Dan Snow's History Hit - Sicily '43

Episode Date: December 17, 2020

James Holland joined me on the podcast to discuss the allied invasion of Sicily on the 10th July 1943.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Hello and welcome to Dan Stowe's History. We've got the mighty, we've got returning champion James Holland on the podcast. He's back. He's a TV presenter. He's a historian. He's a best-selling author. He's a number one

podcast host. I mean, he runs a festival. I mean, jeepers creepers, the guy's a phenomenon. He's now written a new book about Sicily, the 1943 invasion, the first major incursion into the axis, the core axis countries of the Second World War. There you go. Anyway, enjoy this podcast with James Honda. It is today, if you're listening to this on the day this podcast is released, it's pretty much, this is the last two days that you can order anything from the History Hit shop and it arrive in time for Christmas.

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So proud of it. Cannot wait for you all to see it. It's going to be awesome. In the meantime everyone, here is James Holland. Everyone I always meet i said i'm getting james holland the pod they go oh my god i love james how does he write all those books so quickly because this is another it's another mega book it's a bestseller and it's this time it's on sicily so let's answer the question first how do you write all these books so quickly the process of putting a book together is threefold so first of all you've got to sort of gather all your material and the more that you do on this subject and i've stuck religiously to the second world war as you well know the more your kind of base knowledge is

already there and stuff that you've encountered in past interviews you know there might be someone that i interviewed back in i don't know 2004 for about north africa who also talked about their experience in sicily so you go ah yeah i remember him so you've got some of your kind of research is already done. But there's other research to do. Then the second part of the process is getting your ducks in a row. So that's then marshalling your information, working out what your chronology is, working out what the narrative arc is, how you're going to structure it, getting ready to go. And the way I always do that is by having a kind of chronology, a typed out chronology. So I have main events, you know, by having a kind of chronology, a typed out chronology.

So I have main events, you know, Husky, 10th of July, 1943, you know, Allies land. And then in bold, but in different colours for different nationalities, I then have my cast list of individuals that I'm following. So, you know, 13th of July, it might be kind of Wilhelm Schmaltz in purple because he's German, moves up towards Melilli or something something like that so that I know

when I'm writing it that that is the point to go back to that particular source and put that particular anecdote in I might not use that anecdote but I know it's there at that point and then the third part of the process is just the actual writing of it and I just write in a fury I get up at six and you know at my desk by 6 15 6 30 and i literally write till nine you know i do my hours exercise and stop for coffees and lunch and all the rest of it but basically it's kind of i just go through the day i push wait 9 p.m yeah so i'm not i'm not writing for kind of you know 12 hours 14 hours solidly but i put in a long day and i just and i find that works because the problem is if you don't write quickly or if i don't write quickly I forget what I've written and I forget what I've done and have I

used that particular story or not whereas you sort of get in it sounds a bit pretentious but you sort of get in a kind of zone which I can sort of keep going so when I'm in writing mode I just boom I go through it and it takes me about I mean it's literally took me 10 weeks to write but you know it's a it's a year's work but it's but it's more than a year's work, because it's of all that research I've done in the past as well. And also, I was lucky enough that in the past, I've visited Sicily many, many times, I've been there with the British Army, on battlefield studies, I read a novel, I said a novel there during the war, one of my Jack Tanner novels. So I'd done a lot of research already, you know, I kind of knew the lay of the land. And, you know, so a lot of that work was already done.

Let's talk about islands. Sicily, this one. Why did you want to write this account of Sicily? Well, it's just an amazing story and it hadn't been done. And I was amazed that when I was researching this novel, this Jack Tanner novel, you know, some years ago, the last major narrative work on it was by Carlo Deste. And that was published in 1987. So it's a hell of

a long time really you know that's kind of over 30 years and I just thought it was kind of ripe for treatment and I mentioned it to my publisher a few years ago actually before I did the Normandy book and he went well you know I'm not sure is anyone interested in in Sicily but then I read the Normandy book and that did okay so I suddenly had a little bit more kind of sort of bargaining power but the great thing about it is you know it's an island story so it's got a really obvious start middle and end it's got monty it's got pattern you know it's got the sas it's got it's got mountains it's got malaria infested plains it's got mad germans it's got demand uh valentin hoober who's got one arm and as a brilliant kind of commander it's got it's got faustian jaeger you know german paratroopers

it's got british paratroopers it's got airborne ops it's got it's got audausch and Jäger, you know, German paratroopers. It's got British paratroopers. It's got airborne ops. It's got Audie Murphy, for goodness sake. You know, it's got Jim Gavin. It's got Tiger tanks. It's got Messerschmitts and Spitfires and naval actions and Prince Philip winning a DSE. And, you know, what's not to like? I mean, it's literally everything you could possibly want for a campaign. And I'm amazed that it's not more popular.

Oh, and it's got the mafia. Let's not forget the mafia as well. I mean, it's got everything and it's and it's italy and it's and it's cool and it's and you know it's got amazing actions and it's got john buck and son climbing up a kind of perpendicular hill in the middle of sicily leading his company that he's just taking a good battalion which he's just taking command of the day before and you know and so on and so forth and etna itself and it's got all that history already there I mean it's the most amazing place I have I'm sure you have as well many times I've interviewed people for programs about Normandy for the TV and they very much disappointed the

producers by saying D-Day yeah Sicily was worse well yeah it just it just kind of depends on what bit you are involved I mean some of those battles are really, really brutal. So take Troina, for example, or Centuripe. You know, these are these sort of mountaintop towns. And the reason all these towns are on mountains is because of the long history of violence that befell Sicily. And you don't want to be on the coast and you don't want to be on your own because bandits are going to get you or or corsary you know um barbary corsairs from um from north africa to come in and sweep in and steal you and take you back to back to north africa as slaves so you know all these settlements are on these little towns and this infrastructure

in sicily was not great it's still not fantastic now and you know you have this windy little kind of switchback road going up to the top of the town and another one coming back down the other way the only way to go up it is up this road and once you're at the top you know the germans have got got you in their sights it's very very hot it's very very dusty everyone can see you coming so the only way to win is just by kind of grab it inch by inch yard by yard by superior firepower and slogging guts and and you know for the poor old infantry and and the tanks and you know artillery having to do all this stuff it's absolutely brutal it was beautiful both sides i mean troina is amazing because it's the highest highest town in sicily and it's a kind of sort of

sort of lumpy kind of mountain plateau at the top which the americans have to kind of prize from the germans and it just turns into this kind of six-day kind of hell. And because the soil is really thin up there, every time a mortar comes over, you know, shrapnel and shards of rock are kind of flying everywhere. And if you're an advancing squad of 10 men, you could easily have half the squad wiped out with just one shot. So you can understand why it's so tough. And, you know, overall, the casualty figures are not that bad

compared to kind of some campaigns and some parts of the war. But if you take them as a percentage of the attacking infantry and armour that are involved, they're really, really high. So the campaign in North Africa comes to an end. Why do the Allies, is it just too tempting? It's so close to Tunisia. Why do they decide that they're going to try and do Sicily and then presumably Southern Italy rather than focus on northwest Europe straight away? Well, because by the end of the Tunisian campaign in May 1943, they've got this vast armies and armed forces in the Mediterranean. You know, they've got over 3,500 aircraft.

They've got huge fleets. They've got really, you know, got two armies effectively, or soon to have two armies, the 7th and the 8th. First is going back home and disbanded. So you might as well do something with them. And Italy isn't out of the war and if you can get italy out of the war that's a huge pain in the ass for the germans because either they've got to abandon the entire mediterranean or they've got to fill it with their own troops and that means filling you know that means occupying italy it means occupying the balkans it means occupying the

whole of greece the aegean the whole shebang and that's a hell of a commitment when they've already got quite their hands full you know on the eastern front. And they're also preparing for an invasion that's going to come across the English Channel, which they know is going to come at some point. So there are, and obviously that then weakens their effort on the eastern front and also weakens their effort on the western front, which is all to the good. So the aims are really, you know, keep the Germans busy, knock Italy out of the war, make use of the huge force that you've got, because you can't do D-Day in 1943, because that moment's already passed. So there's a kind of three very good reasons for doing it. And also, you know, it's a major

amphibious operation. And as a proving ground for kind of what's to come in 1944, what could be better? So sheer logistics of organising such a major amphibious operation across the Mediterranean from one continent to another, is this kind of stuff that just makes your head hurt. I mean, there's no GPS at this point. There's no email. There's no WhatsApp group to say, you know, is everyone on board their LCT by eight tomorrow? Good on you, lads. I mean, there's none of that.

You've got to do it all analogue. And it's incredible how successful it is. You're listening to History Hit with James Holland. We're talking about the invasion of Sicily. More coming up after this. Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, We'll be right back. teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer.

Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity.

Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Is that the biggest legacy almost of Sicily, do think yeah i think it's the whole thing i think it's part of that evolution and i think what you see by may 1943 suddenly you know they have this dark period in in february where the americans and two core part of british first army get a bit of a

kind of nose kicking at at kasserine pass and it's a real wake up for the americans who realize actually you know what we've got a little bit of hard work to do here. You know, all the theory and training back in the US and, and so on, that doesn't really count for diddly squat, you know, we need to get some combat experience here. And we've got to kind of wise up. The turnaround is so swift. So just three months later, in the middle of May 1943, they've won in North Africa. And although on the ground, it is british you've taken the kind of lion's share of that and done the kind of hard yards in terms of air power it's kind of sort of even stevens possibly even in favor of slightly of the americans by that stage and you're also

harnessing naval power as well and it's general later phil marshall alexander who says you know modern warfare at around this time says modern warfare is a brotherhood of air, land and sea. You know, the army, the navy and the air force all have to work hand in hand. And he's absolutely right. What the allies are doing, what the coalition of Britain and America is working out at this point, is how to kind of their way of war, which is different to the German way of war, it's different to the Soviet way of war, it's different to the Japanese way of war. This is a way of war that is amphibious at its absolute heart, is absolutely harnessing air power every

step of the way, both strategically and tactically. So i.e. bombers operating independently and air power operating as close air support to the troops on the ground. And also working out your long tail. This is big war, as I like to call it, which is this concept of having a very, very long tail so that those in the shooting line, you know, those are absolutely at the coalface of war. Your infantry, armour, I suppose combat engineers and so on, and artillery are absolutely to a bare minimum. But your support network, your backup is absolutely huge. Those summer months of 1943, between the end of the campaign in North Africa and the end of the campaign in Sicily in the middle of August 1943, that is where they sort of start to come of age. I mean, interestingly, Seventh Army, which comes into being at kind of sort of, you know, one minute past midnight on the 10th of July 1943, is the first field army that the Americans actually field in the Second World War in 1943. There are army-sized operations in the Philippines and so on. And, you know, there are multiple divisions being used in somewhere like Guadalcanal

or wherever it might be, and Mugamville and New Guinea. But 7th Army, US 7th Army is the first field army to be fielded in the Second World War. And that only happens in the middle of 1943. So this is a really, really key moment. And yes, huge lessons are learned but but also it has other big strategic advantages you've always been very outspoken on on this issue of what was the german army pound for pound the best army there's ever been in history what does a sicily campaign tell you about the comparison all things being equal is it possible to start making a judgment in the summer 1943 about how this mythologized Wehrmacht is able to cope with the British and Americans? Yeah, I mean, the interesting thing, if you've got a sort of a line, which is your kind of sort

of mean bar of a kind of not bad division, let's say an infantry division in the Second World War, the British and Americans are sort of wobbling either side of it, but not very much. But if you look at the Germans, it's absolutely extreme. You've got some ones which are absolutely hopeless and kind of sort of get brushed aside in no time. And you've got others which are very dogged and tough and really good. The interesting thing about the Sicily campaign is that the divisions that are there on Sicily when the Allies land, which is only two German divisions at the time, are not much shakes. You're not up to much. But just take the Hermann Göring division, for example. That's been cobbled together by lots of ex-Luftwaffe guys. There's some people who've got some experience, but lots

of people who haven't got any experience at all. And they're split into two. So there is a kind of brigade group around Catania, which is commanded by a guy called Colonel Wilhelm Schmaltz and he is a one you know he's absolutely top draw hugely experienced eastern front western front the whole shebang he's been there done it got the t-shirt and he really really knows what he's about and that has filtered down very clearly into his part of the Hermann Göring division the other part of the Hermann Göring division is in other part of the Hermann Göring division is in the centre of the island and is commanded by people who are not up to much. And it's an absolute shower. And they make a hash of things and they cock up the counterattack against the Americans

at Jelle. They don't do very well. Lots of them run away. You know, the whole thing's just hopeless. But then slowly a few replacements come and Schmaltz takes control of it a little bit more and he starts to gel the whole lot together and suddenly the two halves of the hermengoring division come together what's left of them and they become really good you know in a very quick order and it goes to show just how good they can be when they're really well led the other thing that happens is the first faustian mega division first paratroop division gets landed and gets seconded to brigade schmaltaltz. So although they are the Fallschirmjäger Division, they're sort of morphed into that part of the line. And they come under

direct control of the Hermann Göring Division as well, for a large part of the Sicily campaign. And they are, again, full of really highly experienced people who really know what they're about. And they're really good. And and they're tough the big difference between american and british and and german units is less to do with training and more to do with discipline and it's not that the british and americans aren't disciplined they are it's just that with a german soldier you can say get behind that rock with your machine gun and stay there until I say, don't, you know, stop firing. And they will do that.

Whereas the British and Americans will go, we're going to get shot to pieces. Everyone's getting massacred. I'm off. And that is the difference. But that's got nothing to do with training. And I would argue that on a mountain pass, when you can see your enemy coming, manning a machine gun is not very difficult

or firing an artillery piece. You don't need a huge amount of training to that. You know, so it's really, you know, discipline and training can go hand in hand, but they're not necessarily bedfellows. And I think that's the big difference. So in terms of Sicily, the quality of German troops, some of them are quite good.

Some of them are really good. Some of them are absolutely awful. But they have the advantage of the defenders and that the terrain absolutely suits defence in Sicily. Because the final exit point is the Straits of Messina right at the northeast of Sicily and the island tapers to that point, that means as you pull back, your line gets shorter, which means you need less men to man it so that you can organise your retreat across the Straits of Messina quite easily.

And so again, everything about it favours the defender, really. What about the Brits and the Americans? What did they learn? Did Sicily go as expected, or did they think that fighting the Axis in Axis countries would be pretty tricky? Well, the problem with Sicily is that when they're planning and when they agree the plan, which is finally signed off on the 3rd of May 1943, they have absolutely no idea what the defence, Axis defence is going to be. They don't know how good the Italians are going to be. They suspect it's probably not going to be very good, but the Italians have fought very, very well in the

final stages of Tunisia. As it happens, the main reason for that is because you've got a cadre of really, really experienced people, Italian troops in North Africa who know what they're about because they've learned the hard way. Whereas the guys in Sicily are not particularly well trained and not particularly well equipped and as it turns out are absolutely hopeless but the allies don't know that they can suspect it but they don't know that for sure and they don't know how many divisions are going to be of germans defending it so the plan they make is is very cautious and it's very infantry heavy in the initial landings and there's only so much amount of shipping that you've got. So having all those infantry landing, and actually it's more infantry landed on D-Day

on Sicily than D-Day in Normandy a year later, by the tune of about 5,000 men, that comes with consequences. And that's motor transport, because you've only got so many landing craft. And if you're filling up with infantry, you can't fill them up with trucks and tanks and carriers and all the rest of it. The allies have always been criticized for being overly cautious but if you're organizing an amphibious invasion on that scale the most the single most important thing in all of it is that it doesn't fail that trumps absolutely everything because the bottom line is if you can get a bridgehead on your attacking island you are going to win because you've got

more numbers and you've got weight of material advantage but the moment of real risk is in the actual landing itself when you're vulnerable where you're ferrying comparatively small numbers of men in the big scheme of things to you know comparatively small areas which might or might not be very well defended you can't afford to take that risk so the plan actually i think was a very good plan was the sensible plan and the right plan but the consequences of that were that to start off with in those crucial first days where the italians are being you know running to the hills and the germans are off balance and then having to regain their balance militarily the problem is that you've got too many infantry on board and not enough motor transport and so you you can't move quickly. And by the time you get to the key bits,

the Germans have reorganized themselves. And so therefore, it just turns into a slogging match. And that's got nothing to do with the quality of British, Canadian and American troops, and just everything to do with the circumstances in which they land in the first place. Tell me, James Holland, was Britain on its last legs in World War Two and was rescued by the Americans? No, I don't think it was completely. I mean, I think the United States was brilliant. And by 1945, the US Armed Forces are the best in the world bar none, you know, end of. I would challenge anyone to challenge me on that. You have to be careful not to look at Britain now, or Britain in the Second World War through the prism of Britain now, or

even Britain in the prism of the late 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. You know, Britain was in 1939, had the world's largest empire, had the world's largest global shipping empire, had 30% of the world's merchant fleet, largest navy, extra imperial powers and business assets and all the rest of it, had access to around 85% of the world's merchant fleet operating on their behalf. You know, the global reach has never been greater from one nation ever, not even China today or the United States. It's absolutely pinnacle.

So, you know, we had a lot of things in our favor. I think we definitely needed the help of the material help of the United States and the Far East would have been lost without the United States. I'm absolutely certain about that. The war was won a hell of a lot quicker with America as well. But, you know, we're talking about what ifs here. I mean, fortunately, the US did come in. We had this amazing coalition. We worked incredibly closely together, even though we were never a formal alliance and i think rather than kind of sort of thinking you know one one nation was better than the other i think you've got to look at it as a sort of collaborative effort really what a beautiful thing well this has been a collaborative effort well done you the book on sicily is called sicily 43 the first allied assault of fortress europe i think that's a subtitle that's a great title and then your wonderful podcast with al murray is called we have ways of making you talk it is yeah yeah yeah a lot of fun that is too yeah not as much fun as it is talking to you dad well thanks man but it looks like having fun i gotta say yeah it is every so often i see guys like dressing up and doing insane things yeah yeah yeah the the thing

that's kind of i've been sucked into at the moment is bloody modeling you know because al is uh al murray's is is quite keen on this he's a closet modeler and in lockdown he's been doing a lot of it and then he was sort of posting pictures on twitch and stuff and everyone's okay well i'd be doing a model too and suddenly you know the challenge with the gauntlet was laid to have the great british kit off so i suddenly got sucked into this and my god it takes time i mean i haven't got time for this dan i really i really don't. To sort of fiddle around, kind of, you know, putting on kind of Zimmerit on a Panther tank. I just don't need to do that. No, because you've got to keep writing books, buddy.

I've got to write books. Thank you for coming on the pod. A pleasure, as always. Hi, everybody. Just a quick message at the end of this podcast. I'm currently sheltering in a small windswept building on a piece of rock in the Bristol Channel called Lundy. I'm here to make a podcast. I'm here enduring weather that frankly is apocalyptic. Because I want to get some great podcast material for you guys.

In return, I've got a little tiny favour to ask. If you could go to wherever you get your podcasts, if you could give it a five-star rating, if you could share it, if you could give it a review, I'd really appreciate that. Then from the comfort of your own homes, you'll be doing me a massive favour. Then more people will listen to the podcast, we can do more and more ambitious things, and I can spend more of my time getting pummeled. Thank you. more ambitious things and I can spend more of my time getting pummeled. Thank you. explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians.

Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold.