The Italian campaign was the battlefront that most resembled the battles of World War I, armies flinging themselves at each other again and again over the same ground.Ītkinson juxtaposes the fighting for inches with the grave realities of Allied war-making politics and how much blood was spilled because of clashing egos. Atkinson paints Clark as so obsessed with capturing Rome himself that he pondered turning his own guns on the British if he thought they would enter the city ahead of him.Īt the heart of 'The Day of Battle,' though, is the foot soldier, the men pinned down at Anzio, the troops sent relentlessly into fortified German lines. Mark Clark, commander of the American Fifth Army in Italy. Patton's ego seems tame compared to that of Gen.

Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum.The Day of Battle:' | Courage, carnage and obsession: a review of The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 by Rick Atkinson (Thomas Peelem, Contra Costa Times) Softcover, 791 pages, including extensive notes and bibliography.Īnd exhibit programs of the Dwight D. And with the liberation of Rome in June 1944, ultimate victory at last began to seem inevitable.ĭrawing on a wide array of primary source material, written with great drama and flair, The Day of Battle is a masterly account of one of history's most compelling military campaigns. The battles at Salerno, Anzio, the Rapido River, and Monte Cassino were particularly lethal, yet as the months passed, the Allied forces continued to drive the Germans up the Italian peninsula. The decision to invade the so-called 'soft underbelly' of Europe was controversial, but once under way, the commitment to liberate Italy from the Nazis never wavered. Now, in The Day of Battle, he follows the strengthening American and British armies as they invade Sicily in July 1943 and then, mile by bloody mile, fight their way north toward Rome.

In An Army at Dawn-winner of the Pulitzer Prize-Rick Atkinson provided an authoritative history of the Allied triumph in North Africa during World War II. We are currently out of stock on this item.

The day of battle by rick atkinson