Italian campaign

The Italian campaign was the Allied effort to defeat Axis forces in Italy from September 1943 to May 1945. After the invasion of Sicily toppled Mussolini, Italy signed an armistice on 3 September 1943; Germany at once seized the peninsula, disarmed Italian divisions and built successive defensive lines across the mountains. The Allies landed at Salerno in September and at Anzio in January 1944, while the Gustav Line, anchored on Monte Cassino, blocked the road north. Four battles were fought for Cassino, and its historic abbey was destroyed by bombing in February. Rome finally fell on 4 June 1944, two days before the Normandy landings. The Germans then held the Gothic Line through the winter of 1944–45; a final offensive in April 1945 broke through and ended with the surrender of German forces in Italy on 2 May, days before the end in Europe. The campaign tied down some twenty German divisions, but the Allies paid heavily for a slow, attritional advance over difficult ground.