Mitcham Samuel W jr - The Battle of Sicily: How the Allies Lost Their Chance for Total Victory Stackpole Military History Series

THE BATTLE OF SICILY

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THE BATTLE OF
SICILY

How the Allies Lost Their Chance
for Total Victory

Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr.
Friedrich von Stauffenberg

STACKPOLE
BOOKS

Copyright 1991 by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr., and the estate of Friedrich von Stauffenberg

Published in paperback in 2007 by
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5067 Ritter Road
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All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Stackpole Books, 5067 Ritter Road, Mechanicsburg, PA 17055

Cover design by Tracy Patterson

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mitcham, Samuel W.
The battle of Sicily: how the Allies lost their chance for total victory / Samuel W.
Mitcham, Jr., Friedrich von Stauffenberg.
p. cm.(Stackpole military history series)
Originally published: New York: Orion Books, 1991.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8117-3403-5
ISBN-10: 0-8117-3403-X
1. World War, 19391945CampaignsItalySicily. 2. Sicily (Italy)History
18701945. I. Stauffenberg, Friedrich von. II. Title.
D763.S5M58 2007
940.54'21548dc22

2007000835

eISBN: 9780811746694

Table of Contents

Maps

Tables

Introduction

T he Allied invasion of Sicily continues to provoke interest in the United States almost fifty years after it was fought. There are a number of reasons that this operation captures our imagination, including the heroics and histrionics of George Patton; the fact that it was our first amphibious invasion of the mainland of Europe and our first landing against German opposition; and because the American army came of age on the beaches and barren hillsides of Sicily, proving for the first in its own eyes and the eyes of the world that it was equal to the British army and worthy to be its full partner. The stain of Kasserine Pass was wiped out at Gela, Palermo, and especially Messina. Many Americans think that the German army took a severe beating in Sicily, and, when General Patton won the race for Messina, he permanently established the reputation of the U.S. Army as a force to be reckoned with.

Although Friedrich von Stauffenberg and I agree with a number of these points, we do not believe the German army was as badly damaged as Allied propagandists of the time indicated. Unfortunately, their lead has been followed by a number of historians. Our book takes a more balanced approach to this topic. We also take an opposing view on the subject of the race for Messina. This race (and I am uncomfortable calling it that) was not between Patton and Montgomery; rather, it was a three-party affair, and it was won by General Hans Valentin Hube, commander of the German XIVth Panzer Corps. For thirty-eight days his weak forces held off two full Allied armies. Their peak strength totaled well in excess of 400,000 men; Hube never commanded more than 65,000 Germans. In the end he pulled off a masterful evacuation and escaped to the mainland of Italy with his entire commanddespite unreliable allies, the fact that his rear was constantly exposed to enemy amphibious landings, and the fact that the Allies had complete supremacy of the air and sea and a six-to-one superiority on the ground. While Hube was accomplishing all this, Hitler was capturing Italy, a process that was incomplete when Hube finished evacuating Sicily but had gone so far by then that it was irreversible.

The purpose of this book is to tell the story of the Battle of Sicily primarily from the point of view of the Axis military commanders. Allied actions are normally covered only insofar as they affected the Axis situation or influenced Axis military reactions. Primary among these Allied actions was the decision to invade Sicily in the first placea strategic move which we hold to be fundamentally flawed. A more proper target would have been northwestern France or (if the landings had to come in the Mediterranean) the shores of Sardinia, which was less well defended and exposed more of Italy to a subsequent invasion. The Sicilian landings doomed the Allies to a prolonged battle of attrition up the bloody Italian peninsulahardly a brilliant stroke of military genius.