Following the victory in North Africa, the next stage of the war against the Axis forces involved the capture of Sicily as a precursor to an invasion of Italy, a move the Allies hoped would lead to the final securing of the Mediterranean with its vital maritime routes. However, even before the operation began, its planning was dogged by disagreements and acrimony. U.S. General George Marshall still wanted to press ahead plans for the invasion of France and northern Europe. He favored a hard hit to Nazi Germany as the only way to win the war and did not want U.S. forces tied down in interminable operations in the Mediterranean, which he regarded as a strategic backwater. At the same time, Churchill remained preoccupied with attacking what he called on numerous occasions the “soft underbelly of Europe,” both as a means of engaging the Germans and knocking Italy out of the war. As described by his biographer Martin Gilbert, Churchill's aim was “to persuade the Americans to follow up the imminent conquest of Sicily by the invasion of Italy at least as far as Rome, and then to assist the Yugoslav, Greek and Albanian partisans in the liberation of the Balkans, by air support, arms and coastal landings by small Commando units.” At the Casablanca conference in 1943, there had been a marked divergence of opinion over the choice of Sicily (code-named “Husky”); Sardinia or Corsica was preferred by some planners. Then, of course, there was the slow rate of progress in Tunisia: senior commanders earmarked for Operation Husky, including Montgomery and U.S. General George Patton, were tied up in the fighting there until its final stages. As Montgomery protested to Harold Alexander on April 4, the day before the assault on Wadi Akarit: “It is very difficult to fight one campaign and at the same time to plan another in detail. But if we can get the general layout of husky right other people can get on with the detail.” Later, as the planning became more confused and less focused, Montgomery would complain that the operation was “a dog's breakfast” (a favorite expression to describe his disgust at muddled thinking) that broke every basic rule about fighting the Axis. He felt it was doomed due to a failing that he always characterized as “a lack of grip.” It is against that background of uncertain aims and Allied bickering that the British and U.S. roles in the Sicilian campaign should be seen.
In the middle of April 1943, having been relieved of command of U.S. II Corps, Patton returned to Casablanca to prepare the U.S. I Armored Corps for the forthcoming invasion. Ostensibly, as one of the invasion commanders—Montgomery, in charge of the British Eighth Army, was the other—Patton should have played a leading role in the planning of Husky, but so bitter were the British interservice rivalries and the lack of cohesion that he was left out in the cold. Command of the operation had been given to Alexander (Fifteenth Army Group), under U.S. Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower's nominal direction, but apart from Patton, all the senior commanders were British. The Allied naval forces were commanded by Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham of the Royal Navy, while the air forces were under the direction of Air Chief Marshal
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