Eighty years ago this week, probably the Allies best general blots his copy book

 

 

The British and US armies met in Sicily near the town of Bronte. According to Allied propaganda this trapped large numbers of Germans in the pocket between the armies but this was a fiction. The Germans had withdrawn to the port of Messina in good order without informing the Italians, still notionally their allies. From Messina they began to evacuate to the mainland. The Allied failure to prioritize cutting off this exit route from Sicily cost them the opportunity to elminate 60,000 Wehrmacht troops with heavy equipment.

General Patton had demonstrated his competence and drive in the Sicily campaign which gave him a claim to be the Allies' best battlefield commander, but he proceeded to undermine his own standing. In two separate incidents he slapped soldiers hospitalised with shell-shock, accusing them of simple cowardice. These became public and Patton was forced to apologize. The episode could easily have ended the career of a lesser commander, but it almost certainly helped curtail the role Patton was given in the invasion of France the following summer. Unsurprisingly the incident featured in the biopic made of Patton's career.

Despite significant Soviet superiority especially in tank numbers, the first stage of the Red Army offensive towards Smolensk was held by the Germans. This was the first of a number of attacks planned to exploit the swing back in Soviet favour of the initiative after the failure of the German attack at Kursk the previous month. The defensive success of the German army gives a hint of how much more succcessfully they might have held the Soviets had precious resources  not been wasted in an operation driven more by prestige than military considerations.