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Michael Howard (who served in Italy) wrote a book I remember as The Mediterranean Strategy of the Allies During WW II. Quite interesting. The Balkans would hav
by cafard 3y ago
Michael Howard (who served in Italy) wrote a book I remember as The Mediterranean Strategy of the Allies During WW II. Quite interesting.
The Balkans would have been hard to get at without having Italy in hand. Where would one have attacked, when the British couldn't take and hold the Dodecanese?
- jcranmer 3y agoLook at a terrain map of the Balkans. With Italy, you at least have usable coastal highways that let you theoretically push forward no matter where you land [1], but the Balkans don't really have any coast-to-interior routes that can support a large force, and they don't offer that much worth capturing. [1] But there's so few of them and the chokepoints so obvious that it's relatively easy to defend them.
- AlbertCory 3y agoYep. Churchill mastered a lot of topics but "military strategy" wasn't one. If Spain had been in the war that would have been the obvious choice, but they were "neutral."