(Includes maps) From September 1943, when Allied troops came ashore near Salerno, until German surrender in May 1945, 312,000 Allied soldiers were killed, wounded, or missing in Italy. Was a campaign that from the first faced the bleak prospect of coming to a dead end against the forbidding escarpment of the Alps worth that cost? Was the objective of tying down German troops to avoid their commitment in northwestern Europe all that the campaign might have accomplished? The answers to those questions have long been sought but, as is the nature of history, must forever remain conjecture. What is established bet, as this volume makes clear, is the tenacity and intrepidity displayed by American and Allied soldiers in the face of a determined and resourceful enemy, harsh weather, sharply convoluted terrain, limited numbers, and indefinite goals in what many of them must have looked upon as a backwater of the war. This volume relates the story of the last year of their struggle. Three volumes previously published tell of the campaign in northwest Africa, the conquest of Sicily and covert politico-military negotiations leading to surrender of the Italian armed forces, and the campaign from the Allied landings on the mainland through the bitter disappointment of the amphibious assault at Anzio. This volume is thus the capstone of a four-volume series dealing with American military operations in the western Mediterranean.