This is the Friends of History Debating Society. I'm John Batchelor, Gaius, and Michael Vlaius,

Germanicus is here and we're traveling to September, October, November, and December of

1943, the Italian Peninsula.

The British, Canadian, and American armies crossed from Sicily and invaded Italy. At the same time at that moment just as the

US fleet was the the fleet that they could put together was landing the the Brits

and the Canadians at the boot at the very end of the

boot right across from Sicily. The Americans had a convoy headed to Salerno,

somewhat up the peninsula towards Rome.

And the Italian government, an army,

surrendered, collapsed, ended.

The Germans no longer had an ally in the Italians. The Germans then dug in and the war became attrition,

slaughter, both sides, and it lasted well into 44 towards 45. However the point I'm making and Germanicus

knows this well is that in reporting the war from September, early September of 43 until Christmas of 43, just those months.

It was routine to use air power, artillery power, and tank power to

destroy the Germans dug in in the villages and the passes and the mountains of both sides of the

Italian peninsula the Adriatic side and the Mediterranean side to destroy them one at

a time best way to take a village use Best way to take a village? Use the tanks to take down every wall,

throw grenades in and wait. That's how you take a village. No civilian casualties

are concerned of the Allied forces and the German forces.

And on any given night in the diaries of a new book, Savage Storm by James Hollen, any given

night a 16-year-old will record her thoughts or his thoughts about the bombers came

last night and a thousand people died in Naples.

...