1944: The War In Italy
In Casablanca, Morocco, in January 1943, Allied leaders decided to use their massive military resources in the Mediterranean to launch an invasion of Italy, which British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965) called the “soft underbelly of Europe.” The objectives were to remove Italy from World War II, secure the Mediterranean Sea and force Germany to divert some divisions from the Russian front and other German divisions from northern France, where the Allies were planning their cross-Channel landing at Normandy, France.
The Italian Campaign, from July 10, 1943, to May 2, 1945, was a series of Allied beach landings and land battles from Sicily and southern Italy up the Italian mainland toward Nazi Germany.
Meanwhile, the German command deployed 16 new divisions on the Italian mainland. German leader Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) did not want to let the Allies establish air bases in Italy that could threaten Germany’s southern cities as well as its primary oil supplies in Romania. He instructed his army group commander in southern Italy, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring (1885-1960), to make the Allies pay dearly for every inch of their advance.
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Under the resourceful Commander Kesselring, German forces set up several defensive lines across the narrow Italian peninsula. The southernmost of these, the Gustav Line, ran just behind Monte Cassino. Despite Allied air superiority across Italy, it took Allied soldiers four grueling battles over several months to break through heavily fortified Monte Cassino and the Gustav Line. The Allied breakout in May 1944 exposed Kesselring’s main forces to a potential trap by advancing Allied armies from Anzio and Cassino. However, in a controversial and little-understood decision, U.S. General Mark Clark (1896-1984) contravened his orders by moving northwest to capture Rome instead of cutting off the German soldiers retreating from Cassino. His decision allowed a sizable German army to escape and possibly squandered an opportunity for a quick resolution of the grinding Italian Campaign.
As General Clark’s Fifth U.S. Army moved into Rome on June 4, 1944, the D-Day landings in Normandy, scheduled for June 6, took priority over the Italian Campaign.
The Second Front in France
The allied plan for an invasion across the English Channel on German-occupied France gathered steam in 1943. In November 1943, Adolf Hitler, anticipating an invasion along France’s northern coast, put Erwin Rommel in charge of defense operations in the region, though they did not have definite information yet on exact location of Allied landing. In January 1944, General Dwight Eisenhower was appointed commander of Operation Overlord. In the days preceding the invasion, the Allies carries out a massive deception operation to make the Germans think the main invasion target was Pas-de-Calais (the narrowest point between Britain and France) rather than Normandy Eisenhower selected June 5, 1944, as the date for the invasion which was, however, delayed for 24 hours because of bad weather. More than 5,000 ships and landing craft carrying troops and supplies left England for the trip across the Channel to France, while more than 11,000 aircraft were mobilized to provide air cover and support for the invasion.
The amphibious invasions began at 6:30 am on June 6. The allied forces faced slight opposition at beaches codenamed Gold, Juno, Sword, and Utah. Resistance was heavy at Omaha beach where 2,000 American soldiers lost their life. However, by day’s end, approximately 156,000 Allied troops had successfully stormed Normandy’s beaches.
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For their part, the Germans suffered from confusion in planning. At first, Hitler believed the invasion was a distraction from the real attack about to take place in the north. He, therefore, refused to release nearby divisions to join the counterattack. Reinforcements had to be called from further afield, causing delays. He also hesitated in calling for armored divisions to help in the defense. Moreover, the Germans were hampered by effective Allied air support, which took out many key bridges and forced the Germans to take long detours, as well as efficient Allied naval support, which helped protect advancing Allied troops.
By the end of August 1944, the Allies had reached the Seine River, Paris was liberated and the Germans had been removed from northwestern France, effectively concluding the Battle of Normandy. The Allied forces then prepared to enter Germany, where they would meet up with Soviet troops moving in from the east.
The Drive On Germany
At the conclusion of the Normandy invasion, Allied forces rapidly advanced across France and into Belgium. Carrying attack on a broad scale, they demolished German resistance and strove towards the German frontier. Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, commanding the 21st Army Group wished to attack over the Lower Rhine into the industrial Ruhr Valley. To accomplish this Montgomery developed Operation Market-Garden. A two stage operation, it attempted to break through the German lines and move the whole of the British Army across the Rhine River into Germany. The assault would begin with the landing of three Allied airborne divisions behind German lines in order to seize key bridges necessary to take them over the Rhine. The success of the operation was hindered by the fact that several German units had already been placed in the vicinity of Allied landing areas. This meant that Germans very quickly and successfully countered Allied airborne forces. By the beginning of October, serious shortages of gasoline led to an almost complete shutdown of the Allied movement. This breathing space gave Hitler the opportunity to plan for a major push in the west to regain the lost advantage.
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The planned offensive came to be known as the Battle of Bulge. It turned out to be the largest battle fought in the Western Front in Europe during World War II. The German army intended to drive a wedge between the American and British armies in France and the Low Countries and recapture the port of Antwerp in The Netherlands to deny the Allies use of the port facilities. The German attack began on December 16 with major artillery barrage along the Ardennes that particularly impacted the American lines. The crux of the battle centered on the important road junction at Bastogne where Germans and American fought to take control of the town.
On December 26, Allied force defending Bastogne received a relief force from Lieutenant General George S. Patton’s Third Army. When Patton struck with three divisions the following day, the German ring around Bastogne was broken.
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By this time, the Nazi offensive was running out of fuel, literally and figuratively. The Germans had waited for bad winter weather to launch their attack, to diminish the ability of Allied aircraft to support the ground troops. The weather also slowed the German advance, however, and this, the narrow roads and stubborn resistance wrecked their timetable. Improving weather conditions allowed Allied planes to take to the skies again and support the counterattacks that began pushing back the Germans.
While the British and Americans inroads in the Eastern Front, the Soviet military continued to push back German forces. As the Red Army advanced on Warsaw in August 1944, the Polish resistance forces rose up in opposition to the Nazi occupiers in Warsaw. Known as the Warsaw Uprising (August 1), its participants, however, lacked equipment and ammunition. Moreover, the Soviet forces, against the expectations of the Polish resistance activists, did not make any effort to break through the German lines and link up with the Polish resistance. This incident has led many to conclude that the Soviet military had been ordered by Joseph Stalin to not aid the resistance in order to weaken anti-Communist forces in the city.
In the south the Soviets moved to gain a wider foothold in the Balkans in late August. They knocked Romania out of the war, moved into Bulgaria, and then into Yugoslavia. Hungary fell next in October. By the beginning of 1945, Soviet forces found themselves poised on the doorstep of Nazi Germany, ready to topple the Nazi regime in 1945.