WORLD at WAR 15 | DEC 2010 − JAN 2011 7

Strategic Debates

T he Italian campaign started less than auspiciously. Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily,

began on 9 July with two Allied armies hitting the beaches: Gen. George S. Patton’s US Seventh Army and Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery’s British Eighth Army. The Germans fought a brilliant rearguard action with a panzer corps under the command of Gen. Hans Hube. He fell back on the port of Messina and evacuated his divisions, along with many Italian troops, to the mainland, despite Allied naval and air superiority. On 17 August the Allies took Messina, the last Axis stronghold on the island, but Hube had escaped cleanly.

Still, the Allies could claim a victory as, among other things, the political impact of Allied troops landing on Italian soil had led to the overthrow of Mussolini in a 24 July coup and his replacement with Marshal Pietro Badoglio. With Italian participation in the Axis faltering, the question arose among the Allied commanders: where next?

Immediately at issue was whether there should even be another amphibi-

ous invasion in the Mediterranean. The Allies were preparing for Overlord, the invasion of northern France, which would finally be executed in June 1944 in Normandy. That operation’s required preparation called for the concentration of Allied logistics and amphibious craft in Britain. Continuing the war in the Mediterranean meant diversion of resources from Overlord.

While Winston Churchill saw the Mediterranean theater as the Reich’s “soft

underbelly,” the Americans were less optimistic. Further large-scale opera-tions there might lead to nothing more than protracted combat with little in the way of real strategic gain. The American high command preferred the most direct route to Germany, which was via a land-ing in northwestern Europe followed by a mechanized drive across the relatively open terrain of France and Belgium.

Even so, further campaigning in the Mediterranean was also seen as a necessity. For one thing, the Anglo-Allies needed to take some of the pressure off the still-beleaguered Soviet Union. At the start of Husky the Germans were in the midst of their Citadel offensive, a series of great tank battles around Kursk (5-16 July), and the larger course of the war on the eastern front remained in doubt. Politically, then, it was necessary to demonstrate to Moscow the Western Allies were fully in the war, thereby heading off any temptation Stalin might otherwise have felt to make a separate peace with Berlin (a possibility that in retrospect was unlikely, but at the time was of great concern).

Another factor motivating another Mediterranean operation was, ironically

6 WORLD at WAR 15 | DEC 2010 − JAN 2011

Gen. George S. Patton in Italy

Soft Underbelly:Allied & German Strategy

in the 1943 Italian Campaignby Joseph Miranda

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tions there might lead to nothing more Home

8 WORLD at WAR 15 | DEC 2010 − JAN 2011 WORLD at WAR 15 | DEC 2010 − JAN 2011 9

Operational Plans

With the strategic objective of Italy settled, the operational planning began. Several invasion beaches were debated. Initially the Allies considered landing directly at Naples and seizing its port, vital for logistical support of deeper operations. Naples, however, was less than ideal in that it was out of range of Allied single-engine aircraft. There was some talk of using aircraft carriers to provide air cover, but that was deemed unfeasible because those ships couldn’t provide sufficient numbers of fighters to guarantee air superiority, and their operations were subject to the vagaries of the weather. Later events of the campaign would prove the wisdom of that decision, as the Luftwaffe would make a major effort in support of the German counterattack at Salerno, sinking and damaging numerous ships even with Allied fighter cover.

The final Allied plan called for a three-pronged assault. The main attack would be at Salerno, south of Naples, executed by the US Fifth Army (including both an American and a British corps), codenamed Operation Avalanche. British Eighth Army would cross the narrow Straits of Massena to land in Calabria at the “toe” of the Italian “boot” (Operation Baytown). British 1st Airborne Division would make an amphibious landing at Taranto to secure the far right flank

of the invasion (Operation Slapstick). There was some argument over

the utilization of the US 82nd Airborne Division. One idea — the plan originally selected — was for that unit to make a drop into Rome, thereby securing the Italian capital and giving more impetus to anti-German Italian forces to rally to the Allies. This plan was scotched, at literally the last minute, due to full consideration of the impossibility of effectively reinforcing, or even just sustaining, the 82nd that far behind enemy lines. If German resistance prevented a breakout from the beach-heads, the airborne would be cut off and destroyed. As with Naples, Rome was also out of range of easy air cover. The 82nd therefore remained in reserve for the initial phase of the operation.

Meanwhile, the Allies continued to conduct secret negotiations with Italian leaders to try to ensure their country would surrender peacefully and fully. Those talks involved no small

enough, logistics. That is, the Allied divisions and air forces then based in North Africa and Sicily couldn’t be easily shifted elsewhere. Bases in Britain were already filling up with the forces dedicated for Overlord. While Allied units in the Mediterranean could certainly be shipped to Britain, the added facilities needed to house and maintain them didn’t yet exist.

Thus, for lack of any convenient alternative if nothing else, campaigning in the Mediterranean would continue. The dilemma then became choosing the specific target for the next operation. The solution came as the result of more debate among Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, by then in command of all US forces in Europe; Field Marshal Harold Alexander, Allied commander for the Mediterranean Theater; and Gen. Charles de Gaulle of the Free French.

The British wanted to go for the

Balkans. An invasion of Greece or Yugoslavia would lead the way toward the Danube and from that river valley into the heart of the Reich. Late in World War I, the Allied breakout from the Salonika beachhead had done much to finally collapse the Austro-Hungarian Empire and initiate the general Central Powers in the closing months of the war. In 1943 there were large partisan forces across the area that could provide the Allies with much in the way of local support. An invasion of the Balkans, it was argued, might also bring Turkey into the war on the side of the Allies and open a new route for sending Western Allied aid to the USSR.

The Americans, however, advocated an invasion of the Italian mainland. Such an operation would knock out Hitler’s major Axis partner in Europe. Another reason was put forth by Gen. Harold “Hap” Arnold, commander of

the US Army Air Force: the capture of southern Italy could be exploited to build up airpower for the strategic bombing campaign against the Reich’s war industry. Southern Italy, among other things, contained the large airfield complex at Foggia, and those facilities could be used to stage heavy bombers against targets in southern Germany and the Danube valley.

The Free French also had an opinion. They favored sequenced invasions into Sardinia and Corsica, to be climaxed by a landing in southern France. While the Free French were a force subsidized by the Americans and British in terms of equipment and logistics, their interests had to be taken as a matter of concern. London and Washington needed to maintain the coalition of the “United Nations” (not yet the international orga-nization of today, the term was already in extensive use in Allied propaganda by mid-war). Operating in such a way as to facilitate the maintenance of good postwar relations among the Western powers was yet another consideration.

In the end, of course, the strategic consensus came to be it was best to invade the Italian mainland. Invading the Balkans was deemed undesirable, as that would shift the main power of the Western Allies into in an entirely new strategic direction, from western to central Europe. There would also be diffi-culties in providing invasion forces there with air cover and logistics. Southern France, while certainly a tempting target by itself, was ultimately a strategic dead end: an Allied invasion force there would be unlikely to get far enough north to reach critical objectives such as Paris or the German border. Such a move might also cause Hitler to fully shift his armed forces’ strategic concentration from the USSR to France, thereby endangering the projected Overlord operation.

An invasion of mainland Italy had several strategic advantages. It would be sure to divert German attention from France, thereby aiding Overlord’s eventual success. Moreover, secret negotiations being conducted with Italy’s new government indicated such an invasion would not only bring on an Italian surrender, it might also lead to that country committing its armed forces against the Germans. At the same time, southern Italy was within easy range of Allied airpower based in Sicily and North Africa. With mainland Italy the objective, then, US, British and Free French forces assembled for their return to mainland Europe after an absence of more than three years.

Field Marshal Smuts (left) and Gen. Eisenhower

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amount of skullduggery, with Allied representatives meeting with the Italians as far afield as Lisbon, and even a clandestine mission into German-occupied Rome itself by Gen. Maxwell Taylor to make final arrangements. In the event, Italy would surrender and declare itself an Ally, though that had less effect than the Allies had hoped.

Course of the Campaign

The invasion of the Italian mainland began on 3 September with Eighth Army landing at Calabria. On 8 September the Allies

announced the Italian armistice. On 9 September, Fifth Army came ashore at Salerno. Everything seemed to be going according to plan.

Then, however, the German commander in Italy, Luftwaffe Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, implemented his plan. (Kesselring had begun his career in the German Army, and thus was no stranger to ground war strategy.) His units implemented Operation Axis, swiftly moving to occupy strategic points throughout Italy, while also disarming Italian troops to prevent their interfering. German Tenth Army moved to contain

the Salerno landing, while units farther south conducted delaying actions, trading space for time and keeping Eighth Army from linking up with Fifth for several critical days.

Kesselring launched his divisions against the Salerno beachhead, almost throwing the Allies back into the sea while, in the sky above, the Luftwaffe hit Allied shipping and hit it hard. A last-ditch defense of the beach, sup-ported by naval gunfire, finally threw back the Germans. Elements of the 82nd Airborne were also parachuted in as emergency reinforcement, and the beachhead held. Eighth Army linked

The German Perspective

As the Allies debated their plans for invading Italy, the German high command did the same concerning its own strategy for that country. Erwin Rommel, of Afrikakorps fame, wanted to fall back into north Italy and make a stand in the Po valley. That would keep secure the vital industrial areas of Italy’s far north while also avoiding having to operate within easy range of Allied sea power. Defending in the south would be dangerous, Rommel argued, because the long coastal flanks of the peninsula would be vulnerable to Allied amphibious invasions that could cut off major German forces. There was also the question of the Italian armed forces. If they defected to the Allies, it would place large numbers of newly hostile troops across the lengthy German line of communications to the far south.

Albert Kesselring, German commander in the Mediterranean Theater (Oberkommando Sud, “High Command South”), believed central and southern Italy could be held, or at least turned into a trap for the Allies. Given past Allied patterns of operation, Kesselring figured they would land only under solid air cover, which meant southern Italy. By deploying mobile units in the south, and then moving them forward quickly to counterattack the beachhead, the Germans could pin down Allied invaders and perhaps even throw them back into the sea. The Luftwaffe still had effective strength remaining in the Mediterranean and, if concentrated over one spot, German airpower could possibly cause critical damage to Allied shipping, making any landing tenuous at best.

To deal with the Italians, Kesselring put together Operation Axis, which had German divisions moving quickly to disarm the erstwhile ally’s units. As for follow-on invasions along the seaward flanks, they could also be dealt with by mobile reserves that would contain any beachheads. Moreover, rough calculations of Allied shipping capacities showed they had the tonnage on hand for only one major invasion per year in the Mediterranean. In any event, until the Allies seized southern Italy, they would be unable to provide sufficient air cover to support invasions farther north. Kesselring realized the critical nature of airpower to the entire Allied campaign scheme, and he therefore planned accordingly.

Another factor in the balance was Benito Mussolini. In late July the fascist dictator had been imprisoned by disgruntled Italians and held at the mountain resort of Gran Sasso. A German commando operation planned by Luftwaffe Gen. Kurt Student rescued Mussolini on 12 September and returned him to the Reich. Otto Skorzeny, who’d been appointed by Hitler to head up German special operations,

also got involved and did much to ensure the success of the raid. Mussolini’s rescue was a morale booster for the Germans, who were facing otherwise universally bad news that summer on both the Mediterranean and the eastern fronts. It also did much to give Hitler confidence that some kind of victory could be secured in southern Italy.

Hitler therefore ended up approving Kesselring’s approach over that of Rommel, though it was conditional approval. Rommel remained in command of numerous divisions in the Po valley as a strategic reserve in the event of another Allied invasion behind Tenth Army. Kesselring’s forces in southern Italy were restricted to those of Tenth Army, commanded by Gen. Heinrich von Vietinghoff.

An examination of the order of battle reveals the German forces in Italy at that stage of the campaign represented the single greatest large-scale mobile striking force they’d ever assembled in World War II. It had a higher proportion of mechanized to non-mechanized units of any German army-level command of the war. It included numerous panzer (armored), panzer grenadier (motorized) and Fallshirmjaeger units. The latter were Luftwaffe paratroop units, though by that time in the war actual jump-training had fallen off. Instead, their mission had shifted to becoming rapid-reaction units that could be air-transported anywhere on the Reich’s fronts to meet threats. Throughout the Italian campaign, the parachute divisions proved themselves some of the toughest defensive fighters of the war. ★

Field Marshal Kesselring (3rd from left) inspects German troops in the field

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up on the 16th. Kesselring ordered Tenth Army to fall back into a series of defensive lines south of Rome.

The Luftwaffe proved to be particularly effective. Its aircraft attacked Allied shipping in the Gulf of Salerno using, among other things, new Fritz-X radio- controlled bombs to inflict serious damage on Allied vessels as well as Italian naval units

that attempted to sail to Malta to join the Allies. The situation in the air, however, would soon turn around.

On the 27th, Eighth Army took Foggia while Fifth Army moved into Naples on 2 October. The Germans, though, didn’t attempt to make stands in those places. Instead, they fought only delaying actions aimed at slowing the Allied advance. Allied armies

driving north found blown bridges, mined ports and enemy ambushes. Rome was the culminating point of any campaign coming out of southern Italy, and Kesselring was willing to sacrifice territory to its south in order to keep secure the main prize itself. He would make his stand — or rather, a series of them — in fortified lines prepared in front of Rome.

Mid-October found the Allied armies at the Volturno River, where the Germans stood and fought. After some difficult infantry actions, the Allies crossed the Volturno — only to find themselves faced by yet more German defenses behind it, as well as by ever more abominable terrain, poor roads and worsening weather. By the end of the year the Allies were held up at the Gustav (or Winter) Line,

still well south of Rome, with German defenses centered on the formidable hilltop position of the abbey at Monte Cassino. At that time Eisenhower and Montgomery, along with some of the divisions and much of the logistical support, were transferred to Britain to begin final preparation for Overlord. The Allied advance in Italy ground to a halt. Kesselring could rest easy for a while. The Allies would not enter Rome until June of the following year.

After Action

In a sequence of events rare for military history, things can be said to have gone off according to plan for both sides in the opening stages of the Italian campaign. The two Allied armies landed successfully in Italy, while German Tenth Army moved into its countering posi-tions, all pretty much as planned. The Germans contained the Fifth Army beachhead, while delaying

actions kept Eighth Army in check. Kesselring’s counterattack almost succeeded in the destruction of the beachhead, but the Allies held. Kesselring’s divisions then fell back to their prepared defensive lines and held the Allies away from Rome, the ultimate objective of the campaign. The Allies, meanwhile, maneuvered the Germans out of the important objectives of Naples and Foggia.

In the short term the campaign was something of an Allied victory, since Fifth and Eighth Armies seized their initial objectives. At the same time Italy was knocked out of the war, though its support for the Allied cause remained anemic at best. Sadly, though, the Allies failed to take Rome and also failed to destroy the German force in Italy. The Germans thus accomplished their general objective in that they held the Italian capital and bogged down two Allied armies. In the end, Kesselring’s strategy worked (see sidebar). ✪

upper-left — British AA position at Mt. Cassino

lower-left — British troops go ashore at Salerno

below — British Churchill tank

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