Allied invasion of Italy
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This article covers the invasion of mainland Italy by the World War II Allies in September 1943 during the Italian Campaign.
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[edit] Strategic decision
Following the defeat of the Axis Powers in North Africa, there 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 "soft underbelly of Europe". Popular support in Italy for the war was declining, and he believed that an invasion would remove Italy from the war, thus removing the influence of the Regia Marina in the Mediterranean Sea and 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 going to the Soviet Union. However General George Marshall and much of the American staff wanted to undertake no operations that might delay the eventual invasion of France. When it became clear in 1943 that the invasion of France could not be undertaken that year, it was agreed that the forces in North Africa should be used to invade Sicily, with no commitment made to any follow-up operation.
Joint Allied Forces Headquarters AFHQ were operationally responsible for all allied land forces in the Mediterranean theatre and it was they who planned and commanded the invasion of Sicily and the Italian mainland.
The invasion of Sicily in July 1943 (Operation Husky) was highly successful, although many of the Axis forces there were allowed to avoid capture and escape to the mainland. More importantly a coup deposed Benito Mussolini as head of the Italian government, which then began approaches to the Allies to make peace. It was felt that a quick invasion of Italy might hasten an Italian surrender and produce quick military victories over the German troops that would now be trapped fighting in a hostile country. However, Italian resistance to the allies remained relatively strong, and fighting in Italy continued even after the fall of Berlin.
[edit] The plan
In Operation Baytown, the first troops ashore on the mainland were the British Eighth Army, which included British and Canadian troops, under General Bernard Montgomery. Montgomery was strongly opposed to the operation, which he considered pointless. As a diversion, the plan assumed the Germans would give battle in Calabria. If they failed to do so the only effect of the operation would be to place the Eighth Army 300 miles south of the main landing in the Gulf of Salerno.
The Operation Baytown plan called for Allied ground forces to depart from the port of Messina on Sicily, to cross the Straits of Messina and land near the tip of Calabria (the "toe" of Italy), on 3 September 1943. The short distance from Sicily meant that the landing craft could launch from there directly rather than be carried by ship. The British 5th Infantry Division would land on the north side of the "toe" while the Canadian 1st Infantry Division would land at Cape Spartivento, the south side.
Operation Giant II envisioned the 82nd Airborne Division making a drop near Rome, linking up with four now-friendly Italian divisions, and capturing Rome in a coup-de-main. This was cancelled at the last minute (the lead planes were actually in the air) when General Maxwell Taylor, on a secret mission to Rome, learned about two German Panzergrenadier divisions already present.
The main invasion was scheduled for one week later, on 9 September 1943. The main invasion force would land in the area of Salerno on the western coast (Operation Avalanche). It would consist of the US Fifth Army under General Mark W. Clark, comprising the U.S. VI Corps under Ernest J. Dawley, the British 10th Corps under Richard McCreery, and the US 82nd Airborne Division in reserve, a total of about nine divisions. Its primary objectives were to seize the port of Naples to ensure resupply, and to cut across to the east coast, trapping the Axis troops further south. The inclusion of the 82nd Airborne Division as a reserve force was possible only with the cancellation of Operation Giant II. The British 1st Airborne Division would be landed by sea near the port of Taranto, on the "heel" of Italy (Operation Slapstick), as a diversion for Salerno. Their task was to capture the port and several nearby airfields and link with the Eighth Army before pressing north to join the Fifth Army near Foggia.
The plan was deeply flawed. The 5th Army would be landing on a very broad 35-mile front, using only three assault divisions. The two Corps were widely-separated both in distance and by a river. The terrain was highly favorable to the defender. A Ranger force under Colonel William O. Darby consisting of three US Ranger battalions and two British Commando units was tasked with holding the mountain passes leading to Naples, but no plan existed for linking the Ranger force up with the British 10th Corps follow-up units. Finally, although tactical surprise was unlikely, Clark ordered that no naval preparatory bombardment take place.
Approximately eight German divisions were positioned to cover possible landing sites, including the Hermann Goering Division, the 26th and 16th Panzer, the 15th and 29th Panzergrenadier and the 1st and 2nd Parachute.
[edit] The landings
Opposition to the September 3rd Baytown landings was light, as the Italian units surrendered almost immediately, leaving a single German regiment to defend 17 miles of coast. The Axis preferred to withdraw and demolish infrastructure behind them. Thus Montgomery's objections to the operation were proved correct; the Eighth Army could not tie down German units that refused battle, and the main obstacle to their advance was the terrain and Germen demolitions of roads and bridges. Then on 8 September 1943, before the main invasion, the surrender of Italy to the Allies was announced. Italian units ceased combat, and the Navy sailed to Allied ports to surrender. However the German forces in Italy were prepared for such an eventuality and moved to disarm Italian units and occupy important defensive positions. The landings near Taranto went ahead against virtually no opposition, and the port and area were quickly secured.
At Salerno the decision had been taken to assault without previous naval or aerial bombardment, in order to secure surprise. Tactical surprise was not achieved, as the naval commanders had predicted. As the first wave approached the shore at Paestum a loudspeaker from the landing area proclaimed in English, "Come on in and give up. We have you covered." The troops attacked nonetheless.
The Germans had established artillery and machine-gun posts and scattered tanks through the landing zones which made progress difficult, but the beach areas were successfully taken. Around 0700 a concerted counterattack was made by the 16th Panzer division. It caused heavy casualties, but was beaten off with naval gunfire support. Both the British and the Americans made slow progress, and still had a 10 mile gap between them at the end of day one. They linked up by the end of day two and occupied 35-45 miles of coast line to a depth of six or seven miles.
Over the 12th-14th September the Germans organised a concerted counterattack by six divisions of motorised troops, hoping to throw the Salerno beachhead into the sea before it could link with the Eighth Army. Heavy casualties were inflicted, as the Allied troops were too thinly spread to be able to resist concentrated attacks. The outermost troops were therefore withdrawn in order to reduce the perimeter. The new perimeter was held with the assistance of 4000 paratroopers from the 82nd and 509th PIB who air dropped near the hot spots, from strong naval gunfire support, and from well-served Fifth Army artillery. The German attacks reached almost to the beaches but ultimately failed.
General Clark was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest US award for valor in combat, for his front-line leadership during this crisis. He was frequently seen in the most forward positions encouraging the troops. However, in the estimate of historian Carlo D'Este, Clark's poor planning of the operation caused the crisis in the first place. Clark later blamed the slowness of the Eighth Army for the beachead crisis.
The Salerno battle was also the site of a mutiny by about 600 men of the British 10th Corps, who on September 16th refused assignment to new units as replacements. They had previously understood that they would be returning to their own units from which they had been separated during the fighting in the North African Campaign, mainly because they had been wounded. Eventually the Corps commander, McCreery, pursuaded most of the men to follow their orders. The NCOs who led the mutiny were sentenced to death, but were eventually allowed to rejoin units and the sentence was not carried out.
[edit] Postscript to the landings: a change in German strategy
The German Tenth Army had come very close to overwhelming the Salerno beachead. The Allies had been fortunate that at this time Adolf Hitler had sided with the view of his Army Group commander in Northern Italy, Field Marshall Erwin Rommell, and decided that defending Italy south of Rome was not a strategic priority. As a result, the Army Group Commander in southern Italy, Field Marshall Albert Kesselring had been forbidden to call upon reserves from the northern Army Group. The subsequent success of the German Tenth Army's defensive campaign in inflicting very heavy casualties on both U.S. 5th and British 8th Armies and Kesselring's strategic arguments that the Allies should be kept as far away from Germany as possible led Hitler to change his mind in October at which point he withdrew Rommell to oversee the build-up of defenses in northern France and gave Kesselring command of the whole of Italy with a remit to keep Rome in German hands for the longest time possible.
[edit] Further advances
With the Salerno beachhead secure, the Fifth Army could begin to attack northwest towards Naples. The Eighth Army had been making quick progress from the 'toe' in the face of German engineer delaying actions and linked with the 1st Airborne Division on the Adriatic coast. It united the left of its front with the Fifth Army's right on 16 September, and advancing up the Adriatic coast captured the airfields near Foggia on 27 September. Foggia was a major Allied objective because the large airfield complex there would give the Allied air forces the ability to strike new targets in France, Germany and the Balkans. The Fifth Army captured Naples on 1 October, and reached the line of the Volturno River on October 6th. This provided a natural barrier, securing Naples, the Campainian Plain and the vital airfields on it from counterattack. Meanwhile, on the Adriatic coast, the British Eighth Army had advanced to a line from Campobasso to Larino and Termoli on the Biferno river. The whole of southern Italy was in Allied hands, and the Allied armies now stood facing the Volturno Line, the first of a series of prepared defensive lines from which the Germans chose to fight delaying actions, giving ground slowly and buying time to complete their preparation of the Gustav Line, their strongest defensive line south of Rome.
For the next stage of the Battle in Italy see Winter Line.
[edit] Bibliography
- Carlo D'Este: Fatal Decision: Anzio and the Battle for Rome. 1991 ISBN 0-06-092148-X
- Gerhard Muhm : German Tactics in the Italian Campaign , http://www.larchivio.org/xoom/gerhardmuhm2.htm
- Gerhard Muhm : La Tattica tedesca nella Campagna d'Italia, in Linea Gotica avanposto dei Balcani, (Hrsg.) Amedeo Montemaggi - Edizioni Civitas, Roma 1993
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Canada and the Italian Campaign
- American operations at and after Salerno
- British Army museum on Italian Campaign
- Summary of the Italian Campaign
- Details of naval operations around the Italian landings
- University of Kansas Electronic Library
- Online Canadian World War 2 Newspaper Archives - The Sicilian and Italian Campaigns, 1943-1945
- Royal Engineers Museum Royal Engineers and Second World War (Italy)
