Operation Avalanche was disagreement between the Allies as to what the next step should be. Winston Churchill in particular wanted to invade Italy, which he called the "underbelly of Europe" (commonly misquoted as "soft underbelly"). Popular support in Italy for the war was declining, and he believed an invasion would remove Italy, and thus the influence of the Italian Navy ("Regia Marina") in the Mediterranean Sea, opening it to Allied traffic. This would make it much easier to supply Allied forces in the Middle East and Far East, and increase British and American supplies to the Soviet Union. In addition, it would
European theatre of World War II commander-in-chief of all German forces in the country surrendered to Field Marshal Harold Alexander, the supreme commander of all Allied forces in the Mediterranean area. Fighting would, however, continue in Greece where a civil war had broke out and end on 1949 after Greek government troops aided by the US and Britain defeated the communist guerrillas supported by Marshall Tito and USSR. On 22 June 1941, Germany launched the invasion of the Soviet Union, code-named Operation Barbarossa. This invasion, the biggest in recorded history, started the bloodiest conflict in world history; the Axis–Soviet War, also known as the Eastern Front.