United States Army in WWII - the Mediterranean - Sicily and the Surrender of Italy

United States Army in WWII - the Mediterranean - Sicily and the Surrender of Italy
Author: Albert N. Garland
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Total Pages: 1090
Release: 2014-08-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1782894098

[Includes 17 maps and 113 illustrations] This volume, the second to be published in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations subseries, takes up where George F. Howe’s Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West left off. It integrates the Sicilian Campaign with the complicated negotiations involved in the surrender of Italy. The Sicilian Campaign was as complex as the negotiations, and is equally instructive. On the Allied side it included American, British, and Canadian soldiers as well as some Tabors of Goums; major segments of the U.S. Army Air Forces and of the Royal Air Force; and substantial contingents of the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy. Opposing the Allies were ground troops and air forces of Italy and Germany, and the Italian Navy. The fighting included a wide variety of operations: the largest amphibious assault of World War II; parachute jumps and air landings; extended overland marches; tank battles; precise and remarkably successful naval gunfire support of troops on shore; agonizing struggles for ridge tops; and extensive and skillful artillery support. Sicily was a testing ground for the U.S. soldier, fighting beside the more experienced troops of the British Eighth Army, and there the American soldier showed what he could do. The negotiations involved in Italy’s surrender were rivaled in complexity and delicacy only by those leading up to the Korean armistice. The relationship of tactical to diplomatic activity is one of the most instructive and interesting features of this volume. Military men were required to double as diplomats and to play both roles with skill.

The Secret Surrender

The Secret Surrender
Author: Allen Dulles
Publisher: Globe Pequot
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2006
Genre: World War, 1939-1945
ISBN: 9781592283682

The amazing true story of the largest surrender in World War II, as told by America's master spy.

How Fighting Ends

How Fighting Ends
Author: Holger Afflerbach
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2012-07-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0191624543

There are many histories of how wars have begun, but very few which discuss how they have ended. This book fills that gap. Beginning with the Stone Age and ending with globalized terrorism, it addresses the specific issue of surrender, rather than the subsequent establishment of peace. At its heart is the individual warrior or soldier, and his or her decision to lay down arms. In the ancient world surrender led in most cases to slavery, but a slave still lived rather than died. In the modern world international law gives the soldiers rights as prisoners of war, and those rights include the prospect of their eventual return home. But individuals can surrender at any point in a war, and without having such an effect that they end the war. The termination of hostilities depends on a collective act for its consequences to be decisive. It also requires the enemy to accept the offer to surrender in the midst of combat. In other words, like so much else in war, surrender depends on reciprocity - on the readiness of one side to stop fighting and of the other to accept that readiness. This volume argues that surrender is the single biggest contributor to the containment of violence in warfare, offering the vanquished the opportunity to survive and the victor the chance to show moderation and magnanimity. Since the rules of surrender have developed over time, they form a key element in understanding the cultural history of warfare.

Sicily and the Surrender of Italy

Sicily and the Surrender of Italy
Author: Lieutenant Albert Garland
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 644
Release: 2015-07-16
Genre:
ISBN: 9781515100430

(Includes maps) This volume, the second to be published in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations subseries, takes up where George F. Howe's Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West left off. It integrates the Sicilian Campaign with the complicated negotiations involved in the surrender of Italy. The Sicilian Campaign was as complex as the negotiations, and is equally instructive. On the Allied side it included American, British, and Canadian soldiers as well as some Tabors of Goums; major segments of the U.S. Army Air Forces and of the Royal Air Force; and substantial contingents of the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy. Opposing the Allies were ground troops and air forces of Italy and Germany, and the Italian Navy. The fighting included a wide variety of operations: the largest amphibious assault of World War II; parachute jumps and air landings; extended overland marches; tank battles; precise and remarkably successful naval gunfire support of troops on shore; agonizing struggles for ridge tops; and extensive and skillful artillery support. Sicily was a testing ground for the U.S. soldier, fighting beside the more experienced troops of the British Eighth Army, and there the American soldier showed what he could do. The negotiations involved in Italy's surrender were rivaled in complexity and delicacy only by those leading up to the Korean armistice. The relationship of tactical to diplomatic activity is one of the most instructive and interesting features of this volume. Military men were required to double as diplomats and to play both roles with skill.

Hitler's Italian Allies

Hitler's Italian Allies
Author: MacGregor Knox
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2000-10-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781139432030

Fascist Italy's ultimate defeat was foreordained. It was a pygmy among giants, and Hitler's failure to destroy the Soviet Union in 1941 doomed all three Axis powers. But Italy's defeat was unique; the only asset that it conquered - briefly - with its own unaided forces in the entire Second World War was a dusty and useless corner of Africa, British Somaliland. And Italy's forces dissolved in 1943 almost without resistance, in stark contrast to the grim fight to the last cartridge of Hitler's army or the fanatical faithfulness unto death of the troops of Imperial Japan. This book tries to understand why the Italian armed forces and Fascist regime were so remarkably ineffective at an activity - war - central to their existence. It approaches the issue above all from the perspective of military culture, through analysis of the services' failure to imagine modern warfare and through a topical structure that offers a social-cultural, political, military-economic, strategic, operational, and tactical cross-section of the war effort.

The World Almanac and Book of Facts

The World Almanac and Book of Facts
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1020
Release: 1942
Genre: Almanacs
ISBN:

Lists news events, population figures, and miscellaneous data of an historic, economic, scientific and social nature.