Buckingham, William F./Giles, Dudley The Sicily Campaign

From North Africa to Messina

The Allies' efforts to secure the Italian island of Sicily followed immediately after the North African campaign, in which an Anglo-American force had finally encircled the Axis powers in Tunisia, where they were forced to surrender on 13 May 1943, with over a quarter of a million soldiers taken prisoner. With the aim of reopening the sea lanes across the Mediterranean for the first time since 1940 and throwing Italy out of the war, the Allies landed in Sicily on the night of 9 to 10 July 1943. After only eight weeks of planning and preparation, sea and air landings were carried out in the south and south-east of the island. The ensuing campaign included another British airborne landing in mid-July before the Axis powers were forced to retreat across the Strait of Messina to the Italian mainland, leaving Sicily to the Allies. The six weeks of fighting cost the Allies nearly 20,000 dead, wounded and missing, while their opponents lost around 100,000 soldiers and another 123,000, mostly Italians, were taken prisoner. The Sicilian campaign was the first time the Allies had successfully taken the fight to the home territory of an Axis power, and it marked the starting point for the Allies' return to continental Europe for the first time since Dunkirk with the invasion of mainland Italy. It marked the beginning of formal cooperation between Great Britain and the United States, which would prove crucial to the success of the subsequent campaign in north-western Europe.