ISBN 0-275-97478-2
224 pages

Preface; photos; Bibliographic Essay; Notes; Index

Appendices: OB as of July 10, 1943; OB as of September 8, 1943; OB as of January 22, 1944

   The time is right for a fresh history of the war in Italy from Sicily to the Alps, so we were looking forward to the new offering on that topic from Praeger.
   Unfortunately, this is not what we were hoping for.
   Our self-imposed guidelines for book reviews remind us that every book, no matter how weak or quirky, has an audience, and every book deserves to receive at least a few words of praise, even when we're not favorably impressed. Edwin Hoyt's new book on the Italian campaign is such a bland, uninspired rehash of the same old tired stuff that it makes it tough for us to live up to those guidelines.
   The jacket collage, featuring a couple of images completely inappropriate for a book about the campaign in Italy, is the first warning sign.
   Hoyt's rambling, unfocused Preface, loaded with errors of fact and logic, is the next warning sign:

   As it turned out, the American campaigns in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy were unnecessary and costly, the result of confused Allied planning. The better course would have been for the Americans to keep their troops at home until they were better trained and to concentrate on the buildup for the Cross Channel Attack. This was not possible because President Franklin D. Roosevelt was eager to move after making the fateful decision to override his military advisers and concentrate on the war in Europe rather than the war in the Pacific. That decision caused the fall of the Philippines, and lengthened the war in the Pacific. Had General Douglas A. MacArthur received reinforcement from America, there is every reason to believe that he could have staved off the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, and the first American victory would have come there instead of at Guadalcanal. But in those first fateful weeks after Pearl Harbor, there were no reinforcements for the Pacific. Everything was being geared for the war against Hitler.

   Unfortunately, the book itself does little to disprove those early warnings. Hoyt packs the entire Italian campaign into two hundred pages—indeed, a merciful brevity is one of the book's few saving graces—of which over seventy are devoted to operations in Sicily. In sum, these are two hundred clumsy, confused, simplistic pages—not helped in the least by a complete absence of maps—that add nothing to the existing literature of the war in Italy.
   The superficiality of the book is highlighted by Hoyt's brief "Bibliographic Essay."

   The basis of this book is the records of the U.S. Army in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations. For the Italian campaign, I used the three volumes of official army history (U.S. Army History) dealing with Sicily, Salerno to Cassino, and Anzio to the Alps. For the British story, I depended largely on the American records and W.G.F. Jackson's The Battle for Italy, which relates in very modest terms the basic quarrels between the British and Americans. The US Army Air Forces in WW II, vol. 2, was valuable as was Omar Bradley's Memoirs: A Soldier's Story. Winston Churchill's The Second World War, vols. 4, 5, and 6, described British activity and his own. Dwight D. Elsenhower's Crusade in Europe gave something of his point of view. Mark dark's Calculated Risk tells his story. Dan Kurzman's The Race to Rome told the story of Mark dark's bid for glory. Martin Blumenson's Bloody River tells of the crossing of the Rapido River. From my own works, I used The GI's War for the story of American soldiers in Italy; War in the Balkans gave some background on British Empire troops fighting in Italy as did War in North Africa. The story of the end of Mussolini is from my Mussolini's Empire.
   Much of this book depended on two interviews: one with General Mark dark at The Presidio, San Francisco, September 1949; and the other with General James M. Gavin in Washington, D.C, October 1957.

   Additional sources include:

   Delia Rosa, Eligio. Montecassino, Return of the Lost Madonna, and The Inside Story of the Bombing of Montecassino. Glen Cove, N.Y.: privately printed, 1988.

   Hoyt, Edwin P. Hitler's War. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988.

   Kesselring, Albrecht. The Memoirs of field Marshal Kesselring. Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1953.

   Montgomery, Field Marshal Bernard L. Memoirs. Cleveland and New York: World Publishing, 1958.

   Mussolini, Benito. The Fall of Mussolini: His Own Story. New York: Farrar Straus, 1948.

   That's it. The dearth of non-American sources ("For the British story...") is clearly reflected in the unbalanced nature in Hoyt's account.
   So what can we say favorable about Backwater War? If you're looking for a short, superficial, US-centric account of the war in Italy, this book is for you. Otherwise, don't waste your time.
   While we're waiting for a real contender for that fresh new look at the campaign, what can you be reading instead of Backwater War? Plenty of excellent choices.
   To begin with, the best one-volume account (and one that Hoyt quotes often) is still W. G. F. Jackson's old stand-by: The Battle for Italy. New York: Harper and Row, 1967
   As far as official histories go, Hoyt relies on the three American volumes without mention of the excellent, readily available British, New Zealand, Indian, South African, Canadian, and French books.
   Here are some other recommended titles:

   D'Este, Carlo. Bitter Victory: The Battle for Sicily, 1943. New York: Dutton, 1988

   D'Este, Carlo. Fatal Decision: Anzio and the Battle for Rome. New York: HarperCollins, 1991

   Ellis, John. Cassino: The Hollow Victory. New York: MaGraw-Hill, 1984

   Graham, Dominick and Shelford Bidwell. Tug of War: The Battle for Italy, 1943-1945. New York: St Martins Press, 1986

   Zuehlke, Mark. The Liri Valley: Canada's World War II Breakthrough to Rome. Toronto: Stoddart Publishing Company Ltd, 2001

   Zuehlke, Mark. Ortona: Canada's Epic World War II Battle. Toronto: Stoddart, 1999

   Backwater War is available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Praeger.
   Thanks to Greenwood/Praeger for providing this review copy.