The United States of America entered World War II in December 1941, immediately after a Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. naval base on the south coast of Oahu in Hawaii, near Honolulu. Most of the action in Catch-22 is based on Joseph Heller's experiences as a young officer and bombardier stationed on Corsica, an island off the west coast of Italy, with the Army Air Forces in 1944. In the novel, Yossarian's squadron is on Pianosa, a real but tiny island east of Corsica and a few miles south of Elba. As Heller points out in a prefatory note, "It is very small and obviously could not accommodate all of the actions described. Like the setting of this novel, the characters, too, are fictitious." The setting for Heller's war, however, was very real.
The reader should be aware of a few significant dates. On June 6, 1944, called "D-day," Allied forces, including the United States, entered a massive invasion of western France. The Allies were already in southern Italy, as referred to in the novel, and had captured Rome. On August 25, 1944, the Allies liberated Paris. On May 8, 1945, a few months after the end of the novel, the Allies declared victory in Europe (VE-day). So most of the novel takes place during approximately the last year of the war in Europe.
Italy had entered World War II in June 1940, on the side of Nazi Germany; the two countries formed a union known as the Axis (later joined by Japan). Benito Mussolini (Il Duce, "the leader") was head of the Italian Fascist Party and the country's dictator. His military preparations were inept, however, and King Victor Emmanuel dismissed Mussolini on July 25, 1943, aligning the official government with the Allies who were in the process of invading southern Italy. (This act of diplomacy reminds the reader of the philosophy of the old man who argues with Nately at the brothel, in Rome, in Chapter 23 of the novel.) The Allies were then opposed primarily by German troops in Italy.
