The Eighth Army and the Italian Campaign

This is a comprehensive new history of the British Eighth Army in the Italian campaign during the Second World War. Daniel Marston examines how the British, Canadian, New Zealand, and Indian formations and units performed in battle and how they operated as a coalition force from 1943 to 1945 under the command of Bernard Montgomery, Oliver Leese and Richard McCreey. Exploring their common and differing concepts of interpreting doctrine, battle experience, and warfighting, he assesses how successfully the victors of El Alamein adapted to their new environment and how the Eighth Army's way of war evolved to take account of the social, operational, technological, and logistical dimensions of war and strategy and the realities of attrition. Ultimately, he shows how the Eighth Army, alongside the US 5th Army and with air and sea support, was able to inflict the first unconditional surrender upon the Germans in early May 1945.