El Alamein
In September 1940, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini extended the war to North Africa, seeking to create a "New Roman Empire," but suffered a series of terrible reverses at the hands of the British. The German Afrika Korps was forced to come to the Italian's assistance, which led to a back-and-forth series of battles fro control of Libya and parts of Egypt. After the pivotal Battle of El Alamein, British Commonwealth forces eventually pushed the Axis forces back to Tunisia.

Operation Torch
Months before the British victory at El Alamein, President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met to discuss Allied strategy for 1942. While American commander favored landing in occupied Europe, the British believed that such a course would end in disaster, due primarily to shortage of men and ships, and proposed an attack on French North Africa instead. With Joseph Stalin demanding that a sense front be opened to take pressure off Russia, Roosevelt relented. Planning for the operation, code-named Torch, began in July 1942.

Sicily
Early in 1943, after concluding that a successful invasion of France would be impossible that year, it was decided to invade the Italian island of Sicily from newly won island as a base for Axis shipping and aircraft, allowing free passage to Allied ships in the Mediterranean Sea, and to put pressure on the regime of Benito Mussolini in the hope of eventually having Italy struck from the war. The film you will see is a partial record of Canada's First Division in the Sicilian Campaign.

Salerno
Soon after the last Axis forces were driven from Sicily, Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini was overthrown. To exploit the collapse of the Fascist regime and draw as many German troops as possible away from the Russian front and the western coast France, an immediately invasion of the Italian mainland was imperative. The Allies settled on Salerno, some 50 miles southeast of the strategically important harbor at Naples.

Monte Cassino
Following the successful Allied landings on the Italian mainland in September 1943, German forces began a slow, fighting withdrawal to the north before settling into the Gustav Line, a sophisticated belt of interlocking defensive positions on the high ground along with the peninsula's narrowest point. The town of Cassino was the most formidable of the Gustav Line positions.

 

Anzio
With German defenders firmly entrenched behind the Gustav Line, Allied commanders settled on a plan, championed by Winston Churchill, to turn the German flank by mounting an amphibious landing at Anzio, some fifty miles behind enemy lines. By gaining a passage to the routes to Rome and threatening lines of communication and supply, it was hoped that the stalemate along the Gustav Line could be taken.

The Battle Of San Pietro
It has taken the U.S. 5th Army from the middle of October to early November to fight their way from the Volturno Line to the Bernhardt Line. In the center of the 5th Army front lay the Mignano Gap, which represented the only realistic path to the mouth of the Liri valley and the road leading to Rome. Fortified enemy positions dotted the high ground on both sides of the gap and the village stronghold of San Pietro was a key point in these defenses. The Battle of San Pietro was produced in 1944 by legendary filmmaker Frank Capra, who commissioned John Huston to direct and narrate and Dmitri Tiomkin to compose the score. The film is considered one of the strongest indictments of war ever made.

Climb To Glory
In the spring of 1944, the German Army was finally forced to retreat after nearly simultaneous Allied breakthroughs at Cassino and Anzio. By September, the Germans had withdrawn to the Gothic Line, a 16 km-deep belt of fortifications that wound through the natural defensive wall of the Apennine Mountains. The 10th Mountain Division, an elite group of skiers and mountaineers, went into combat for the first time in this difficult terrain.