The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (2007)

Rick Atkinson's An Army At Dawn was a stellar read. While the campaign in Sicily continues in the same mold, the campaign in Italy falls apart as his neat separation into American and non-American events no longer works. The British and Allied contributions to victory in Italy are not given the dues they merit. The campaigns in North Africa and Italy served their main purpose of training the green US army for the real fight on the European mainland. The Americans could gain experience fighting against limited numbers of Germans in a secondary theater.

While the conquest of Sicily made sense as an air base, the attack of the Italian mainland was a classic folly of Churchill. Italy was not the "soft underbelly" of Europe but ideal defensive terrain for a defender. Any student of military history will know how many armies went into Italy to die there. The Germans managed to contain the American and British attack and turned it into a futile war of attrition. The Americans were further hampered by bad generalship: Mark Clark looked like a general but was a terrible commander. Both Salerno and Anzio were mismanaged and caused needless casualties. It is no wonder that Catch-22 is based on the experiences of the war in Italy, a tragic drôle de guerre.

I am looking forward to the third and final volume that has just been published. Hopefully the Canadian and British contribution is appreciated a bit more than in the present book. Recommended. ( )

Following up with his Pulitzer Prize-winning An Army At Dawn, Rick Atkinson offers a readable and entertaining narrative of the U.S. Army's campaign in Italy. For those who don't know much about the U.S. Army's campaigns in Sicily and the Italian mainland, this is a great one-volume history.

My one criticism of the book was that it ended with the capture of Rome in June 1944, when U.S. soldiers fought and died for a whole other year as they climbed higher up the boot. Just because D-Day in Normandy stole the headlines away from the Italian Campaign at the time, doesn't mean we have to also ignore the fighting that continued in Italy from June 1944 to May 1945.

I can't wait for the Atkinson's third and final installment of the trilogy documenting the U.S. Army's war in Europe. ( )

Staggering. A great read. ( )

Great read. Excellently written history of the US part in the Italian Campaign. Very balanced, very thorough. I take issue with the gentle treatment given to Lieutenant-General Mark Clark, but do admit to somewhat of a Commonwealth bias against a man as prejudiced against the Canadians and British as he was. I know a lot more about the campaign than I did before. I also know more about great writing and solid research. ( )

A very readable history of the campaign showing the absolute brutality of war. Atkinson effectively shows how logistics provided the attackers the crucial advantage in the longer term. ( )