Was Italian Campign worth effort and casaulties ?

From September 1943 to April 1945 two allied armies battled from Salerno to Po Valley , one of the harshest and most easily defended terrain with mediocre or bad commanders against a very well directed and experienced adversary. In Italy casualty and AWOL lists were higher than any other front. I wonder was it worth it ?

Benefits of Italian Campign :

1) Put Italy out of War : Althrough Italian Armed Forces were paper tiger compared Wehrmacht or Allies it is a worthy goal ( all manpower and industrial output of Italy was out of picture althrough when Germans took over Italy they reclaimed most of them ! Italian Army , Navy , Airforce were done for , Mediterrenian sea routes were secure ) but Italy was almost out of war when Mussolini was deposed in August as a result of Operation Husky , invasion of Italy....So was it necessary to land Salerno and Regio di Calabria for follow up ?

2) Keeping as much as German reserves tied up in Italy : This is one of the most circumstancial arguement I have ever heard. German defending in Italy were numerically inferior and their supplies were scarce but they performed brilliantly under Kesselring. Same thing can not be said for Allies which had everything but botched up most of the operations they initiated and advanced in slug pace. So Germans with minimum resources kept vast Allied armies tied up in Italian peninsula and kept them far away from Fatherland not the other way around. Who knows if Normandy landings hadn't occured maybe Kesselring might even take reinforcements and recapture Naples with a counter attack in 1944. ( I know a distinct possibility but Germans had a tendancy to surprise their adversaries even at the end of war )

3) Capturing Foggia airfields to initiate strategic bomber attacks against Reich from south : Again a tactical gain but considering the arguable success of Strategic Bombing again was it worth it ?


Note : If there is any spelling mistake sorry. English is not my native language

 

The western allies had no choice, Stalin by this time had lost patience with Roosevelt and Churchill over the continual delay of an European invasion by US and British forces, and so the chose the soft underbelly of Italy which was in effect the continuence of Operation Torch, it was totally worth it it knocked out Italy as an enemy (eventually Italy became an ally) and for the German it diverted considerable resources away from the French and Russian Fronts

 

I think that the defensive advantages that Italy offered to the Germans also appealed to the Allies - given that the offensive frailties of the Allied armies seen in the Torch campaign and the poor coordination of Allied armies, navies and air forces, the Italian gig was a limited risk, offered airfields for the Allied strategic bombers, created a latent threat to the German position in the Balkans and southern France and made the Mediterranean an Allied lake. The supply infrastructure of the Western Med was put to use and an additional drain imposed on the German army which had to withdraw forces from France and also extend the area in France where they were garrisoned to replace Italian forces in the south. Looked on from this point of view it was a relatively cheap campaign which forced many changes for the better on the Allies in organisation, equipment and expectatons.

 

Squeeth

I see you say "the Italian gig was a limited risk"

I know that at my age I can't be expected to understand all the nuances of modern phraseology but in the interests of the many who are no longer here, I have to tell you it was never a "gig" and, in my humble view, never a "limited risk".

According to Wikipedia, it is estimated that between September 1943 and April 1945 some 90,000 Allied and 110,000 German soldiers died in Italy.

Ron

 

Fair point, Ron.

At the time it was launched, the campaign probably looked like the best, and maybe only, option for the Allies. It was another case of what looks easy on the map isn't so easy on the ground, and there was also that awkward factor of WWII - the Germans.

The Campaign degenerated into a war of attrition which certainly contributed to the UK's 'manpower shortage' in Normandy.

 

Dear Ron, my use of language has perhaps obscured the meaning I intended. I was speaking in strategic terms. I didn't intend my language to imply that the Italian campaign was a holiday. My point about limited risk was intended to convey the point that a big failure in Italy was unlikely because if the Germans had tried an offensive strategy, this would have transferred the burden of terrain to them. Much of what happened in Italy had lessons which were well taken and I suspect made the Normandy 'gig' less bloody for the Allies than it turned out to be.

 

Dear Squeeth

Thank you for your clarification.

I accept that it was not your intention to "diss" those who served in the CMF, as it was then known. and that you never considered wartime Italy to have "been a holiday".

What you did remind me of however, was the German propaganda leaflet I have in my Army Album that clearly illustrates this point.

The inside of the leaflet showed that for once the German propagandist had got it about right !

 

I agree. I think Italian Campign taught much more lessons about warfare to Allies which was put in use at Normandy. Aliied commanders and soldiers got more experienced, North Africa campign wasn't enough for that alone.

 

I am at a loss to see a connexion between my comments and nazi propaganda but since you were there (with Uncle Harold - 7th Amd Div) I won't labour the point. My opinion about the value of Italy has come through reading Amazon.co.uk: Tug of War: The Battle for Italy 1943-45 (Pen & Sword Military Classics): Books: Dominick Graham,Shelford Bidwell Bidwell and Graham. Perhaps you know it?

 

Squeeth

I am afraid that I don't remember seeing your Uncle Harold there, but I won't labour the point either

Ron

 

Ron,
Can I say quite firmly, please don't ever hesitate to share any of your anecdotes or show us your mementoes.

They are always tenfold more interesting than whatever speculative attempts at history we manage to rattle on about, and never irrelevant.

Cheers.
Adam.

 

Adam

As the Japanese stamp collector used to say

"Philately will get you anywhere"

and Cheers to you !

Ron

 

The big question might be more whether or not the Italian campaign was fought intelligently. The answer to that would be mostly, no. The problem is that most things like this, you learn by making mistakes and getting rid of idiot leadership.

 

I've really never understood this line of thinking...that the Western Allies were forced to invade Italy because "Stalin had lost patience with the continual delays" regarding an invasion of Europe. What was Stalin going to do...make a separate peace with Hitler...doubtful.

 

I agree it's doubtful and with the benefit of 60+ years' hindsight, maybe even apparently ridiculous.

But maybe we should keep in mind that only two years previously, the USSR had been firmly linked with Germany. Memories of 1917 were still fresh in the minds of the Allied leadership. Even today, when negotiating with Russians, one never quite knows exactly what they are going to do.

 

Who didn't negotiate with Hitler? No doubt the Munich Agreement was fresh in the minds of the Soviet leadership. Have you considered the effect on UK-US opinion if the Allied armies had twiddled their thumbs for a year?

Oddly enough, Stalin of all people was the first leader to take military action to enforce the Treaty of versailles!

 

And have you considered the effect that the the concentration of effort in Europe did have on US opinion, which would have preferred that effort to be focused on the Pacific...?

 

The Pacific War? Hmmm, less of a sideshow than Italy but Germany First was unquestionably correct. Since when have America's rulers treated adverse opinion as anything other than an obstacle to be finessed?

 

What action did Stalin take to enforce the treaty of Versailles?

Sideshow? Are you forgetting that at the time Italy was the Show in Europe? The Pacific war a sideshow too? What then is the Main Event? The Eastern Front?

Why would you say that Germany was the main threat to the US in 41?

 

He made the Curzon Line (or thereabouts) the Soviet border.

The preparations for Overlord began long before 1944.

Germany was the main threat because German warmaking potential was far greater than Japan's and Japan's war only affected commodity producing areas of the world. Europe was far more valuable to the USA - all that industry, infrastructure, export markets . . .Germany had some nuclear potential as well.