re: Just got done reading Rick Atkinson's book about WWII in both Sicily and Italy...

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The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944.

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Sounds like they left off the part about it starting in N.Africa.

If so, they left off the importance of taking those countries before invading Germany.

My Dad was sent to N.Africa and made that trip through Sicily, Italy, France and then was badly wounded in Germany.

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Finished reading it a few days ago and have come to the conclusion that the war in Italy was a complete and total waste of time

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Easy to say after reading some guy's take on what happened and all these years later.

Well, nobody said we were perfect. They just said we won.

Remember this too, it was their war. We just went to help. It doesn't do any good to be pissing on the graves of the men we lost there.

I downvoted by accident. Upvoted to neutralize.

I haven't considered alternatives. Too many rabbit holes. I'm just a grunt coming from a long line of grunts.

We weren't taught to think, just sling and catch/dodge bullets.

My dad was a few months too young to join the military while the war was going on, but he did get to spend some time there as part of the occupying forces once the war ended.

I wonder if the veterans who had done the fighting were jerks to guys like your dad. "We did the fighting and now here you are"

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Finished reading it a few days ago and have come to the conclusion that the war in Italy was a complete and total waste of time, a vanity product of the British - particularly Winston Churchill - that was run by politicians and not by the military

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Nah. By the way I recommend his entire trilogy.

The North African campaign was essential to control of the Mediterranean, and Middle East oil.

Holding that would multiply our air and sea power, helping choke the Germans off. Once you commit to the Africa campaign, everything else followed logically. After we expelled Germany from Africa, we could not just leave our armies sitting there. Nor could we pull them out and have them go to, say, England to wait for a later invasion of France. It would be way too difficult to transport them, and way too risky in that Germany might try to re-invade Africa.

Sicily and Italy had some hellish terrain but it was worth the cost in men and resources. Every division Hitler had to tie down in Italy and southern Europe trying to fend us off was one less he could send to western France to fight the invasion we were soon to launch from Britain, and one less he could throw against the Soviets. In effect it was two for one- one German soldier fighting in southern Europe, meant he needed two more for Russia and France, and he soon began running out of quality troops. His fuel and other material supplies were also in steep decline. Doing it the way we did may have saved 100,000 Allied lives if not more.

If you ever read Rommel's papers, they are full of complaints in North Africa, Italy, and France, about a variety of things but mainly resources. Fuel and materiel and more troops were what he always complained about not being given enough of. Through the early 1940s the Germans were spread dangerously thin, first on two fronts and finally in 1944 a third front.

Sounds like they left off the part about it starting in N.Africa.
—read the first book in the trilogy. An Army At Dawn.

But without Italy, Operation Greenup would have never happened and Inglorious Basterds would have never been made.

Thanks for the recommendation.

Have you a source for Rommel's papers?