War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding

right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased its

size, and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Thank you. Your host, James Early. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Key Battles of World War II in Europe, our 10,000-foot

survey of the Second World War in Europe and the areas around it.

I'm your host, James Early, as always, and my co-host,

as always, is Sean McIra. In our last episode, I'm sure you remember, but in case you have

forgotten, we'll recap it. We talked about Operation Torch, which was the joint American and

British invasion of North Africa and the campaigns that followed it in which the

British came from the East, the Americans and British came from the West, and eventually

they defeated the Germans and Italians that were in Tunisia and gained control of all of

North Africa. Now, even before that operation was concluded, Allied planners began planning their next move,

which was going to be the invasion of Sicily, right across the Mediterranean. So we will talk about

that, and then we will talk about the next step, which was the invasion of Italy proper. And we're

going to go ahead and go all the way through the fall of Rome and the removal of

Italy from the war.

We'll talk about all kinds of things related to that.

We're going to go ahead and put Italy to bed.

So we're going to kind of go past where you might think we would in chronological order.

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