About the Website

Canada in Italy exists as a repository of the history of the Canadian Army that fought in Italy during the Second World War told by Canadian military historian Terry Copp, CM. It details the history of the units, men and women involved in the campaign as well as act as a repository of the abundance of publicly available primary sources on the Italian Campaign for access by prospective researchers, students and the public.

History of the Website           

 My research on the Italian campaign began soon after I completed the final draft of Cinderella Army, the second of my books on the Canadians in Normandy and Northwest Europe. I was planning to write a similar study of the Canadians in Italy after sketching the main events as a series for Legion Magazine. I soon encountered a major problem; evidence from research on Montgomery’s 21 Army Group carried out with my mentor, the late Robert Vogel and published as the Maple Leaf Route in the 1980s convinced us that a more scholarly revisionist interpretation was long overdue. I found no such challenge in the evidence about the 16 months of combat in Italy. For one thing I was struck by the quality of the Canadian official history by G W L Nicholson which offers a far more, nuanced and critical account of operations than C P Stacey’s The Victory Campaign. The British official histories also proved to be far more detailed and analytical than the volumes on Normandy and Northwest Europe. Before writing the articles for Legion, which this website is based on, my wife and I made three trips to Italy fulfilling my promise not to write about combat without first walking the ground.As we explored the battlefields it became apparent that the terrain had shaped the campaign to an even greater extent that in Normandy determining the scale of actions. Individual battalions, working closely with combat engineers and armour, fought virtually separate battles. Artillery barrages, used in Normandy to shoot the infantry onto an objective was far less effective against small groups of enemy holding a hill town or mountain pass never mind a well fortified defensive zone . I decided to expand my coverage of the campaign in Legion articles rather than write a book. I hope you enjoy the result as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Terry Copp, 2024

The author

Terry Copp, CM is the leading scholar of Canada’s military role in the Second World War and an influential advocate for military history in both military and civilian post-secondary education. His books on battle exhaustion, on 5th Canadian Infantry Brigade, and his two volumes on the Canadians in Normandy and Northwest Europe, Fields of Fire (2003) and Cinderella Army (2006) have led to a reinterpretation of Canadian soldiers’ effectiveness in 1944 and 1945. He was also the onscreen historian for the television series No Price Too High and a regular contributor to Legion Magazine.

Terry has explored Canada’s European battlefields for more than thirty years with hundreds of students and members of the public. This interest in the battlefields of northwest Europe has led to the creation of battlefield memorials and the publication of a series of battlefield guidebooks.

Terry’s most recent project is Montreal at War 1914-18, available now from the University of Toronto Press.

The web designer and administrator of Canada in Italy is Alex Maavara, with further research support provided by Alicia Koepke.

Special thanks to the Laurier Centre for the Study of Canada.