Soldiers and sailors, as usual, remained in the dark and subject to severe restrictions on their letters home. All documents that disclosed the invasion destination were stamped with the classified code word Bigot, and sentries at the Husky planning headquarters in Algiers determined whether visitors held appropriate security clearances by asking if they were ‘bigoted.’ (‘I was frequently partisan,’ one puzzled naval officer replied, ‘but had never considered my mind closed.’)

Hewitt doubted that three thousand vessels could sneak up on Sicily, but Husky’s success relied on surprise. With The Day of Battle, Atkinson has once again given us the definitive account of one of history’s most compelling military campaigns. And with the liberation of Rome in June 1944, ultimate victory at last began to seem inevitable.ĭrawing on a wide array of primary source material, written with great drama and flair, this is narrative history of the first rank. Led by Lieutenant General Mark Clark, one of the war’s most complex and controversial commanders, American officers and soldiers became increasingly determined and proficient. The battles at Salerno, Anzio, and Monte Cassino were particularly difficult and lethal, yet as the months passed, the Allied forces continued to drive the Germans up the Italian peninsula. But once under way, the commitment to liberate Italy from the Nazis never wavered, despite the agonizingly high price. The Italian campaign’s outcome was never certain in fact, Roosevelt, Churchill, and their military advisers engaged in heated debate about whether an invasion of the so-called soft underbelly of Europe was even a good idea. Now, in The Day of Battle, he follows the strengthening American and British armies as they invade Sicily in July 1943 and then, mile by bloody mile, fight their way north toward Rome. In An Army at Dawn-winner of the Pulitzer Prize-Rick Atkinson provided a dramatic and authoritative history of the Allied triumph in North Africa.

In the second volume of his epic trilogy about the liberation of Europe in World War II, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson tells the harrowing story of the campaigns in Sicily and Italy

The day of battle by rick atkinson