The Savage Storm: The Battle for Italy 1943

Historian Holland (Brothers in Arms) returns with a captivating and dramatic account of the Allied invasion of Italy in September 1943. Though Italy’s armed forces quickly capitulated after the Allied capture of Sicily in August, the German army dug into the hilly landscape, determined to make the Allies pay a heavy price. (“Italy, it was all too clear, was a defender’s dream. And an attacker’s nightmare,” Holland writes.) The invasion soon turned into one of the most protracted and bloody battles of the war; the U.S. Army’s 36th Infantry Division suffered nearly 1,000 casualties in the first eight days of fighting. Eighteen-year-old American corporal Audie Murphy (who would become the most decorated U.S. soldier in WWII) wrote of the Italian campaign, “I have seen war as it actually is, and I do not like it.” Preparations for Operation OVERLORD, the planned D-Day landing at Normandy, overshadowed the Italian invasion from the start; Churchill described it as “the tyranny of OVERLORD.” Even as the fighting continued in Italy, soldiers, supplies, and leadership attention shifted to the invasion of France. Taking those circumstances into consideration, Holland reassesses the reputations of Allied commanders in Italy, contending that they accomplished much with little support. Drawn from letters and diaries, Holland’s immersive narrative is told through the eye-level perspectives of dozens of subjects. Readers will be enthralled. (Dec.)