Strategic Setting

In January 1943, American President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill met with their senior military advisers at Casablanca, Morocco, to devise a military strategy for the coming year. The United States Army had begun ground operations against the European Axis Powers only two months before as part of a joint Anglo-American invasion of North Africa. With the North African campaign moving toward a successful conclusion, the leaders of the two nations debated where to launch their next blow. After several days of negotiations, they agreed to make Sicily their next target.

Situated ninety miles off the north coast of Africa and a mere two and one-half miles from the 'toe' of the Italian peninsula, Sicily was both a natural bridge between Africa and Europe and a barrier dividing the Mediterranean Sea. Its rugged topography made it a tough, unsinkable bastion from which Axis air and naval forces could interdict Allied sea lanes through the Mediterranean. Yet despite its strategic location, the Allies were deeply divided over the merits of invading the island, and in the end the decision to invade Sicily represented an uneasy compromise between British and American strategists.

The British strongly supported the invasion because Britain had long-standing political and strategic interests in the Mediterranean. They argued that Sicily's conquest would not only reopen Allied sea lanes to the eastern Mediterranean, but also give the Allies a base from which to launch further offensives in the region. Moreover, the occupation of Italian national territory might shock the war-weary Italians into dropping out of the war altogether.