Osprey General Military - Destination Berchtesgaden, The US Seventh Army During World War II.pdf

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DESTINATION
BERCHTESGADEN
Osprey Publishing
© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com
DESTINATION
BERCHTESGADEN
The US Seventh Army during
World War II
John Frayn Turner & Robert Jackson
© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com
CONTENTS
Chapter 1:
Operation
Husky:
The Invasion of Sicily
Chapter 2:
The Battle for Sicily
Chapter 3:
Operation
Dragoon:
The Allied Invasion of Southern France
Chapter 4:
The Fight for a Bridgehead
Chapter 5:
The German Retreat
Chapter 6:
The Seventh Army Advances
Chapter 7:
River Crossings, German Defenses, and Resistance
Chapter 8:
To the Siegfried Line
Chapter 9:
The Ardennes Offensive
Chapter 10:
Breaking the German Defenses
Chapter 11:
Crossing the Rhine
Chapter 12:
An End in Sight
About the Authors
© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com
CHAPTER 1
OPERATION
HUSKY:
THE INVASION OF SICILY
The storm came out of the west, sweeping across the length of the Mediterranean from the Straits
of Gibraltar to lash the normally placid seas into a tumult. Around the rocky coast of Sicily,
German and Italian sentries gazed at clouds that raced across the evening sky and wondered if the
gale would last long enough to bring a temporary respite from the Allied bombers, which for
weeks now had been pounding the island’s defenses by day and night.
It was July 9, 1943, and after three and a half bitter years the tide of the war was at last beginning
to turn against the Axis. In the Atlantic, hunter-killer task forces and aircraft combined to hound
the U-boat wolfpacks to their deaths; on the Eastern Front, the German Sixth Army had been
annihilated in the rubble of Stalingrad, and the Russians were massing their forces for an
offensive in the Kursk salient; the once-proud Afrika Korps, trapped between the British Eighth
Army and the American forces, had fought its last battle in Tunisia; and the heart of Germany
was burning under the Anglo-American strategic bombing offensive. The Axis leaders knew
beyond all doubt that it was now only a question of time before the Allies attempted to gain a
foothold on mainland Europe, what they did not know yet was where the blow would fall.
On July 9, the German and Italian garrisons on Sicily had no way of knowing that they were to be
the target for the first Allied invasion of Europe, or that the blow was only hours from being
stuck. The decision to attack Sicily had, in fact, been reached only after considerable argument
and discussion between the British and Americans. At the end of 1942, the British, foreseeing the
elimination of the Axis forces from North Africa following the successful Allied landings there in
November, envisaged exploiting this victory by pushing across the Mediterranean. They wanted
to land in Sicily, Sardinia, the Italian mainland, or southern France; they also believed that such
an action might persuade Turkey to enter the war on the side of the Allies. The Americans, on the
other hand, wanted to build up their forces in Britain to launch a direct invasion across the
Channel in 1943; they had no desire to continue the offensive in the Mediterranean, other than
step up the strategic bombing of Italy to lower Italian morale.
It was this divergence of opinion that led to an Allied summit conference at Casablanca in
January 1943, during which President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and their
advisers met to thrash out a plan of campaign following the Allied victory in North Africa. The
Americans, who now held the view that the North African campaign – with its considerable drain
on Allied resources – would make a cross-Channel invasion in 1943 impossible in any case,
finally agreed to an invasion of Sicily. At a later conference, held in Washington in May 1943,
© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com

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