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Private Notes
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.
In early 1942, President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met to discuss strategy. While Roosevelt favored landing in occupied Europe, the British believed that such a course would end in disaster, and proposed an attack on French North Africa instead.
Early in 1943, it was decided to invade the Italian island of Sicily to put pressure on the regime of Benito Mussolini. The film you will see is a partial record of Canada's First Division in the Sicilian Campaign.
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 immediate invasion of the Italian mainland was imperative.
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.
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.
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.
By late 1944, the Germans had withdrawn to the Gothic Line, a belt of fortifications that wound through the Apennines. The 10th Mountain Division, an elite group of skiers and mountaineers, went into combat for the first time in this difficult terrain.
