[ConorMacNessa]

Yes - I remember that suggestion well from my youthful reading. I was a prodigious reader of American and British History in my youth - with a concentration on WWII.

We will never know if he was right - but somehow I feel that the defenses on France's Mediterranean Coast were not the equal of what we encountered at Normandy.

"I am an American fighting man. I serve in the forces which guard my country and our way of life.
I am prepared to give my life in their defense."

[ConorMacNessa]

Of course, you have to consider the logistics of a Southern invasion - would be considerably more difficult even with the resources we had in North Africa at the time.

"I am an American fighting man. I serve in the forces which guard my country and our way of life.
I am prepared to give my life in their defense."

[ken5050]

What is often surprising about history is how some events take on iconic status, while others, often of equal if not superior military accomplishment and significance, are all but forgotten.

Two examples:

1. Churchill ordered the Royal Navy to destroy the French fleet in 1940. He would not accept Admiral Darlan's statement that he (Darlan) would scuttle the French battleships, and after several deadlines had past, the RN took out the French battleships (in port). Some 1,300 French sailors were killed. Many French considered Churchill a war criminal. The French fleet was modern, and dangerous, and in the hands of the German Navy might have altered the Battle of the Atlantic.

2. Everyone..even today's college students, knows about Pearl Harbor, but 13 months earlier, the British launched a carrier attack at the Italian naval based at Taranto, sinking one BB and severely damaging two others. Even using all but already obsolete very slow torpedo bombers, this demonstrated the supremacy of carrier aviation over the battleship as the dominant factor in future naval warfare. The Japanese studied this raid, and emulated it in the attack at Pearl Harbor.