The biggest error of the Italian campaigns was committed with battle for Sicily. Because neither US or British Navies were willing to venture into the very narrow strait between Messina and the main land, German forces on Sicily were allowed to evacuate their entire force with almost all their equipment unopposed on rafts in the middle of the nights. These same forces were deployed again and again against the Allied advance in Italy in very difficult terrain for the offensive. The Allied objective of collapsing the Italian will to resist and to suck German forces away from Russian front and from the future front in France was made much more difficult by the failure to bottle up Messina.
