Europe 1943: A year of arguments, decisions, and victories

The year 1943 began with successes for the Western Allies. Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery had won a resounding victory for the Eighth Army at El Alamein towards the end of the previous year, and was in pursuit of Field Marshal Rommel’s Panzerarmee Afrika. Four days after victory at El Alamein, Anglo-American forces landed successfully in north-west Africa in the first major amphibious campaign of the war, Operation Torch. By early January, these troops were edging eastwards. And 3,000 miles away in southern Russia, the Germans faced complete annihilation in the titanic Battle of Stalingrad. Eighth Army soldiers amid the ruins of Catania on 5 August 1943, during the invasion of S