THE END IN ITALY

THE NET CLOSES

The late summer and autumn of 1944 in Italy had seen a protracted defensive campaign by a somewhat heterogeneous German army, supported by large concentrations of forced labour units of the Todt Organisation. The German defence had been masterfully organised by Field-Marshal Kesselring to delay and hold General (later Field-Marshal) Alexander's attempts to cross the Appenines and advance to a line running from Venice to Brescia, and also to fend off an amphibious invasion that the Germans were (wrongly) convinced would come from the Bay of Venice. Such an invasion was in fact almost impossible because of the sandbanks offshore, but Kesselring appeared not to be aware of this, a fact that worked appreciably to the Allies' advantage by keeping six German divisions tied down to the defence of the coastline.

Hitler was of course aware that a successful advance to the Alps would present the Allies with not only the option of an assault on Austria and Germany from the South, but also a greatly-improved ability to bomb the Rumanian oilfields and the important aircraft factories in the South of Germany. He had made substantial resources available to Kesselring for the fortification of the 'Gothic Line', a defensive position running coast to coast across the mountains for 200 miles from a point near La Spezia on the Gulf of Genoa to Pesaro on the Adriatic. Every mountain route that Alexander and General Mark Clark could reasonably take to the Po valley was protected by heavily defended strongpoints, and when the battle for the Gothic Line began in earnest in August 1944, the Germans had installed 2,376 machine gun nests, 479 anti-tank and assault gun positions and four of the formidable 75mm Panther gun turrets. Had Alexander waited longer before attacking, there would have been 30 of these Panther installations, and the course of the battle would have been harder for the Allies.

In August, Kesselring had been able to field 26 divisions, including six armoured Panzer and Panzergrenadier divisions and six Italian divisions loyal to Mussolini's German-supported 'government in exile'. The Allies had only 20 divisions, following Alexander's having to give up seven divisions for 'Dragoon', the Allied amphibious landing in the South of France, but, as in every other theatre by this stage of the war, Allied air superiority was total. Alexander was able to call on the services of no less than 75 bomber and fighter-bomber squadrons, plus plenty of air transport and supply aircraft. Kesselring had only 170 aircraft of all types. Given that Kesselring had detached substantial forces to defend the Bay of Venice, the balance of power was in the Allies' favour, but not to a sufficient degree to make a rapid victory likely or predictable. In this context it should not be forgotten that the Italian partisans were now constantly and effectively active against the German army's depots and military installations behind German lines, and were directly beneficial to the Allies.

The Allies' originally-planned direct frontal assault against the Gothic Line in the mountains was re-planned early in August as a 'two-handed punch' towards both Ravenna and Bologna. The bulk of the British 8th Army under General Sir Oliver Leese - two Corps - was to attack towards Ravenna along the East coast via Route 16, and through the nearby hills to Route 9, the only available routes that did not cross the mountains. The other British Corps, XIII Corps, was to join II Corps of the US 5th Army for the assault on Bologna, and two more US Corps, plus the 6th South African Armoured Division, were to hold the remainder of the 5th Army line while the assault took place.

The snag, early in August, was that the entire 8th Army was in the mountains, positioned for the attack as originally planned. A massive secret operation was mounted to move the two Corps to the plain without the Germans finding out, and it succeeded brilliantly. When the attack on the coast came on August 25th, Kesselring did not take it seriously, believing that all the Allies' strength was far away in the mountains. By the time he discovered the truth it was too late, and the Polish, Canadian and British troops of the 8th Army were through the Gothic Line on a narrow front. By August 31st they held the heavily defended town of Montegridolfo, and on September 1st took Tavoleto. The Canadians suffered a great many casualties in fierce fighting, but succeeded in getting across the River Conca and establishing a bridgehead.

In the mountains, the 5th Army found the assault far more difficult and costly. Rough mountainous terrain made the advance slow, and gave the advantage to the defenders. Kesselring managed to get substantial reinforcements up to the front, and, during the first week of September, the Italian autumn once more provided the unremitting rain that had bedevilled the Allied campaign of a year before. The Air Forces could no longer guarantee the all-important 'aerial artillery' function, and the Allied advance ground to a halt. General Clark reviewed the situation, and regrouped for a set-piece attack against the German positions at their most vulnerable positions. On September 12th, with better weather permitting air support once more, the attack began again, this time with two corps on a narrow front against the Gothic Line fortifications near the Il Giorgo pass. By September 18th, Clark's army held seven miles of the Gothic Line defences, and the Americans began to fight their way towards Route 9 at Imola, where it was hoped that they would join up with the 8th Army.

Kesselring threw in almost all the reinforcements he had available in the area to prevent the US 88th Division reaching Imola, and although on September 27th the US troops were ten miles from the town, they were still no closer a week later after fierce fighting against four entire German divisions. The weather was now closing in, and the worsening conditions favoured the defenders. So General Clark abandoned his attempt on Imola for the time being, and pursued his major objective of reaching Bologna. On the plains of the Romagna, near the Adriatic coast to the East, the New Zealand, Greek and Canadian troops of the 8th Army had pushed both North and towards Route 9 from the other side, but the New Zealanders had become bogged down by the heavy rain on the banks of the River Fiumicino.

Clark's progress through the mountains towards Bologna was punctuated with heavy casualties in terrible conditions. Kesselring had reinforced the German 10th Army with five additional divisions, including the redoubtable 16th SS Panzer Division, and the Americans had to fight for every inch of the rocky terrain. Monte Grande fell to the US 88th Division on Octover 20th, byt by the 25th conditions were so bad, and so little progress was being made that General Clark gave the order to dig in. Both in the mountains and on the plain the intensity of the deluge was so great that bridges were swept away and rapid advances were virtually impossible. Not until just before Christmas could the offensive be resumed, and then it was only for a matter of days before Field-Marshal Alexander gave the order to return to the defensive as the bitterly cold winter weather closed in on the armies of both sides.

The Last Push into 1945 and Victory

During the lull of the winter, the Allied armies in Italy were substantially reinforced with new weapons; new better-armed tanks, armoured vehicles with wider tracks to cope with the soft ground, and tracked landing vehicles for use in the marshy areas around Lake Comacchio. Alexander had been appointed Supreme Commander in the Mediterranean in succession to Maitland Wilson, and as the winter began to recede, Allied morale was high. The Germans set to work with their huge forced labour organisation building yet more defences on every river line in the path of the Allied advance, and remorselessly trained the heavily reinforced 10th Army, now commanded by General Herr, for the struggle to come. Kesselring's Armies were now probably the best equipped facing the Allies anywhere in the European war, and the 10th Army, defending the Easter (Adriatic) sector had had a whole Parachute Corps of 30,000 men under General Heidrich newly added to it. General Senger, commanding the German 14th Army in the Western sector, defending the approach to Bologna, had the 51st Mountain Corps holding the line towards Genoa and the Mediterranean, and the 14th Panzer Corps providing the defence of Bologna itself.

By comparison, the strength of the Allied 15th Army had been reduced, it having lost three divisions to the quelling of civil war in Greece, and the Canadian I Corps to the Allied push in Holland. Alexander was down to 17 divisions in the field, but remained totally in command of the air, and with it, in the end, the battle. Between February and April 1945, the strategic bombing force in Italy was progressively increased, and by the time the April offensive began, there were some 4,000 Allied aircraft taking part. As early as February 6th the bombers had begun attacking the German supply routes through the Brenner Pass, and the all-important German fuel dumps. By April, every railway line North of the River Po had been cut in several places, and the German armies were doing battle with their supply problems to an increasing degree every day. As the weather improved, the Allied bombing intensified and the Germans became more aware that the date of the new Allied offensive could not be far off, Field Marshal Kesselring was suddenly recalled to Germany on March 8th to become Commander-in-Chief in the West, in succession to Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, and Colonel-General Heinrich von Vietinghoff-Scheel was appointed to succeed him as German Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean.

The plan for the Allied spring offensive was again based upon Alexander's favoured approach of the two-fisted thrust, but this time with two twists. A diversionary ( and yet nonetheless necessary) attack was mounted by the Commandos before the main offensive to clear the nearer shore and the islands of Lake Comacchio of German troops. The actual objective of this operation was to clear the way for the main advance by the 8th Army, almost the whole of which had been moved secretly to a position just North of Route 9, but the intention was that it should also deceive the German commanders into believing that the expected major landing in the vicinity of Venice was at last imminent. The second twist was to follow as the 5th Army began its attack towards Bologna, when elements of the 8th Army, instead of pushing ahead on the Eastern sector front, would cross Lake Comacchio in 'Fantail' tracked amphibious landing vehicles (the 56th Division) and break out from the newly-won Santerno bridgeheads (78th Division) in a pust to take Bastia. This, it was hoped, would cut the German line of withdrawal to the East.

But, between the two twists, it was necessary to win the Santerno bridge-heads. To do that, the 8th Army would first have to cross the Senio river, fight its way North-West to the Santerno, then cross that river in turn. In the evening of April 9th, after three hours of ceaseless bombing by Allied aircraft (one account says that 125,000 fragmentation bombs were dropped on German defenders along the Senio that afternoon), followed by four hours of mortar bombardment, the two divisions of V Corps, the 2nd New Zealand and the 8th Indian, plus the Polish II Corps, crossed the first river. That night, under fearsome conditions of fire, and under constant flame thrower attack, the Allied engineers built the bridges upon which the Allied armour was to cross. On the 10th, the Allied air assoult began again, with 1,600 heavy bombers dropping thousands more bombs on the German positions, and opening the way to the Santerno. The carnage was appalling, and the Allied army began to win the battle by sheer attrition of manpower. The next day, on the 11th April, the New Zealanders crossed the Santerno, thereby gaining their bridge-head, and more than 2,000 German prisoners.

Bad weather grounded the Allied aircraft temporarily, and delayed the next stage of the attack, but by the 14th April conditions were again good enough for the campaign to be resumed in earnest. On that day, the Poles took the heavily-defended town of Imola, the New Zealand Division pushed forward over the River Sillaro and the 78th Division, which had been steadily moving towards Bastia managed to take the bridge in the town, join up with the 56th Division and mount a joint attack on the road to the crucial gap in the terrain at Argenta.

Now General Truscott, who, since General Clark's promotion to command the 15th Army Group, was the commander of the 5th Army, launched his army into the attack in the Western sector from positions West of the road from Pistoia to Bologna. During the next four days, the Allied air forces flew more than 4,000 sorties in support of the assault, and it was reported that during the first half-hour of the attack more than 75,000 shells fell on the German mountain positions. Despite this intensity of fire-power, the 5th Army advanced scarcely more than two miles in three days, and it took a week of tough fighting before they managed to break out, by-passing Bologna to the West, as had been agreed under Alexander's plan, and advancing North.

General von Vietinghoff was now acutely aware that Hitler's standard form of order to any defensive force, by which he had been forbidden under any conditions to retreat, was about to cost him his army, as the 5th Army wheeled around him to the South-West, and the 8th Army did the same from the North-East. Unless he could retreat beyond the jaws of the pincer, his army was trapped. On April 20th, von Vietinghoff, in total defiance of Hitler, ordered a retreat to the already prepared defensive positions along the River Po, but his order was already too late. Argenta had been taken by the Allies, and the British 6th Armoured Division was moving at high speed towards Ferrara. The bridges across the Po were all either destroyed by the Allied air attacks, or totally blocked by burning or burnt-out German vehicles. German positions defended by Heidrich's1 Parachure Corps in Bologna, heavily threatened by the US 34th Division from the South, and by the Poles from the East, fell on the 21st April. The 5th Army, preceded by tactical air strikes every mile of the way, advanced amid the increasing ruins of the German armies towards the Po, and by the 23rd the first US soldiers were over the river - the 10th US Mountain Division claiming the honour of being first on the other side.

Now the right flank of the 5th Army, the 6th South African Division, was able to join up with the left flank of the 8th Army, and the pincer was complete. Behind them were 67,000 German casualties and 35,000 German prisoners. General von Senger succeeded, as did many of his troops, in retreating across the Po, but there was little left to fight for, even less to fight with, and overwhelming Allied superiority in every aspect of the battle. On April 25th, an Allied signal to the Italina partisans brought forth a major rising against the remaining German defenders, now little organised and unable to fight in a coherent way. Individual garrisons began to surrender - Churchill tells of the surrender of the 4,000 men of the Genoa garrison to one British liaison officer. On the 27th April, the 8th Army crossed the Adige on its way to Venice, and the 5th, which had already captured Verona, headed for Vicenza and Trento.

The Allied victory in Italy was complete. On May 2nd, recognising the situation and the many individual surrenders that had already taken place, the remaining German and Italian troops of Army Group C surrendered unconditionally. Almost a million men joined the ranks of the prisoners in Allied care.