Allied invasion of Italy
With the Salerno beachhead secure, the Fifth Army began its attack northwest towards Naples on 19 September. The 82nd Airborne, after suffering serious casualties near Altavilla Silentina, was shifted to X Corps, joining the Rangers and the British 23rd Armoured Brigade on the Sorrento Peninsula to flank the German defenses at Nocera, which the 46th (North Midland) Division attacked. The 7th Armoured Division, passing through the 46th Division, was assigned the task of taking Naples, while the newly landed U.S. 3rd Infantry Division took Acerno on 22 September and Avellino on 28 September.
The 8th Army had been making good progress from the "toe" in the face of German engineer actions and linked with the 1st Airborne Division on the Adriatic coast. It united the left of its front with the Fifth Army's right on 16 September and advancing up the Adriatic coast captured the airfields near Foggia on 27 September. Foggia was a major Allied objective because the large airfield complex there would give the Allied air forces the ability to strike new targets in France, Germany and the Balkans.
Squadron A of the King's Dragoon Guards entered Naples on 1 October (whose occupying forces had just been ejected by a popular uprising) and the entire Fifth Army, now consisting of three British and five U.S. divisions, reached the line of the Volturno River on 6 October. This provided a natural defensive barrier, securing Naples, the Campainian Plain and the vital airfields on it from German counterattack. Meanwhile, on the Adriatic coast, the British 8th Army had advanced to a line from Campobasso to Larino and Termoli on the Biferno river.
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Aftermath
The German 10th Army had come close to defeating the Salerno beachhead. Despite using six divisions of tanks and mechanized infantry, the German attacks had not had sufficient forces to both break through Allied lines and exploit the gains in the face of Allied artillery and naval gunfire support. The Allies had been fortunate that at this time Adolf Hitler had sided with the view of his Army Group commander in Northern Italy, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, and decided that defending Italy south of Rome was not a strategic priority. As a result, the Army Group Commander in southern Italy, Field Marshall Albert Kesselring had been forbidden to call upon reserves from the northern Army Group.
The subsequent success of the 10th Army in inflicting heavy casualties, and Kesselring's strategic arguments, led Hitler to agree that the Allies should be kept away from German borders and prevented from gaining the oil resources of the Balkans. On 6 November[4] Hitler withdrew Rommel to oversee the build-up of defenses in northern France and gave Kesselring command of the whole of Italy with a remit to keep Rome in German hands for as long as possible.[5]
By early October, the whole of southern Italy was in Allied hands, and the Allied armies stood facing the Volturno Line, the first of a series of prepared defensive lines running across Italy from which the Germans chose to fight delaying actions, giving ground slowly and buying time to complete their preparation of the Winter Line, their strongest defensive line south of Rome. The next stage of the Italian Campaign became for the Allied armies a grinding and attritional slog against skillful, determined and well prepared defenses in terrain and weather conditions which favoured defense and hampered the Allied advantages in mechanised equipment and air superiority. It took until mid-January 1944 to fight through the Volturno, Barbara and Bernhardt lines to reach the Gustav Line, the backbone of the Winter Line defenses, setting the scene for the four battles of Monte Cassino which took place between January and May 1944.
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In Popular Culture
- To Hell and Back movie 1955
- Medal of Honor Airborne 2007 video games
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See also
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Footnotes
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References
- Clark, Lloyd (2006). Anzio. Headline Publishing Group, London. ISBN 0 7553 1420 1.
- D'Este, Carlo (1991). Fatal Decision: Anzio and the Battle for Rome. ISBN 0-06-092148-X.
- Fifth Army Historical Section [1944] (1990). Salerno American Operations From the Beaches to the Volturno 9 September - 6 October 1943, CMH Online bookshelves: American Forces in Action Series. Washington: US Army Center of Military History. CMH Pub 100-7.
- Grigg, John (1982). 1943: The Victory that Never Was. Kensington Pub Corp. ISBN 0-8217-1596-8.
- Mavrogordato, Ralph S. [1960] (2000). "Chapter 12: Hitler's Decision on the Defense of Italy", in Greenfield, Kent Roberts: Command Decisions, CMH Online bookshelves. Washington: US Army Center of Military History. CMH Pub 72-7.
- Muhm, Gerhard (1993). La Tattica tedesca nella Campagna d'Italia, in Linea Gotica avanposto dei Balcani, (Hrsg.) (in Italian). Roma: Amedeo Montemaggi - Edizioni Civitas.
- Muhm, Gerhard. German Tactics in the Italian Campaign (in English).
- Orgill, Douglas (1967). The Gothic Line (The Autumn Campaign in Italy 1944). London: Heinemann.
- Smith, Col. Kenneth V. (1990?). Naples-Foggia 9 September 1943-21 January 1944, CMH Online bookshelves: World War II Campaigns. Washington: US Army Center of Military History. CMH Pub 72-17.
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External links
- British Army museum on Italian CampaignBad link
- Canada and the Italian Campaign
- Details of naval operations around the Italian landings
- Online Canadian World War 2 Newspaper Archives - The Sicilian and Italian Campaigns, 1943-1945
- Royal Engineers Museum Royal Engineers and Second World War (Italy)
- Summary of the Italian Campaign
- University of Kansas Electronic LibraryBad link
- One of Many - Overview of 10 Corps operations at Salerno
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