The world saw that the outcome of the war hinged upon events much farther north, in France and Germany. But the Italian front occupied the attention of one-tenth of Hitler’s ground forces, which would otherwise have been deployed on the Eastern Front or in France. Allied air bases in Italy made possible a heavy and effective bomber assault on Germany’s Romanian oilfields. It is hard to imagine how the campaign might have been accelerated, avoided or broken off. But it yielded neither glory nor satisfaction to those who fought, or to the hapless inhabitants of the battlefield.
