I was reading a book the other day that claimed that the invasion of Southern France was one of the biggest strategic blunders of the Allies. Their reasoning was that the German forces in the South of France simply retreated without being encircled or destroyed, and the whole operation had no effect on the Normandy campaign. On the other hand, it stole resources from Italy and thus prevented a swift pursuit of German forces and allowed them time to get settled in on the Gothic Line, which the weaker Allied forces took months to break I wondered if the brains and knowledge of the members here would have any insight or opinion on this
No, it was not a strategic blunder. It did run into a few issues, mostly related to logistics. However, logistics was the factor that was hamstringing the main Allied effort in the western front as well. The allies had the shipping and material but getting it ashore and to the forward units was the chokepoint. The capture of the ports of Marseilles and Toulon and the rail system in southern France resulted in a third of all supplies coming into western Europe coming through those ports by early October. In September 1944 the supply situation was slowing and stalling the allied advance/pursuit in on the western front as well as in southern France. The logistical network captured during the operations in southern France in large part alleviated this. Plus, a large portion of France was liberated in several weeks, another front for the Germans to defend against was opened and German forces that could have been shifted to resist the main effort were tied up, reducing their defensive options against the main advance.
I read something like that with the James Holland book Italy's Sorrow and in a bio of Field Marshal Alexander. It looks like the juice wasn't worth the squeeze.
Marseilles alone was worth it from a logistical standpoint. For a commitment of less than 20 percent of the Allied effort on the ground it generated about one-third of the logistical throughput of the campaign in Europe. Without it and those forces landed there it is unlikely the Allies could have anchored their southern wing in Europe, which would have left the lower Rhine frontier Strasbourg to Basel and Geneva-La Rochelle open. The number of troops that would have had to be committed to secure that would have been unsupportable through northwest Europe.
Well 20% was my WAG without really digging. The Allies committed roughly six divisions, plus a rump airborne division to DRAGOON. By 15 August 1944, the UK had committed 16 divisions and the Americans 23 (including 2d French AD) in Normandy. So actually 15.4 percent of the troops committed to get one-third of the logistics onto the Continent. Well worth it and Italy was going to go nowhere very fast even if VI Corps and the CEF had stayed around longer.
Perhaps the question should be whether continuing the Italian campaign was worthwhile once the main Allied forces were established in France. France was the decisive theater, where the full force of Allied, especially American, armies could be brought to bear and could advance into Germany. As others have noted, Anvil and particularly Marseilles were vital to the support of the main effort. Most of the value of the Italian campaign had been achieved by the end of 1943: Italy was out of the war, indeed on the Allied side. Germany had had to replace Italian troops in their occupied territories. The Allies could supply and support the Yugoslav partisans. Their air forces had opened a southern front. Sardinia and Corsica, vital bases for the invasion of France, had fallen into Allied hands almost by default, giving no indication of the Allies' next move. Around twenty German divisions were tied down in Italy - by around twenty Allied divisions with vastly greater supporting elements and logistic requirements. Italy was some of the best defensive terrain in Europe, the worst place for a mechanized army to try to sustain an offensive.
In the book that inspired my post, the author wanted Italy cleared out so Western Allied troops could be further into Central Europe by the war's end, which in his view would have meant the Iron Curtain would be further east. Personally I do not believe this for a moment. Even had Italy fallen sooner and the forces there had been able to pass the Alps with impunity, their only real destinations were Austria (Western side of the curtain historically) or Yugoslavia (good luck stopping Tito)
That was part of the rationale for pressing the advance up Italy, but it would have made clear to Stalin that his allies were more interested in forestalling him than in defeating the common enemy. Good point about Tito. While he was glad to accept the western Allies' support, he was equally determined not to let them make any significant move into Yugoslavia. When the British set up a small base on the Adriatic coast, Tito insisted that it be withdrawn. There was also a standoff when Allied forces finally reached Trieste. You never get something for nothing. Greater emphasis on Italy would be at the expense of the main campaign through France and into Germany, especially if, as this author suggests, they omitted the landings in southern France. The Allies would have been remarkably foolish if trying to gain a foothold in Yugoslavia allowed Stalin to penetrate deeper into Germany.
Carronade and Ricky have already mentioned the Alps. If sufficient forces were left in Italy, having eventually cleared the north of Italy, the only possible directions then were west, where of course Anvil could have landed many, many months earlier, or east, toward Hungary, but not north, crossing the Alps in any force being unlikely. Could the Allies have there made a penetration into Central Europe before the Russians? With supplies coming from Genoa? Dead end.
