This is an IHeart podcast.

And we continue with our American stories.

Stephen Ambrose was one of America's leading biographers and historians, and one of my

favorites. At the core of Ambrose's phenomenal success is his simple but straightforward belief that

history is biography. History is about people. He would tell anybody who cared to listen.

Ambrose passed in 2002, but his epic storytelling accounts can now be heard here at

Our American Stories, thanks to those who run his estate. Even before the U.S. British victory

in the North African campaign in May of 1943, there was disagreement among the allies on the best

strategy to defeat the Axis powers.

Eventually, the U.S. and British political leadership reached a compromise in which both would

commit most of their forces to an invasion of France in early 1944, but also launched a relatively

small-scale Italian campaign. Here's Stephen Ambrose with the story.

The next operation was Sicily in July of

1943.

This was a logical extension of the original commitment

to North Africa, but it needs to be pointed out, this was an

awful long way away from the heart of Germany's power, and this was the big operation

for the United States Army and the British Army and Air Forces in the European

theater in 1943 was the taking of Sicily,

which was hardly going to be a decisive action.

But it did provide a stepping stone to get to Italy and then on into Italy and

a campaign that was to follow in the fall that was being planned already,

...