I knew what the story was about, directly from the title (I'm sicilian).
When I first read about the story when I was a teen, I believed without question that it made a huge difference.
Now, I'm not so sure. It's enough to look at a map to see that invading sardinia doesn't really give you much in terms of invading italy. Perhaps just a closer airbase. But they had north africa, malta, and not spain…
> It's enough to look at a map to see that invading sardinia doesn't really give you much in terms of invading italy.
Sardinia was an important air base for the Axis campaigns in North Africa, so it's invasion could have been interpreted by the Axis as way of degrading the Axis forces rather than a launch pad for an invasion of Italy.
Those small islands surprise me. Crete was an important airbase too (and a nazi propaganda film of a fleet taking off from Crete was the inspiration of the famous "Ride of the Valkyries" in "Apocalypse Now")
When I first read about the story when I was a teen, I believed without question that it made a huge difference.
Now, I'm not so sure. It's enough to look at a map to see that invading sardinia doesn't really give you much in terms of invading italy. Perhaps just a closer airbase. But they had north africa, malta, and not spain…