The invasion of North Africa and the lengthy Tunisian campaign had inevitably drawn the Allies into a Mediterranean strategy. Unless their forces were to remain idle for a year, they would have no choice but to attack what Churchill inaccurately referred to as the "soft underbelly" of Europe. But initially, there was no agreement on where they should strike. Sicily was the obvious target. It lay only 100 miles from Tunisia and a mere two miles from the toe of the bootlike Italian peninsula. Its conquest would clear the central Mediterranean for Allied shipping. But some Allied planners favored an assault on Sardinia, which lay 150 miles north of Tunisia and 200 miles northwest of Sicily. Only weak Axis troops were present in Sardinia, and its capture would open the possibility of an invasion of the Italian mainland to the north of Rome or even a landing on the southern coast of France.
A number of factors persuaded Roosevelt and Churchill to choose Sicily over Sardinia. Allied fighter planes operating from Malta could provide air cover for a Sicilian operation, and the shorter distance from Tunisia to Sicily would make an invasion armada less vulnerable to enemy air and submarine attacks. Sicily also offered easier Allied access to mainland Italy. But the Allies made no decision regarding a follow-up operation against the Italian coast. The British favored such an enterprise, but the Americans were reluctant to commit themselves in advance to any undertaking that might endanger the promised buildup for the cross-channel invasion of France in the spring of 1944.
THE ALLIED INVASION OF SICILY
Anglo-American planners paved the way for the invasion of Sicily with an elaborate hoax that later became the basis for a book and a film titled The Man Who Never Was. It involved the corpse of a vagrant, who had died of pneumonia. British agents removed the body from a morgue and provided it with a uniform complete with various papers identifying the bearer as a major in the British Royal Marines. A submarine then deposited the body along the coast of Spain where it washed ashore with a courier's briefcase attached to its belt. The case contained "official" documents indicating that the Allies planned to invade Sardinia or Greece. This information soon fell into the hands of German agents, who notified Berlin. Hitler responded by diverting troops to Greece. He had already sent reinforcements to Sardinia. Ultra quickly alerted Allied leaders that the enemy had taken the bait. These diversions as well as the loss of so many Axis soldiers in Tunisia resulted in a shortage of manpower for the defense of Sicily. But Mussolini was reluctant to allow additional German divisions to come to the rescue. The Duce feared that such an influx would give Germany a commanding position in his country. When Hitler offered to send five panzer divisions to Italy, Mussolini indicated that he could manage with three. The Germans finally sent all five, two of them going to Sicily.
Churchill and Roosevelt agreed that Eisenhower would serve as supreme commander of the Sicilian operation, Alexander as actual field commander. Alexander led an army group that included Montgomery's British 8th Army and the U.S. 7th Army under Patton. The plan for the invasion (Operation Husky) provided for the 8th Army to strike against the southeastern coast near the port of Syracuse while Patton's forces landed on the island's southern beaches. Ultra reports gave Allied leaders an accurate picture of Axis strength on the island and detected the arrival of two German panzer divisions.
Italian troops defended the Sicilian coast while Field Marshal Kesselring, Hitler's commander in Sicily and southern Italy, held the less numerous but more mobile German forces in reserve. The Allies carried out the invasion on July 10 and caught the defenders off guard. Axis leaders had anticipated landings on the southwestern coast. They also did not expect the invasion to come when it did because of poor weather and high surf. The Italians were sick of the war, and several divisions collapsed almost immediately, some virtually without firing a shot. Montgomery captured Syracuse and drove northward along the east coast toward the port of Messina on the Strait of Messina, which separated Sicily from the toe of the Italian peninsula. Patton's forces pushed inland toward the center of the island.
Operation Husky designated Montgomery's drive as the main spearhead because it was closest to Messina. If he could take the city quickly, he would make it difficult, perhaps impossible, for the Axis to evacuate the Italian mainland. Kesselring was quite aware of this and prepared to make his stand south of Mount Etna, a huge volcano whose slopes lay in the path of the 8th Army's advance. Montgomery also played into Kesselring's hands by pausing to regroup his forces before pushing northward. This enabled the Germans to strengthen their defenses, and when the British resumed their drive, they made slow progress. The original plan called for Patton merely to protect Montgomery's left flank, but the American general chafed under this restriction, and he persuaded Alexander to authorize his forces to drive north to the sea, thus cutting Sicily in two. Patton did not tell Alexander that his real objective was to capture the great port of Palermo considerably farther west, followed by a drive along the northern coast to take Messina. Four days later, on July 22, his troops entered Palermo, much to Alexander's surprise. The speed of his advance made Patton a hero in America, and the press hailed him as "Old Blood and Guts."
Most accounts have portrayed the campaign from this point as a race between Patton and Montgomery to see which army could reach Messina first. It is now clear that there was no race. In reality, Montgomery realized that due to the strength of the German division confronting him, it was most unlikely that he could beat Patton to Messina. Indeed, Montgomery invited Patton to a meeting on July 25 during which he proposed, to Patton's amazement, that the 7th Army push on to capture the vital port and hopefully cut off the Germans facing the 8th Army. But tenacious German resistance stalled Patton's advance as it had already foiled Montgomery. Kesselring nevertheless realized that his badly outnumbered forces could not hold the Allies for long. He prevailed upon Hitler to withdraw as many troops as possible to the mainland while his rear guard fought an effective delaying action. The evacuation began on the night of August 11 and continued under cover of darkness for the next week. Patton finally reached Messina on August 17, but his entrance was anticlimactic. The Germans had gotten away.
Patton's elation over the capture of Messina proved to be short-lived. This was due to two incidents that occurred as his troops were advancing along the northern coast. On the first occasion, while visiting a field hospital, Patton encountered a soldier who had suffered no wounds. Assuming that he was malingering, the general accused him of cowardice and slapped his face. In reality, the man was afflicted with malaria and dysentery. A week later, when visiting another hospital, Patton ran across another soldier with no wounds but this time suffering from battle fatigue. The general again flew into a rage, called the man a coward, slapped him across the face, and even threatened to shoot him. He had to be restrained by the head of the hospital. News reports of this incident reached America and led to demands for the general's dismissal. Eisenhower shunned such a dramatic remedy, but he did reprimand Patton and ordered a public apology. Under the circumstances, there was no chance of Patton's participating in the invasion of Italy, and many believed that his career was over. These postmortems proved premature, but he did not command another army until the summer of 1944.
CONSEQUENCES OF ALLIED SUCCESSES IN SICILY
Control of Sicily cleared the Mediterranean for Allied shipping and opened the way for an invasion of the Italian mainland. But the campaign also provided another vivid demonstration of German defensive brilliance and flair for executing fighting withdrawals. It should have been clear to Allied leaders that the enemy would be equally adept in defending Italy, where the terrain was even more difficult. Despite the success of the Blitzkrieg in the early years of the war, the power of a skillful defense still remained a factor of great importance.
The invasion of Sicily also led to Mussolini's fall from power. The war had been one long nightmare for the Duce, and the Italians had become even more disillusioned with his leadership. With the expulsion of the Axis from Africa and the threat of an Allied invasion of Italy's home territory, opposition increased in the army and even within the Fascist party. The assault on Sicily convinced these dissidents that Mussolini must go, and on July 24 they moved against the once mighty dictator. King Victor Emmanuel III dismissed him as premier, and the police placed him under arrest. The aging Marshal Pietro Badoglio took his place. Badoglio had served as chief of the Italian supreme command from 1925 until 1940, when he became the scapegoat for the failure of the invasion of Greece. But Mussolini was not yet finished. On September 12, German commandos led by Lieutenant Colonel Otto Skorzeny, landed in gliders on the mountaintop where he was held prisoner, rescued him, and escaped by plane. Hitler now installed the Duce as ruler of a puppet Fascist state in northern Italy.
Soon after becoming premier, Badoglio dissolved the Fascist party and formed a government without political affiliation. He also opened secret negotiations for an armistice. This was no easy task. He wanted to switch sides and joint the British and Americans in ridding Italy of the Germans, but the Allies, primarily at American insistence, clung to their doctrine of unconditional surrender. This divergence in aims slowed progress toward an agreement. At the same time, Badoglio tried to assure the Germans that he would remain loyal to the Axis cause. Hitler refused to be deluded by this stratagem. He sent additional German troops into northern Italy and the area around Rome to defend against the expected Allied invasion. To complicate the situation still more, American leaders did not agree to an invasion of the Italian mainland until July 20. The wholesale Italian surrenders in Sicily convinced them that they might be able to carry out a limited operation with relative ease. The late date of this decision meant that several weeks of preparation would be necessary before the Allies could act.
Negotiations with the Badoglio regime also sparked a controversy similar to the one that had erupted after the Darlan deal in North Africa. Both the new premier and King Victor Emmanuel III had close links to Mussolini. The king's continuation on the throne offended many people in the Allied countries as well as in Italy. But Churchill saw the monarchy as a source of stability and a bulwark against communism. He strongly favored dealing with the new government, and Roosevelt acquiesced. Negotiations finally concluded in an agreement on September 3 that fell short of unconditional surrender. It provided for Italy to hand over its navy, merchant marine, and air force to the Allies. The Italians also agreed to become a cobelligerent against Germany.
ONTO THE MAINLAND
The decision to invade the Italian mainland marked the start of the final lengthy stage of the Mediterranean strategy that had begun with the invasion of North Africa. Despite his earlier commitment to a cross-channel invasion, Churchill definitely appears to have lost his taste for such an enterprise by the summer of 1943. This was probably due in part to his concern over the defensive prowess the Germans had demonstrated in Tunisia and Sicily. The prospect of another World War I-type bloodbath in France, never far from his thoughts, now loomed larger. But he also believed that Allied operations in the Mediterranean had opened a much more promising strategy against the "soft underbelly" of Europe. He favored launching a vigorous offensive in Italy as well as providing aid to Yugoslav Partisans under Marshal Tito and attempting to bring Turkey into the war as an ally. The Americans did not share the British enthusiasm for an ambitious campaign in Italy, because they feared that this would divert strength from a cross-channel invasion in 1944. They insisted on a limited commitment.
It now appears that the area north of Rome offered the best choice for the invasion site. Kesselring believed that an assault there would have resulted in a German withdrawal from the southern half of Italy. But the Allies considered an operation so far north to be too risky and chose to strike farther south. The invasion involved three landings. In the first of these, forces of Montgomery's 8th Army crossed the Strait of Messina on September 3 and established a beachhead on the toe of the boot. Six days later, other elements of the 8th Army went ashore near the Italian naval base at Taranto on the instep of the boot. At the same time, General Mark Clark's Anglo-American 5th Army landed at Salerno, south of the great port of Naples.
Clark had recently enjoyed a meteoric rise from obscurity by gaining the backing of both Marshall and Eisenhower shortly before America's entry into World War II. Clark became Ike's deputy for the North African campaign and at age 46, became the youngest lieutenant general ever to serve in the U.S. Army. Clark possessed boundless energy and ambition. He also courted publicity and was frequently abrasive in his dealings with colleagues.
The Allies had chosen Salerno as an invasion site after a heated debate. Clark and other Americans preferred to outflank Naples by landing to the north of the city. This site would also reduce the distance to Rome, and its nonmountainous terrain posed the possibility of a rapid advance inland. The British insisted on Salerno because the area north of Naples lay outside the range of Allied fighter planes operating from Sicily. Unfortunately, the beaches near Salerno were ringed by mountains, which gave the Germans a strong defensive position.
Montgomery prepared the way for his landing on the toe of the boot with an enormous barrage from 600 guns based in Sicily as well as 120 naval guns. Although impressive, it proved totally unnecessary because the Germans chose not to contest the assault. But they did slow the British advance by skillful demolitions along the narrow roads leading north. The landing at Taranto also encountered no resistance. But the troops which went ashore at Salerno were not so fortunate. When the Germans heard the delayed announcement of Italy's surrender on September 8, their forces raced southward. They quickly disarmed Italian troops and along the way and moved to block the Allied advance toward Naples and Rome. The Salerno operation ran into trouble initially from just one understrength panzer division. This unit held the mountains overlooking the beaches and rained down murderous artillery fire on the exposed Allied troops. A determined German counterattack threatened to force the invaders into the sea. By the third day of the operation, the situation looked grim. Only two U.S. artillery battalions blocked the Germans from breaking through to the sea at one point. Rear echelon soldiers found themselves pushed into service to man a last-ditch line of defense. But the intervention of Anglo-American artillery, air power, and naval bombardments prevented a disaster and allowed Clark to consolidate his beachhead.
It was not until the advance elements of Montgomery's forces reached the Salerno area on September 16, after a slow advance from the south, that the Germans began to fall back toward Naples. The Allies had hoped to take Naples three days after the Salerno landings but were not able to capture the city until October 1. British troops gained another important prize when they seized the major Italian air base at Foggia on the eastern side of the peninsula. Its capture enabled the Allies to dominate the skies over Italy and carry out bombing raids against targets as far away as Austria and the Balkans. German forces also evacuated Sardinia in late September and Corsica in early October.
Kesselring continued to make good use of Italy's ideal defensive terrain. The Apennine Mountains extended down the center of the peninsula, creating formidable barriers to the Allied advance. Innumerable rivers provided additional impediments, especially since heavy rains turned them into swollen torrents. The vision of "sunny Italy" soon faded from the minds of both Allied and German soldiers. The valleys oozed with mud that made progress painfully slow. In the barren, rock-strewn mountains, the men had to contend with cold, snow, and a lack of cover. For supplies, they depended on mules, which carried them until the slopes became too steep, at which point soldiers took over and hauled them the rest of the way. In such conditions, armor was of little use. The struggle became one of opposing foot soldiers, often in hand-to-hand combat. The weary perseverance of the American GIs in the face of this misery as well as endless monotony was reflected in Sergeant Bill Mauldin's cartoons of "Willie" and "Joe" in the army newspaper Stars and Stripes. Mauldin became a great favorite of the soldiers along with war correspondent Ernie Pyle, who lived with them and shared their misery. Pyle wrote vividly about what is was really like at the front in Italy:
Our troops were living in almost inconceivable misery. The fertile black valleys were knee-deep in mud. Thousands of men had not been dry for weeks. Other thousands lay at night in the high mountains with the temperature below freezing and the thin snow sifting over them. They dug into the stones and slept in little chasms and behind rocks in half-caves. They lived like men of prehistoric times, and a club would have become them more than a machine gun...
The front-line soldier I knew lived for months like an animal, and was a veteran of the cruel, fierce world of death. Everything was abnormal and unstable in his life. He was filthy dirty, ate if and when, slept on hard ground without cover.
During the fall and early winter, the Allies slogged northward from one river to another until they bogged down before the main German defensive position less than 100 miles from Rome - the Gustav line - in January 1944. Kesselring anchored this powerful line on Monte Cassino, which dominated the Liri and Rapido river valleys. A famous medieval abbey crowned the summit of the mountain, and the town of Cassino sprawled on its lower southern slope. General Heinrich von Vietinghoff's 10th Army defended the Gustav line. Vietinghoff had skillfully commanded a panzer corps in the Russian campaign and now proved a master of defensive warfare. He had led the German forces against the 5th Army at Salerno and directed the retreat that had so effectively delayed the Allied advance.
CHANGES IN ALLIED COMMAND AND STRATEGY
A major change took place in the Allied command structure at the end of 1943. Eisenhower moved to London to become supreme commander of the long-delayed cross-channel invasion, with Montgomery as his field commander. Alexander remained in charge of Allied forces in Italy, while General Oliver Leese took over the 8th Army and Clark continued to lead the 5th Army. Leese had studied under Montgomery at Staff College and became one of his closest associates. He had served as an 8th Army corps commander at El Alamein as well as in Tunisia, Sicily, and Italy.
In a dramatic attempt to break the deadlock, the Allies made an amphibious landing behind the German front on January 22. They struck near the resort town of Anzio, which lay just 33 miles south of Rome. The operation took the Germans by surprise, and the attacking forces gained a beachhead against virtually no resistance. For a time, they imperiled the entire German position in Italy.
In planning the operation, General Alexander had intended that the invading troops advance rapidly to the Alban Hills 20 miles from the coast. This action would cut German communications between Rome and Cassino and force the enemy to abandon the Gustav line. But General Clark expected Kesselring to react quickly, as he had at Salerno, and ordered General John Lucas, the commander of the operation, to move inland only after building up strength in the beachhead. Lucas, a highly cautious and insecure man who lacked experience as a leader in the field, needed little encouragement to stand fast. Despite the remarkably successful landing, Clark refused to alter his decision, although Ultra intelligence revealed that German reinforcements would not arrive for a week. Kesselring did, however, converge nine divisions in eight days against the three American divisions and prevented expansion of the beachhead. Instead of threatening the rear of the Gustav line, the Allies found themselves pinned down by incessant artillery fire, including 280-mm shells from the railway gun dubbed "Anzio Annie" by the GIs.
On February 19, Clark replaced Lucas with General Lucien Truscott. The new commander had trained the first American Ranger battalion, which he had modeled after the elite British Commando units. Truscott provided much more vigorous leadership, but for the time being he and his troops had no choice but to remain on the defensive.
At the same time as the Anzio landing, Clark carried out a major attempt to gain control of the relatively wide valley of the Liri River. He and Alexander hoped that this would enable the Allies to outflank Monte Cassino on the southwest and link up with the beachhead. But American troops could not maintain a foothold across the Rapido River near its junction with the Liri and suffered heavy casualties. Later in January, Clark ordered the capture of Monte Cassino itself, which he believed was crucial if the advance were to continue. American units crossed the Rapido and penetrated the northern outskirts of the town of Cassino but failed to take the mountain.
In early February, a New Zealand corps under General Freyberg, who had led the unsuccessful defense of Crete in 1941, relieved the exhausted Americans. Freyberg's corps contained General Francis Tuker's Indian Division. The acid-tongued Tuker urged an operation to outflank Monte Cassino rather than a frontal assault. But since his superiors insisted on a direct attack, he demanded that heavy bombers destroy Monte Cassino Abbey as a prerequisite. Allied soldiers firmly believed that the Germans were using the building as an operation post. Freyberg supported Tuker, and Alexander bowed to the New Zealander's pressure. Alexander feared that unless the bombing took place, Freyberg would pull his corps out of the line. For some time, many people in New Zealand had been demanding that their troops return home. But General Clark, Freyberg's immediate superior, argued against bombing the abbey. He doubted that the enemy was using it for observation. Alexander insisted, however, and Clark finally agreed. On February 15, over 200 bombers pulverized the renowned structure - to no avail. The Indian attempt to storm Monte Cassino failed, with heavy casualties as the price. Ironically, the Germans had not used the building as an observation post, although they had maintained a presence nearby. But they now moved into its ruins, which provided effective cover for mortars and machine guns.
The Allies renewed their efforts in March. Again they placed their faith in air power. This time they sent 500 bombers against the town of Cassino as a prelude to a ground attack that would seize Cassino before the dazed German survivors could recover from the terrible pounding. One thousands tons of high explosives obliterated the town, but when the bombardment ceased, the German defenders repulsed the attacking troops. The bombing actually hindered Allied progress by blocking Cassino's narrow streets with huge heaps of rubble.
The deadlock did not end until May, when Alexander moved much of the British 8th Army from the eastern end of the front to the Cassino area, where it worked in cooperation with the 5th Army. The Allies now enjoyed an advantage of 20 divisions to only 7 for the Germans. Starting on May 11, they ground slowly forward, and this time they were successful. Soldiers from a number of Allied nations made major contributions.
French troops, under General Alphonse Juin, executed a crucial flanking operation through rugged mountains southwest of the Liri. Kesselring and Vietinghoff had left this area lightly defended because they considered it impassable. Juin had long opposed the bloody attempts to take Monte Cassino by frontal assault. Despite a paralyzed right arm, a memento of World War I, he had led a division in the 1940 retreat to Dunkirk. He later commanded Vichy forces in North Africa. But his sympathies lay with the Allies, and he joined them after their landing in 1942. Juin now emerged as the man of the hour. His forces penetrated the Gustav line and threatened the entire enemy position. The Germans began to fall back. British forces took the town of Cassino, while a Polish corps outflanked Monte Cassino on the north. After another bitter struggle, the Poles reached the summit and captured the ruins of the abbey on May 18.
Five days later, reinforced American troops in the Anzio beachhead launched an attack that Alexander hoped would take the town of Valmontone and cut off the enemy retreat from the Gustav line. But Clark was thinking of another objective - Rome. He wanted American troops to have the honor of capturing the Eternal City. Clark ignored Alexander's orders, and his staff directed Truscott to move toward Rome, even though Ultra reports indicated that the capture of Valmontone would likely result in a disaster for the German 10th Army. Truscott reluctantly complied. This decision allowed Kesselring to extricate his troops from danger, and he declared Rome an open city to spare it from destruction. American forces occupied the capital on June 4.
The Germans withdrew toward another prepared defensive position 150 miles to the north - the Gothic line, which stretched across the peninsula beyond the cities of Leghorn (Livorno) and Florence. They based this line on one of the last ridges of the Apennines to the south of the great plain extending northward to the Po River. By making skillful use of a series of strong mountain positions as he retreated, Kesselring prevented the Allies from reaching the Gothic line until late in August.
Allied leaders also weakened Alexander's striking power by diverting seven divisions to take part in an invasion of southern France (Operation Anvil-Dragoon). Chuchill and Alexander were not keen on Anvil-Dragoon, preferring to push the offensive in Italy. Alexander insisted that if allowed to continue at full strength, he could capture the remainder of Italy and follow with a drive toward Vienna by way of the Ljubljana Gap in northern Yugoslavia. Since the war, critics of Anvil-Dragoon have contended that shifting these forces prevented Alexander from reaching Vienna and breaking into the Hungarian Plain ahead of the Soviets. This argument assumes a great deal. Although the retention of these troops might have resulted in the liberation of most of the remainder of Italy in 1944, it seems highly unlikely that a quick thrust toward Vienna would have followed. In view of this spectacular tenacity of German defensive efforts in the Apennines, it is difficult to see how the Allies could have expected anything other than excruciatingly slow progress through the various ranges of the Alps that blocked the route to the Austrian capital.
Despite their reduction in strength, Alexander's forces surprised Kesselring in September and fought their way through the Gothic line. But once beyond it, they continued to encounter difficult mountains as well as boggy terrain and an abundance of rivers. German resistance stiffened, and although the Allies pressed their attacks throughout the fall, they made little progress. In late December, they decided to forgo additional offensive operations until the spring of 1945. Another grim winter in Italy's icy mountains lay ahead.
The Italian campaign remains extremely controversial. Its supporters contend that operations on the mainland pinned down 20 German divisions that might otherwise have opposed the Soviets or the cross-channel invasion. They insist that this alone made the Allied effort in Italy worthwhile. But other observers question whether the heartbreakingly slow advance up the peninsula was worth the price in blood and destruction of so much of the country. They contend that an Anglo-American presence in Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica alone probably would have forced Hitler to concentrate substantial strength in Italy to guard against invasion. The Germans maintained 24 divisions in the Balkans in large part to resist a potential assault on this area, which did not face as direct a threat as Italy. These critics argue that once Allied troops had gained control of the southern portion of the peninsula, Germany could not have avoided a considerable commitment there. They question whether the Allies showed good judgment in hammering away at such formidable defensive positions as the Gustav line. It would appear that they are correct. There was no strategic objective worthy of such an approach.