The story of this place
On 10 July 1943, Operation Husky—the largest amphibious assault of the war to that point, larger even than D-Day in troops landed on the first day—put Allied forces ashore across southern Sicily. At Gela, General Patton's U.S. Seventh Army landed alongside American Rangers; the following day the German Hermann Göring Panzer Division counterattacked, its tanks pushing to within 2,000 yards of the beach before naval gunfire and dug-in troops halted them. The successful invasion of Sicily led directly to the fall of Mussolini on 25 July 1943, when the Fascist Grand Council voted him out and King Victor Emmanuel III had him arrested. Sicily was cleared in 38 days, opening the door to mainland Italy.