After bruising defeats in the Soviet Union and North Africa, the Germans were on their heels. The Allies, in contrast, were gaining strength each day, and looking to break Hitler’s stranglehold on his “Fortress Europe.”

The United States had long favored a push to Germany through occupied France, but British Prime Minister Winston Churchill insisted on a drive through the Mediterranean and what he called the “soft underbelly” of Europe. The Americans relented, bowing to both urgency and reality. The Soviets were desperate for the Allies to exert greater pressure in the West, and Allied forces were wholly unprepared to invade France from across the English Channel.

In July 1943, an Anglo-American army landed in southern Sicily, a small, rocky island just two miles off the coast of Italy. Perched on its northern tip was the city of Messina, from where Allied troops could easily cross to the Italian mainland. Capturing Messina was assigned to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s British Eighth Army, a selection that irked Montgomery’s counterpart, Lieutenant General George Patton, whose US Seventh Army was relegated to a supporting role.

As Montgomery’s forces began clawing up the southern coastline, they were slowed by a rigorous German defense and challenging terrain, opening the door for Patton to forge his own path to Messina in the north. He drove his men and armor forward with almost reckless abandon, battling past the German defenses and capturing 53,000 Italian prisoners. His arrival in Messina ahead of Montgomery cemented a bitter rivalry between the two larger-than-life figures that would endure through the end of the war.

The abrupt loss of Sicily—the island fell in just thirty-eight days—added to a wave of anti-war sentiment sweeping across the Italian mainland. Dictator Benito Mussolini was removed from power, and on the eve of the Allied invasion, his successor quietly negotiated a peace agreement. Adolf Hitler was incensed by the betrayal, ordering the entire country occupied and every Italian soldier taken into captivity.

The subsequent campaign in Italy proved one of the most punishing of the entire war. It began in September 1943, when American and British armies landing on the southwestern coast were nearly pushed back into the sea by a concerted German counterattack. The Allies eventually broke into the Italian interior, but a series of defensive belts across the waist of the peninsula, coupled with the onset of incessant rains and freezing mountain temperatures, led to excruciatingly slow progress and heavy casualties. A low point came in January 1944, when the Allies attempted a bold gambit, landing 36,000 troops near the seaside town of Anzio, miles behind the German lines. A lack of initiative—marked by the absence of Patton—led to failure, as the men dug into defensive positions rather than capitalizing on the surprise they had achieved.

Casualties continued to soar, and the struggle in Italy stretched well into 1945. Even as the war neared its conclusion and the last Nazi resistance crumbled outside Berlin, a sizeable German army still managed to hold out in northern Italy. The 19-month campaign cost the Allies more than 300,000 killed or wounded, with German casualties eventually topping 500,000.