The Mediterranean and Middle East

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The penultimate volume in the eight books of the 18-volume official British History of the Second World War on the war in the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern theatres, this work describes the Italian campaign from June to October 1944. This gruelling summer campaign, Operation Dragoon, cleared central Italy of German forces, pushing their Army Group C back on the Gothic Line, which ran across the Italian peninsula from Lucca on the western coast to Pesaro on the Adriatic. But after the Line was breached, the Allied advance bogged down again, despite strenuous attempts in the early autumn to break into the strategically vital Po valley. In the face of continued German resistance, and worsening allied morale, General Alexander in October decided on a second winter in Italy, limiting his objectives to capturing Ravenna and Bologna. He was constrained by the demands of simultaneous campaigns in Normandy and southern France. Meanwhile, as the Germans, hard-pressed on other fronts, began to withdraw from the Greek islands, British forces moved in to fill the vacuum. With three appendices, and 29 maps and diagrams.