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Answer The campaign to capture the German and Italian forces in Italy is what is referred to as the Italian Campaign. After the Allies fought the Germans in North Africa and won a victory there, they wanted to continue their advance against the German/Italian forces. They were not ready to invade Germany or France---that would come in June 1944 at Normandy. So in July 1943, they invaded Sicily, an island belonging to Italy. This was captured in 2 months and then they invaded mainland of Italy on 8 September 1943. This began the Italian Campaign This campaign continued until the end of the war; the German forces in Italy surrendered on 2 May 1945. Churchill thought it would be easy to advance up the "boot" of Italy and attack through Austria and into Vienna. But Hitler choose General Kesselring to command the defense of Italy and they fought to hold back the Allies at every Mountain and river. It was a long campaign. After the fall of Rome on 4 June 1944, almost 1/3 of the Allied forces were pulled out of Italy and sent to southern France to assist the campaign to drive into Germany. This reduced the forces such that the Allies had almost equal strength of the Axis forces. The campaign became called "the forgotten front" and some soldiers called themselves "the D-Day Dodgers", because they did not have to fight at Normandy. Even today, most history books will hardly mention any battles fought in Italy from June 1944 until May 1945. Reference LInk on last 12 months of the Italian Campaign: www.custermen.com

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17y ago

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