit their pants; assess leadership; feeding them; rewarding them; and sometimes shooting them for disobeying basic human morality. And focusing on annihilating the enemy. These were very difficult tasks. And the generals had pretty limited tools for management compared to what we have today. Think communications alone. And yet when compared to Stalin's management of the Eastern Front, Eisenhower's team looked like the Genius Bar. ( )

Good, but hard to read, history of WW2 in Italy. ( )

“The Allies had a plan where there had been no plan, but whether it was a good plan remained to be seen. Certainly it was vague. How Italy should be knocked out was left to the theater commander, General Eisenhower, and the concomitant goal of containing “the maximum number of German forces” implied a war of attrition and opportunism rather than a clear strategic objective.”

Second book in Atkinson’s World War II Liberation Trilogy, The Day of Battle tells the military history of the Allies’ Italian campaign, 1943-1944. It is organized in order of the named Operations. It starts with the invasion of Sicily and ends just after the capture of Rome.

It primarily focuses on the leadership of the Allied forces in the field – George Patton, eventually succeeded by Mark Clark, and Bernard Montgomery. It is supplemented with quotes from letters and diaries of servicemen, so we get a breadth of perspectives up and down the chain of command. Atkinson describes the difficulties of decision-making in the face of uncertainty and how war almost takes on a life of its own once a strategic decision is made.

The terrain in Italy presented many more difficulties than the African campaign and it often took a long time to cover a short distance. The obstacles encountered at Anzio, Rapido River, and Cassino are vividly (and gruesomely) depicted. The Italian campaign was a slog, with many setbacks, questionable decisions, and great loss of life. None of this is glossed over. It is, at times, harrowing reading.

The summary at the end relies on quotes from other historians and participants. It questions whether what was achieved in the Italian campaign was worth the cost. Atkinson does not take a firm stand on whether he sees it was worth the sacrifice and it was a huge sacrifice in terms of loss of life and resources. He leaves this topic with the question, “If not Italy, where?”

I appreciated the inclusion of many maps, photos, and a glossary of terms. I did not like it quite as much as An Army at Dawn, the first in the series, but it is well-written and gives the reader an idea of the horrors of war on both the military participants and the civilian population. Anyone who wants to understand what this war was really like should read this trilogy.

“And then there was the saddest lesson, to be learned again and again in the coming weeks as they fought across Sicily, and in the coming months as they fought their way back toward a world at peace: that war is corrupting, that it corrodes the soul and tarnishes the spirit, that even the excellent and the superior can be defiled, and that no heart would remain unstained.”
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This is the second volume of Pulitzer winner Rick Atkinson’s Liberation Trilogy. It’s a doorstop but worth the effort. Atkinson’s well-researched work has a lengthy set of endnotes that would be a gold mine for any researcher. His narrative is gripping. As the Greatest Generation is passing it’s easy to forget everything that came before D-Day. The horror is so intense and information so tightly packed it’s best digested in small bites. The slog up the boot to root out the Germans was an endeavor to remember. Whew! ( )

Volume Two of The Liberation Trilogy. A dramatic and authoritative history, Atkinson follows the American and British Armies as they invade Sicily in July 1943, attack mainland Italy two months later, and then fight their way, mile by bloody mile, north towards Rome.