 The enemy had come far and fast, reaching out to conquer a world. But his Blitzkrieg offensive were a thing of the past. The United States Army was by now very much in the war. With combat-experienced divisions in North Africa, the jungle-covered islands of the Pacific, the Aleutians where they had wiped out the Japanese on Attu. Now the blooded veterans of the North African campaign had landed on Sicily in a drive for the Italian mainland. In the war, we're training in the United States. We were well on the road to the ultimate victory. In 1940, our army numbered a little more than a quarter of a million men. Three years later, in 1943, it numbered almost 7 million and would continue to grow to 8 million. But numbers alone do not make an efficient fighting force capable of winning the final victory. An undisciplined and unequipped rabble, even though the cause be just, never won a war against a trained and well-disciplined, well-armed and well-led force. Thanks to the intensive training program under General Leslie McNair, commander of Army ground forces, American soldiers had never before been as well trained and equipped to fight, as were our soldiers in World War II. Certainly the veterans of the North African campaign learned that intensive training pays off, and now they were continuing to prove it in Sicily. Our drive across Sicily was aimed at the key port of Messina, just across the narrow straits which separates Sicily from the toe of the Italian mainland. The Germans fought stubbornly, utilizing every defensive advantage offered by the rugged terrain. Italian forces offered little resistance. Patton's 7th American army attacked from one side, while General Montgomery's 8th British army pressed forward from the other. Citizen soldier G.I. Joe had fought and defeated the best the Nazi had to offer in North Africa, and had taken the enemy's measure. Now he was a veteran who had growing confidence in himself and in his leadership. He was a soldier. Whether he knew it or not, he was adding new glory to the traditions of the American fighting man. And at war's outcome, the word defeat had never been written on the scrolls of that fine tradition. In many areas, there was nothing more than a rut for a road. So units of the 7th Army did a little amphibious leapfrogging along the coast in their push for Messina. While our 7th Army pushed the Nazis across Sicily, in far away New Guinea, the 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment made an airdrop at Nadsale, while American and Australian ground forces continued to press forward. Our growing air power made a daylight raid on military objectives in the heart of Italy with 500 bombers. On Sicily's north coast, Patton's 7th captured Palermo and drove on eastward toward Messina. In the air, 177 American B-24 bombers raided the oil refineries at Flouesti in Romania with 300 tons of explosives. The initiative no longer belonged to the Nazi fascist taxes in the air or on the ground. The ruthless drive for world conquest had been stopped all the way around the earth. From North Africa to the Pacific, where U.S. Army troops and Marines captured the Munda airfield on the island of New Georgia. On the same day our troops took Munda, Soviet forces smashed German defenses in central Russia. Key military targets on the Italian mainland were being mauled by our air force. Our ground forces were also hitting the enemy with devastating power. The crushing defeat suffered by the Axis in North Africa and Patton's advance toward the Straits of Messina were psychological poison to a badly shaken fascist regime. The once triumphant Caesar guard who had looked like this at the height of his power when his fascist legions had slaughtered and conquered Ethiopian tribesmen who fought with spears and ancient guns. Now looked like this. Mussolini had led his people through a nightmare of military disasters. His arrogant dictatorship had come to an end. Retributive justice was close at hand. The King of Italy ordered Marshal Pietro Badoglio to organize a new government and conduct secret negotiations for surrender. A separate peace by Italy was the last thing Hitler wanted. The collapse of Mussolini and his fascist regime brought additional German forces pouring into Italy. From fighting ally, the Nazi was now the unwelcome intruder who would wage his battles of fierce resistance on Italian soil, bringing further ruin and suffering to an exhausted and war-sick people. On the 17th of August, 1943, 38 days after the invasion began, Patton's 7th Army took Messina and all Sicily was in allied hands, as well as 100,000 Italian prisoners. Most of the Nazis had escaped to the mainland across the Straits of Messina. Eleven days after the fall of Sicily, Allied headquarters in the Pacific announced the end of all Japanese resistance on New Georgia Island. General MacArthur's forces were starting on the road back. We had already begun our island hopping in the Central Solomons. But the battle for Nazi-held Italy was only beginning. On the 3rd of September, two British divisions crossed the Straits of Messina to land on the toe of the Italian boot. Six days later, American forces struck the beach at Salerno, 30 miles south of Naples. They met stiff enemy resistance. Four days after the landings, the hurriedly reinforced enemy launched a strong counterattack, pouring in some of its best troops. For a time, our foothold was precarious. But supported by a concentration of combined firepower from aircraft, naval guns and artillery, the Allies held the beachhead. The heavy pounding by land, sea and air was too much for the Nazis. They fell back as our own forces pushed on toward Naples. By then, Italy had surrendered unconditionally, was officially out of the war. October 1st, 1943, elements of General Mark Clark's Fifth Army entered the city of Naples. They were greeted not as conquerors, but as liberators. The citizens of Naples knew that we and our Allies were the only hope of driving the Germans from their homeland. Here, as elsewhere, a new problem confronted our invasion forces. How to provide government for the civilian population? Years of fascism had promised plenty, but delivered only strife and hunger. Unless such centers of hungry population along a route of advance are well controlled, the advance is hampered. Communications break down, supply channels clog up. In Naples, the Allies met the challenge and thwarted chaos. The Naples water supply presented another challenge to be allied forces. This problem was also mastered. Military government was a necessity, one which also had a direct influence on post-war rehabilitation throughout Europe. Following the fall of Naples, we expected our advance to contend. It did, but only for a brief period. The mountainous regions of central Italy provided the Germans with a number of natural defense lines. These, together with the closing end of the Italian winter, virtually stopped our forces in their tracks, scarcely 80 miles from Rome. While our fighting men in Italy were faced with a veritable stalemate, an entirely different kind of war was going on in the far away Pacific where allied forces landed on mono and sterling islands in a campaign launched to drive the Japanese from Bougainville. We invaded the Gilbert Islands. The 2nd Marine Division took Taroa after 76 hours of bloody fighting. Heavy casualties were suffered, but the Japanese were wiped out. Elements of the Army's 27th Infantry Division took Macon and the neighboring Atoll. Our Army Air Corps was engaged in massive bombing of the industrial heart of Germany, devastating Nazi plants and marshalling yards. But the Nazis got a demo wrong. The twilight of the gods had yet to come. The bitterest of large-scale battles had yet to be fought, and some of these were soon to come on the Italian front where strong defensive positions were held by a tough and stubborn enemy. That and the weather had bogged down our advance. It was winter 1943. The stage was set for the Cairo Tehran talks. Roosevelt and Churchill met with Chiang Kai-shek at Cairo. Even at the moment fighting was most intense in Italy, high-level master plans continued to be made for the invasion of France and for other allied operations throughout the world. At Cairo, talks centered on the relation of European operations to the war in the Pacific. From Cairo, Roosevelt and Churchill flew to Tehran, where for the first time during the war they met with Marshal Stalin, dictator of Soviet Russia. The Allied leaders failed to agree on everything, but one thing they did agree upon was that the invasion of Normandy in southern France must and would take place sometime during the following summer of 1944. For some time there had been doubt as to who would command Overlord, the invasion of Normandy. Roosevelt en route home from Tehran stopped off at Tunis to see General Eisenhower and to tell him that he was to command Overlord. The grand design for victory in Europe was now completed. But so far as the allies in Italy were concerned, France and the cross-channel invasion were a long way on. It was to be a tragically long winter of hard fighting in Italy. There was the battle for Monte Cassino. To bypass the mountainous terrain holding up our advance in southern Italy, our forces made an amphibious landing at Anzio, only 35 miles south of Rome. Heavy Nazi resistance stalled the breakout from the beaches. Finally, we blasted our way out of the pocket. The landings at Anzio convinced Hitler that we were launching an all-out campaign in Italy. He rushed eight more divisions to reinforce his army in Italy and the stalemate was resumed. In total war there is no easy road to victory. And we had entered World War II unprepared for global war with such unprecedented magnitude against aggressors who numbered their trained combat divisions by the hundreds. It was two long years from Pearl Harbor to the winter stalemate in Italy. During those two years, lack of time had been our most immediate and worst enemy. Precious time we had needed in which to prepare while two great oceans protected our shores and the embattled British were fighting a delaying action on to the dead. Three times in the last 50 years, aggressors have underestimated our capability and our will to fight. Our military weakness and our isolationist attitude at the time invited the aggressor to launch his grandiose designs for conquest. Today the world has shrunk until in travel time the Atlantic and Pacific oceans are no more than large lakes. Our coastlines and our inland cities are vulnerable to attack. We are a member of a family of freedom-loving nations. And if that family is not to be annihilated, we have the responsibility of maintaining the moral resolve and military strength to protect ourselves and those others with whom we have the common goal of the preservation of liberty and freedom.