The World At War: ‘Tough Old Gut’, Italy:
November 1942 – 1944Churchill once told Stalin that the Mediterranean was the ‘soft under belly’ of the crocodile. This was a British plan that the Americans only reluctantly agreed to pursue, believing it would detract from the main aim of attacking Germany.
The episode begins with footage from Operation Torch. The Anglo-American landings in French North Africa which took place and were successful in November 1942. The American military deemed it unnecessary but Roosevelt wanted to show support for Churchill who supported the plan and was eager to give his troops a taste of combat since most had never been tested before.
posted by Benjamin Nakizo at 7:04 PM
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In Casablanca during November that year the British and American military leaders came together to discuss their future plans. The British got their way. Sicily, and not France, would be the next target. Roosevelt also used the conference to state that they would accept nothing but unconditional surrender from the Axis powers. Churchill was not expecting him to say this, but agreed to it all the same.
But as the Americans looked to Italy they were taken by surprise by the German General Rommel and his African army that were still holding parts of the Algerian coastline. He launched a surprise attack on the green American army at the town of Kassarine. Rommel’s vetren African Korp had a field day and inflicted upon America one of its worst military defeats in the war.
On the plus side it made the Americans realise that this was not going to be an easy war and secondly it also brought the Americans and British closer together since after the American defeat the British, who had been fighting the Germans in Africa for a year or more already, offered tactical advice which greatly aided the American efforts.
The Allies moved in to finish off the German presence in Africa. With full naval and air superiority the Americans advanced from the west while the British came up from the South. The two armies met up in the middle and turned northwards to finish off the now Rommel-less German army. (Rommel had been withdrawn from Africa by this stage). Seven days of fighting ensued and the German Army complete with all its generals and staff surrendered, nearly 250,000 men in total. A huge boost to the concept of a Mediterranean war.
Buoyed by their success the Allies moved quickly on to Sicily and began landing troops just two months after the German surrender in Tunisia. The British forces were led by Montgomery and the American forces by General Patton. The Americans met little resistance and in many cases, what with many of the American soldiers being Italian migrants were warmly welcome by the locals, if not from members of their own family. The British however ran into the brunt of the Italian army and had to fight their way through. With the landings however opinion throughout Italy, never fully behind the war, quickly turned against Mussolini. When Rome was bombed even more began to question the necessity for fighting the Allies. Italian army units began to desert and surrender intact and without prompting. Hundreds of thousands poured towards the Allied lines and offered themselves up.
Mussolini’s government, still technically subservient to a ‘Grand Council’ found itself voted out of power and the Italian King, still the recognised sovereign, chose a new government. At its head was the elderly Marshall Badoglio. Perhaps wary of the numbers of German troops in the north of Italy and feeling Hitler breathing down his neck Badoglio declared that Italy would continue to fight, yet immediately entered into secret negotiations with the Allies.
Sicily fell quickly but the Germans were able to get their men out and back to the mainland relatively successfully.
Now given the capture of Sicily the Allies once again began to think differently. Britain wanted to press on to the mainland, sensing the Italian governments imminent collapse. America however felt they had wasted to much time already in the Med and wanted to get back to planning Operation Overlord, the invasion of France. Yet the Italians soon secretly conveyed their willingness to sign an armistice following an Allied landing on the mainland to safeguard Italy from German invasion and retribution.
This they got – but not to the degree to which they had hoped. Cautious at landing to far north and being cut off from their supplies in Sicily the Allies landed in the two of Italy – and to their surprise met no resistance. The Germans had moved all their units northwards and were digging in. So the Allies instead decided to land more northwards, but this time only at Salerno, not Rome as the Italians had wanted. Yet it was enough for the Italians to fulfil their side of the bargain and they surrendered.
Hitler had anticipated this and the Italian army units to the north were quickly disarmed and their positions seized by German forces in a prearranged operation. The Germans next moved into Rome and the Badoglio government fled. Likewise at Salerno itself the Germans were ‘Ready and waiting’ and had seized the high ground over the landing beaches, making it incredibly difficult on the American forces.
Officially out of the war Italy had nonetheless become the playground for a clash between German and Allied forces. The landing at Salerno was tough and the American general came close to ordering his troops to re-embark. Yet with massive air and sea barrages the beach head was able to survive. A week later the Germans withdrew and the Allies could safely land.
Now a significant portion of Southern Italy was in Allied hands. Conditions there however were dire. Food and water shortages caused riots in the cities and the standards of living fell dramatically. Wartime rationing had already stretched the domestic supply and the disruption of war on the Peninsula disrupted trade and supply routes.
The Germans had dug in to the mountains just south of Rome. Given the mountainess interior of Italy all progress had to be made along the coastline. Easy to do if the Allies had the right landing equipment. In the event the armies fighting in Italy had access to no such thing because it had all been transferred to Britain in anticipation of Operation Overlord. The Allies would have to fight their way up to the Germans, over land which the Germans had already retreated across and destroyed as much transport and infrastructure as they could and had heavily mined and booby trapped. Facing them the Germans had a strange assortment of American, British and Commonwealth troops which what with the differing dietary, equipment and language requirements caused the military planners some problems. To add to their problems the rainy season began and turned much of the land into bog lands. Most of the Allied armies had previously served in Africa. This was not what they had come to expect. The going was tough for the Allies, casualties were high and the German resistance determined and fierce.
In November 1942 at Tehran, Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill met. Against Churchill’s desires they agreed to move on with the invasion of France. Italy, where fighting was still fierce, was set to become a ‘sideshow’. With a date set for Operation Overlord sometime in May the following year Churchill knew he had little time to act and pressed Roosevelt to spare more equipment in order to rap up the Italian campaign while they could. Amphibious landing platforms were found and a plan devised.
One Allied attack would come across land towards the German position at Cassino, these would draw the German reserves southwards and in turn make it possible to land an Allied army just south of Rome at Anzio, trapping the bulk of the German army. The attack on Cassino went disastrously for the Allies and they took heavy casualties without budging the German troops. Yet the second stage still went ahead in Anzio. This initially went very well since the Germans, kept guessing as to where an Allied landing might come had not seen fit to position any men in Anzio. The Allies were free to disembark. Apparently the only Germans encountered during the while process was a carload of drunken German officers returning to their barracks after a night out in Rome.
Despite this stroke of fortune the American general, General Lucas was far too cautious and instead of pressing on merely stuck to his thin strip of land around the beachhead and waited. Had he been more daring or better informed he could have pressed on till Rome the same day. When the Germans realised the landing had occurred they threw ‘everything they had’ at the waiting Americans. Americans were killed or captured in their thousands. Two Ranger battalions were paraded through the streets of Rome.
In order to relieve the landing force it was necessary to breakthrough the German position at Cassino. Yet there overlooking the entire region was the monastery of Monte Cassino. This was not being used by the Germans, but the Allies believed it was. On 15th February 1944 over two hundred Allied bombers struck at this historic landmark and turned it into rubble. The Germans however looked up at the smoking rubble and to their delight saw a site perfect for resistance. The rubble provided great cover in which to dig in so the Germans moved up and into the monastery. The Allies could not break through.
Meanwhile Anzio was still under relentless attack, Hitler had made it a personal point to succeed in Anzio, he believed it would be a pivotal turning point, leading to stalemate in Italy and putting the Allies off a landing in France. Yet despite throwing themselves at the Allied guns the Germans could not remove them from the Island. Hitlers orders had sent thousands of brave German soldiers to a needless death. The Allies were in a difficult position yet the Germans played to their strength and simply got gobbled up by the superior Allied artillery. Yet Anzio broke down into trench warfare. The Germans resorted to propaganda to try to split the British from the Americans. With great lines such as the Americans are ‘lease-lending your women’ and with graphic images of American troops sleeping with British women beneath the by line ‘while your away’.
Meanwhile another big push at Monte Cassino began with a large bombing raid that among other things was able to destroy the headquarters of the British Eighth Army. The bombing raid was however not co-ordinated effectively with the Army assault and by the time the Allied regiments of New Zealand troops had began their attack the Germans had emerged from their bunkers and were once again in position. The German defenders were some of the best in the German Army, the elite paratroopers. House to house fighting ensued. The New Zealanders lost 4000 men. The Germans still held the post.
The Allies had to rethink their tactics after three failed attacks. The Germans were tricked into thinking another amphibious assault was being planned so they weakened their contingent at Monte Cassino to protect the beaches. It was then that a massive barrage by 2000 pieces of artillery and a well time infantry attack finally led to the German collapse in Monte Cassino. Polish troops were the first to reach the city centre and they raised their national flag.
The defeat sent the Germans into disarray and they retreated back in chaos. The plan was then that Clark, the American general holed up in Anzio should break out and drive a deep wedge eastwards and cut off the retreating Germans, ending their resistance once and for all. Instead Clark found the temptation to take Rome to great, a Rome in which all Germans had left and which had been declared a free city. Clark went for Rome and missed a golden opportunity to end the fighting in Italy there and then. For the second time in his career. As the Allies entered the city the Italians began to turn on one another for collaboration with the Germans.
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