In July of 1943, British American and Canadian troops had landed on
the beaches of Sicily and were beginning to fight their way inland. But there was
a problem. More than two weeks into the operation, the Allied leaders had failed
to decide what they would do next. The Americans wanted to take the most direct
route into the Third Reich via France. But the British wanted more time to build their forces.
The debate was fierce, but on the 25th of July 1943, everything changed.
The Fascist Grand Council deposed the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini. His successor,
Marshal Badoglio, began secret peace negotiations with the Allies. Now, the Allies planned to take
advantage of the coup and knock Italy out of the war with an invasion of the Italian mainland.
The invasion was supposed to be a simple one,
capitalising on a wavering Italy and a distracted Germany. But the reality
was very different. In this second episode of our series, sponsored by Company of Heroes 3,
we’ll be taking examining the Allied invasion of Italy and just how close it came to catastrophe.
With secret Italian peace negotiations underway, it was vital that the Allies
took the initiative in Italy before the Germans had a chance to take control of
the country. Planning was frantic, but as the flighting in Sicily drew to a close,
the operation took shape. The invasion was two pronged.
First, troops of Bernard Montgomery’s 8th Army would land on the toe of Italy at
Reggio di Calabria in Operation Baytown. They would attempt to tie down the Axis forces who
had escaped across the straights weeks before. Then, troops of Mark Clark’s 5th Army would land
at Salerno, in operation Avalanche. They would capture Naples and the airfields at Foggia to
cut off any Axis escape. This would coincide with the announcement of the armistice and would be
accompanied by an American airborne landing near Rome to help Italian forces in defending the city.
If everything went to plan, Italian forces would be able to delay the Germans,
allowing the Allies to take the south of the country with limited interference. It seemed
that a short campaign was within their grasp. On the 3rd of September 1943, Marshall Badoglio
signed the secret armistice with the Allies. The Italians were out of the war. On the same day,
Montgomery’s men embarked for the invasion. But their landings did not unfold as planned.
The Landings at Reggio de Calabria were straightforward. The distance across the
Strait of Messina was only three miles so the troops could cross on landing craft without
the need to disembark from Naval vessels. The aim of those Landings was to tie down
axis forces and stop them from retreating further north. But as General Montgomery
had predicted the landing did not provoke a German counter-attack. Instead Field Marshall
Kesselring instructed his subordinate General Herr to conduct a fighting retreat. Impeding
the British advance with the use of mines and the destruction of bridges.
The Germans were well prepared for the Allied landings. While a small force
slowed Montgomery’s advance, Kesselring concentrated the bulk of his troops to
the north near Naples where he expected the main Allied attack to fall. He had orders
to delay any landing, before falling back to defensive line North of Rome.
They were also well prepared for the Italian armistice. Though Marshal Badoglio had publicly
proclaimed that Italy would continue fighting for the Axis, Adolf Hitler was
sceptical. He had devised Operation Asche which would use Erwin Rommel’s Army Group
B alongside Kesselring’s forces to seize Italian territory and neutralise army should they defect.
The Italians were expecting the armistice to be announced on September 12th, giving them time
to prepare a defence of Rome. Instead, they learned that Eisenhower planned to make the
announcement on September 8th. Badoglio begged for more time, but with landing craft already
enroute to Salerno the Allied commander refused. On the evening of the 8th, the announcement
was made. But the botched execution would have terrible consequences. The American
airborne landings in Rome were abandoned, while an additional landing at Taranto codenamed Operation
Slapstick was hurriedly put together. Meanwhile, German troops moved in to disarm the Italians.
The Italian surrender was a complete shock to the officers who commanded Italian troops. The
Italian forces defending Rome were substantial and there was an attempt to defend the city from
the German assault. But this was undermined by the flight of Marshall Badoglio and King Victor
Emmanuel III from the city. The confusion that reigned in the Italian Armed Forces
assisted the well-executed German plan that saw hundreds of thousands of Italians taken into
captivity. The swift action by the Germans dashed the Allied hope of a quick victory.
In the following days, the Germans would set up a puppet state in the parts of Italy they still
controlled and break Mussolini out of prison to run it. At the same time, Allied troops
embarked their landing craft for Italy. At Taranto, the landings faced almost no
resistance and the British paratroopers quickly took control of the town and
its port. But the troops at Salerno were in for the fight of their lives.
Their commander, Mark Clark believed he could achieve tactical surprise and chose
not to employ a preliminary Naval bombardment. But he was wrong. As the first wave of troops
approached the beaches, a German loudspeaker sparked into life and proclaimed “Come on
in and give up. We have you covered.” The bloody battle of Salerno was about to begin.
At 3:30am, the British and American troops hit the beaches of Salerno. But as they waded ashore,
fire from the 16th Panzer Division in the hills above Salerno rained down onto
the beaches causing mayhem and confusion. On the left US Rangers took the mountain
passes to Naples with minimal resistance, and British Commandos fought hard for a foot hold
in Salerno itself. Meanwhile, British 10th Corps in the centre and US 9th
Corps on the right managed to secure a small beachhead, but were ominously split in two.
As they attempted to advance inland, the Allied troops then came under attack from German tanks.
In the face of the German armoured onslaught British infantryman had to rely on weapons such
as the PIAT, which stands for the projector infantry anti-tank. The PIAT was designed
to provide infantry with a readily portable weapon capable of stopping a tank. The range
of the pier was a rather short so it required infantrymen to come perilously close to the tank
for the chance of an effective strike. At the Vietri sul Mare, three miles west of Salerno,
No.2 Commando were able to stop a tiger tank after multiple hits with their PIAT.
The Allied soldiers were under severe pressure as they fought to stabilise defensive lines.
Overnight, new German units arrived from the north and stopped the British
from capturing the town of Battipaglia the following day. They also denied the use of
Montecorvino airfield to the Allies, which restricted their air support.
But in the south German units ran out of fuel and failed to arrive in time. As a result,
the US forces expanded their beachhead and closed the gap between themselves and the British. All
the time Montgomery’s units were advancing at a snail’s pace through the toe and boot of Italy.
Offshore, the Luftwaffe mounted over 550 sorties in the first three days of the invasion. Their
targets however, were not the Allied troops landing in force but the ships in Salerno bay
which were finally unleashing their huge firepower against the German defenders.
The Germans did have one answer to the massive Allied firepower that sat in Salerno Bay.
Throughout September they repeatedly deployed the world's first precision guided weapon - the
Fritz X. The Fritz X was specifically designed to target cruisers and battleships. The bomb was
guided by a radio control link which sent signals to the spoilers in the tail fins. The operator
had to keep the ammunition in sight whilst the pilot of the aircraft had to maintain course.
On the 11th of September 1943, the American light Cruiser the USS Savannah was hit by a
Fritz X which passed through the roof of a gun turret. The bomb exploded in the lower ammunition
handling room. 197 United States Sailors were killed and 15 severely wounded in the attack.
After four days of fighting, the situation was becoming more and more precarious. The beached
was still shallow and the Germans were seemingly reinforcing faster than the Allies. But things
would only get worse. With Montgomery’s men still miles away, Kesselring had concentrated
elements of 6 German divisions ready for a massive counter-attack. As the 13th of September arrived,
they were poised to drive downhill, straight in between the British and American forces.
The German units were highly mobile with tanks and armored vehicles. They quickly
concentrated and identified weak points in the Allied line, they exploited those holes,
before regrouping and concentrating to attack in a different direction. The attacks were costly
for the Germans. The 16th Panzer Division's attack in the center caused the loss of more
than half of its tanks. Still by the night of the 13th of September the Germans appear to be
on the brink of victory as they threatened to split the Allied beachhead in two.
As dawn broke on the 14th of September the mood was gloomy. All unloading was ceased as supply
men joined the combat troops digging in for a final stand. Meanwhile initial preparations were
made to evacuate the Salerno beachhead. The only good news was the arrival of vital reinforcements
in the form of the 82nd airborne division, whose landing near Rome had been cancelled days before.
At 8am the Germans attacked again, having received yet more reinforcements. But this time the Allies
held. Devastating supporting fires from the naval guns in Salerno Bay proved pivotal and
scores of German tanks were destroyed. By the end of the day, evacuation plans were
out the window. The Allies were here to stay. After the war, Kesselring stated that with two
more panzer divisions transferred from Rommel’s Army Group B his forces could have defeated the
Allied landings at Salerno. Instead, after a few more attacks, the German forces began to withdraw
northwards and Allied finally began to pour into Salerno. On September 20th, 5th Army finally
linked up with 8th army and together began their pursuit. For their next objectives, Naples and
Foggia, the Allies were expecting an even tougher fight, but they were in for another surprise.
In the days following the Allied landing at Salerno a febrile atmosphere had been
brewing in Naples. When an announcement was made that all men of working age
would be rounded up for deportation to work camps in either Northern Italy or Germany,
the refusal to comply with this order surged into a civilian uprising. Their
efforts prevented the Germans from organizing a defense of the city, but the consequences were
severe. As the Germans withdrew from the city they perpetrated acts of destruction such as
burning the university library and the state archives. The Germans also planted explosive
devices with time delays. Shattered water, gas, and electricity supplies, wrecked sanitation,
and a major food shortage greeted the allies when they liberated the city on the 1st of October.
On the same day, 8th Army found Foggia abandoned. The Germans had changed their strategy.
Hitler had initially decreed that the Germans should only defend Northern Italy. But after
the defence of Salerno, he was persuaded that the mountainous terrain of central Italy would
favour defensive fighting. Now Kesselring, given command of all German forces in Italy,
planned for fighting withdraw across a series of defensive fortifications,
culminating in the fearsome Gustav Line. There he would hold the Allies for as long as possible.
The Germans slowed the British advance by laying numerous mines. The most famous was
the S-mine or Bouncing Betty as the Americans named it. When triggered a propellant charge
sent the mine upwards to about chest height. Then the main charge detonated
and the material inside became shrapnel spraying horizontally maiming or killing
anyone in the area. The safest response was to drop to the ground as quickly as
possible. These mines became emblematic of the static attritional warfare that was to follow.
The Allies now controlled Southern Italy. The fighting had been costly, over 12,500 Allied
casualties to this point, with the Germans suffering just over a quarter of that number.
Ahead of them lay even tougher German defences, and autumn rains turning the ground into a
quagmire. But as the Allied soldiers fought the mud, their commanders were grappling with a new
question. How much further should Allies go? Whichever answer they chose one thing was
clear. The supposedly soft underbelly of Europe had turned out to be a tough old gut.