Sicily, Early Summer 1943

When the Allies landed in Sicily on 10 July 1943, many Italian units put up only brief resistance before disbanding in the face of the enemy’s military superiority. However, German resistance slowed the Allied offense. With the arrival of German reinforcements and takeover of the command by General Hans-Valentin Hube, the front stabilized. In any event, the idea of Italian refusal to fight only partly corresponded to reality. The fighting on the island was intense and lasted five weeks. All told, the Wehrmacht would suffer 4,500 deaths, above all in fighting in the Catania area and the positions around Mount Etna. To enable the evacuation of troops and equipment, the Wehrmacht deployed a large number of antiaircraft units along the Strait of Messina to protect the crossing.

POWs are a frequent motif in propaganda-photos. During the war photos of prisoners, including many American and British POWs, were published in various media for the sake of strengthening Axis morale. Horst Funke, a photographer in PC 699, photographed these POWs in Sicily. In comparison to captured Red Army soldiers in 1941, the representation of the Allied soldiers was less strongly ideologically stamped; this led to their individual personalities being recognizable on some of the photos.

In the Second World War Sicilian cities experienced repeated heavy aerial attacks, against which they were virtually defenceless. Especially Palermo suffered grave damage: Over an extended period, the attacks primarily targeted the harbour but also struck the old city, destroying many important monuments and historical buildings. 2,123 civilians were killed in the Palermo province; c. 30,000 were wounded.

Smaller towns, including Taormina, also suffered heavy damage. On 9 July 1943,Allied aircraft bombed the city in order to prepare the next day’s landing. Taormina, which served as the headquarters of the 2nd German Air Corps, became a strategic military target, resulting in significant civilian casualties.

Although German soldiers were fighting in a war, Sicily’s summer climate had more than military impact. Before the Allied landing, PC-photographers with ‘touristic’ curiosity took pictures of both soldiers enjoying leisure time and the island’s monuments and landscape. The following photos by Horst Grund record visits to mainly archaeological sites.

Horst Grund (b. 1915 in Berlin) was a cameraman in the 1930s. In 1937 he joined the Wehrmacht, fighting in Poland and in the west. In Jan. 1941, he joined a navy PC as a cameraman. He participated in the Balkan Campaign and was deployed in the Soviet Union and North Africa in 1942/1943. After being seriously wounded in Africa, Grund returned to Italy and went to Sicily. There he pioneered the use of parallel-connected cameras—an Askania Z and an Arriflex—to simultaneously capture close-ups and long shots. He produced a great deal of photo reportage from the front. After the war Grund lived in Berlin, continuing work as a cameraman, documentary filmmaker, and travel reporter. He died on 8 May 2001.