Italy - Forgotten Front Remembered
The Mutli-National Southern European Battlefront of World War II
Diverse in scope the Italian Campaign of World War II lost its prestige once the Allies stormed into Normandy in June 1944, but played a large part in the final victory.
This less publicized campaign, taking Allied forces up the Italian boot, was no less as difficult and deadly for the Allied forces involved than the more popularly discussed Western and Eastern European Theaters.
Many nations including Canada, France, Brazil, Poland, Greece, South Africa, and India, contributed to the American and British Corps battling the Germans at the southern entrance into Europe. This Italian battlefront would also see multi-cultural forces within the American Army. The ‘Tuskegee Airman’, the 99th Fighter Squadron composed of African-Americans, and Japanese-Americans of the 100th Battalion, and later the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which became one of the most decorated American units of World War II, fought the Germans in Italy. This multi-cultural coalition would help shorten the war by eliminating an Axis partner (Italy), and force the Germans to retain forces and supplies in Italy, which were badly needed in France and on the Eastern Front.
It was assumed by Allied planners that the road through Italy would be an easy one. When the Italian government of Mussolini collapsed in July 1943, it appeared the Allies might be correct in their assumption. Hitler and his Generals had other plans…Italy would be defended. Hitler dispatched Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, a Luftwaffe officer and former Wehrmacht colonel, to take charge and occupy Italy. The Third Reich could not survive if Allied forces were allowed to establish a base of operations in Southern Europe. The German High Command understood the threat Allied bombers posed to southern German cities, not to mention the threat to the Romanian oil fields which were Germany’s primary source of crude oil.
Overall, Allied strategy began to place a greater emphasis on the forthcoming landings in Northern France - Operation Overlord. The Italian Campaign began to be considered secondary, as Generals Patton, Bradley, and Montgomery began to push Allied forces across France and into Germany. This combined with the difficult terrain of the Italian Theater resulted in the slow Allied advance. Rolling hills and streams gave the Germans natural defenses and excellent fields of observation. The defenders also established a series of defensive lines, from the Gustov Line south of Rome, to the Gothic Line south of Bologna. Each had to be overcome for the advance to continue. After a major Allied effort in May 1944 to break the Gustov Line, the Allied forces were poised to strike at the Italian capital itself.
Rome would fall on June 4th, 1944, as General Mark Clark’s 5th U.S. Army advanced into the ancient capitol. The psychological effect the capture of an Axis capitol provided to the Allied troops was enormous. The Germans would now fall back into a series of unfinished defensive positions and were never able to establish a sound defense or retain effective supply. In comparison to earlier fighting in Italy, the war north of Rome was just as difficult for the Allies to advance. Although the enemy had been weakened, his remaining forces were battle-hardened, and it took a steady, well supplied advance from the Allies to push into northern Italy.
Allied divisions would initially become bogged down and struggle for every step up the Italian mainland. Fighting would not cease until May 2nd when the German armed forces surrendered to the Allies ending the war in the Italian Theater.
See Various Entries of:
I.C.B. Dear & Foot, The Oxford Companion to World War II (Oxford New York: Oxford University Press, 1995)
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