This is a comprehensive new history of the British Eighth Army in the Italian campaign during the Second World War. Daniel Marston examines how the British, Canadian, New Zealand, and Indian formations and units performed in battle and how they operated as a coalition force from 1943 to 1945 under the command of Bernard Montgomery, Oliver Leese and Richard McCreey. Exploring their common and differing concepts of interpreting doctrine, battle experience, and warfighting, he assesses how successfully the victors of El Alamein adapted to their new environment and how the Eighth Army's way of war evolved to take account of the social, operational, technological, and logistical dimensions of war and strategy and the realities of attrition. Ultimately, he shows how the Eighth Army, alongside the US 5th Army and with air and sea support, was able to inflict the first unconditional surrender upon the Germans in early May 1945.

‘Daniel Marston explained in his Templer prize winning ‘Phoenix From The Ashes' how Slim's Fourteenth Army became a victory machine. Now he has done it again for Britain's other Imperial army, the 8th, whose war from the fall of Rome to its victorious end in northern Italy has hitherto never gotten the careful, in depth, analysis it deserved. Now it has.'

Ray Callahan - author of Triumph at Imphal-Kohima: How the Indian Army Finally Stopped the Japanese Juggernaut

‘We need this history of how a multi-national army fought and won against a first-class enemy that had all the advantages of terrain and, often, numbers. More importantly, it walks us through how the Eighth Army's units and formations prepared to fight, then fought, then learned lessons and made adjustments, then fought again-over and over. Only a historian with Marston's command of the material and analytical acumen could produce a work of such insight and magnitude.'

Douglas Delaney - author of The Imperial Army Project: Britain and the Land Forces of the Dominions and India, 1902—1945

‘Astonishingly detailed, holistic, and transnational to its core, The Eighth Army and the Italian Campaign, sheds new light on the British, Imperial and Commonwealth experience in the Mediterranean. It is an essential read for anyone interested in the Italian campaign of the Second World War.'

Jonathan Fennell - author of Collapse: A Global History of the Second World War, 1931—1941

‘This book is the first transnational history of the Eighth Army that fought in Italy to show how successful its leaders were in melding together soldiers from Britain and its Commonwealth into a highly effective fighting force.'

David French - author of Raising Churchill's Army: The British Army and the War against Germany, 1919–1945

‘Impressive research, perceptive analysis, convincingly argued. Marston demonstrates that the Eighth Army was a learning organisation, able to adapt to changing circumstances and environments despite all the challenges of an ongoing, intensive campaign – a key to military success then, now and in the future.'

John Kiszely - author of General Hastings ‘Pug' Ismay, Soldier, Statesman, Diplomat

‘In this detailed and thoughtful study of the making of the 8th Army and its hard fought victory in Italy, Daniel Marston has added both depth and breadth to our understanding not just of the Second World War but of warfare itself. Through training, developing shared doctrines, learning from hard won experience and with competent leadership, troops from very different parts of the British empire were welded together into a formidable fighting force. Many of those lessons that Professor Marston lays out so well are still relevant today.'

Margaret MacMillan - author of War: How Conflict Shaped Us