Allies Fail to Take Sicily

Lets say that the Germans take a better fight in Sicily and crush the Allied invasion there. Would the Allies be able to launch a second invasion, or would they have to find another area to land, like Crete, or Greece.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
How do the Germans do this?

They lack the forces and time to build them up. They also lack the terrain features that allowed them to make the defensive stands on mainland Italy.
 
I don't remember all the detalis about Husky, but remember, Italy was still in the war at that point. The Germans couldn't just come in and shove them aside. The Italian forces, with the exception of those individuals who were fachisti, had little desire to fight the Americans. Many of them had relatives in the US. [incidentally, the Americans were generally treated as liberators by the Sicillian population, even while they were still technically enemies]
As for the Germans, as an earlier poster said, they didn't have the necessary troops. Unless they stripped a number of divisions from the eastern front [which might have affected Kursk] there was nothing they could do but give ground as slowly as possible. And except for the volcano in the eastern part of the island, there wasn't good defensive terrain.
 
I don't remember all the detalis about Husky, but remember, Italy was still in the war at that point. The Germans couldn't just come in and shove them aside. The Italian forces, with the exception of those individuals who were fachisti, had little desire to fight the Americans. Many of them had relatives in the US. [incidentally, the Americans were generally treated as liberators by the Sicillian population, even while they were still technically enemies]
As for the Germans, as an earlier poster said, they didn't have the necessary troops. Unless they stripped a number of divisions from the eastern front [which might have affected Kursk] there was nothing they could do but give ground as slowly as possible. And except for the volcano in the eastern part of the island, there wasn't good defensive terrain.

Siciliy did affect Kursk and severly at that. Manstein's Army Group South was at the critcal point of the battle when the allies landed for Operation Husky. Manstein begged Hitler to release the 5th SS Viking division and 17th Panzer Division so he could smash the Russians who were stalmated against the 2nd SS Panzer Corps around Provorovka but instead Hitler panicked and called off the offensive and refused to release the reserves and took the Leibstandarte out of Russia and sent them to Italy.

The Germans had two divisions on Siciliy one good and one scratch. Kesselring and Hube used up too much of their strength attacking the beachead directly (this was only partially effective and cost them a lot of tanks and made them vulnerable to naval gunfire). Sicily has a couple of river lines up the east coast and Mount Etna near the toe. The Germans could have retreated step by step fortified the Mount Etna area and inflicted a bloody nose. ASB for them to push the allies back into the sea in and of themselves and besides they inflicted a lot of casualties in Siciliy relative to the amount of forces that they engaged
 
No Tunisian Fiasco

The Germans could have applied a lot of Strength to Sicily if they would have decided not to try to hold Tunisia, but use their strength to evacuate DAK and defend Italy instead.
 
If you combine a German victory both at Kursk and Sicily, you could concievably get Stalin to the bargaining table on grounds of he's been taking millions of casualties while his so called Allies just pitter about.
 
If you combine a German victory both at Kursk and Sicily, you could concievably get Stalin to the bargaining table on grounds of he's been taking millions of casualties while his so called Allies just pitter about.

Tsouras lays out a version of this by having the Germans delay Kursk to have the Russians attack first and have the Germans evacuate 9 battalions out of Africa to fight in Siciliy and force a stalemate. Its called known enemies and forced allies. Complete and total ASB from the stance of evacuating even a portion of the Africa Corps. The dealy at Kursk is feasable since Guderian, Model and Manstein were in the don't go for it camp and Hitler vacillitated back and forth on it several times
 
I don't remember all the detalis about Husky, but remember, Italy was still in the war at that point. The Germans couldn't just come in and shove them aside. The Italian forces, with the exception of those individuals who were fachisti, had little desire to fight the Americans. Many of them had relatives in the US. [incidentally, the Americans were generally treated as liberators by the Sicillian population, even while they were still technically enemies]
As for the Germans, as an earlier poster said, they didn't have the necessary troops. Unless they stripped a number of divisions from the eastern front [which might have affected Kursk] there was nothing they could do but give ground as slowly as possible. And except for the volcano in the eastern part of the island, there wasn't good defensive terrain.

Hmmm. There are quite a number of popular myths about the Sicily campaign. Its is true that among Sicilian soldiers almost only the most committed of Fascists fought, and it is true that western Sicily, cut off by Patton's spearhead rush to Palermo, fell almost without resistance. It is also true that Americans were often welcome with sympathy, but that was because it was well known that they were rich, and would bring in much-needed food. However, the Italian army on the whole DID offer resistance to the invaders, even of the heavy kind as at Gela as the "suicidal" charge of the Livorno division with WWI French tankettes had to be reduced by naval gunfire and bazookas, and US troops engaged in sveral instances of war crimes (cold blood shotings of POWs, etc.). Same at Troina where both army and Carabinieri fought with bravery as long as they could.
 
Top