Italy

1st Special Service Force Fight for Mt. La Difensa

Dusk came early as they boarded the convoy of trucks, their olive-drab forms softened by baggy trousers and heavy field jackets. Read more

Italy

Fighting from Tobruk to Milan

The contribution of the Union of South Africa’s armed forces to the winning of World War II is little known outside South Africa itself. Read more

Italy

The Film and Battle of San Pietro

By Michael E. Haskew

The monotonous rattle and snap of the film projector provided a steady accompaniment to the images flickering across the screen in the darkened room. Read more

Italy

Before the Battle of the Bulge: Forming the 551st “GOYAs”

By summer’s end 1944 Adolf Hitler, along with much of his staff, began to realize that Germany was in serious danger of losing the war. Read more

Italy

Italian Blunder in the Balkans

A thin shaft of moonlight played over the broad, deserted boulevard leading to the suburban Athens home of Greek Prime Minister John Metaxas on the night of October 28, 1940. Read more

Italy

My Battle Up the Boot: Paul McNelis in the Italian Campaign

The U.S. 85th Infantry Division was one of the Allied workhorses in Italy during World War II. Read more

Italy

A List of American Commanders in WWII Who Lost Their Lives

General George S. Patton, Jr., once said, “An army is like a piece of cooked spaghetti. You can’t push it, you have to pull it after you.” Read more

Italy

Battle of Cape Ecnomus & the First Punic War

“But so long as the Carthaginians held unchallenged control of the sea, the issue of the war still hung in the balance. Read more

Italy

Solferino: Birth of a Nation

­Long columns of blue-clad French troops marched east though the sun-baked plains of northern Italy in late June 1859. Read more

Italy

English Mercenary Captain John Hawkwood

Long columns of heavily armed soldiers streamed southeast along the left bank of the Adige River in the Veneto region of northern Italy on March 11, 1387. Read more

Italy

A Death in San Pietro

After sweeping through Sicily in the summer of 1943, Allied forces invaded Italy in September. The American Fifth Army landed at Salerno and moved up the peninsula through Naples that fall. Read more

Italy

The Essex Regiment’s Frontal Assault on Monte Cassino

It was March 14, 1944, and Private Albert “Albie” Duddy of D Company, 1st/4th Battalion Essex Regiment, was staring up at the monastery on top of the hill at Monte Cassino from a location north of the town of Cassino, Italy. Read more

Italy

What the Devil’s Brigade Did in World War II

When General George C. Marshall visited London in April 1942, the new chief of the British Combined Operations Command, Lord Louis Mountbatten, introduced him to a “very odd-looking individual … [who] talks well and may have an important contribution to make.” Read more

Italy

Battle for Monte Cassino: Hell on a Mountaintop

By the evening of January 22, 1944, it was increasingly apparent that a drastic shift in strategy was needed to break the bloody debacle that had developed in central Italy. Read more

Italy

Ordeal at Monte Cassino

Lt. Gen. Mark Clark’s Fifth Army, comprising the U.S. VI and British X Corps, headed north from the Salerno battlefield in September 1943, German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, commander of Army Group C in southern Italy, implemented new defensive tactics and fortifications. Read more

Italy

Rome Avenged: Hannibal in Italy

Two Generals met in the Fall of 202 BC in a last-ditch attempt to secure a mutually agreeable peace between their respective nations. Read more

Italy

How To Make a Fake Tank

Deception is a vital tool in war. During World War II, the British developed a dummy tank to fool enemy surveillance planes into thinking they had more tanks than they needed, were strong where they were weak, and were preparing to attack where they were not. Read more

Italy

Operation Aphrodite

When it came to advanced military technology in World War II, arguably no one was better at it than Nazi Germany, whose scientists Adolf Hitler keep busy trying to invent the ultimate “super weapon” capable of defeating his enemies. Read more

Italy

Rampage on the Riviera: Operation Dragoon

Early in 1944, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the defeated hero of North Africa and now head of Army Group B in France, was tasked with strengthening the Atlantic Wall defenses against Allied invasion. Read more

Italy

The Irish Brigade in WWII

It was a letter in the London Times that caught the attention of British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Read more