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Allies take Sicily

Broadcast Date: July 10, 1943

Allies take Sicily

• The Second World War began on Sept. 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later, and Canada declared war on Sept. 10.

• On June 10, 1940, Italy, allied with Germany since 1936, declared war on France and Britain. Canada declared war on Italy the same day. The United States entered following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941.

• Prime Minister Mackenzie King declared war against Italy on June 10, 1940 on CBC Radio. The announcement was made unusually difficult by the death earlier that day of Minister of National Defence Norman Rogers. Rogers was killed in a plane crash on his way to a speaking engagement in Toronto. He had been one of Mackenzie King's closest political colleagues.

• The U.S. Fifth Army and the British Eighth Army spent 1943 fighting field marshal Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps in North Africa. After defeating the Axis troops in Tunisia in May 1943, the two Allied forces looked northward to Sicily.

• The British Eighth Army was actually made up of units from many Commonwealth nations including Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Rhodesia. In Italy it included the Canadian First Infantry Division and the Canadian Armoured Brigade.

• Although the first Canadian troops sailed for Britain on Dec. 10, 1939, most spent the next three years training and waiting in England. The 1943 invasion of Sicily was the first action many of them saw.

• Montgomery's Eighth Army landed near Pachino on Sicily's southern tip on July 10, 1943. The U.S. Seventh Army under general George Patton landed close by near Gela.

• The invasion of Sicily was called Operation Husky. It involved 160,000 troops and 600 tanks. A gale blew up as the invasion armada prepared for the assault, with seas too rough for small landing craft to handle. U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower, commanding the operation, gambled the storm would die down, and he was right. In the end the storm worked to the advantage of the Allies, as the enemy was caught off-guard.

• By the time of the invasion of Sicily, Italy was almost out of the war. Sicilian coastal defences surrendered to Canadian commander Gen. Guy Simmons after just two days. Most Italian soldiers just wanted to go home.

• The Italian army collapsed soon after the landings, and on July 25 the Italian king ordered dictator "Il Duce", Prime Minister Benito Mussolini arrested, ending the fascist regime there. In response, Adolf Hitler ordered German troops south into Italy to disarm the former ally.

• Though the Italian army was effectively out of the war, Mussolini was rescued by German paratroopers and reinstalled as the head of the government, though in reality the Germans were in control as an occupying power.

Allies take Sicily

Medium: Television

Program: Canadian Army Newsreel

Production Date: July 10, 1943

Guest(s): Bernard Montgomery

Duration: 8:32

Topic photo: Alexander M. Stirton / Canada. Dept. of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada / PA-128090

Canadian Army Newsreel, Issue No. 13

Photo: Frank Royal / Canada. Dept. of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada / PA-130249

Last updated:
May 29, 2009