Coalition Warfare in Italy, 1944: By the Numbers

The Italian peninsula in early 1944. Image sourced from the Atlas of the World Battle Fronts (1945).

Because who doesn’t need 33,576 miles of telephone wire and sixteen million maps?

The more you wrestle with the numbers, the harder it gets to see how the Allied coalition could have done more to attain a more palatable outcome in the Italian campaign of World War II given the constraints imposed upon it. In some ways, it is shocking the Allies achieved the results they did in light of the frankly ridiculous logistics effort required.

In this brief piece, I break down some of the Allies major logistical achievements over a five month span in Italy between May and October 1944 using a unique document I stumbled on in the British National Archives.

Read here.