World War II Italian Campaign: Allied Forces--International Character (1943-45)


Figure 1.-- The Italian campaign was the most internationalized campaign of the War, at least on the Allied side. The Axis essentially made war on the world and in Italy it came back to bite them. The Allied forces were the American Fifth Army and British Eighth Army. Both were composed of many foreign units, especially the Eighth Army. Here Free French units are moving north after the liberation of Rome. The press caption read, "French Soldiers Give Candy and Cigarets to Italians: Italian civilians of Siena, Italian city liberated by the Allied [American] Fifth Army on July 3, 1944, crowd around a jeep to receive candy and cigarets from French soldiers."

The Italian campaign was the most internationalized campaign of the War, at least on the Allied side. The Axis essentially made war on the world and in Italy it came back to bite them. The Allied forces were the American Fifth army and British Eighth Army. Both were composed of many foreign units, including British Empire formations as well as units from occupied countries. This permittef America, Britain, and Canada to withdraw forces from Italy and focus on the critical effort to reenter the continent in northern Europe and drive into the heart of the Reich. This was the strayegy the United states advicated from the start, but the British with more experience fighting th Germans eventually agreed with. The United sttes saw this as the best way to destroy the NAZI tyranny and war-making capacity. The British after the enormous casualties in France during World War I were more concerned. The American Fifth Army included ethnic U.S. units, both the segregated African-American 92nd Infantry Division and the Japanese-American 442nd Infantry Regiment. Most of the foreign (non-British and american) units fought with the British Eighth Army. One exception was French General Alphonse Juin's Free French Expeditionary Corps. The Free French also included the Algerians, Moroccans, and Senegalese. The Brazilians also fought with the Americans Fifth Army. The British Eighth Army was formed from the Western Desert Force and fought the Afrika Corps in North Africa. The Eighth Army was an Empire and European anti-NAZI effort, including Africans from various British colonies as well as one Latin American country. This included Brazilians, Canadians, Czechs, Greeks, Gurkhas, Indians, Italian partisans, Jews from Palestine, New Zealanders, Poles, Rhodesians, and South Africans. The Australians played an important role in the British Eighth Army during the North African campaign, but after Pearl Harbor withdrew to fight the Japanese. After D-Day more American, Canadian, and French forces were pulled out to invade southern France--Operation Dragoon.







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Created: 9:48 AM 8/20/2016
Last updated: 9:48 AM 8/20/2016