A year before the much-heralded second front was opened at Normandy in 1944, the Allies waged a campaign in Sicily and Italy - an assault that was marked by argument and dissent from beginning to end, highlighting the fundamental differences in strategic thinking between the Americans and the British. Churchill favoured scrapping what would become the Normandy Invasion entirely, focusing instead on the "soft underbelly" of Nazi Europe, but American planners summarily rejected any plan that relied solely on a southern option. This is the story of this backwater campaign, a series of battles skillfully staged by the Germans and so botched by the Allies that their victory was achieved only as a result of German exhaustion.