Music

Afton, Afton, welcome to We Have Ways and make you talk with me, Amari and James Holland.

And in our last podcast, we tried to persuade the sweetlister or rather lean on them quite heavily.

That 1943 is the critical year of the war. And James, I think it's fair to say you're up to your neck in 1943 right now, aren't you?

Well, I am, because I'm absolutely immersed in Italy. And one of the things I think is interesting, I mean, you know, I've caught in my new book, Casino 44, but actually it's not...

That's not even a quarter of it, it's going to be about Casino.

You know, that's because the bit that comes before Casino is really, really interesting. And all the bits that are going on while Casino is also going on, but aren't Casino is also really, really interesting.

There's so much going on. And actually the Italian, from the Italian surrender, the armistice, through to the landings at Salerno, which I'm just absolutely blown away by.

Because it's just such an atypical, very, very, very high risk venture by the Allies, which goes against the grain of everything that they stand for from the middle of 1942 onwards kind of approach.

And yet it's indicative of that shipping crisis, which is developed in the lack of half of 1942, and which is still kicking on in 1943.

And the ripples of that and the huge global commitment to the Soviet Union, to China, to the Pacific, to the Southeast Asia, to the Mediterranean, and to the build up of troops in the UK.

All of that has a massive effect on what is going on in Italy. And the aims of the Italian campaign, from the Allied point of view, are really simple.

And it is not make sure that once and for all we knock Italy out of the war, that we draw troops away from the eastern front and the western front, the western front is going to be, ie North West Europe, France, Normandy.

Yes.

Make life as difficult as possible for the Germans.

Capture airfields, strategic airfields around Fodja. So Fodja is this interesting bit. It's in the sort of central southern part of Italy, but it's on the eastern side.

And although nearly all of Italy is kind of mountainous, there is this sort of weird plane bit that runs from Apulia, which is the kind of heel of Italy, all the way up that eastern side.

Then there's a little kind of there's the Gagnano, Gagnaro, a little sort of, sake, a sort of bunion that sticks off the edge of the coast, which is mountainous.

But in between that, and then the mountains of a Brutsi and Campania and Melisa, is this kind of flat bit. And in the center of it, is it kind of sort of a sort of Mussolini new town really?

I mean, it's an old town, but it's been rebuilt called Fodja. And around that, it's just this absolute raft of airfields.

One of the reasons the Allies are persuaded to go in and particularly the Americans is because they're very big on strategic airpower and bombing Germany as much as they possibly can and tightening the news around Nazi Germany and making a, you know, a type of war.

And then they're making, you know, attacking his industry and all the rest of it. And suddenly you've got this huge area where you can can put in B24s and B17 flying fortresses, and from which you can operate a strategic air force in tandem with RF bomber command and the USA for force operating out of the UK.

...