In many ways, Operation Husky was a dress rehearsal for Overlord, the Normandy invasion that would follow a year later. In fact, in terms of numbers of men, ships, and size of the invasion area, Husky was bigger than Overlord, and it brought General George S. Patton into the public eye. A demanding perfectionist, Patton wanted things done his way and could not stand it when he saw something as important as an officer fail to carry out an order or something as trivial as seeing one of his soldiers without a tie or a helmet. He argued with U.S. Admiral H. Kent Hewitt, the commander of the Western Naval Task Force, about how to conduct the pre-invasion naval bombardment, and felt Hewitt was full of shortcomings. This revealed partly Patton’s lack of interest in logistics, and partly of the fact that he behaved as if the U.S. Navy were the enemy, rather than the Germans. Patton’s antagonistic relationship with British General Bernard Montgomery, with whose British Eighth Army he shared the responsibility of seizing Sicily, is also well documented, and his arguments with his superior, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, are legendary. The planning was complex and the fighting was fierce, across mountainous terrain. When the Allies were unable to stop tens of thousands of Germans and Italians from escaping from the island to the Italian mainland, Patton was furious at everyone but himself. Sicily itself would prove fateful for both sides. Its fall led to the ouster of Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator. This, in turn, led to Italy declaring its neutrality and ending its association with Germany as a fighting partner. It also required Hitler to station nearly a million troops in Italy instead of sending them to other fronts where they could have been of decisive use. In the unfolding of Operation Husky, Patton in Sicily will take many well-known but disparate aspects of Patton’s abilities and character and frame them in a new and revealing light.
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