Allied Blunders in Italy, the Soft Underbelly of Europe

This will be very interesting as it seems to a lightly talked about subject and overlooked in it's importance. Remember this front was the first to surrender to the Allies; Germany as a nation surrendered after this event.

Cheers!

 

To bomb the castle of monte Cassino was one of the greatest blunders here. Only after the historic abbey had been turned to rubble did the Germans take position there, and they found limitless possibilities to entrench...

 

General Mark Clark was the blunder

Putting Mark Clark in charge of the Italian Campaign was the blunder of the campaign. He was a chairborne ranger most of his career as Marshall's Chief of Staff. This may be a way to make rank quickly, but didn't give him any combat experience. He was facing a defensive genious in Kesselring, and his lack of ability cost a lot of lives.

 

A small off-topic question: Clark was the Chief of Staff to Marshal? Then wouldn't he be the chief of staff to the chief of staff? :-?
I mean, General George C. Marshal was the Chief of staff of the US armed forces, directly under the President, wasn't he?

 

Perhaps not truly a blunder, yet Alexander's not firing Mark Clark comes close to it!

 

I'm obliged to agree, especially after Clark's early offensives were such bloody disasters. When you hear of battalions being reduced to the size of platoons, with nothing to show for it, then something is definitely *wrong*! Of course, that brings up the question of who do you replace Clark with? My vote goes to Lucien Truscott.

 

The thing is, Italy is almost perfect defence country. It has hills and passes, rivers with bridges that can be blown, mountains with tunnels that can be demolished, etcetera. However the Allies were never much good at attacking, history shows this. So maybe the commander couldn't help their defeat. I think it's easy to blame Clark for this, but I don't know the value of such a judgment.

 

Allied commanders, in every theatre, won the war by their proven ability to mount attacks and defeat the enemy no matter how difficult the terrain. However, General Mark Clark was not one of them, more importantly he was guilty of a major military crime, not obeying orders.

By 26th May 1944, the entrapment of the bulk of von Vietinghoff's 10th Army had become a reality. Highway 6, bounded by mountains to the east, was now virtually the only way for the Germans to retreat.

With 8th Army advancing steadily from the south, led by units of the Canadian Army who had successfully crossed the river Melfa, and US VI Corps, commanded by the aggressive General Truscott, thrusting its way towards Valmontone on Highway 6 (Operation Shingle's second objective), the jaws of the trap were about to be sprung. Sadly it was not to be, as General Truscott was ordered to divert the bulk of his forces to advance north on Highway 7, Via Appia.

In satisfying the ego of 5th Army's Commander to be the first to enter Rome, a great opportunity had been squandered. The responsibility for the subsequent loss of so many lives is General Mark Clark's alone - it is a matter for conjecture how many of the nineteen men of the NIH, now resting for ever in a foreign land, would have been reunited with loved ones. Of all that has been written about the events of May 1944, perhaps Dan Kurzmann's book The Race for Rome is the one most objectively written.

The egocentrism of the 5th Army Commander, whose decision allowed so many of the enemy to escape and fight another day, is recorded by Eric Sevareid, a well-respected American war correspondent, when the 1st Special Service Force was held up on the outskirts of Rome, during the early afternoon of 4 July. Major General Geoffrey Keyes, II Corps Commander, arrived in a jeep and challenged Brigadier General Robert Frederick, 1st Special Force commander: "General Frederick, what's holding you up here?"
"The Germans, sir," Frederick replied.
"How long will it take you to get across the city limits?" Keyes asked.
"The rest of the day. There are a couple of SP guns up there."
"That will not do. General Clark must be across the city limits by four o'clock."
"Why?"
"Because he has to have his photograph taken." Keyes said.
Frederick mulled that over briefly and replied, "Tell the general to give me an hour."

After men of the 1st Special Service Force had silenced the guns, the way was clear for 5th Army commander to have his picture taken in the Holy City. His brief moment of glory was quickly overshadowed as, two days later, the events of D-Day unfolded.

 

Canadian airborne units vs. German airborne units, I think in the port town or Ortona; east coast of Italy across from Rome.
This was a nasty battle where the casualty rates were very high, the 'dirty tricks' mining of buildings with HE and then allowing the building to be taken by attrition. Then when the enemy has moved into the building blowing up the entire structure; in one instance out of 28 men there were only two Canadian survivors, the Canadians obliged the Germans with the same.

I met two Canadian vets and one German vet that fought in this battle, it was fierce and cemented the German soldiers' belief that the Canadian troops were the allied's version of the SS.

Cheers!

 

Interesting how Hitler ordered the German army to fall back to pre-built defensive positions if they were ever threatened with being overrun or outflanked, In Italy.
This caused a very high caualty rate amoungst the Allied troops.

One thing I think is very interesting about how wars are fought on the front lines. The Monestary of Mount Cassino was not occupied by the Germans until the Allies bombed the hell out of it, the Germans then entrenched themselves their because if the Allies thought it to be important then they should defend it.


Cheers!

 

No offence to your well-documented and heartful story, but I have to note this. I said that the Allies were not good at attacking because of a huge list of operations where their skills turned out to dissapoint everyone and cost numerous lives. The Allies, even after their luck had turned and the Germans were on the retreat, fouled up so many attacks that I have come to doubt their ability to do so at all.
A few examples are Monte Cassino, the Anzio beachhead, operation Baytown, the breaking of the Gustav line and the subsequent Hitler and Gothic lines, Epsom-Charnwood-Goodwood, the failure to seize the Scheldt estuary and the operations in doing so later on, Market-Garden, the operations in Huertgen Forest and against Aachen, counterattacks on the Bulge, the crossing of the Saar river, operation Veritable, the attacks on the Narva line in the Baltic states, the crushed attack of 2nd Shock Army in the same area, the siege of Prague, the assault on the Oder-Seelow line and the horrendous casualties on taking Berlin, and it keeps going on like this.

 

When the tide of war turned in 1942, the enemy began to be consistantly out-generalled. Of course every Allied attack did not go exactly as was hoped, war is not an exact science, but the fact is most were successful, otherwise the Wehrmacht, Italian and Japanese forces would not have been defeated. Above all, every attack should have a definitive purpose without which they should not have been mounted. Mark Clark's committing 36th US Division to crossing the Rapido on 21st January, 1944, most certainly falls into the latter category.

A question. Of the examples you quoted, what is the rational for opining that three of them were "fouled up"?
1. The Gustav Line was broken after six days of fighting.
2. The two-mile wide Hitler Line was broken in less than twelve hours.
3. The twenty-mile wide Gothic Line was broken in ten days.

 

Then why did it take them a year to get from Salerno to Rome?!

 

Logistics were a key role in that aspect, there is no suggestion that the Gewrmans just rolled over and died. They fought dogidly for every yard until these defensive lines were installed and manned.
Attrition in the Italian campaign is a huge factor because of the terrain; mountains, rivers, single lane tracks, not highways as of today, weather conditions to the extreme.

The hit and run techniques used by the Germans were done with complete expertise. Here is one factor on the experience of the Allied troops vs. the German vetrans; most of the 'shock troops' that landed in Normandy became vetrans on the Italian front.
The bulkj og the German defenses in Normandy were green to regular, with a couple of hardened and/or elite divisions caught there when being rested and refitted to go back to the Eastern front.

With that said I hope for to now realize the difference between having at least a vetran army to attack or defend a position, there is nothing I can say or do to explain to someone, even a genius of rocket science, the fighting differencies of a soldier.
There is a saying my squad had, "if you think you are dead", meaning that the training yoyu get in BTM is so you understand the difference between reacting to any battle field condition instantaneously; if you think your mind will stop.

We left the officers to the task of thinking, it was the only time we got a chance to rest or sleep.

In no way do I think you or anyone else jusat doesn't get it, there are many things in life that I just don't get for the life of me, where others look at me and shake their head.
We are all capable and have geniuses, maybe even more than one, but then that is when experience comes in to play.

Cheers!

 

Eight months does not a year make!

You yourself gave a partial answer: "Italy is almost perfect defence country. It has hills and passes, rivers with bridges that can be blown, mountains with tunnels that can be demolished, etcetera."

The Germans had used the rugged terrain to create perhaps the most forbidding series of defensive positions that had yet confronted an attacking army in World War II. The mountains bristled with murderous, mutually supporting strong points, each of which the Allies would have to overcome or neutralise if the advance was to continue. Before the Gustav Line (which stretched across to the Adriatic) could be reached, both the Barbara and the Bernhard Lines had to be broken.

However strong and intimidating were the German defensive positions,
but for the autumn and winter rains that commenced in October they were not invulnerable, as was later proven. For those who fought during the Italian winters, crossing the many swollen rivers each was a D-Day unto itself. It is unfortunate, from a distance as were the smug-faced crowds of WW I, far too many cannot comprehend "the hell where youth and laughter go."

 

Sorry my head must have been somewhere else. I presumed for some reason that the sluggish Allied progress in Itlay was caused by these defensive lines only, but of course every hill and pass was a defensive position that had to be taken. Thank you.

 

Exactly. In that terrain, Allied superiority in numbers of both troops and tanks were negated. Even their eventual air superiority didn't help as much as it later did in France.

 

The impression I get is that the war in Italy was a far tougher proposition than most people give credit. Ironically, France was the soft underbelly.

mdhome

 

Well now you are not entirely giving the Atlantic wall its due credit. This was indeed a formidable barrier, and the idea of having to breech it postponed the invasion for a further 2 years. Southern France, now, was not much of a challenge for the forces participating in Dragoon, as it was held only by the second-line units of the 19th Army. But this terrain would not have been available for any invasion without the fighting for Italy in the preceding years.

Italy was in no way the soft underbelly Churchill had envisioned, but this could have been concluded by looking at the map; the thing is, nabbing away at exposed parts of Axis strength was a literal part of British army doctrine. The Conquest of Italy also cleared the mediterranean of Axis forces and vanquished the Italian forces as an enemy, and it opened the way for a possible invasion of southern France.

 

If I remember someone in the Allied staff was quoted to making that statement; I wonder if it was the same one who told the Canadian feild generals at Dieppe, 'DON'T WORRY THIS WILL BE A PIECE OF CAKE'.

Cheers!