The Mediterranean, North Africa and Italy

Italy entered the war on 10 June 1940, and Malta was attacked from the following day. The island’s Grand Harbour, dockyard and airfields sat across the routes between Italy and Libya, giving British aircraft, submarines and surface forces a base from which to threaten Axis supply traffic. The same position left Malta dependent on convoys for food, fuel, ammunition and replacement aircraft.

Operation Compass opened on 9 December 1940 as a limited British attack against Italian fortified camps around Sidi Barrani. The camps were separated by wide gaps, and the Western Desert Force used surprise, armour and mobile columns to break into them before the Italian command could create a continuous defence.

Rommel’s first counter-offensive began in late March 1941 and rapidly recovered most of Cyrenaica, but Tobruk remained an Allied-held port behind the Axis front. Its garrison forced Axis traffic onto longer road routes around the perimeter and was sustained by repeated Royal Navy supply runs across the Mediterranean.

The Axis offensive at Gazala began on 26 May 1942 with mobile forces sweeping around the southern end of the British minefields and fortified boxes. Fighting around Bir Hakeim and the area later called the Cauldron left Rommel temporarily dependent on a narrow supply corridor through the mine belt, while British commanders struggled to concentrate their armoured strength against it.

The Second Battle of El Alamein opened at 21:40 on 23 October 1942 with a massed Eighth Army artillery bombardment, followed by an infantry attack through the Axis mine belts. The Mediterranean coast and the Qattara Depression fixed the limits of the battlefield; infantry and engineers had to create the passages through which British armour could move.

Operation Torch put British and American forces ashore in French Morocco and Algeria on 8 November 1942. Allied planners could not know in advance how Vichy French commanders would respond; fighting ended after local political agreements, while German and Italian forces moved quickly into Tunisia and reached the approaches to Tunis before the Allies could secure the city.

Operation Husky landed British, Canadian and American armies across southern and southeastern Sicily on 10 July 1943. Bad weather disrupted parts of the airborne plan, but the beachheads held and Allied naval and air power sustained the advance inland. The invasion placed Axis territory under direct ground attack and forced the German command to prepare both the defence and evacuation of the island.

British forces crossed from Sicily into Calabria on 3 September 1943, the same day Italian representatives signed the armistice at Cassibile. Its public announcement on 8 September triggered a rapid German move to disarm Italian formations and occupy key positions. The main Allied landing at Salerno followed on 9 September, with a separate British landing at Taranto.

The first Allied attacks against the Gustav Line began in January 1944 around the Garigliano, Rapido and Cassino sectors. The mountains channelled movement into a small number of valleys and roads that German artillery and infantry could cover. Operation Shingle landed at Anzio on 22 January to turn the position from the coast, but rapid German reinforcement contained the beachhead before it could sever the main routes south of Rome.

On the night of 2 August 1944 an OSS team parachuted into the Pranjani area to organise the evacuation of Allied airmen who had been shot down over occupied Yugoslavia. Villagers and forces loyal to Draža Mihailović had sheltered many of the airmen, while the Fifteenth Air Force could reach the area from bases in southern Italy. Improvised strips were enlarged for C-47 transports, and the first large evacuations flew to Bari on 9–10 August.

The Allied attack on the Gothic Line began in late August 1944, with the Eighth Army striking toward the Adriatic sector while the Fifth Army attacked through the central Apennines. Initial breaches forced German withdrawals, but mountain roads, prepared positions, rain and the cumulative losses of the Italian campaign prevented a rapid advance into the Po Valley before winter.